My take on...

The eternal Operating System debate:

Sigh. For years I have stood in the shadows listening to the latest dreg about the superior operating system du jeur. Really, a true professional doesn't care what is presented to him/her, they learn it, they support it, they make it work. I am not lazy or a snob when it comes to the operating system.

I have supported mixed environments for almost two decades. And by mixed I mean Mac and Windows and HP UNIX and IBM (remember OS/2?) and Novell. Maybe BeOS too. And there is one universal: As a System Administrator you MUST suck it up and support whatever wackiness is presented to you. THIS is how you excel in your job. Most Sys Admins will complain and hem and haw about the Mac if they have supported only Windows and the MAC Admin will hate Windows. And me? I hate them equally. They have their quirks. They all make assumptions about the end user and can be laborious and frustrating. But my job has been to eliminate the crashes and the missteps and help the end user be more productive. I adapt. I am not lazy, I will learn the weaknesses and the strengths of each and build them to work together politely.

I don't have a preference, I don't care. I can build a stable network with anything the financial guy throws at me. I won't make excuses about the system requirements or the licensing. I will tell them what they need and then I will assemble it. Any Sys Admin that has a preference will only be able to last as long as the next CTO. Because, sure as hell, the next CTO will want to 'shake things up' and build the best and the fastest and that probably won't include anything that you have worked on or worse yet, your nemesis. So find that other job, the one with the O/S you really like and make all your excuses as to why it is better. Go ahead. And I will come in and make the system that you hate, work. And I will charge double what you did, because I did what you wouldn't. I dumped the ego involvement and built an enterprise infrastructure that works.