Why a homogenous computing environment brings agony

Users with computers.
Consumers eating food.
Kids playing with toys.
Grown men comparing their cars.

These scenarios are written to illustrate the same thing - people are different!

If you run a business, say a medium-sized one, what would be most intelligent way to treat your users? Would it be forcing them to use something they don't like? A specific Operating System on their computers for instance?

Before answering these questions, you should need some backgrounds facts that you have to weigh against users' freedom and perceived freedom.

Let's look at how three relevant OS platforms of today scale:
- A Windows environment costs lots of licensing plus administration of licenses. Is totally incompatible (unless you tinker with it a lot) with the other two.
- A Mac environment the same, but it integrates better with the other two. Re-using cheap/old PC hardware is impossible as the software is bound to the hardware.
- A GNU/Linux environment has no licensing costs and no administration of said licenses, integrates well with the other two, it even runs most relevant Windows software with WINE which can be easily installed.

There's more that can be said about these platforms, but from an administrator's point of view - it's easiest to manage a GNU/Linux environment unless you're dumb and don't know English and or can't find your way in a system shell and in that case you should not work with computers in the first place: See This Wikipedia Article for some well-deserved self-indulgence.

So: obviously if you're a real sysadmin, you support ALL these platforms and you let people CHOOSE.

The order in which you present them is:
1. GNU/Linux
2. Windows
3. Mac

Why this order? Linux is cheapest for the company. Windows is not as cheap, but you can at least run it in a virtual machine. Most expensive and hardest to maintain is the Mac platform, it's mostly suited for the laptop people, no gain in using stationary machines there.

But there are people out there who can't live without windows or mac - so let them have it! But let them know what they're getting themselves into - that it'll be harder for them to get support. That it's more expensive for the company.

One company that has understood this is Google. There people can use whatever they like for a computer (or so I've read) and that is the same sound principle that I try to implement in the computing environment at the company where I work - about 60 employees.

We run GNU/Linux against a centralized NFS Solaris server with ZFS for backups, a bunch of Windows machines and a few macbooks. New employees are offered GNU/Linux and most accept it. Some even find it encouraging. So if you're stuc in one platform - consider beginning to use all platforms!