<snip solid advice about co-existing with Microsoft Exchange, et. al>
<snip excellent and entirely justified umbrage at puerile name-calling>

> WTF is it about *nix that creates
> zealots.  I have never met anyone in the Microsoft camp that is a
> zealot about Microsoft to the extent that some members of the *nix camp
> are zealots about *nix.

Personally, I think the reason that *nix inspires zealous attitudes is,
perhaps paradoxically, due to the insanely difficult user experience on
most *nix boxes (especially, oh especially, servers running high-availability
network services).  Although this is a rapidly-changing reality, it is my
humble contention that the learning curve for, say, a *nix mailserver
running Sendmail is almost a step-function: near the bottom you know enough
to check and see if there's a sendmail process running on the box; near the
top there is almost nothing the machine can spit out that you haven't seen
before.  The distance between bottom and top is a nearly-vertical ascent,
composed mostly of learning to understand the relationship between the
cryptic, nearly-criminally-terse output of various commands and the state
and behavior of the programs running underneath.

Once you start up that cliff face, you have to believe that it's all for
the good, that the knowledge you are gaining makes *you* *better*; else
how could it possibly be worthwhile?  Maybe you will never again encounter
a corrupted mail header that causes Sendmail to choke inthat way; but getting to learn about how Sendmail deals with violations
of RFC822 is worthwhile in and of itself right?  Right!?!

On the other hand, Windows servers are theoretically designed to be useful
tools that do their business quietly and only bother you when something
goes awry.  When something *does* go wrong, there's often not a lot you
can do about it "directly".  Maybe you can click on the "End Task" button;
maybe you have to reboot the server.  This isn't to say that a Windows
server running IIS or Exchange isn't complicated and featureful;
it's to say that the complications are, wherever possible, abstracted
behind a decidedly non-zealotry-inspiring GUI.  The learning curve is
decidedly different,in that the UI is designed to help you understand the
function and state of the machine at a certain level. The functionality
that is required to perform the assigned tasks of the machine is exposed;
other potential functionality is hidden.
When your server is just a tool to get the company mail moved around, and
not a case study in the hows and whys of the NT kernel's interaction with
the network layer, Exchange's implementation of RFC822, etc., what is
there to get excited about?  As long as you know how to configure services
correctly, the machine is in one of two states (working or rebooting)95% of the time.

I think the reason some *nix zealots are condescending to Windows in
general is the same reason some *nix zealots are condescending to *nix
newbies: the inability to come to grips with the fact that *your* passion
for understanding The Whole Damn Machine does not imply that those who
don't share your passion are somehow incorrect, invalid, or incompetent.
Yipe, what a long-winded rant!

-- 
Chris Johnson Bidler