And I am in no way saying that my own experiences as a systems admin are the norm – I for one enjoy working in all systems, as it gives me greater experience (I was actually a Mac novice when I started some years ago, now have more Mac experience / troubleshooting than most people at a Mac store).

But to be honest, windows (NT based) systems are the easiest to manage in a large node network. Or it could be that I am ignorant to some things that can be achieved through a non-Windows based network. If I had my way, every user would be on a thin client, running a light weight linux client, and connecting via Citrix to a win 2k8 box (and many are). That’s the easiest from an admin point of view.

I could elaborate further, but I do think this is decision process that is often very poorly done. In many ways the “fault” lies at a management level.

Company system administrators need to “get over” favouring one OS to the exclusion of the others

To cheery pick/quote mine (as I left off the rest of that sentence), I do in fact, as a system admin, need to “favoure” one OS to another. Strictly from an admin point, I have to use windows when possible. This is due to the fact that we are in a domain ran by Windows 2k3/2k8 servers, within exchange. We need to require AD login for all users. We can set group wide preferences on users via log ins, that cannot be achieved easily in other systems.

Now we have a Mac network, which I am glad to support, but MANY of our apps don’t work on Mac. We use Citrix for all app (we are server based) so what the end user has on their desk doesn’t really matter – but they will all be seeing a windows desktop regardless. They only use their Mac desktop for CS4 and Quark (which tend to run better on Mac) PC = cheaper = that’s what you get. Also, for road users, I require windows as I cannot use dameware/remote admin to remote into their systems via VPN.

The point being, it may not be that the admin is actually favoring because they are a fanboy, but because it’s what fits into the system.

It’s almost as gratuitously stupid as the Office 2007 UI changes.

RE:Office 2007 UI changes. I would have agreed with you about a year ago, as we rolled out 2007 to my office and it was SUCH A PAIN. I spend months re-training everyone on where everything is. Oddly though, a year later, I think my employees would be lost in the 95 interface now… Point I guess, pissed me off at the tikme, but I’ve warmed up to it (except that Excel is a CRAZY resource hog)

People who claim they have never lost anything don’t know what they’re missing.
HA!
OS the Breakdown:
Work: XP
Netbook: Linux
For my mother who doesn’t know how to operate a PC: OSX
Crazy Gaming System: Windows 7 64-bit(or soon enough)

Done and done

And always backup, no matter the OS. Better yet, RAID 1 for OS drive and RAID 0+1 for data. Yes, keep your data and your OS on different drives, not just partitions.

To me it’s simple: if you’re already familiar with one OS and it serves your needs well, stick with it. Don’t go bashing other’s choices because just as your choice works for you, their choice most likely works well for them as yours does for you (assuming they fit the target audience).

From my experience, Linux is a fine web/database server platform (I invariably use Linux for web and database servers), excellent for the most code development (esp. the more “traditional” approaches). I don’t think it’s really suitable for most business or home user environments and I doubt it ever really will be as it’s development approach naturally leans to experienced users creating things that match their own needs. (That’s not a bad thing, just the nature of how it is.)

OS X provides excellent GUI applications sitting on a BSD platform. A lot of the core is intentionally targeted at being simple enough for newer users, with Apple implementing a tidy approach to the “basics”, in part trying to kick-start developers to meet the more advanced users needs, e.g. Finder (taken at face value, at least) is a little simple, but there’s PathFinder for more advanced users. The “Unix level” is less well-exposed than in Linux, but reflects advanced users being a secondary target of the company and that new users don’t really want to be faced with it from the onset (as opposed to picking it up later if the choose to).

You can run the standard versions of other OSes on OS X via virtualisation (Fusion, Parallels), so you can make it a OS X GUI + Unix + Windows platform if you care to. For some users this is a cost-effective way to, say, test websites or other cross-platform issues without having to support a lot of hardware.

Windows I don’t have as much experience with, but at the end of the day, people seem to be able to get done what they want to get done, which is ultimately what matters. They seem to have a lot of worry about security issues. (Why don’t I use Windows much? – basically because I already have (more than) one way of doing what I need/want to. I do use it for cross-platform testing, but develop on OS X / or Linux, and for games; I’m not much of a gamer, though.)

One more thing I’d like to toss in because I think it’s important. Company system administrators need to “get over” favouring one OS to the exclusion of the others, especially based on their person bias, and make their job “making it happen” for the company staff whatever platform they are using. After all, surely their job is to serve the staff, not for the staff to serve their bias as it were. It’s a waste of resources having staff learn how to use a new OS if they already know how to get what they need done on an existing OS. I had the experience of (informally) advising a local company to leave Linux for the server room and let the staff use what they were comfortable with on the desktop and support their use of their preferred platform. The sysadmin insisted “Linux was best” and made everyone use it. What a disaster. For the next two years the company lost valuable time of expensive staff…

@travc, I suspect the rep will point at Snow Leopard, as I believe they’ve been working on that.