From the Corporate side of the house (which I am currently converting Windows to openSUSE running Fedora DS) from a security standpoint Windows is the short-bus candidate. If the first brink in the wall is crumbling, then that wall is going to fall over sooner more tan later. (There is a REASON the NSA chose Linux to build their super secure system with, hence SELinux)

As far as AD being superior to anything else, sorry that one’s a wash. Novell’s eDirectory has far more years doing the things that AD is just now getting into doing. Fedora Directory server, originally based on netscape Directory server, (and SUN has a nice one based on that too) gives flexibility to all of the UNIX, Linux, Apple, Main Frame, AS 400, etc etc etc applications, AND operating systems out there.

If Microsoft’s Servers are so very stable, then why are more business critical databases/applications/web sites hosted on Debian/SUN/Red Hat than Mickey Mouse O’soft’s IIS?

Why is it that when a virus makes its way into the company, the Windows admins call me and ask me to ‘quickly’ download the virus definitions for them to my ftp server…

Why is it that if you are not a Microsoft system, you can;t quite use the full functionality of Windows DNS services… (believe me, it is a pain)

If AD is so special, then why is it I can get a Windows system authenticating to OpenLDAP, or FDS quickly and without much fuss, but with AD, I have (or had to) extend schema, load Services for NIS (or with R2 populate the attributes), THEN hope it will actually allow my system to authenticate IF I join the ‘domain’ ..

Exchange? hahahahaha, should I really comment? I cannot believe you deem this as a collaboration suite. it is an email server with shared folders. You ever look into SME server? Zimbra? or any other OSS servers out there? How is Exchange better than Groupwise? and to answer your question from another poster, have you ever USED Lotus Domino/Notes? Now THAT is a collaboration server. mail, shared calendaring, shared workspace, private workspace, integrated communications, SECURITY, and you don;t have to have OUTLOOK as the sole locked in interface to get on a Notes box. .. Any 12 year old with a Windows for Hackers second hand book can bring an Exchange server to it’s knees.

Active Directory/GAL/Exchange — there is a reason that it tells you to run backups of the directory, GAL, and mailbox structure.. so next month when it corrupts, you have a point to run back and lose all of that extra ‘worthless’ data. One bad partial, or bad update and your database is corrupt .. press ‘any’ key to continue… You get a bad replication with eDirectory, and it might corrupt one box, but you still have the others that refused to replicate the bad data. Same with FDS, and openLDAP.

Windows is better that Linux desktops — one word.. VISTA.. an OS so bad, Microsoft is even trying to bury it…

I can’t remember the last time I had to reboot my linux based boxes.

Yeah, like they say, it just works!

I’m glad to see that someone actually reads my posts. I want to reply to your comment regarding Lotus being superior to Exchange.

Let me paint a picture for you…

When a member of the Mormon Church knocks on my door, I tell them that I will convert to their religion if they can prove to me that what they preach is true. I put one caveat into my bargain with them, you will have to provide me with unequivocal evidence that what they are saying is true and that you can use it using the defacto source (in Christianity being the Bible)

With that being said, provide to me evidence that Lotus is a superior product in ALL situations when 90+ % of all major businesses use some sort of Exchange solution to provide what these two products do. Also, find me an administrator that knows Lotus whom I can pay the least amount of money. I can find an administrator with an MCSE that can hit the ground running for less that 50K a year starting (a green guy of course) with no bad habits or opinions that have been garnered by posts such as this. The more obscure the application or platform, salary requirements rise.

To compound that, how much harder would it be to find a person to replace the Lotus admin if they left? If you were at the helm of a multi-billion dollar company and didn’t want to have to deal with finding admins that know obscure (let’s face it, it really is obscure compared to any MS or UNIX product) applications, what would you want to implement?

If you were starting a company with a miniscule IT budget and you needed to hire IT for cheap, what would you probably start with? Probably the solution that would have the least short and long term costs.

Now, if for some reason, the shop you work at started with Lotus products from day one, then yes, I would have to say that in that specific situation Lotus would be superior to Exchange. It would be fiscally smart due to the cost of integration.

In no way am I defending Microsoft. Domino is pretty slick mainly because you can tie it into a DB2 Database. But again, how many companies want to burn capital in initial and recurring costs on an IBM product. I am a big believer in open source and will defend it to the bitter end. However, I cannot let my opinions get in the way of the success of my company. That goes beyond being an admin, an engineer, or a janitor for that matter. If an open source solution would work better than a MS in a specific situation for me, I’ll use it. The some holds true with the opposite.

To sum up what I am trying to convey here… As I mentioned before, there is no way anyone can say that one is better than the other. If you do, you need to come up with hard evidence and very sound business reasons to do so.

–Berto