Forums for Windows Admins? 114
Work-w/-MCSEs asks: "I work with Microsoft products for a living, as well as for fun. I've been lurking in Slashdot discussions for a while now. I find a lot of the stories interesting, but it is obviously geared more toward Unix people. Stories about MS products are often full of flames. I can see the reasons why Microsoft users aren't accepted as 'true geeks'. I acknowledge that Unix people are more technical (by necessity since they often compile their own software), and I'm not asking or expecting the attitudes here to change. However, I do wish I could find a similar forum for us to talk about our chosen operating system, applications, viruses, and other issues. Usenet is just too full of spam to be useful. Where is a Windows user to go for good discussion?"
Usenet (Score:4, Interesting)
Some sysadmin support sites... (Score:2, Interesting)
http://www.sysinternals.com...it's a decent place for windows related discussions...
For sun stuff, the best place is really sun itself http://forum.sun.com...
For tru64 stuff go subscribe to the tru64 mailing lists, I think it's the only thing that's staying alive for that stuff...
as for Linux, well...really you could look just about anywhere for that...
who sells the software? (Score:4, Interesting)
All in all, MS wants nobody to feel confused or threatened using their software, including admins. This means everything is hosted, or sysadmin'd by people who just get to the fact, no BS. So, your slashdot-like knockabout sites are elsewhere. There are lots of them (google Expert/Advice/Programming) in various flavors of competance.
Those thick books people layer on their desk are great now and then, but at ~$50 a pop, you may want to just register for an online book resource. Sorry, no link, but Books24x7 and stuff like that.
So if you want technial knowledge, MS shovels it out. Magazines, websites galore. If you're looking for general "science news" and the resultant BS chatter, then
Personally I reconcile the two by not trying to change the world everywhere. My company pays me to do technical, and mostly interesting work. If it's on an MS box, an automotive-microcontroller, or just DSP math research in school, you're still in the tech world. So just put up with the flames and read
Re:I'll stand up and be flamed. (Score:4, Interesting)
Actually, I suspect *nix people may well be more technical; *nix encourages the idea of (for example) stringing together awk | sed | cut | sort | grep to do things that under Windows would almost always be implemented as a monolithic program.
But let me second (part of) the parent poster's comment: compilation is so ridiculously easy these days on linux-y systems.
I remember when I -- a professional programmer -- hesitated to compile unfamiliar source, because of conflicting headers, non-standard "Standards" (before C++98/C99, everyone and his brother had a different idea of what bool should be), and other gotchas.
These problems have largely disappeared on linux-y systems, thanks mostly to configure scripts. Nowadays, I have no real worries about downloading source I'd never heard of before, and I'm surprised if it doesn't compile cleanly the first time.
Funnily enough, I do most of my compiling not under linux per se, but Cygwin. And most of what I've been doing recently has been cross-compiling, for the SH-1 and the StrongArm processors. Still, I have few problems, mostly because of the configure scripts.
If you've never used a configure script, it compiles a battery of test code in such a way as to test for any particularities of your environment, and adapts the Makefile to your system.
Nor are decent Makefiles limited to linux-y environments; Neil Hodgson, in addition to writing the excellent SciTE editor, also makes the source available with Makefiles that perform flawlessly for a number of compilers -- I was able to compile using the Borland command line compiler "out of the box" using Neil's Borland makefile.
What I dread these days are "Integrated Development Environments" with "projects" or other proprietary replacements for Makefiles. True, the Makefile is a dated and awkward format that goes so far as to (disastrously, if you don't know about it!) make semantic distinctions between spaces and tabs. But it also works most anywhere.
Recently, I took an app written for Qt on some linux distribution, and after a few days of compensating for the fact that it used the 3.x QT libraries and I was using 2.3.3, I was able to cross-compile it under Cygwin for my Sharp Zaurus. Other than implementing Qt 3.x functionality using Qt 2.3.3 classes, the configure script took care of all the work for me.
The parent poster also wrote "Linux is far superior there. But, as it stands, Windows is still a better desktop OS."
With Cygwin under Windows 2000, and a policy of using programs -- like Mozilla -- that are Open and exist in both MS-Windows and Linux -- I really think I have the best of both worlds.
Re:I'll stand up and be flamed. (Score:4, Interesting)
I disagree with this completely. The original story appears to come from a professional windows admin. By the nature of ths OS, that is an easier job to be competent at than a UNIX admin.
I'm not flaming. Here's 2 examples:
If you need to setup an email / groupware server then go and install MS Exchange on a Windows 2000 server. I've done it. Click, Click, Click and you're done. For your clients you can install MS Outlook, point them at the Exchange server, give it a username and your done. Try and do the same thing on UNIX. You'll need to install an IMAP server. Then a separate LDAP server (which the IMAP server must be able to use). Then work out which of the myriad of Groupware options is the best for what you need. Then you'll need to configure each of the clients for the IMAP settings, LDAP settings, etc. Neither of these systems will work just by running
What about a web server. Add Remove programs, Windows Components, Internet Information Server. Stick in the CD, away you go. Sure, it's simple to install apache on a linux box. But for dynamic pages? Well you can unstall PHP, but should you enable track vars? Which XML options should you choose? which database is better? Want to use mod_perl instead? should you install it as a DSO option or compile it into Apache? Or should you go the JSP route. then which version of tomcat do you choose?
Microsoft's product is designed to be easy. It's meant to be simple to setup a server. And as such it allows for less skilled individuals to get something working. If you actually did what I suggested in my examples then you would be having issues with your Windows Servers pretty quickly if they get reasonable load on them. For someone to understand exactly what their Windows server is doing and for it to be a scalable and reliable system, then they will need to be as knowledgable and experienced as their UNIX counterparts have to be. But the nature of the platform allows for lower skilled techs to get the systems running and that's why it's perceived to be a less technical solution to UNIX
Cause and effct (Score:2, Interesting)
I think you have cause and effect mixed up here.
What I did for Linux... (Score:3, Interesting)
I wanted a place for highly technical information about Linux, particularly programming documentation. I'd read the HOWTO's and had used google, but was irritated that google tended to find me the question, but rarely the answer.
My solution was to set up the WLUG Wiki [wlug.org.nz]. If you can find a group of like minded people to "seed" the community with your problems (and solutions) then slowly, over time other people join in. We've been running the wlug wiki for 18 months now, and it's now the top hit on google for all kinds of things, and is linked from all kinds of official pages as documentation.
Theres been several people that have said that they'd love to have a general "system administration" wiki for Windows, but there are none (and I'm not going to set one up -- I don't know enough about administering windows!)
So, set one up, it's not difficult. Try and write down what problems you've solved each day and what their solution were into the wiki, and try and get a couple of other people to join in. Pretty soon you'll have created you're own resource