most commonly used Linux version?

[Kelsay, Brian - Kansas City, MO]

I was shocked when I found out about the existence of Redhat in our domain.  We had switched from an all Novell NDS and server domain to a Microsoft Active Directory and servers not long after I got here.  Desktops went from NT 4  to XP after that.
Then it took a couple of years from  the conversion to XP that I heard our DNS was on Redhat and then some programming tools started to appear that were FOSS.

Winmerge (does a diff on files); Tortoise, Subversion Cmd Line client, Subversive and AnkhSVN (all SVN repository clients); Putty and WinSCP (SSH clients); Wireshark and Nessus (network sniffing); went from Websphere to Rational to Eclipse (Java programming IDE); Tomcat App Server on Redhat; and a bunch of other stuff that I'm probably forgetting right now.

I'm excited that they were willing to at least look at FOSS alternatives and save the taxpayers some money.

Brian Kelsay
Sr. IT Specialist/Systems Analyst
Anadarko Industries, LLC,  working for:
USDA/OCIO/ITS/TSD
Kansas City Large Office
Phone:  816-926-6897
Fax:  816-448-5605
Email:  brian.kelsay at kcc.usda.gov<mailto:brian.kelsay at kcc.usda.gov>

From: kclug-bounces at kclug.org [mailto:kclug-bounces at kclug.org] On Behalf Of Haworth, Michael A.
Sent: Friday, June 03, 2011 11:13 AM
To: Jim Herrmann; kclug at kclug.org
Subject: RE: most commonly used Linux version?

ROFL! That answer sums up the fight that I am in the middle of right now - sometimes it's the admins that need a three day class to learn how to run M$-Word... Microsoft (in my situation) wins because of the automagic "it just Works!" that they have propagated over the years. This is a company of around 500 users and getting any FOSS in the door is like pushing an 18-wheeler uphill. GIMP barely made it into the image - it's free so it can't be trusted - I am only making progress with Redhat and SuSe because they offer (require) paid support models (so does Ubuntu/Canonical, but I DO NOT like Unity) - that means that they are good and wholesome, not some fly-by-night outfit...

Sometimes I think that the mindset has been formed by corporate drones that 'if we can't pay for it (and pay A LOT!), then it's not good enough for us.'

I would love to share with the LUG the hoops that I had to go through to get a simple NTP server running on CentOS into the company - we were seriously going to drop $2k+ on a program that would synchronize 1 windows computer to the root NIST servers and then auto-configure the Group Policy so that all other computers would sync to the single server... $2k for something that any Linux distro does FOR FREE! I pissed off several people when I went ahead and set it up on a desktop and did the configuring myself and then just told everyone that it had been done. It's still running, but the main proponent of purchasing the other software package will occasionally spit out that it 'is not as accurate as the Windows program would have been'.

If my Linux-Fu ever gets strong enough, I will start applying for some of the sysadmin jobs that I see from time to time.


Michael Haworth
Enterprise Systems Support Manager | PAS Technologies Inc.
1222 Atlantic | North Kansas City, Missouri 64116
T: 816-556-5157 | C:(816) 585-1033 | F: (816) 556-4692 | Michael_Haworth at pas-technologies.com
Visit our website at www.pas-technologies.com<http://www.pas-technologies.com>

From: kclug-bounces at kclug.org [mailto:kclug-bounces at kclug.org] On Behalf Of Jim Herrmann
Sent: Friday, June 03, 2011 7:02 AM
To: kclug at kclug.org
Subject: Re: most commonly used Linux version?

Joe,
Since you were asking about desktop Linux, and the system administrators on the list veered off into server land, let me bring this conversation back to your original question.  You said you wanted to install a desktop and wanted the most commonly used Linux version.  If you look at the vendors that are selling retail desktops, to consumers, they are using Ubuntu.  If you are looking for the more common business desktop, then use Windows, because businesses don't install Linux on their desktops, well damn few anyway.  Only smaller, smarter companies, do that.  The big boys are all stuck with Windows XP because it's too damn hard to change out 10,000 desktops of people who need a three day class just to learn how to run M$-Word.  I'm sure that some companies, more in Europe no doubt, are switching to Red Hat and SuSE desktops, but if you want the most commonly used *consumer* desktop, download Ubuntu here:  http://www.ubuntu.com/

I hope that actually answers your question and tip toes around the holy war that still rages within the Linux community.  ;-)

HTH,
Jim
On Mon, May 9, 2011 at 2:59 PM, Joe Cho <ksjoecho at gmail.com<mailto:ksjoecho at gmail.com>> wrote:
Hi,

I would like to install a Linux to my desktop.
Could you advise a most commonly used Linux version?
for example: Redhat, Debian, etc.

and where can I download?

Thanks in advance.


-Joe

--
Joe Cho
ksjoecho at gmail.com<mailto:ksjoecho at gmail.com>
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