I make my living from Linux but am a little bit envious of Microsoft's consistent ecosystem.
Posted by Delicious-Wasabi-605@reddit | sysadmin | View on Reddit | 109 comments
Other an 18 month gig writing some C++ applications many years ago when I was a developer I've never really worked in Microsoft's ecosystem so maybe this is a grass is greener on the other side view but the way Microsoft has a full end to end suite of tightly coupled applications for enterprises seems like you just learn one set of apps and good to go.
Where Linux is a free for all. There's hundreds of flavors of Linux itself. Then there are dozens of management applications each with their own strengths and weaknesses. And while the various desktops are ok none of them are as refined and polished as the Windows desktop. And nearly every application has hundreds of forks. And so libraries full of junk (but I wouldn't be surprised if Windows dlls are similar, especially ones that are decades old).
Eh, whatever back to work on my Mac.
Dave_A480@reddit
The problem with Windows is that it's got so many generations worth of interfaces...
You've got the original click-ops GUI (the generation that gave us control panel, etc)
The original CLI (cmd/batfiles)
PowerShell
For remote access:
RDP
psexec
winrm
And then you've got the registry which is a huge ass-pain in terms of config changes... Also still some INI files...
Some things can be done on all of them... Some only one of them...
My previous job did a lot of 'managing Windows as if it was Linux' (Ansible/powershell mix) and the original is much easier to deal with, at least from the perspective of trying-to-never-log-into-anything-directly IaC type management.
hihcadore@reddit
Every Linux admin thinks this way but is too fated to admit it.
Blue-Purity@reddit
I’ve had no problem installing google Remote Desktop on any system I needed quick remote access to.
I tried it on Linux the other day, holy shit what a nightmare.
beheadedstraw@reddit
It’s Linux bud. We never use the the GUI on servers. It’s a waste of CPU cycles and ram.
hihcadore@reddit
It’s not 1995 anymore. The gui is negligible.
The real reason I think people like gui-less (even in windows server) is elitism.
haroldp@reddit
Fuck all that shit.
The command-line is efficient and expressive. No digging through gawd damn menus to clickety-click on some dialog in some tab in some app, over a shitty mobile connection. Just run the command. If you have to do it a second time, save the command as a script, so it's even faster.
And for troubleshooting, it's not even in the same ballpark. TEXT, do you speak it?
hihcadore@reddit
Again, elitism. Nothing stop you from just opening up a terminal or powershell and doing the same exact thing.
haroldp@reddit
Does that shell have my environment? Does it have my utilities? Does it have my scripts? Is my fix repeatable? You got jq installed? On top of being slower and more cumbersome on mobile or mobile connections. Exactly what is better about a remote desktop for unix sysadmin? Can you name one thing?
hihcadore@reddit
You know the gui just adds something, it doesn’t take it away.
We’re talking about a server environment btw. Maybe you’re in the wrong subreddit.
haroldp@reddit
Overhead.
hihcadore@reddit
You running your stuff on raspberry pi’s?
haroldp@reddit
Linux servers in colos, FreeBSD servers in colos, Windows servers in colos, Raspberry Pis and other assorted *nix stuff at home. Cloud stuff galore - mostly Azure.
narcissisadmin@reddit
Only one: a picture is worth a thousand words. But anyone calling CLI "elitism" can be safely ignored.
hihcadore@reddit
The CLI itself isn’t elitism. It’s the people that think it’s the “better” to have a CLI only environment.
narcissisadmin@reddit
And people who say that blathering bullshit don't know what they're talking about.
beheadedstraw@reddit
Less ingress points. Less CVE to worry about, less to worry about on patch day. No extra ports to open.
The only thing you’re gonna do in a GUI is open up terminal to run sudo commands anyways. Literally no point.
Kyla_3049@reddit
What about a lighweight GUI like XFCE?
narcissisadmin@reddit
You offload that to the connecting client.
narcissisadmin@reddit
If you're remoting into a Linux system then YOU are doing it wrong.
bagaudin@reddit
You can try our solution.
peakdecline@reddit
Its Linux... why do I need remote desktop to access a remote system remotely?
I... kind of... get your point. Though I also don't.
TxTechnician@reddit
Rustdesk
knightofargh@reddit
Linux does have pretty great CLI package software though. Windows update and updating installed applications is still a total goat rodeo.
quazywabbit@reddit
Every Linux admin I’ve met ignores updates half the time and even have met admins who will tell me about their multi year up times like they win a prize. On the windows side updates are pretty consistent and a multi year up time will horrify other admins.
beheadedstraw@reddit
You don’t need to reboot Linux unless you’re upgrading libc or the kernel, and even then there’s live patching for that for the last 5+ years.
quazywabbit@reddit
Do you do that or just saying it? There is still no prize for having a high uptime.
beheadedstraw@reddit
Yes?
Work in Fintech and get back to me on that “no prize for uptime” schtick lol. Every minute our trading servers are up that’s a few hundred thousand USD in trades.
hihcadore@reddit
This is coming to windows soon ;);)
peakdecline@reddit
You're just telling me you've never actually talked with a professional Linux administrator. Because apparently none of them work in any professional environment with a cyber security team, audits or anything at all.
quazywabbit@reddit
Oh I have and do. In fact I’m working with a customer right now to upgrade various systems that are running older versions of RHEL (6 and 7) and getting them up to date.
peakdecline@reddit
And none of them have the oversight teams I've mentioned that would dictate regular and timely patching? Seems very unusual, frankly.
The web runs on Linux. If every Linux admin wasn't patching in a timely manner then everything would be compromised.
timbotheny26@reddit
Pretty sure I saw a story from someone on here who met a Linux admin who hadn't rebooted or updated a server(?) in 19 years or something.
Unsurprisingly, the OP found a shit load of vulnerabilities.
quazywabbit@reddit
But but. Linux Secure. 😂😜
beheadedstraw@reddit
Senior LinuxCloud Engineer that now helps supports a 50/50 environment dealing with Server and Azure and AWS.
Hell to the no.
dracotrapnet@reddit
Consistent? maybe for 6 months at a time. The only thing consistent is change.
Tr1pline@reddit
Try working with a Windows print server.
GremlinNZ@reddit
The server is fine, it's the printers that hate you. And the label printers haven't even joined the chat...
Dadarian@reddit
Haha. Ha.aaah. Aa. Haha. hAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHHHAHAHAHA thisHahahaaaacoughhAhahasotrueAhahahahaaaahhhhhhhhh.
sigh
GregoryKeithM@reddit
windows don't come in dists. And linux does not have hundreds of flavors of dist either..
Droid126@reddit
I have never seen Microsoft in the same sentence as consistent before. Feels wrong
narcissisadmin@reddit
Sure you have, usually with " is in" between those two words.
NETSPLlT@reddit
I was in a week long Azure course a couple years back. During the course, the site/Azure console changed. Twice. It's ridiculous and I hope I can get away from dealing with Windows, but I like people even less. So I have been avoiding all 'people leader' roles. It's been 20 years since I worked with linux, have it everywhere at home of course but I don't think I can work in linux today. Stuck with MS and it sucks.
Practical-Alarm1763@reddit
What the hell are you smoking brother?
TheFluffiestRedditor@reddit
OP is smoking the bad crack, and I want none of it.
DarthPneumono@reddit
I said "huh?" aloud like 8 times
DarthPneumono@reddit
A lot of what you wrote made me go "huh?" but this one was the most huh??? of all of it.
There's thousands of anything but nobody uses more than a handful in any real environment, and with many Linux sysadmin-y things, the skills are usually at least somewhat transferrable.
And why is it bad for applications to have the libraries they need? Are you proposing every dev has to, all at once, update every library so you don't need multiple versions? Your package manager will handle adding and removing these libraries when they aren't needed.
beheadedstraw@reddit
Consistent? Have you ever dealt with Azure in your life? 😭
Centimane@reddit
When the azure cli renames an option and doesn't alias the old name to the new name LIKE ANY SANE PERSON WOULD so it breaks pipelines over a renamed option...
haroldp@reddit
It would be so very nice if
az webapp config ssl bindcould start working again...PixelHir@reddit
Consistent?
anonpf@reddit
What you’re seeing is an illusion
ArborlyWhale@reddit
If anything we should be flattered.
anonpf@reddit
I read it as we should be flattened lol
ArborlyWhale@reddit
2025: Year of The OS Wars.
koshka91@reddit
So according to you guys, rebranding is as bad as fragmentation. So that Ethereal becoming Wireshark actually caused grief.
Valdaraak@reddit
Rebranding on its own isn't that bad. Rebranding constantly is, especially when it's confusing.
Remember when it was Microsoft Office? Then it became Microsoft 365, even though that was the name of a different type of license. Then a few years later, they re-brand it again to Microsoft 365 Copilot, even though Microsoft 365 Copilot is a separate paid license for a different product.
koshka91@reddit
Also the whole defender saga. At least with USB, nobody gives a s***. You don’t run anything high performance off a USB cable and even the latest gen is allowed to only support certain speeds
a60v@reddit
I'm still bitter about Netsaint becoming Nagios. And the various Firefox permutations: Phoenix, Firebird, Firefox, etc.
AltTabMafia@reddit
Consistent?
serverhorror@reddit
Not even staying within just Microsoft is a single ecosystem. This only exists on shiny slides, and even on those, the picture quickly breaks apart into just as many different things as Linux has.
I'd argue it's even worse, some developers prefer the Linux way of doing things (so ... config files) and some don't.
It's not unheard of that those are in the same team so you end up with a mix of flavors, even in the same codebase.
Wicaeed@reddit
I ended up hitting some random key combo on my Windows 10 home PC and now I get MS Copilot come up every time I fucking boot up my system.
My Linux box NEVER does that.
primalsmoke@reddit
Can you say DLL hell? The way they fixed it? Multiple iterations of updates on disk.
DLL was a way to reduce OS size by sharing libraries, Linux is actually more simple.
The registry started out as a good idea, now it's a huge database.
quazywabbit@reddit
This isn’t a windows thing. Linux has dependency hell and had had issues where i needed a specific version of OpenSSL for python but I needed another version for something else.
primalsmoke@reddit
True, here's my opinion, you can switch working directories in Linux. Or probably call a specific version of SSL within your script. Or fire up a VM with an instance of python or the other platform, since the OS is not monolithic it can have a small footprint..
Not arguing here, but the problem seems to me that the library that came with your version of python was not compatible with a specific ( newer version most probably) version of SSL.
With DLLs sometimes they were patched. Patching didn't work well, so MSFT decided to keep iterations of DLLs and come up with rollbacks. DLLs were meant to be part of the core OS. When Windows first came out it could fit on a 500mb drive, no problem, now after the initial install the hardware requirements start eating drive space with every patch.
Anyways thanks for your opinion
Get-Cimlnstance@reddit
If only...
mdervin@reddit
The apps are the same, just the names and locations change every few weeks.
210Matt@reddit
And they constantly add and remove features and change licensing requirements. Lets not forget the copilotisation of everything.
digitaltransmutation@reddit
Windows's main draw is the huge ecosystem of 3rd party applications, these "LOB apps" leave a lot to be desired.
Personally I find LOB apps meant for linux much more pleasant to work with than the ones in Windows's ecosystem. But, you will find there are many many many more companies consuming software than making it, so work is easier to come by.
tmontney@reddit
After switching my "production" homelab over entirely to Linux, I can appreciate this post.
Nietechz@reddit
julioqc@reddit
consistent? LOL
on_spikes@reddit
bro april 1st was yesterday
coolbeaNs92@reddit
Haha.
-Wintel Admin.
ITnewb30@reddit
I wish I dove into Linux more at the beginning rather than Microsoft.
tony_pitonii@reddit
Consistency is really not a word to describe Microsoft. Tbh…linux env has a bit more consistency. Microsoft is just flashy. The constantly change the admin interfaces. At some point, there were 2 for exchange(old and new) and there were some features that dis not exist in the new so you had to switch to old. When they split security from compliance (in o365) I got so lost…. And if we start about powershell modules for all the services, holly hell. At some point there were 3 or 4 to handle azureAd, some of them were “deprecated”, but rhey kept the functionality, i suppose, because they looked at the statistics and a lot of orgs kept using them. But, before I switched from sysadmin, they made GraphAPI, with a really goos module(actually a packet of modules) that allowed you to get into everything. I really eo hope they kept developing it, and i do hope they will stick to it. Having in my head 3 commands for the same thing is funny…but very fking non productive and stupid. That’s microsoft for you. Oh and, don’t get me started with hybrid organizations…
Valdaraak@reddit
I agree. I've been running Linux at home for a year or so now. You know how many times a menu's appearance has changed, options renamed and/or moved, or bloatware/ads installed after running updates? Zero.
And if an update did come out that did something like that, I can just uncheck it in my update manager and skip it. Permanently.
mvbighead@reddit
I am envious of Linux admins. The simplicity in some cases. The lack of users commonly running a similar OS and escalating to support for their desktop issues when your focus is servers.
Sure, there are various flavors of Linux. Most professional places I have been focus on 1 variant, and sometimes have a secondary. If you can master 1 version of Linux, you can do plenty in the others.
And meanwhile, MS is shifting soo many services to cloud offerings and away from on prem or instance based (in the cloud). So that whole game is changing for a lot of senior staff.
tankerkiller125real@reddit
LOL, you've 100% never worked with Microsoft products if you think it's one cohesive system.
Just as an example, Microsoft has Microsoft Fabric right, great system, has BI, Data Modeling, Data Ingest, etc. so you would use the Fabric SDK if you want to say embed a BI report into an app right? Nope, you gatta use the legacy Power BI SDK for that because they only support the embedding feature in the old SDK, but if you want to use Git functions then you gatta use Fabric. And that's one "suite" of product.
b4k4ni@reddit
It was true for offline Microsoft. Since the cloud everything seems to go to shit.
I hate the new development style with a passion. I don't want half backed shit they plan to finish sometime in the future, so it has to bake with the customer.
Same with windows. I want my old deployments back. Every X years a new OS. Finished. Not taking 10 years to remove the control panel with a settings system which looks and works differently in every damn subrelease.
It's so, so bad. And quality control went to shit too..
Valdaraak@reddit
Because they fired their QA team. Not even joking.
TkachukMitts@reddit
They’ve been trying to get rid of the control panel for more like 13 years. It started with Windows 8, and I still routinely have to use the OG control panel for things that Settings doesn’t have.
CharacterUse@reddit
So many features missing from the cloud MS stuff.
CharcoalGreyWolf@reddit
And changes every x months so you can never keep up.
ohiocodernumerouno@reddit
its like 100 disjointed jank tanks
tom_yum@reddit
All the AD integration stuff that pretty much "just works" is pretty nice. But most other sysadmin tasks are far worse.
a60v@reddit
Assuming that this isn't an April Fools' joke, the difference with Linux (and other open-source tools) is that you have the ability to make it better and do exactly what you want it to do. If you don't like it, you can fix it instead of complaining about it.
i_live_in_sweden@reddit
Consistent and Microsoft doesn't belong in the same sentence. It's a nightmare of changes all the time, so what you learned how to do in O365 last week can't be done the same way this week, and the service has been renamed to something copilot for some reason so good luck even finding it in the first place. And if you try the software they have left that isn't cloud based, isn't compatible with their other own software.
bdanmo@reddit
Oh you sweet, summer child.
Microsoft is hell.
punkingindrublic@reddit
Man..... From the outside looking in, maybe....
bgatesIT@reddit
Hahahahahaha Microsoft.... Consistent.... Is this a fever dream? Late April fools it must be? Sure linux has lots of dependencies and options and whatnot, but at least you dont have to worry about them forcing ads down your throat on the desktop, changing the name of their entire product sweet quarterly, and customer support/tech support with Microsoft is non-existent essentially
Hotshot55@reddit
Sure but 99% of the shit is the same. The only real differences you're going to see are how the software is packaged and when it gets released.
deftonium@reddit
As someone who is going in the opposite direction of yourself, I can confidently say “no you’re not”.
OmegaNine@reddit
Eh, it depends on what you are doing. If you are writing a UI or a game, yes windows makes things easy. But if you want to manage 250 servers? Its going to be rough. Powershell has made a things better, but its not bash.
TripleAimbot@reddit
I want to share my (most likely) unpopular opinion.
I work in IT, i'm a System/Network administrator in the company i work for and i'm now starting to get into the cybersec side too.
I love Linux for server work but i literally HATE it for desktop use.
I tried a few times to do the switch on my work laptop(s) but after a while i find myself reverting back to the now trusty Windows11 + WSL combo where i can get the best of both worlds.
I despise having to go nuts to get some kind of driver to work, or other times some proprietary app that used to run on an old linux version but refuses to do so on newer ones and so on and so forth.
Server-side i never had to work with Microsoft products (luckily i'd say) except a few years back when i was managing the company's domain so i can't really say much for that, but client / desktop side Windows wins hands down.
fdeyso@reddit
A single PAIN of glass.
Not a typo.
zawadzio@reddit
As a developer with 10y of exp in .NET and also few years in Azure already, I constantly find new bugs or lack of documentation, GitHub issues opened for years etc. Some products or technologies seem to even compete between each other. Also. some things are hard to understand for instance why MS does not use their own frameworks to build their own products (why not use Blazor to build their own web apps?).
Still, there are some good parts, especially for enterprise use - generally the support, AD/Entra and some exciting stuff like .NET Aspire (I hope it clicks).
dustojnikhummer@reddit
If you are in corpo environment you will either learn Ubuntu Server or RHEL. Skills from those are transferable to other derivatives.
As far as desktops go, most sysadmins won't need to bother, and those who do will do Gnome, because that is default on RHEL.
adappergentlefolk@reddit
microsoft gives the impression of consistency, but dig just a bit deeper and it's a hodgepodge of different things with very few systematic standards applied and new shit is always so buggy
divad1196@reddit
I personnaly disagree that Microsoft has a "consistent ecosystem", at least not so much more than Linux. Mac on the other side has pushed the ecosystem consticency really far.
It's true that office apps are great and have no equivalent (for me, the browser version is good enough). But each app works mostly alone and doesn't work well with just any other app. Many products are not so great either.
At work, I have a Windows. All the development is done on WSL for many reasons. I don't really have an issue with working like this. You could maybe try it, but if you have a Mac, I would personally just use it.
j0nquest@reddit
Microsoft is horribly inconsistent, not just in their tooling for managing the OS, but also with their SDKs for developing software for Windows. There was a time when that was not completely true, but that time ended somewhere between Windows 7 and Windows 8. Look at the settings app- it’s been incomplete since it first appeared in Windows 10 and remains scattered across the old control panel and the new settings app to this day. Want to develop a desktop application? Good luck figuring out what flavor of GUI SDK to roll with. WPF, MAUI, WinForms, Windows Store App.. WTF? Half of their own shit they release now is WebView. Who knows anymore if the choice you make is going to be supported for very long. Want to stand up ADFS for on prem identity services w/AD? Well guess what, it’s on the chopping block. Entra ID and all their other azure integrated shitware is the future, at least for this week.
Microsoft has its head so far up its own ass I’m not even sure they know the current state of their ecosystem. It’s a cluster fuck, but hey copilot everywhere no one needed it!
tony_pitonii@reddit
Yeah, windows 10 and 11 are just Frankesteins, with pieces of dead OSs sticked together with stitches(cheap ones).
Prize-Grapefruiter@reddit
consistent ? to me windows appears to change constantly , quality stays low and you have to keep learning new fads .
Lofoten_@reddit
I'm not sure you've ever worked in a Windows enterprise environment...
PressFfive@reddit
You may wanna join community, or I can teach you Microsoft Stuff while You can teach me Linux. This would be a great trade?
Ssakaa@reddit
Well played...
Technological_Pirate@reddit
This has to be an April fools joke.
bbqwatermelon@reddit
What I find relieving is that even though MS documentation could be better, with Linux I nary find a guide, even newer ones, that flawlessly execute through all steps on doing just about anything with Linux. There is always, always at least one step that produces an error and therein begins a rabbit hole to investigate the error that eats up more time than doing the thing the guide is about. However because of this, when it works, it seems more rewarding. Overall there is room for both I feel but I am desensitized to the aggravation following any guide for Linux now and just accept that it comes with the territory.
dmuppet@reddit
Do you mean how it's a consistent headache? Consistently changing and rebranding? Or consistently a giant pain in my ass?
RustyFebreze@reddit
Microsoft's consistent downtime more like