Linux vs. OpenBSD

I received the email first thing in the morning from the IT department. Our network would be undergoing a major overhaul to correct the ad hoc growth it had experienced in the last year, and starting next week Internet access would be sporadic. There would also be a new firewall and security measures, replacing the old OpenBSD system I'd managed to get installed last Spring. Happy for the heads-up, I went to work right away to make sure Linux had no place on our network. This was not the first time that I had faced this threat.

Requiem for an Open Source Mullet

Today I arrived at work and noticed nothing unusual — except the shifting and shuffling sounds comeing from the Open Source Mullet's cubicle. Minutes later, he swung around my corner of the cubicle farm flung up a peace sign to me.

"See y'around, man!"

I had no idea of the terrible truth.

It turns out that the Open Source Mullet had been quietly fired just moments before I had gotten to work. It was a lesson in choice of software: Open Source and proprietary software, licenses, and philosophy do not mix. It wasn't a shock, really, but after a year I had mostly stopped expecting it. Still, there are things the Open Source Mullet taught me; ways he touched my soul; knowledge he passed on to me I will always hold near to my heart.

• Kansas City's "Butt Hill" is home to the "people who wear leather but don't ride bikes."
• Sweating, swearing, flairing your nostrils, and drinking 12 cups of coffee a morning are not ways to be productive.
• OpenBSD is a far more superior OS for firewalling than Linux.
• Insisting on using Linux as a backup system for a Windows network will severely unimpress your boss.
• Being owned by kiddiez using the "Hitler Root Kit" (I shit you not) makes you lose face amazingly quickly, even before you decide to wipe and reinstall the entire box.

So there will be no more flairing nostrils, swearing under anyone's breath, suggestions of Linux as a viable solution to [insert your problem here], hole-ridden t-shirts with "SCHWAG" written across their fronts, or pickup trucks in the parking lot decorated with Greatful Dead stickers, animal skulls, and dried mud.

This is a scathing reminder to never use Linux. Not that I needed it; I use Mac OS X happily every day and would never dream of switching teams — Linux can offer nothing to me that Mac OS X doesn't do better. But the real-world repurcussions of using "Free" Software and "Open Source" solutions were never more vivid and in-my-face than this morning.

Let it be a lesson to you all.

The Open Source Mullet Revisited

Well it's been a few months and I have to say the Open Source Mullet is no longer the bleeting, sinister Linux zealot he was just months ago, and is now a valuable asset to our company. Things have certainly changed since I last wrote about him and I felt it was time to set the record straight. His nostrils no longer flare, and he no longer swears (as often as he used to), and the references to Open Source software have declined by a huge amount. I'd like to detail these changes in an effort to show the progress of a man reforming.

First off, he's stopped talking about Open Source solutions. No more mentions of the GIMP (I think my boss buying me Photoshop 6 did the trick there), no more talk of Linux on our $40,000 Sun box, no more bitching about Windows 2000 crashing (I think he finally realized that Windows 2000 drivers are a better choice than Windows NT 3.1 drivers under Windows 2000). This is such a refreshing pace, considering that there was an average of 6 Open Source/GNU options mentioned or discussed a day by my neck-blanketed hippie coworker.

Another factor in the calming of the Open Source Mullet is that my boss let him have an old PC under his cublicle to run Linux on. I think he may have promised to let Open Source Mullet run a proxy on Linux or something. It's a 200MHz non-MMX Pentium with 64 megs of RAM. Probly has a gigabyte hard drive too. So of course that quells his straining heart, and so his flared nostrils and Tourrette's-like outbursts, fueled spurts of testosterone and adrenaline, are a thing of the past. This is only a good thing.

Another factor in the calming of the Open Source Mullet is the downturn of his caffeine habit: when we worked downtown, we had an unlimited supply of coffee. He averaged 12 cups a day, often imbibed double-fisted. Since we moved to our current office, however, he has to ration himself to 8 cups a day so others can share in the java. Just that 2000mg of caffeine makes a huge difference in his disposition. No longer does he stand and exercise in the middle of the office (yes, he did this for quite a time). He now sits placidly in his chair, hunkered down over his laptop, all day long.

All in all I'd say the Open Source Mullet went from a knuckle-scraping, schwag-smoking, psychadelic Open Source hippie (Homo Sapiens Linucis) to a fine, obedient, slightly eccentric code-monkey (Homo Sapiens Eccentricis). To my boss goes the highest of kudos for manualy evolving the Open Source Mullet.

The Open Source Mullet

At the place where I work, there's an Open Source zealot with a mullet, the most annoying hybrid of human ever to exist.

He loves to throw around technical terms:

“Yeah, the SPARC's 64-bit!” he exclaimed to the temp we just hired.

Oh, is it, Open Source Mullet? I always thought that SPARC was 32-bit, and that UltraSPARC was 64 bit. But I don't use Linux, so I wouldn't know.

“The AS/400's a pretty open systems,” he would mouth-shit.

What the fuck!?

So I coyly asked, “How are they open?”

Man, his fucking answer made me want to rip his head off and fuck his throat.

“Well, now that Linux runs on it…” and I heard no more.

I almost wanted to cry. And he went on about how the “major players” are all involved in Open Source, and how Open Source is this and that and blah blah blah… Lord, why did he have to work here?

It had come to the point where he would spout off about Linux with all of his buzzwords every time someone asked him a question, regardless of what it was.

For example, my boss had asked me if I had Photoshop for my Mac for a web project, and lo and behold, here comes Open Source Mullet with comments about how the Gimp is just as good, etc.

I DON'T FUCKING CARE!

DOES IT RUN ON MY MAC?

CAN I INSTALL IT WITH A FEW CLICKS, OR DO I HAVE TO DOWNLOAD A MILLION LIBRARIES AND COMPILE ITS FUCKING SOURCE CODE FIRST!?

CAN IT DO EVERYTHING PHOTOSHOP DOES!?

I DON'T THINK SO, OPEN SOURCE MULLET, AND I HAVE A JOB TO DO!!!

Anyway, I tossed him my lethal grenade: “My new iBook runs Mac OS X.”

Open Source Mullet flared his nostrils.

“It's Unix. A BSD userland with an optimized Apple kernel. And Apple's GUI and apps on top. Sure as hell don't need Linux on my Mac now.”

Open Source Mullet half growled. “When the hell did that come out?”

Man, for being such an Open Source advocate, he sure hadn't paid attention to the Apple Public Source License, an official Open Source license. Could he be nothing more than a Linux mark?

Well, to end my frustration with him for that day, he started having problems with his Oracle8i install. Thankfully that tied him up for the rest of the day.

I could still hear him hissing “fuckin' bitch” under his breath every few minutes though, and something about mySQL being a lot simpler to configure.

Oh well. I had made it through another day without murdering the Open Source Mullet.