On Mon, 18 Oct 2004, Ryan Ware wrote: > On Fri, 15 Oct 2004 18:40:20 -0500 (CDT), Mike Miller > >> We have IT staff but they are just getting into Linux (they still >> prefer to run VMS, believe it or not). > > VMS is about a rock solid as you can get in both stability and security. Yet there are *many* problems with your statement and with continuing to use VMS. I have some comments below. I would be very interested in hearing more from the people on this list. I am especially interested in knowing any ways in which VMS is *superior* to Linux. Regarding stability: VMS may be a stable OS, but how stable is the software that is running on VMS? Well, that depends. Some VMS software is quite buggy and there is little hope that those bugs will be fixed any time soon. This brings us to the big problem with VMS - very little new software is being developed for VMS. Compare that with Linux! We would like to run R... http://www.r-project.org/ ...but that will never happen on VMS. That's one example. There are dozens of other examples. The corporations that have owned VMS over the past few years (it has changed hands several times) have threatened to put an end to it, but user protest has kept it going. It's a "lock-in" problem for many users - they have code that runs on VMS but not on Linux/UNIX. We have to fight lock-in. Regarding security: Do you have evidence that VMS is secure? More secure than Linux/UNIX? I would like to know more. What I see is that we are running insecure protocols because either SSH is not available for VMS, or our IT staff don't want to run it (maybe it is prohibitively expensive). I have told them that telnet/ftp are not secure - passwords are transmitted in the clear across the internet - but they have not lifted a finger to change this situation in the 3 years I've been here. (I just found a company that sells SSH for VMS, but their price is high enough that they don't list it on their web page, so I left a voice mail in their sales department.) Regarding cost: You didn't mention cost. We just started using spam filtering software on VMS. On Linux, I believe you can get nice spam filtering for free, but the spam filtering software we just ordered for VMS is costing us $3,700 per year. That will be $37,000 in the next decade just for spam filtering. That is just *one* minor program. I doubt the VMS spam filtering software (PreciseMail; www.process.com) is superior to the usual Linux spam filtering software. If someone can convince me that use of VMS on servers is a good plan for a University department, please do so because it will make me feel better about what's happening where I work. I would be especially encouraged if you would recommend it for a new unit that has no server system in place. Thanks. Mike -- Michael B. Miller, Ph.D. Assistant Professor Division of Epidemiology and Community Health and Institute of Human Genetics University of Minnesota http://taxa.epi.umn.edu/~mbmiller/ _______________________________________________ TCLUG Mailing List - Minneapolis/St. Paul, Minnesota Help beta test TCLUG's potential new home: http://plone.mn-linux.org Got pictures for TCLUG? Beta test http://plone.mn-linux.org/gallery tclug-list at mn-linux.org https://mailman.real-time.com/mailman/listinfo/tclug-list