Now, I don't wanna get off on a rant here...
but yes, it is typical of a Linux user's perspective. Having run web servers and databases under both quite a bit, and installed both quite a bit, I'd have to say that if it takes you more than a couple days to install RedHat 7.2 with Postgresql, then you probably shouldn't be on any compay's corporate MIS team in any role. It's much easier than installing Win2K and SQL2K, and postgres 7.0.x and 7.1.x are both very stable branches.
Postgresql under windows is so slow that if he runs postgresql on the same box as the web server then he's asking for performance problems. Postgresql's lack of internal threading makes it pretty sluggish on Windows machines under Cygwin. Plus, Cygwin / postgresql only work right because of permission issues, on NT and above.
It's not unusable, but it is easily 10 times slower than under the Linux on the same hardware, especially under load. No matter how much he likes it for it's beautiful SQL 92 interface, Postgresql will seem slow.
So, he's still gonna have to install a new OS, and NT is NOT like Win98. The front end looks the same, but the chewy nuggets are quite different. Might as well try Linux as NT if you've tried neither.
MySQL is multithreaded and runs as a native Windows app. If he's gonna compare them for features, then Windows and Cygwin will work, and are well documented in the online documentation as www.postgresql.org. But if compares performance he may come away thinking MySQL is better, when he hasn't had a chance to compare them in a fair environment. MySQL will smoke Postgresql in Windows, much like PHP on Linux, before 4.1, smoked PHP on Windows.
So... Is Postgresql worth the effort of requiring your company's so-called computer professionals to "learn" Linux? Yes.
Any Compsci student worthy of a C average could put a RedHat / Postgresql box online in one afternoon, for nothing but pizza and the fun of building one on a P100.
I don't argue that Linux is ready for Joe Desktop on the Corporate IT net. But, where I work, there are tons of smart people who use it everyday, they just don't know it.
They store their files on it, they view them off of web and email servers running it, and they even run interactive web apps on it, form their comfortable little Windows bubble. We keep track of their networking statistics with it, and serve products to customers on it. Right alongside the NT / Win2K servers. Which are far more stable than they once were, but not in the realm of Linux, which isn't quite in the realm of Solaris or BSD.
So that point has no reason to be here. If you're smart enough to want to understand databases, then you're smart enough to understand Linux, at least the easy distros. Being a computer profressional isn't about trotting down dew covered ivy paths. It's about analyzing the tools and figuring out which are best, and if you can't run Unix of any flavor at all, then you're at just as much of a disadvantage if you can't run Windows. I.e. you're so worried about your own comfort you've forgotten that what gives your users comfort is when they come in every morning and the servers are all up and running.
