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Old Aug 17, 2019, 12:44 am
  #15  
KRSW
 
Join Date: Aug 2008
Location: Somewhere in Florida
Posts: 2,577
Originally Posted by DenverBrian
No worries; some of these same people in 1995 were saying "I'll NEVER give up DOS!"
I still support a few companies who run DOS-based systems. There simply isn't a replacement system out there for them without completely scrapping all of their equipment, so we keep the old stuff going, which actually is very simple. With VMs, this is even easier. If it's not broke, don't break it! I have no plans to abandon Win7 in my office anytime soon. Only as hardware is replaced, and we hold onto our equipment for a long time.

As many people have discovered, newer isn't always better. Win10's forced upgrades along with Office 365's auto-updates break things with each update. Don't take my word for it -- Microsoft publishes a Known Issues bulletin which talks about this. Invariably, each Windows 10 update breaks our printer drivers and breaks the network links to our accounting system. All brand-name hardware & software being used here. I've even had Windows 10 IGNORE policies and settings which specifically were supposed to prevent it from updating. The settings were there and correct, Windows Update just decided to ignore it. I lost a weeks' worth of data because a batch job got interrupted TWICE by Windows 10 forced reboots. Win10's interface is schizophrenic at best. They have the newer-style menus and windows for some things, but after that you're stuck with the Win 3.11-era dialog boxes and Wizards. Users complain to Microsoft and Microsoft doubles-down by releasing a new update that breaks even more things. The useless and unnecessarily obtuse Powershell is now replacing CMD. What a complete joke of an OS.

We've run a Linux/BSD back-end in our office since ~2008. No licensing fees, no CALs, no Patch Tuesday crap, no rebooting the machines to update things either. Uptime is generally 99.99% annually, running on 15-20 year old servers. Even the PBX is *nix based, running on 15-20 year old hardware. It...just...works. Because of all the issues we've had with Windows 10, we've started to deploy Linux user workstations where we can. It's an adjustment for users, but so is Windows 10. Unfortunately some of the software we use still isn't cross-platform yet and we've not found suitable alternatives yet...but when that time comes, I'll be very happy to kick Win10 to the curb.

Do I place a lot of faith in Linux? I trust my life to it, literally -- my car's control systems (steering, braking, engine) run on Debian Linux, straight from the manufacturer. I don't imagine there's anyone out there willing to do the same with Win10 or Server 2019.

/typing this on a 2009 Macbook Pro running OS X 10.11.6. Replacing w/a Lenovo Thinkpad w/Linux later this year.
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