| Topic: | Re:Re:Re:Re:Re:Re:Re:Re:Re:Re:Re:Re:Re:Re:Re:Re:Ealing Council Web Site Goes Kaput | |
| Posted by: | Chris Bell | |
| Date/Time: | 10/06/09 10:51:00 |
| There is plenty of top quality support because Unix compatible software is both well covered in University level courses and actively used during those courses. It is widely used in large organizations, and generally in other countries. There is much more poor quality support for Microsoft, yet there is a greater need for any kind of support for Microsoft because it is so unreliable. It is generally accepted that Microsoft requires about five times the IT support compared with Unix compatible Free Open Source Software. There is no absolute guarantee that the software will be perfect, but there is no shortage of users capable of providing improvements and patches when the original source code is available for anyone to view, while closed source software relies on the supplier to get round to fixing problems, if at all. Microsoft does sell you a product that includes Free Open Source Software, for example much of the networking facilities are taken from BSD complete with the licenses, and users often add Free Open Source Software such as Firefox. Unfortunately software supplied to work with Microsoft is not usually tested to ensure that it will coexist with other software, and there is no requirement or guarantee that it will work without unexpected problems. Try getting Microsoft to help you sort out an obvious bug in their system. There is a free choice of advanced Open Source Software supplied in test versions, or thoroughly tried and tested versions such as the "stable" version of Debian, while commercial software is too often supplied initially as a barely tested package, to be tested by customers. |