OT: Why Oh Why

Thermodyne · #1 July 11th, 2003, 04:35 AM

The main issue we would have is with the server based network. When a change occurs we benefit from work done by the venders. We also benefit from a wait and see attitude where we let others work out the bugs. While this sort of debugging occurs in the Nix world, it is not as well organized as it is in the windows world. Also, the Nix world is not really a server based model. Nix tends to rely on apps on the workstation. Which is not so bad until update time rolls around, then there is a massive amount of hands on. With our system an update to say
Office XP would require software to be installed on the farm only. The user would have it at
log on with no added strain on the bandwidth. There is also the issue of interconnected software. We have an app that holds a db that is what we are there for. We have 2mil invested
in it and 1/2 a mil worth of support contracted for each of the next three years. It generates
email by interfacing with our exchange server. And authenticates by using our NT domain
controllers. Were we to change to open source on either of these, it would be COD all the way. If it would be done at all. At this time they support Windows w/Java and there is a Version that can be run on Sun systems.

minipol · #2 July 11th, 2003, 03:33 PM

Java runs fine on linux too. And about the server farm: are you saying that linux isn't that easy to setup thinclients? I thought that was the hole purpose of unix/linux. You have a server and a couple of terminals are connected to that server so people can work on it. I've seen a lot of info on this. There is even software that allows to cluster a number of servers so this would even make it easier.

Thermodyne · #3 July 11th, 2003, 04:22 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by minipol:
Java runs fine on linux too. And about the server farm: are you saying that linux isn't that easy to setup thinclients? I thought that was the hole purpose of unix/linux. You have a server and a couple of terminals are connected to that server so people can work on it. I've seen a lot of info on this. There is even software that allows to cluster a number of servers so this would even make it easier.

The farm is 7 Citrix servers. And Citrix is designed to run on MS and serve up MS apps.

PvK · #4 July 11th, 2003, 09:52 PM

My preference list is based on my own needs and experience setting up small LAN's for personal or small office use mainly for game playing and development.

If someone already has experience with an OS and doesn't hate it, then using what they know how to make do what they want will of course be an appealing choice. Personally, I have no reason to want to learn what all I would have to do to get Win 2K Server to not run all sorts of crap I don't want. Even if I believe the incredible claim that there is "one" registry setting which will remove all unwanted crap features from Win 2K Server (which reg key is this?!?! I'm thinking "hmmm... HKEY_CURRENT_CONFIG\System\CurrentControlSet\Contr ol\Class\{4D36E96A-E325-11CE-BFC1-08002BE10318}\0666\DontDoBloatCrap), it seems like it'd just be a more expensive Version of Win 2K Pro, for my purposes, and even Win 2K Pro with all patches still has issues with some games and nVidia graphics cards, while bare bones Win 98SE has no such issues and seems to boot and run much faster as long as you don't let lots of annoying apps stuff the registry full of crud.

PvK

minipol · #5 July 12th, 2003, 02:51 AM

Quote:

Originally posted by Thermodyne:
The farm is 7 Citrix servers. And Citrix is designed to run on MS and serve up MS apps.

I heard about Citrix but i don't know it. I'll have to check that. So you basically install apps on the citrix servers and then people can connect via a terminal or stripped pc to one of those citrix servers to work?

Thermodyne · #6 July 12th, 2003, 03:04 AM

Quote:

Originally posted by minipol:

quote:
Originally posted by Thermodyne:
The farm is 7 Citrix servers. And Citrix is designed to run on MS and serve up MS apps.

I heard about Citrix but i don't know it. I'll have to check that. So you basically install apps on the citrix servers and then people can connect via a terminal or stripped pc to one of those citrix servers to work?

Yep, they send key strokes and get display changes back. Server does the work. Low network load and low client load. The down side is that it likes big iron for servers. We have 5 quads and a pair of dual processor Xeon servers in the farm. They need lot of ram too, each user gets his own block of ram at logon.