server Memes

Ever notice how Windows and Unix admins are basically different species? The left column shows the Windows admin's sacred incantation: "update and shutdown" – because Windows needs to apply those 47 patches and reboot or your machine becomes a digital petri dish. Meanwhile, the Unix/Linux admin on the right smugly performs the superior "update and restart" – keeping that 400-day uptime streak alive because rebooting is for the weak. Their server has been running since the Obama administration and they're proud of it. The subtle difference between shutdown and restart is the digital equivalent of "to-may-to" vs "to-mah-to" except one of them will get you fired when you accidentally take down production.

That rusted, half-dead computer case is apparently all you need to run Linux. While Windows demands 16GB RAM and a quantum processor just to open a text file, Linux will happily boot on whatever archaeological artifact you've dug up from behind the shed. I've seen production servers running on hardware that belongs in the Smithsonian. That box probably outperforms half the cloud instances people are paying $50/month for. Just slap some Debian on it, SSH in from another continent, and watch it run for 7 years without rebooting.