Fundamental Difference in the Mindset for Updates of Linux vs. Windows Admins
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This just occurred to me today. It's a difference in the "typical mindset" between the two ecosystems that I find bizarre and one that I do not understand. But it is important to recognize and understand, I think.
In the Linux world, people tend to embrace "current." Systems are patched quickly, updates are rolled out and systems rarely age (from a software perspective.) The culture around Linux (and open source and non-Windows in general) is one of keeping everything up to date. Updates bring stability, security, performance and features. We don't just put up with updates, we embrace them. We love updates because things work better (nearly always) and there is little to no reason to invest "in the past." It's an embracing of the vendor and the ecosystem - relying on a community and partner that you trust and working together.
In the Windows world, we get very much the opposite. People routinely implement patching controls not to accelerate patching but to control holding it back. Patches are often rolled out grudgingly and infrequently. Major updates, like moving from Windows 7 to Windows 8, 8.1 or 10, are often actually avoided. In Linux you can go an entire career without hearing someone so much as question if they should keep up to date or not (with the bizarre exception of the Ubuntu ecosystem that has a fits and starts update thing caused by confusion around their LTS naming and, I assume, a high percentage of Windows admins testing out the Linux space, but even there it is different culturally.)
This Windows "anti-current" culture is so strong that it has become a mantra in the SMB for Windows Admins to make the bizarre claim (without logical connection to technology cycles) that something with a service pack name on it is required before the last set of updates are considered valid for inclusion (which is, of course, insane because that would also imply that the service pack would need to be patched at least once before it would be ready for inclusion, and so forth.)
What I find even more confusing is that Linux Admins are often quick to embrace the fact that Linux is just one option and that using something else is very much a consideration. But it seems that the more that someone distrusts Windows and does not embrace Microsoft as a trusted vendor partner, the more likely they are to feel that Windows is the only viable option and cannot be taken into consideration for replacement.
What makes Windows Admins so adamant about their ecosystem while simultaneously distrusting it and unwilling to embrace it while other operating system ecosystem users seem ubiquitously to trust and leverage their vendors and work with, rather than against, their platforms?
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In some cases it is directed by software use. There is a case that we are looking at right now that the Software does not run with Office 365 or 2016. But it runs perfectly with Office 2013.
The same software doesn't support Windows 10 yet. So they can not move forward - even with the seven computers they bought this year alone as Win10 cripples them It has to be Win7 or 8/8.1
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@gjacobse said:
In some cases it is directed by software use. There is a case that we are looking at right now that the Software does not run with Office 365 or 2016. But it runs perfectly with Office 2013.
How is this possible? How does software determine the license model for Office 2013?
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@scottalanmiller said:
@gjacobse said:
In some cases it is directed by software use. There is a case that we are looking at right now that the Software does not run with Office 365 or 2016. But it runs perfectly with Office 2013.
How is this possible? How does software determine the license model for Office 2013?
In the regard of licenses it doesn't. It's the physical ability to use the add-ons and such.
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@gjacobse said:
The same software doesn't support Windows 10 yet. So they can not move forward - even with the seven computers they bought this year alone as Win10 cripples them It has to be Win7 or 8/8.1
This begs a separate, but also important question. Why is it so commonly considered acceptable in the Windows world to become beholden to software that is either not supported or poorly supported? Being a little slow on updates, sure, that's acceptable. But being many generations behind without keeping the software updated? In any ecosystem outside of Windows, this would be considered not business ready and abandoned. Just look at Elastix, they fell nearly two generations (rather than four) behind and even with one product bridging the gap to some degree and a fully updated one in the works, many people considered it to be totally abandoned because they hit two versions without supporting the current OS!
The non-Windows world views embracing their platform as wildly more important than the Windows one does. What is not just tolerated but totally excused and often embraced on Windows would be met with ridicule and totally removal on another platform.
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@gjacobse said:
In the regard of licenses it doesn't. It's the physical ability to use the add-ons and such.
But the license is the sole different between Office 2013 and Office 365.
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How much is chicken and egg. My guess is that a distrust and lack of embracing of Windows leads to an allowance for third party software that also does not embrace it. Once you don't feel that patching or staying up to date matter, you are very likely to not care when you buy software that doesn't stay up to date either and then the cycle begins to support itself with everything going more and more out of date and soon you are running DOS on 486 hardware to support something that no one really considered how to maintain long term reliably.
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@scottalanmiller said:
Why is it so commonly considered acceptable in the Windows world to become beholden to software that is either not supported or poorly supported?
I'm guessing sunk cost. They paid for it, and now it's unsupported so they are either going to have to spend more money on another solution or just not pay anything and stay where they are.
The hospital I interviewed at was using full desktops pretty much as thin clients and they were still on XP. If I remember right they had issues with some part of their EMR or something on 10, so they weren't going to update to that. But they would have to pay for 7 or 8.1.
Obviously this would have been mitigated by not using a thick client with a full OS as a thin client, but I wouldn't be surprised if the director got a kickback for doing that.
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I guess Windows admins simply don't have the balls to deal with potential problems that supposedly can arise from patching and upgrading Windows systems. I keep hearing that Microsoft usually breaks things with another Windows Update cycle, yet besides single Outlook 2010 issue a month or 2 ago, I have never run into issues with patching.
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@johnhooks said:
I'm guessing sunk cost. They paid for it, and now it's unsupported so they are either going to have to spend more money on another solution or just not pay anything and stay where they are.
That's a great point, and another one that I don't understand. So often the same "group" of people that I see that distrust Windows and Microsoft, but feel that they absolutely must use it, also feel at the onset of any purchase that vendor support is so critical that they must choose Windows for this reason (a bad one since it doesn't come with any support, that's a common SMB myth) and yet they then willy nilly abandon support when it is most needed (as the product ages.) What makes support so important at one point that it drives a huge amount of decision making yet then matters so little that it is casually discarded?
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@marcinozga said:
I guess Windows admins simply don't have the balls to deal with potential problems that supposedly can arise from patching and upgrading Windows systems. I keep hearing that Microsoft usually breaks things with another Windows Update cycle, yet besides single Outlook 2010 issue a month or 2 ago, I have never run into issues with patching.
They did have a bad one in like 2014 where WSUS broke everything IIRC. But that's just one.
It's probably the crap software they buy from some junk vendor that was written in FoxPro that gets screwed up from an update.
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@marcinozga said:
I guess Windows admins simply don't have the balls to deal with potential problems that supposedly can arise from patching and upgrading Windows systems. I keep hearing that Microsoft usually breaks things with another Windows Update cycle, yet besides single Outlook 2010 issue a month or 2 ago, I have never run into issues with patching.
Nor have I, and I've never seen a hard core enterprise Windows shop shy from patching in any way. Although I have seen them fall a decade or more behind on major updates.
I hear horror stories of updates going awry, but I have never witnessed it first hand.
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@scottalanmiller said:
What makes support so important at one point that it drives a huge amount of decision making yet then matters so little that it is casually discarded?
Because they learned "that system" and don't want to learn another one.
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@johnhooks said:
They did have a bad one in like 2014 where WSUS broke everything IIRC. But that's just one.
I've seen lots of WSUS problems, but not update ones.
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@scottalanmiller said:
@johnhooks said:
They did have a bad one in like 2014 where WSUS broke everything IIRC. But that's just one.
I've seen lots of WSUS problems, but not update ones.
Ah I remember what it was. When the update was sent out, it broke the ability to update from WSUS after that.
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@johnhooks said:
Ah I remember what it was. When the update was sent out, it broke the ability to update from WSUS after that.
Yeah, WSUS seems like a piece of crap. So many problems caused by WSUS. I totally appreciate the goals of it, we do this all the time in the Linux world, but it is just so poorly done. I'm dealing with an environment with it right now and my first question "can't we just remove WSUS and have that fix all the problems?" WSUS generally solves nothing in the SMB but introduces a lot of cost, complexity and problems of its own. It's just extra fragility often there for no purpose other than to intentionally disrupt rapid patching.
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@scottalanmiller said:
@johnhooks said:
Ah I remember what it was. When the update was sent out, it broke the ability to update from WSUS after that.
Yeah, WSUS seems like a piece of crap. So many problems caused by WSUS. I totally appreciate the goals of it, we do this all the time in the Linux world, but it is just so poorly done. I'm dealing with an environment with it right now and my first question "can't we just remove WSUS and have that fix all the problems?" WSUS generally solves nothing in the SMB but introduces a lot of cost, complexity and problems of its own. It's just extra fragility often there for no purpose other than to intentionally disrupt rapid patching.
Thankfully I've never had to use it. I've just heard of the issues with it.
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@scottalanmiller said:
@johnhooks said:
Ah I remember what it was. When the update was sent out, it broke the ability to update from WSUS after that.
Yeah, WSUS seems like a piece of crap. So many problems caused by WSUS. I totally appreciate the goals of it, we do this all the time in the Linux world, but it is just so poorly done. I'm dealing with an environment with it right now and my first question "can't we just remove WSUS and have that fix all the problems?" WSUS generally solves nothing in the SMB but introduces a lot of cost, complexity and problems of its own. It's just extra fragility often there for no purpose other than to intentionally disrupt rapid patching.
I use it for the purpose of rapid patching. And I am aware of the issues with it, but it's nothing major that can't be easily fixed.
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I'm always happy to see updates, but having been burned I am cautious about how / when I apply them. Usually within 7 days of their release I'll do it over a weekend. Typically that's enough time for some other sucker to blow up his junk with a bad update and bleat about it on tech news.
As to new OS my primary concern (and a primary part of my job description) is keeping things running smoothly. New OS means user training and while a majority are excited to get new kit and have a go with it there is a minority that unleash FUD and prattle on about how it impacts their productivity. This can rattle up the chain and really impact my relationship with the business. I do not deploy a new OS lightly for this reason.
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@scottalanmiller said:
@johnhooks said:
Ah I remember what it was. When the update was sent out, it broke the ability to update from WSUS after that.
Yeah, WSUS seems like a piece of crap. So many problems caused by WSUS. I totally appreciate the goals of it, we do this all the time in the Linux world, but it is just so poorly done. I'm dealing with an environment with it right now and my first question "can't we just remove WSUS and have that fix all the problems?" WSUS generally solves nothing in the SMB but introduces a lot of cost, complexity and problems of its own. It's just extra fragility often there for no purpose other than to intentionally disrupt rapid patching.
WSUS is a piece of crap but with limited bandwidth I'd much rather download them all once. Kinda screwed up to think about but WSUS might be one of the worst pieces of software I use on a regular basis.
