Canadian, sysadmin, trans rights are human rights, puncha-the-nazis, cats are pretty great, GNU Terry Pratchett.

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Cake day: June 8th, 2023

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  • Rob Bos@lemmy.catoLinux@lemmy.ml*Permanently Deleted*
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    10 months ago

    oh geez. I’ve done Windows desktop support for many years, and that is so VERY not true. Even if you discount the fact that win95 software would be written for 32-bit architectures, they don’t account for UAC or file permissions, often fail to let you move installation files to better locations, and universally have shitty automated installers. Often they depend on hardware, eg dongles that no longer exist or CDROMs that have long since gone to hell.

    Usually we’ll airgap a machine and run Windows XP 32-bit, which is generally the highest you can reliably get a win95 program working with. Sometimes a VM will work. Sometimes you can mount an ISO and fake a CDROM. It’s a challenge.

    Linux is so much easier. You have more options for getting old stuff to work, even if you have to do a lightweight VM with an old OS, you can sandbox it better.



  • Many places support MacOS as well, so it would only be a third additional toolset. Plus, there’s a ton of overlap between toolchains, which reduces the overhead further. If you’re supporting enterprise MacOS, you’re probably using Foreman, JAMF, or Puppet with Active Directory.

    Not to mention, a lot of places already have Linux servers, so the configuration management toolchains and expertise may already exist in a given organization, unless they’re absolutely pathologically mired in the Windows ecosystem. Which, granted, is a lot of places, but you’re making it sound far harder than it would be in a real world situation.