The thought that any application doesn’t require support or maintenance is bullshit in the most conservative of terms. Have you seen all the constant patches and updates for Linux distros that happen almost more often now than with Windows? What about the fact that most of the noticed hacks and patches for Linux are results of exploits that let you Root the damn box!? Windows is far from secure, but most exploits are fairly high level, and only a few have resulted in people being able to run your box. A Root exploit in a linux build, you own the box. Also because no one company makes/mantains all the lil craplets in a Linux distro... any one of the many small additions wrote by some company is a security issues if one of them isnt secure enough. With MS, if its an issue with file sharing, terminal services, or FTP you know who to go to, its all MS's fault. Not having to find geeks to support Samba, or Apache, or proftp all seperately.
Now I know airspirit is a total gentoo zelot, so theres no chance is even speaking any wrong about gentoo (even if it takes more work to get it to do what you want than it woudl take to write a ****ing OS). My point airspirit, is as long as the minority of browsers out there hide under IE's name don’t bitch about people not coding for them. If the browser was that good, they wouldnt need to hide under their competitors name, but would make a point to show the industry they are good enough to be on their own.
as far as email clients, I am pretty neutral. All I know is nothing... not one damn app out there can do all the things outlook can do. No office package is as well refined, and filled with tools that are functional and effective than MS office. Office 2003 has renewed my faith in MS as a groupware/productivity tool company. I have sat in many many meetings with the geeks from the UW system trying to get the state to go to all freeware stuff for email/web/productivity.
They make these big plans, but then when you break it down. They have 7 ... SEVEN applications on a server side to be supported to do what EXCHANGE can do. But its free! They had 2 suites of applications that a workstation would need to do everything O2K3 does. But its not free! the cost of the suites on a linux workstation ok was close to the cost of Office 2K3 Pro!
I have done cost analysis for the states groups on Linux based (or as I like to call it "doing it just cause its leet and hip this year") desktop and groupware implementations Vs MS and their goods. and Linux does come in cheaper, but not by much at all. I think it was a total saving of 20$ per workstation and would take an extra 2 years to implement, and additional staff.
I just hear these zealots far too often preaching that just cause software costs money its bad. Or needs to be patched, its bad. MS is far from good, but they are the best option out there still.
I wont choose any other OS than linux (or BSD) on a web server though... that’s what its meant to do, be a server. Guess I don’t get the whole rush of being able to say "were a linux house" when I hear someone say that, I cant help but think "wow just too cheap to do it right".
and pH, I support Windows servers for a living, I work on PC's at home for fun
Also I do maintain Linux servers at work and at home also. I have run linux desktop implentations, recently I tested a few office suites from them. I've been there, and I see that I could make more money maintaining Linux system (simply cause they require more of it than any windows system I have ever seen, and do not have the facilities for automated updates the way windows systems now do), but its just a damn headache. Even the ultra shitty Office XP was better than almost any linux office implementation out there.