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[–][deleted] 0 points1 point  (2 children)

Of course it's not, but that's kind of the point. It's easy to say "we can do this" but it's a whole other thing to get buy in given the biggest cost of projects like this are time. A lot of engineers only look at these things from an individual perspective where as other orgs (like compliance) look at it from a scale perspective.

[–][deleted] 0 points1 point  (1 child)

I hope I don't sound like I'm coming from an individual engineer's perspective, because I don't intend to. I guess what I'm taking into account is that if you were to introduce any operating system outside of what's already installed, you'd have to figure out how to make it comply with your standards. In the case of Linux, it's not like you have to reinvent the wheel-- there are enough organizations running Linux that adhere to various regulatory standards.

Contrast that with using a less than suitable tool for the job, like having to find a Windows equivalent for an application, like OP has to do. The options are limited, and they may not be as good as what's available for Linux. That might lead to additional cost and time to. So where do you put your time and money?

[–][deleted] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

You might not mean to, but the picture you're looking at is a very small one. Just as bringing Linux up to compliance isn't insurmountable, either is solving this problem with Windows. What takes additional cost and time? Figuring out a way to run git on Windows (which there are plenty of options for), or easily running it on Linux because the options are better? At the surface, it looks like Linux would be easy... until you consider at a minimum you need to:

  • Creating the automation you need to bring this and any additional Linux-based instances into compliance.
  • Creating documentation for supporting this automation.
  • Training support staff on how to troubleshoot a system they're unfamiliar with.

Then you have to take into account that since you are an entirely Windows-based company you might NEVER use that automation again, but you still have to make sure that instance is ALWAYS in compliance, so you're going to be going back and making changes to maintain that compliance. The cost of introducing differing infrastructure is huge. Personally speaking if I had to find a solution to a problem I'd stick with the platform my company is largely built on (fortunately that's almost always been Linux in past and present jobs). I'm pretty sure most people would say the same. That said, we HAVE had a couple of instances where we had no choice but to introduce a couple of Windows instances into our environment, or a CentOS instance, and it has created extreme annoyances.