Prometheon works with whatever our customers choose to use. Windows, Linux, Mac OS X, you name it. Naturally, being a company whose name derives from the Greek Titan that took fire from the Gods and gave it to the common man, we see open source paralleling that great story and prefer Linux and open source to Windows and OS X in nearly every case where it’s appropriate for the customer’s need. However, Microsoft still holds a tenuous mindshare of the enterprise computing space and it’s interesting to see how Microsoft is trying to purposely misrepresent Linux. As Ghandi once said, “First they ignore you, then they ridicule you, then they fight you, then you win.” We’re somewhere in between ridicule and fighting in the open source vs. proprietary fight with Microsoft.

In needing to keep up with Microsoft’s latest offerings, which serve more to line their pockets by getting their customers to upgrade more frequently, I receive a newsletter from them every so often. Microsoft decided to do a UAC or User Access Control vs the time tested and proven Unix/Linux sudo which means “super user do”. Anyone who is familiar with the sudo command will find this video amusing. Microsoft has purposely added extra steps to make a Linux account have elevated sudo privileges, leaving out how easy it is to simply just switch to the root account when logged in as someone else, and do what needs to be done without having to have someone log out. Better yet, you can manage the a Linux desktop user’s privileges through either NIS, OpenLDAP, or heaven forbid, Linux tied to Microsoft’s own Active Directory!

So watch out for Microsoft’s FUD campaign. As the saying goes, Deny, Deny, Deny, even when someone has pictures that say otherwise, just deny the truth!