Hardware

- Adaptec are gits for 1) dropping support for older cards at the earliest opportunity 2) Failing to release product documentation to open source groups, meaning less than perfect Perc2/Si support in OpenBSD.
- Dell are shits for having a BIOS that occasionally hangs on the PE2900. I'd rather have a slower server that works than an eight core monster that fails to remotely reboot at half fucking midnight and requires me to drive into the office (at 00:30) and switch it on and off. I foresee a UPS control solution in the future..

Software, or why both Unix and Windows suck

Unix and Unix derived software

- Due to adaptec (see above) having to create a custom OpenBSD boot CD with aac(4) enabled, then having to config(8) the kernel to disable ACPI because it's still less than stellar on OpenBSD..
- Apache 2.2. Yes it does work. No, it's not intuitive how to do some stuff, especially under Windows where some nasty hacks are used. IIS is *far* easier to administer doing most common tasks.
- Perl. Actually, Perl under Windows, but I'm including it here. DBD:Pg sucks. The sourcecode doesn't work well under Windows and it requires too many libraries copying to make it work.
- Bugzilla. For still being a mess, even after umpteen releases. For the default for checking the setup not being 'don't touch any of my settings, you bastard'.
- pkg_add on various BSD Unixes, where the packages 'work' but not for all functionality.
- fuck loads of difficult to resolve dependencies sometimes. Windows isn't perfect but is usually more prone to 'just run setup and it works'.

Windows

- Dell need to burn in a minor pit of hell for creating a Windows 2003 x64 build that is both a) shit and b) uses a C: drive of 12GB
- Microsoft need to similarly burn for putting all their shit on C:
- DLL hell. Alive and well in Windows Server 2003.
- SQL 2005. For being still a bit shit. Even after two servicepacks. For requiring the very latest .NET fixes to run a scheduled job.
- For putting Unimportant Shit in the event viewer at every possible opportunity
- For having yet more illogical problems that can't be worked out from first principles and need to resort to googling, again.
- Bugzilla/Perl (again) for having a Perl repositary that doesn't contain all components (i.e. DBD:Pg), also the Internet for idiots who point you to another repository which contains DBD:Pg, but where they haven't looked at the build log and found it hasn't successfully built *for 6 months* - but still letting it be 'available' for installation anyway.
- PostgreSQL - for not letting you easily download just the client component to connect to remote servers
- Reboots - still too many. The OS should be able to patch .NET without a reboot...

Lessons :

1) Unix for Unix stuff, Windows for Windows stuff, if you can manage it.. They'll both still suck, but not as badly.
2) Insist on blowing away the vendor supplied OS install and doing it yourself. It'll avoid worlds of pain.
3) Computers will fail just when you'd rather they didn't.
4) All hardware sucks. All software sucks.