[Info-vax] Maybe a bit OT, maybe not.. in any case an interesting article

[Nomen Nescio]

Paul Sture <paul at sture.ch> wrote:

> On Mon, 14 May 2012 11:35:27 -0700, John Wallace wrote:
> 
> > I don't know where Nomen Nescio is, but in this part of the world there
> > are already Linux-centric folk willing to be paid to get phone calls at
> > 2am in the morning, in sectors varying from SME to corporate. Customers
> > of these folk probably get better answers than the vast majority of MS
> > customers ever get from a support call.

Didn't see John's post so I am answering here.

Don't get me wrong, I find Linux vastly superior to Windows. I'm not a Linux
fan but that doesn't mean I don't realize Windows is crap. I realize Windows
"support" isn't. But that is not what I meant. I was saying no matter how
good something is, something that looks impressive is going to be the choice
whether it's good or not. It's the devil you know vs. the devil you don't
know for most of these companies. It's not good enough to have one or two
guys running a Linux support operation even if their support is the best in
the world. In the vast majority of cases big companies want to see the
financials of all their providers. They don't want somebody going out of
business tomorrow and getting screwed on a contract even if it never happens
in real life. It's stupid but that's the way it is. That is all I meant.
Believe me, I hate having to run XP just because some of the places I
consult for refuse to support Linux on their networks and have Windows-only
clients and other network crap there isn't any open source support for.

> > before Linux users are vulnerable to scamsters like Nerd Support, one of
> > whose reps spamcalled me the other day and who was puzzled when I asked
> > him where the Start menu he wanted me to click on "to clear the errors
> > he'd seen on my computer" could be found on an Ubuntu computer (I don't
> > use Ubuntu but wondered if he might at least have heard of it and
> > realise his MS-dependent scam was doomed to failure).

Haha! Yeah..