Everything Old is New Again
Looks like I’m going to be a Unix admin!
Yeah, it definately looks like we’ll be using some form of Linux at the new place. If not Novell’s Open Enterprise Server on Linux, then Red Hat Advanced Server. Of course, I’ll end up running SMB as a Windows PDC, for the login scripts, but, hey, at least I can do it! And, it almost sounded like the boss was actually leaning toward Novell’s solution. It actually worked out to be about the same, cost-wise, as Red Hat. Though, the Novell pricing doesn’t include any support if anything went wrong. But, I suppose we could pay by incident. I mean, I hardly ever call Novell anyway these days. Their online knowlegebase has most of the answers I need.
And, of course, there’s all the Mac and OS X stuff, too. That’s BSD, essentially, with a Mac X Windows front end. Funny, it all comes around to that GUI, doesn’t it? All point and click. Oh, for the good, old days when all we had was a command prompt and we were darn lucky when we got that! These kids today don’t have any appreciation for what a good command prompt can do. Why, I remember, back in the “before time”, messing around on an old HP-UX system and figuring out how to read mail from reading the man file! So, here I am, again, back where I started, about to become a Unix admin again.
Cool.
I don’t know why, but I have my fingers crossed for Novell’s Open Enterprise Server. It’s really cool!
Comment by MightyKong — 5/3/2005 @ 8:59 pm
Actually, there are some advantages to going that way. For one thing, if I’m reading the documentation right, I could use the Novell client and login scripts. That’d be a little easier than doing SMB as a PDC. And, if there’s a Mac client, that takes care of a second problem I’ve got right now, too. Either way, it’ll be interesting!
Comment by the Network Geek — 5/4/2005 @ 5:27 am
Ah! So you’ve Macs in your shop as well? We’ve about 20 of the cute little buggers. The G5 Desktops are about the most attractive computers I’ve seen…and the 23″ Cinema displays are a joy! Then you sit down to use one and they seem a little…slow. It could be a bias on my part.
Anyway, I installed Tiger (OS X 10.4) yesterday to my little G4. Seems just fine…and it required no bleedin’ activation!! Lemme know if I can help or test anything for you…you know how to reach me.
POL
Comment by Pol — 5/4/2005 @ 6:17 am
No, they are a little slow, but, consider how many pretty pictures they have to draw with every screen refresh! I used to give my older brother the business about Macs and the “pretty-picture-to-what-the-hell-it-does” translator for us command-line folks. Which, in retrospect, is funny because my brother used to program for the TI home computer, whatever it was called, which was all command line and ASCII graphics. Fun stuff. At least, this place is going to round out my resume!
Comment by the Network Geek — 5/4/2005 @ 8:29 am