Comment Up to 200 or as low as 25 (Score 1) 414
1. Does the administrator have complete control?
2. Can the servers/desktops run effectively as diskless or thin clients?
3. Are all servers installed from the same base image/jumpstart/kickstart?
4. Are patches tested and maintained across all platforms on a regular interval?
In a perfect world, all 4 are true. Under those conditions it is possible to manage 200 UNIX/Linux server systems per admin. Given thin or diskless clients, the number of desktops supportable per admin is very high.
The worst case scenario is when all systems are different and carelessly maintained. The number can drop to 25 per admin on busy/active systems.