From: "Trent W. Buck" <trentbuck@gmail.com>

Petros <Petros.Listig@fdrive.com.au> writes:

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Also worth noting that with Linux, you tend to get a huge variance in the way things are set up, depending on the sysadmins who created it. If you bring in a new Linux shop, they may well take quite a while to figure out how everything works, and then want to change it.

I do not think that is true.

I'm a sysadmin. I routinely inherit systems. It's definitely true.

Simple things are usually consistent, but Toby's right that it can take a while (weeks/months) to understand all the... quirks and pecadillos of the previous maintainer. I tend to dismiss that as incompetence, but it could be style differences.

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It is probably even more consistent over years - compared to the move from Windows XP to Vista to Windows 7 to Windows 8.

I can't comment on Windows systems administration.

I was referring to it in a Linux vs. Windows context. I am "a bit" involved in the Windows administration too although I have a colleague who is doing a lot of the ground work. You will find similar quirks in the Windows world too, whether it is a domain setup, naming conventions, directory structures, shares, version control setup, monitoring, remote control, firewall solution etc - that all has to be added and configured on a "pristine" Windows box before you have a working system. And then you have the next version and "C:\Document and Settings" becomes "C:\Users". /home is there since I use Unix. You have to tweak the registry to use a file server home under Windows. Our company setup requires a particular samba share mounted as W: and some of the W: directories added to the path, Firefox under C:/Program Files (not the default C:/Program Files(x86), you have to create a fake D: drive to make a particular program happy.. not to know that will give you a bunch of surprises. Documentation helps (fortunately we have that, a long Wiki page describing how to install and configure Windows machines) - but that is universally true. At my kids' primary school the teachers started to use USB sticks to exchange data - because nobody was able to fix issues with their Windows file server, for months. They had some external Windows admins to maintain the network. Maybe that is a bright spot if you have a Linux admin: Most of them know what they are doing;-) Regards Peter