[rescue] off topic - red hat linux book

[Lionel Peterson]

On Oct 20, 2009, at 3:05 PM, Robert Darlington <rdarlington at gmail.com>  
wrote:

> I have no books to suggest, but would like to say that you're on the  
> right
> track with RHEL.  Past a handfull of machines, it becomes extremely
> difficult to manage systems when there is no sane way to patch  
> them.  I ran
> several thousand at a former job with Uncle Sam.  I can't imagine  
> doing it
> without RHEL.  Actually, then again, I did write that giant Expect  
> script to
> patch IRIX!

At $WORK I am the resident *nix expert, since I've debated against it  
with a few well-intentioned idiots in the community who feel that we  
should trim our $70K license fees with MS and go from Apple/Win  
environments to all Linux. Debian, to be specific.

The issue boils down (for me) to the reality that you can't manage  
1,500 desktops as easily under Linux, since the tools either don't  
exist or cost more than comprable MS/apple tools (depending on  
distribution choosen). As a educational facility, we pay under $40/ 
desktop per year for OS (WinXP, Vista, or Win7) and Office Enterprise  
2007. Server licenses are equally affordable.

Is there a comprable management suite for Linux that is closer to Free  
than $40/desktop? The Ubuntu management package is around $400/ 
machine, but designed for servers, not really desktops...

Lionel