Operating systems from a support standpoint.

[M00T]

Which OS do you feel is easier to support?

This is all nothing more than a rant, but it makes me wonder about the psycological programming that windows does to it's users.

UNIX/Linux/Solaris Pros:
- minimal instructions for the clients
- verbose error logs
- complete command line remote administration
- ls /proc/pci -- I can see if hardware is present! [I meant cat /proc/pci, not ls. And lspci is preferred these days.] - thanks Nothinman.

Windows Cons
- constantly waiting on people to locate program xyz
- constantly have to tell people how to spell xyz
- clients use the system for years, but still never learn basic adminstration tasks
- basic applications such as IE are constantly broken by thid party plugins/apps which the clients sometimes don't even realize they installed
- device manager -- if a device doesn't show up at all, my only choice is to rescan or reboot.

I've had to learn to psychologically trick windows users into doing what I want. It's not enough to say read me the value for "y", I have to say "read me the value that's between x and z"

In the past I have given support for home networking, and the unix people were snappier, more responsive and much more knowledgable about the technology I was helping them with.

I've had limited experience with [mac OS/OSX] users, but the few times I have had to help them it was relatively painless.

 

[Smilin]

Man, I was reading through this thinking how biased it seemed then got to your last line indicating it's basically a rant. Fair enough ... I'm not gonna knock ya.

Based soley on your list there it just doesn't seem like you are as good at supporting Windows as Linux (that's as close as I'll get to knocking you... it's not an insult at all... I'm the same but opposite)

It also seems like maybe the users you are supporting are:
1. Not in a controlled environment (domain with some sensible policies applied)
2. Are perhaps not of the same skill level as their unix counterparts.

on point 2, if you have someone dumb on the other end of the phone/remote session (or next to you) then it's going to be more difficult. Doesn't matter which OS it is. You have probably noticed a "sweet spot" in user skill: Those that are clever enough to follow your directions quickly but know their limitations and don't hold up the process with questions or try to push their own suggestions.

If you feel that the *average* Windows user as a whole is dumb... hehe it's quite possible you are right. Let's face it...Windows is so easy your grandma can use it. Linux isn't. You think it's tough getting grandma walked through something in Windows, try it with linux... guiding her through the buttons to reach device manager will be easier than having her *correctly* type a mildly complex command with a few switches (then read stuff back).

My support experience is almost entirely supporting IT customers (I'm the tech support for the tech support for the tech support ... and then some) who know what they are doing. With this experience the user doesn't get in the way and I'm left with the raw supportability of the OS itself. Windows is pretty f'n easy to support!

 

[stash]

Is your stipulation that *nix support has no cons, and Windows support has no pros?

You are describing two vastly different classes of users. Do you think the same Windows users that you have trouble with would be any easier to support if they were running *nix? If all else fails, you can just remote into most Windows boxes and fix it yourself.

I would do this constantly when I was in PSS, because even though I was doing enterprise support, the level of knowledge of IT personnel across different corps varies wildly. Some people were great to work with, others didn't have a clue, so it was easier to just (diplomatically) tell them to back away from the keyboard and fix it myself.

 

[M00T]

I agree with the responses so far that my post does seem biased. I get so frustrated with windows users and their applications.

Here's a little dialogue I had earlier today:

"My mail is broken"
"Ok, what seems to be the problem?"
"I'm not getting mail"
"Ok, let me check your account" ... quota is fine, account is enabled... "Alright sir, can we do a netmeeting"?
"What's a netmeeting?"
"Hit start, all programs, accessories, communications"
"I can't find it"
"ok, hit start, run, and type 'conf.exe'"
"I can't find run"
I suppose I could tell him to press windowskey+r, but thinkpads don't have a windows key.

Where do I go from there? I can't help him any further because he can't even locate items in his start menu. They are there, but he can't "see" them. I come across this situation all day every day with windows users.

EDIT:

And in response to having a user navigate device manager in windows vs *nix... I don't have to do that in *nix. I log in via ssh and determine the problem myself and fix it accordingly.

 

[stash]

Your first mistake is using Netmeeting You can initiate a remote assistance session from an XP box, so the user won't have to hunt for anything.

Whenever you try to get the user to do the troubleshooting/support for you, you will always be frustrated. It's not his (the user's) job to know what netmeeting is, or how to do basic administration on his computer. That's your (the support person's) job.

 

[Nothinman]

- ls /proc/pci -- I can see if hardware is present!

You mean cat, not ls. And lspci is preferred these days.

- device manager -- if a device doesn't show up at all, my only choice is to rescan or reboot.

And if it does show up as "Unknown Device" all Windows tells you is the PCI IDs so you have no clue what the device might actually be.

I've had limited experience with MAC users, but the few times I have had to help them it was relatively painless.

Mac in this context isn't an acronym so you shouldn't put it in all caps. And OS X is based on NeXT and FreeBSD so it would go in the same category as the other unixes.

Windows is so easy your grandma can use it. Linux isn't. You think it's tough getting grandma walked through something in Windows, try it with linux... guiding her through the buttons to reach device manager will be easier than having her *correctly* type a mildly complex command with a few switches (then read stuff back).

Hardly, true. Walking someone like grandma through anything is a nightmare, it took me probably 20 minutes to get my aunt to tell me what version of Windows she had via the phone. And if I setup grandma's Linux box SSH would be enabled so I could just fix it myself, I know Windows has remote desktop now but that's still a good bit slower.

 

[Smilin]

Originally posted by: M00T
I agree with the responses so far that my post does seem biased. I get so frustrated with windows users and their applications.

Here's a little dialogue I had earlier today:

"My mail is broken"
"Ok, what seems to be the problem?"
"I'm not getting mail"
"Ok, let me check your account" ... quota is fine, account is enabled... "Alright sir, can we do a netmeeting"?
"What's a netmeeting?"
"Hit start, all programs, accessories, communications"
"I can't find it"
"ok, hit start, run, and type 'conf.exe'"
"I can't find run"
I suppose I could tell him to press windowskey+r, but thinkpads don't have a windows key.

Where do I go from there? I can't help him any further because he can't even locate items in his start menu. They are there, but he can't "see" them. I come across this situation all day every day with windows users.

Haha you poor bastard.

But seriously dude that is a problem with a both the User and You... not windows.

That user is an idiot....move him to Linux and it's gonna get worse.

EDIT:

And in response to having a user navigate device manager in windows vs *nix... I don't have to do that in *nix. I log in via ssh and determine the problem myself and fix it accordingly.

Yeah, see you just aren't as good at supporting windows.

Why don't you just remote assistance / remote desktop in in Windows and do it yourself? Why not just snag the setupapi.txt out of %systemroot% and see the granular detail of what devices have been doing.

 

[M00T]

I realize I'm fairly ignorant in many computer related technologies. I suppose that what frustrates me the most is that as I learn more and more about *nix, the more I realize I hate windows.

 

[Smilin]

Originally posted by: M00T
I realize I'm fairly ignorant in many computer related technologies. I suppose that what frustrates me the most is that as I learn more and more about *nix, the more I realize I hate windows.

Hm. More I learn about Windows (and I'm getting pretty f'n high up the food chain) the more I realize how superior it is....never really hated linux though. It's got it's own thing going.

Oh well.

Good luck with those users man!

 

[Nothinman]

Hm. More I learn about Windows (and I'm getting pretty f'n high up the food chain) the more I realize how superior it is....never really hated linux though. It's got it's own thing going.

Too bad you pretty much have to work at MS to actually learn how most of the stuff works on the inside...

 

[M00T]

I looked through microsoft's documentation, and it appears as though remote assistance requires the "novice" to make a request to the "expert's" machine. They also have to provide a password.
Remote assistance

In our Active Directory environment here, it appears as though netmeeting is the simpler option and less confusing for the "novice". I could be wrong though. Is there a way to force a machine to request remote assistance without requiring the user to do anything?

I know how to force a desktop view with 3rd party applications such as dameware, but those sort of apps aren't provided here.

Any other suggestions?

 

[n0cmonkey]

I have trouble finding stuff in XP's start menu sometimes.

 

[MrChad]

Originally posted by: M00T
I looked through microsoft's documentation, and it appears as though remote assistance requires the "novice" to make a request to the "expert's" machine. They also have to provide a password.
Remote assistance

In our Active Directory environment here, it appears as though netmeeting is the simpler option and less confusing for the "novice". I could be wrong though. Is there a way to force a machine to request remote assistance without requiring the user to do anything?

I know how to force a desktop view with 3rd party applications such as dameware, but those sort of apps aren't provided here.

Any other suggestions?

If your group policies are setup properly, the "expert" can offer assistance to the "novice".

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/301527

 

[M00T]

Previously I would dial the machine via the email address in netmeeting. It worked 90% of the time, and I'd use the IP address for the other 10%. For someone who can barely navigate the start menu, finding out the IP address is nearly impossible though.

So I just looked through the help menu and found that it will allow connections by machine name. Lucky for me, we have a database of all machine names. However, netmeeting still has to be running on the remote machine for me to connect successfully.

 

[MrChad]

Originally posted by: M00T
Previously I would dial the machine via the email address in netmeeting. It worked 90% of the time, and I'd use the IP address for the other 10%. For someone who can barely navigate the start menu, finding out the IP address is nearly impossible though.

So I just looked through the help menu and found that it will allow connections by machine name. Lucky for me, we have a database of all machine names. However, netmeeting still has to be running on the remote machine for me to connect successfully.

Did you read my link? You can use remote assistance to connect to a user's machine unsolicited.

 

[Maximilian]

Windows can be quite trying too, even to an experienced user like me. For months i couldnt figure out why my folders would arrange things by the date created, and KEEP it like that, they would always go back to alphabetical listings next session. Turns out these folders were set to read only for some reason.... Why the hell cant it tell me this? Little popup informing me of this extremely relevant info, which would make a change from the usual things it pops up with :roll: "click this balloon to show your hidden icons!" "your desktops a mess, click here to clean it" "click here for shits and giggles"

I can only imagine linux being twice as trying.

IMO people over 50 that dont get the concept of a window/drag n drop/copy/paste will fair poorly with every OS when your trying to help them. Not their fault, theyve probably gotten into a routine of only using their OS for one single task. Probably why a quite a few people think their OS is called microsoft office.... just a guess

 

[M00T]

MrChad, I just finished up with it.

I checked the remote assistance setting on my machine to get an idea of what the group policy is. It appears that remote assistance is enabled but the only permitted people are myself. I assume that means I have to be manually added to the client's machine or be the AD admin.

I tested it against a coworkers machine, and got "permission" denied when attempting to connect. He never saw a dialogue to accept or reject.

I am not the AD admin, nor can I change the group policies for the entire company = 10's of thousands of machines.

Oh the joys of level 1 helpdesk.

 

[MrChad]

Originally posted by: M00T
MrChad, I just finished up with it.

I checked the remote assistance setting on my machine to get an idea of what the group policy is. It appears that remote assistance is enabled but the only permitted people are myself. I assume that means I have to be manually added to the client's machine or be the AD admin.

I tested it against a coworkers machine, and got "permission" denied when attempting to connect. He never saw a dialogue to accept or reject.

I am not the AD admin, nor can I change the group policies for the entire company = 10's of thousands of machines.

Oh the joys of level 1 helpdesk.

Ah, ok. Can you talk to your admins about enabling this privilege for help desk users? It seems like it would save you guys a lot of time.

 

[Nothinman]

Why the hell cant it tell me this?

I had a similar eXPerience with O2K3 recently, whenever I tried to enable cached Exchange mode it would happily uncheck the box for me without any indication as to why. I poked around in the help and even called our Exchange admin to find out if it was disabled on the server, which it wasn't, before I finally found that the path to the OST file had a variable in it and apparently O2K3 won't expand them.

I can only imagine linux being twice as trying.

Part of the problem there is that you're just imagining and not actually looking at Linux, lots of things in Linux are not any harder or easier but just different. And a lot of things that are an extreme PITA in Windows aren't even relevant in Linux, for instance when you bootup udev loads the modules for all of your hardware automatically so there's no need to install any drivers. Obviously if the hardware isn't supported out of the box you'll have to do a little bit of work, but sites like wiki.ubuntu.com usually lay out the steps required pretty well. And if you don't have a module for the device you can still run 'lspci' to find out what it is, unlike Windows which just gives you "Unknown Device" and the PCI IDs.

IMO people over 50 that dont get the concept of a window/drag n drop/copy/paste will fair poorly with every OS when your trying to help them. Not their fault, theyve probably gotten into a routine of only using their OS for one single task. Probably why a quite a few people think their OS is called microsoft office.... just a guess

It's not just people over 50, I had a friend of mine who is 23 call me to help her burn some files to CD and it took me probably a half hour to walk her through it using the built-in crap in XP.

 

[nweaver]

I am on the phone supporting family with windows all the time...

the one person I put on linux has had one call in 2 years, and that was an issue with their ISP (couldn't dial up). Yeah, I find it easier to support, Multiple calls versus no calls?

 

[Smilin]

Originally posted by: Nothinman

Hm. More I learn about Windows (and I'm getting pretty f'n high up the food chain) the more I realize how superior it is....never really hated linux though. It's got it's own thing going.

Too bad you pretty much have to work at MS to actually learn how most of the stuff works on the inside...

Not really. It's certainly easier to learn here in general for a great number of reasons but at the end of the day very, very little of what I learn with is not available to everyone. You'll find a copy of Windows Internals in every cube, but it's the same book available on Amazon.

 

[Smilin]

Originally posted by: Soviet
Windows can be quite trying too, even to an experienced user like me. For months i couldnt figure out why my folders would arrange things by the date created, and KEEP it like that, they would always go back to alphabetical listings next session. Turns out these folders were set to read only for some reason.... Why the hell cant it tell me this?

heh. I giggle because this confuses the crap out of people and it was definately a "huh?" moment when I learned as well.

The read only attribute does not apply to folders. If you look at the properties of a folder you may see the read-only attribute set but it is never actually used. You can clear the attribute, hit ok, go back in and it will be there again. If you are having problems of some sort this is not the reason. We get calls on it a lot when people have goofed up NTFS permissions but then see this. We should have altered that properties display I think.

 

[stash]

Originally posted by: nweaver
I am on the phone supporting family with windows all the time...

the one person I put on linux has had one call in 2 years, and that was an issue with their ISP (couldn't dial up). Yeah, I find it easier to support, Multiple calls versus no calls?

Um, if you have one person running Linux and several people running Windows, simple statistics say you will get more Windows calls.

 

[stash]

Originally posted by: Smilin

Originally posted by: Soviet
Windows can be quite trying too, even to an experienced user like me. For months i couldnt figure out why my folders would arrange things by the date created, and KEEP it like that, they would always go back to alphabetical listings next session. Turns out these folders were set to read only for some reason.... Why the hell cant it tell me this?

heh. I giggle because this confuses the crap out of people and it was definately a "huh?" moment when I learned as well.

The read only attribute does not apply to folders. If you look at the properties of a folder you may see the read-only attribute set but it is never actually used. You can clear the attribute, hit ok, go back in and it will be there again. If you are having problems of some sort this is not the reason. We get calls on it a lot when people have goofed up NTFS permissions but then see this. We should have altered that properties display I think.

There was a thread on our internal Vista alias on this issue only a few weeks ago, and I had to explain to several people that this is by design. The read only attribute is used for folder customizations and that's it.

We even have a KB about it: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/326549/

 

[doornail]

One thing I hated about XP was the plethora of versions. Seems like I could never find a CD that would make someone's product key happy when they asked me to fix their spyware encrusted box. Linux is much easier in the sense you don't have to hassle with a marketing department's deranged, confusing, and utterly artificial product segmentation -- each with varying degrees of consumer-hostile EULA's. Plus never having to deal with obnoxious WPA, WGA, or CAL's is serene.

I'm guessing that Vista's mult-install DVD may behave nicer, but I'm done with Windows at this point.