Why do so few Industrial product come with Linux support ?

Ziggurat@sh.itjust.works to No Stupid Questions@lemmy.world – 63 points –

I was thinking about the recent story about the DB looking for windows 3.1 administrator.

A classic issue I've soon working in heavy industry is that hardware last longer than windows version. So 10 years ago, you bought a component for the product you design or a full machine for your factory which only comes with a windows XP driver.

10 year latter, Windows XP is obsolete, upgrading to a more recent windows might be an option but would cost a shit load of money.

I have therefore the impression that Linux would offer more control to the professional user in term of product lifecycle and patch deployment. However, there is always that stupid HW which doesn't have a Linux driver.

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2 main reasons in my view:

  • windows is the de facto standard for desktop ans users management. So each corp has at least one guy used to the interface to dofirst-level debug
  • windows comes with support, not linux. So corps don't want to employe one Linux admin "just in case". That's the main reason I keep hearing from sysadmins I know

There’s plenty of support for Linux. REHL, for example; their entire business is selling support. Suse, CentOS, and Debian all have people specifically to support enterprise.

Sure, there’s not a hotline with a guy on the other end who may or may not be more knowledgeable than a 5yo post on Reddit or stack exchange or wherever… but they do have enterprise-grade support

There’s plenty of support for Linux.

This is the way tech is. Once someone gets an idea in their head it doesn't go away. IT guy at my job told me this about two years ago, ok yeah buddy not like I used to sysadmin a RHEL system for years. No support contracts, or irc rooms, or websites, or books, or man pages, no nothing.

I just stopped arguing with people about this stuff. I get a contract and I give them the best design I can come up with. They tell me they want to use some ancient thing and I give it to them.

I knew a REHL admin that developed a custom theme for KDE that made everything look like XP... it was all the modern bells and whistles under the covers; but it looked ancient and for some reason that kept his clients happy.

Oh I believe. I have a folder full of schematics named "for morons" on my work computer. It is achieves most of the basic functionality of a modern design except every part of it looks like it was made in 1994 or so. Your tax dollars at work btw.

Did your buddy make that grass hill thing as well as the background?

Not sure. I made the mistake of telling him I grew up on redhat so he gave me a ~'98 version of gnome.