[NCLUG] local end-user support

Brian Wood bwood at beww.org
Thu Nov 8 13:55:46 MST 2007


Chad Perrin wrote:

> To me, "end users" are the folks using a desktop system to access the
> servers in the data center, or the individual workers at their desks at
> the business office -- and not so much the sysadmins of machines in the
> data center or "IT Resource Managers" and netadmins in business offices.
> The word "end" in "end user" is key to my understanding of the term.

Guess I look at it this way: I (or my company) purchase a machine to
serve web pages or handle mail. We do not sell that machine, or its
services, to anyone else. We are responsible for the upkeep of those
machines. Thus to me we are the "end users" of the hardware and software
running those services.

I think you are saying that the people accessing those web pages or
popping mail off the server are the "end users", I suppose it would
depend on whether these folks are our employees or outsiders.

I think both definitions are correct, just different.

But the original point of the thread is valid - supporting a company or
even an individual by offering "support" to any user is much more
difficult with Linux systems than with Windows (or OS-X for that
matter), for a variety of reasons. This is probably why Linux has made
much deeper inroads into the server market than the consumer one.

beww



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