[CLUE-Talk] Homeland Securty abandons MS for Linux

[Joe 'Zonker' Brockmeier]

On Tue, 28 Jan 2003, Sean LeBlanc wrote:

*snip*

> It's not like security isn't an issue on UNIX, but in my limited anecdotal
> experience, it seems that UNIX admins have more competence in what they do,
> as opposed to the typical NT admin.

I think that has a lot to do with the mindset of your typical NT admin.

Most Unix/Linux admins understand that system administration can be
hard, but are willing to take the time to learn a new system or tool,
and when I say learn, I mean actually learn what the tool does and
how it works. Often, you have to have at least a fair understanding of
something, say networking, to use the tools that come with *nix systems.

On the other hand, the whole idea behind Microsoft tools is to prevent
the end user from having to understand something thoroughly before
setting up networking or web serving or whatever. It's pretty rare
to be able to get by with only minimal knowledge on *nix systems.

So, the folks are attracted to *nix administration tend to be people
who really think things through (and overthink at times in some
situations, but that's another story entirely...) and part of that
thought process usually leads to thinking about security.

NT admins -- the ones who choose Microsoft over Unix, not the ones
who end up administering NT boxen because the economy sucks and it's
the only job they can get right now -- are attracted to something
that's easy and that doesn't require much learning. IMHO those types
aren't qualified to be sys admins. If I were a manager who heard
an admin complaining about the difficulty of using *nix instead
of an easy MS solution, I'd want to fire them on the spot.

I'd rather have an admin who's willing to spend the time to learn
the system to achieve the flexibility and security that *nix allows
that NT/2000/XP does not. It's usually the "easy" features from MS
that come back to haunt you anyway...

Zonker
--
Joe 'Zonker' Brockmeier
http://www.dissociatedpress.net/