Non-technical digression, followups redirected to alt.dev.null...
> The reason why NT is so attractive over UNIX is that it is harder to
> install a UNIX system. Many people like NT because they just want to boot
> to a floppy, insert a CD-ROM and be guided through a graphical, automated
> setup.
The last three operating systems I installed were FreeBSD, Red Hat Linux,
and Windows NT. They all had the nice friendly install screens and menus.
Red Hat had the GUI up during the install, FreeBSD did it with boxes and
text, but they were functionally pretty much identical. Except that with
Red Hat and FreeBSD I didn't have to reboot multiple times during the
install process, hand it a 2940 driver (twice) because the 2940 driver on
the install CD was flakey, and sit there and babysit the thing because it
didn't ask all the questions it needed right up front... they were both
just load and go.
With multiple boxes to install UNIX is even easier. You can install over
the network, schedule installs. With Solaris you can set up a box that's
just got a cache file system and a /tmp directory, plug it in, and it'll
boot off the net loading only the files it needs to run, so you get high
performance without having to make your workstation customized. Your users
may never know that there's no local operating system installed, since it'll
keep on happily working through net outages because of the cache.
This "NT is easier" propoganda is just propoganda. It's *not* any easier
than a modern UNIX system, it's less well documented, and it's more complex
too! You really can't get by without a good NT book, the correct resource
kit, and a bunch of shareware tools (for example, a good resource editor
with global search and replace). Any environment that's simple enough that
NT is really as easy to use as it looks would be no harder to deal with
under UNIX... but UNIX scales so very much better.
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