Slashdot Mirror
Open Source Software in a Windows Environment?
brennan73 asks: "Like many people, I work in a Windows NT/2000 shop that has absolutely resisted bringing *nixes into our environment. Everyone has their reasons - my boss has resisted because it would be more difficult and expensive to find a replacement admin if I leave, since said replacement would need to be able to administer both Windows and *nix boxes, which I can understand. But I'm still curious...has anyone out there replaced major pieces of Microsoft software with open source equivalents in a medium-to-large business environment, while still running on the Windows platform?"
"Like many people in such shops, I've just about had it with IIS's security problems. I'm also highly unimpressed with Microsoft's new licensing schemes. In other words, between security and money concerns, I can see good reasons for businesses to look for alternatives to Microsoft's standard offerings, for apps and utilities if OSes are ruled out by management.
So, I'm thinking of replacing IIS and Office with Apache and StarOffice for Windows, and I'm open to other examples on both servers and the desktop. Why did you switch? How painful was it for both you and the users? Any experiences that anyone could relate, even failed experiments, would be great."
Lots of people run it on Windows.
HTH,
"Nothing was broken, and it's been fixed." -- Jon Carroll
There is little open source software for windows, because authors of open source software do not want to support microsoft.
Apache and Star Office are exceptions, because they want to become standards and that means being available for the most popular desktop platform.
IMO Open source software is usually harder to use for the average microsheep. People like GUIs are are willing to pay for them. It seems that that is what the linux world is lacking at the moment.
Functionality is not always more important that ease of use, at least that's how most users think.
- PS. This is what part of the alphabet would look like if Q and R where eliminated.
Well...
We just completed a StarOffice 5.2 rollout.
This was in direct response to some very threatening letters we received from the BSAA (Business Software Association of Australia). In hindsight, it was just a scare-campaign to fool us into buying more software - and it half worked. We bought Win2000 licenses for MOST PCs. And we bought Office XP for those who absolutely needed our legacy VB code in Excel. We use Access (developer) to create and distribute our database front-ends - the developer version lets you distibute an Access 'viewer' type package without having a license for Access.
The most interesting change for us though was StarOffice - about 85% of our staff who were using Office 97 are now using it, and we have 2 people trialling StarOffice 6-beta.
Also, I recently bought Borland's Kylix (www.borland.com/kylix). It's Delphi for Linux (Rapid Application Development, for those who don't know). I am half-way through creating our first Kylix-based database front-end (I'm presently testing it out at home, talking to M$ $QL Server on Win2k running under VMWare!!! Ha!). We are about 6 weeks away from our first Linux box on the desktop. It'll be running Netscape 6.1 (it has a spell checker for email - what can I say?), StarOffice 6-beta, and my Kylix-based database front-end. Oh - by the way - Kylix is available for FREE download if you only create open-source projects with it (I bought the Desktop Developer anyway...).
If all goes according to plan, I will start on the (very) long task of rebuilding our database front-ends under Kylix, but as I said - it will take time... I estimate that in 5 years (and my boss backs me up on this) we will be running a fully Linux-based office, and the only commercial app we'll be using will be Kylix.
I am forced to use W2K for my job. Having Cygwin installed gives me almost a complete *NIX environment (Openssh, Bash, Perl, Python, Postgres, Xfree, etc) that runs seamlessly in a Win32 system. It is completely awesome.
We're been quietly replacing several NT file and print servers with a Redhat 7.1/Samba solution.
Managers are beginning to discuss replacing all the publicly available web servers with Apache (currently IIS).
We are deploying two new web servers in November, and both will run Redhat/Apache.
Myself and others are testing the StarOffice beta, on Linux as well as NT.
There's beginning to be a discussion about how to move our Visual Basic applications over to something that M$ can't orphan.
The big push for 'Active Directory' seems to have died,
The Novell guys are talking about Novell/Linux on the same box, but I'm ignorant of the details...
KDE runs on Windows. It uses the Cygwin POSIX emulation layer (they claim they only had to change about 100 lines). Currently it requires an X server, but they are working on eliminating the dependency.
I also remember an older project, using a non-free POSIX toolkit. Can't remember the name, tough.
And if I REALLY need to get into windows there's no need to reboot. Double click the VMWare icon and load the suspended image file of Windows. No more than four seconds and I can do whatever I need to do in Windows. The only thing that's still problematic is integrating samba browsing in Nautilus in a good way. KDE is of course a good alternative, but personally I don't like that environment.
I got some screenshots up at my site.
I've done it. At work, we had need of a web server for our team, but the Powers That Be didn't want to make part of the Intranet available to us mere peons. I downloaded and installed Apache for Win32 on my NT 4.0 box and had it up and running in about 15 minutes (10 minutes spent reading the manual). It runs quite happily on my NT box serving my team.
The next thing we needed was a SQL server for our bug tracking database. Our database was originally a MS-Access 97 application. The shared datastores was an Access MDB on an NT file server supporting a team located at two different sites. We discovered the hard way that Access was not designed for network operation :-)
We couldn't get a license for Microsoft SQL server from Management, so I downloaded MySQL for Win32 and installed it on my NT box. I also downloaded the MySQLODBC driver and several MySQL tools (e.g., the Access to MySQL server migration utility). Within a day, we had created and deployed our bug database as SQL server based MS Access application. Yes, MS Access app connected to a MySQL backend. No problem.
So at work, the NT machine I do my development on runs Apache and MySQL supporting up to 8 users without a problem.
On a bigger scale, the big corporation I work for is a MS shop. For the project we're working on, we insisted on and got UNIX servers (IBM machines running AIX). FastConnect from IBM was screwing up constantly, so we bugged the IT department enough until they installed SAMBA -- we dragged them kicking and screaming into it, I might add. No problems. NT and Win9x workstations connect to and use an IBM AIX as our fileserver.
This happens all the time, guys. Most Win32 ports of Open Source apps have very nice installation packages. Both Apache and MySQL come with automated installs which, frankly, are some of the slickest installers I've ever used. Apache and MySQL require a minimum level of competence to set-up and maintain.
Oh, and how did Management react when they found out about my Apache/MySQL server? Very, very positively. I was commended for my initiative and resourcefulness. The Dept VP said he loved the choices because it cost nothing to the department.
The bitter lessons of a veteran coder: http://bitterprogrammer.blogspot.com
Another way to accommodate demands that you move to a platform that supports Outlook calendaring is to consider (try approaching this option with an open mind) moving to an OS X environment.
You get the (sort of) BSD unix environment to work in, and have the ability to install all the Micro$oft apps (Office, Entourage) and interact with the Windows boxen out on the network just as if you were similarly hobbled with Windows.
And it's all native -- no emulation or VM to reduce performance.
Of course, you'd have to change the hardware, but that's usually the cheapest thing to change, and gets replaced on a regular basis anyway...
As a regular user, you can add a Windows `Send To...' option to your menus which make it available as an editor. Also, when you open the File Types menu, if you choose the Advanced options for a TXT text document and change the program used by the `open' action to gvim, you can make it the default text editor.
If you are really lucky and have registry access, you can make it into the default source-code viewer for IE.
Not having to look at Notepad has made me a much happier (albeit still reluctant :) Windows user.
CJW
I don't think this is a troll; it's a legitimate question. Fortunately, there's a legitimate answer. And that is ...
The open-source/free-software (hereafter os/fs) landscape is constantly changing. Some projects (e.g. Mozilla) are better about putting out constant updates than others, but the fact is that os/fs in general is a rapidly evolving world, and limitations that existed a year or a month or even a week ago might not exists today. So it's worth checking on a regualr basis to see what solutions exist.
Also, not only are the technologies changing, but so are the skillsets that grow up around them. It seems to me that what the poster was asking about was what kind of experiences people have had with migrating from M$ to os/fs solutions. Well, it's perfectly reasonable to think that someone might have useful knowledge to share about this migration process that they didn't have last time the subject came up.
I think that in the long run, this might be a good way to get the PHB's to recognize the value of os/fs. M$ pushes its projects on the basis of M$ itself being this huge, monolithic entity that will always be there. That's probably true [sigh] but the countervailing os/fs argument is that monoliths don't (and in fact can't) respond to user needs and create new opportunities the way distributed, open projects can. Put it in terms b-school grads will understand: these days, os/fs is at the cutting edge of innovation, and if your business doesn't get with the times, it will be left behind by faster, more agile competitors.
The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.
I run a Linux users group and I also advocate Linux for what it is good for. I personally believe that every platform has its use.
However, I have a problem with insipid people like yourself that need to show how immature they are by using "M$" or "Wintendo" instead of calling the products by their real names. Personally, I am not fond of Celeron Processors, but I don't go about calling them "Celery" processors. I am also not incredibly fond of Microsoft's business practices, but that doesn't mean that I need to refer to them as "Micro$oft"
The OS Windows, is not personally the best choice for all jobs, calling it "Windoze" or "Wintendo" simply shows that you are closed-minded about things.
If you wish to advocate or intelligently discuss the merits of your OS of choice, which is my OS of choice, you must do so in a mature fashion. Going into the offices of any business, to sell your wares or skills talking like that. May not only get you laughed out of their offices, but will surely keep you from getting their business or that job.
Furthermore, to call something, that you have admitted to not using, "Wintendo" simply shows your lack of mental width. As for myself, I am studying to become a Linux+, RHCE professional. I am also training to become and MSCE. Why would I do that? So that I can properly determine what is indeed the best solution for my clients or job to get their work done. If the client asks for Windows, they get Windows. If they ask for Solaris, guess what? They get Solaris. If they ask for Linux, they get Linux.
I am also becoming an MSCE so that I know the shortfalls of the Windows platform. The same holds true for learning all I can about the Unix and Linux in general. One thing is unable to be all the things to all the people. That is why you need to know all the things or enough that you can properly explain the benefits and the shortfalls of those systems.
--
.sig seperator
--
If you ignore the other uses of a tool, does that make the tool less useful, or you less useful?
HP's OpenMail can replace an Exchange server. It allows Outlook as a client and supports calendaring. I don't know what other clients it supports, or whether other clients can use the calendaring features.
This is something I see as one of the biggest obstacles for large scale acceptance of Linux/FreeBSD/... in business environments. Suits like it a lot, it seems they can't live without it. A viable alternative should be high on the priority list!
This sig under construction. Please check back later.
We are a small company in South Africa, and we run vritually everything on Open Source software. on the server side we have:
.....
... we will see about that soon ...
3 Linux Mandrake boxes:
1)Samba PDC and main fileserver (also NFS), openldap server,
2)Postfix/UW-IMAP/amavis virus scanning mail server, apache web and webmail, Star Schedule Calendar server.
3)Samba/CUPS printserver, intranet server
The only proprietary software here is the Star Schedule server, which we are looking at replacing.
1 Windows 2000 Server/MSSQL 7 server/IIS
This box is for the ERP/Project Management software we use (don't blame me, management didn't even consult IT).
On the desktops we run mostly Windows 2000 or Windows NT with Star Office, GIMP, and Netscape. We will be deploying Mozilla and OpenOffice to replace Netscape and StarOffice.
Openldap provides a convenient shared address book, and allows use to use linux on the desktops as conveniently as Windows boxes joined to the domain. Password authentication on linux is done with pam_smb, account info by ldap -> one account and one password. Star Schedule povides calendaring, although it is not that robust. We migth migrate to phpgroupware
There are a few people who have MS Office (since they claim they can't send (Star|Open)Office to other companies
Other proprietary software we use is Pro/Engineer and Wave (from Ricardo). Pro/E does not run on linux (yet), but Wave does.
That's what we are using to automate our windows environments ! windows has no embedded scripting language as for example OS/2 with REXX. We use it for nearly everything - automated installs, login scripts, database management, system administration, etc. It makes life a lot easier and extensible, and the support (newsgroups, internet) is excellent. If you try to do this with a microsoft method, you would have to learn several different programming and scripting languages, pay for compilers (VB), click a lot around, and would require much more personel, and have a crap support !
Thanks for stereotyping Open Source software developers. Unfortunately you are wrong. Many people who become involved in Open Source software do so because they want to share software with people and not because Micro$oft sux0rs. Simply because most of the posts on Slashdot typically mindlessly bash Microsoft and call it the Great Satan doesn't mean that people developing software that they want to benefit users of software will divorce themselves from the Windows platform.
What makes you think that Open Source development is restricted to users of a certain platform? Open Source Developer != Linux user even though a lot of them are.
Apache and Star Office are exceptions, because they want to become standards and that means being available for the most popular desktop platform.
Exceptions, huh? How about
I think a lot of folks are doing stuff like this. We did it a little at a time. MOST of our users haven't noticed anything different except that things tend to run a little better. The firewalls/proxy servers went to a Linux box three years ago. Web based access to corporate mail moved to an open source Linux solution last year. Hardly anyone realizes that the last three years of corporate transactional data (we're a financial institution) now resides on a sub $1,000 Samba box. Can't even remember when I moved that....certainly over two years ago.
/proxies. Outlook is history..replaced by Pegasus Mail (I know.....not open source or Linux friendly but works great) which will soon host a Python scripting engine for all the stuff that VB does in Outlook.
This year, we bought some insurance agencies to add to our holdings. BEFORE we bought them they were MS everything....from the mice up. Seems that most of the insurance business likes Redmond a lot. AFTER we bought them, they have Win2K on the desk, Samba as a server, and Linux based firewalls
The stuff runs great. The people don't know the difference...they just say that they're glad they all have a new "computer system". A few suits have trouble because they only know "names" like Exchange or Outlook. They also expect to see a calendar in their e-mail software....although they can't explain why it belongs there. I always have handy, an expense report on what the stuff cost us and a quote from CDW on what it WOULD have cost us using NT Server/Proxy/Exchange, etc. I also remind them that their way would probably cost us more IT staff too.
None of this was hard to do. None of this was technically difficult. None of this hurt our business.
All of this worked. All of this helped our people. All of this saved us money. All of this was the right thing to do.
Pick a project....think it out...do some research and get it done. You'll be happy you did and your company will be better for it. I did it in a very conservative financial institution that HATES to take risk. And now I work for a better company because of that decision.
I deal daily with a nontrivial program coded directly to the windows API (no MFC or anything of the sort). It runs across several flavors of Windows (98, ME, 2000) though being developed on 98 and never targetted to 2000. Additionally, it was developed without MS tools using an open source (though not Free) compiler.
Bleh!
Here are just a few of the tools that are considered traditionally in UNIX/Linux/BSD territory that are available for Win32. In all actuality, there's enough out there to get as much of Linux running on Win32 as Win32 running under WINE.
/ ruby-install.html
t ml
i ls.html
s .html
XFree86: http://sources.redhat.com/cygwin/xfree/
KDE: http://kde-cygwin.sourceforge.net/
GTK/PHP/Libglade: http://gtk.php.net/download.php
Apache: http://www.apache.org
PHP: http://www.php.net
PHPTriad: http://www.phpgeek.com
Perl: http://www.activestate.com
Ruby: http://www.pragmaticprogrammer.com/ruby/downloads
Python: http://www.python.org/download/download_windows.h
TCL/TK: http://www.pconline.com/%7Eerc/tclwin.htm
MySQL: http://www.mysql.com
MySQL ODBC: http://www.mysql.com/downloads/api-myodbc.html
PostgreSQL: Included in cygwin (only works on NT)
ATT's U/WIN* Unix for Windows: http://www.research.att.com/sw/tools/uwin/
Cygwin: http://sourceware.cygnus.com/cygwin/
DJGPP: http://www.delorie.com/djgpp/
Native UNIX command-line binaries: http://www.wzw.tu-muenchen.de/~syring/win32/UnxUt
vi: http://www.cs.vu.nl/~tmgil/vi.html
Emacs: http://www.cs.washington.edu/homes/voelker/ntemac
OpenOffice: http://www.openoffice.org
Mozilla: http://www.mozilla.org
GIMP: http://user.sgic.fi/~tml/gimp/win32/
List of GNU software for Windows: http://www.gnusoftware.com/
And so on . . .
There's a list over at DMOZ.org of a lot of this.
The Glass is Too Big: My Take on Things
HOWEVER, almost every attempt I've made to move to Linux or open-source software on the workstation front has been met with absolute failure. The only real open-source program we use on a regular basis on the workstation side is PuTTY, really. Every time I tried moving a user to Linux as their OS, for example, or switching them from MS Office to Star/Open Office, they end up complaining loudly that it's too different, and their boss ends up making me switch them back to what they normally use. They're extremely resistant to change; they may be willing to try something brand new, but not switch to something that's different and replacing what they've used before.
So, that's where it stands at my company... we've done the switch to open-source, but only as much as I can switch without the users noticing the real difference. Otherwise, I can't get them to try something different. This is the main problem we face in getting the OSS alternatives in, IMHO... not the MS monopoly enforced by their strongarm tactics, but end-users too unwilling to use something else.
Just my $.02...
In short it would cost HP lots to give away something unusable and likely not worth fixing up.
I don't read ACs: If a post isn't worth so much as a nom de plume to its author then I wont bother either.
This is a very timely discussion!
:(
My company is in a pretty tight situation. Changing over to Microsoft's subscription based licensing scam is expected to increase our costs by well over $200,000 per year in an industry with already razor thin margins. The verdict: No bloody way.
So we are very much looking for alternatives. Thankfully the management (so far) does not seem to be very biased nor can they afford to be with one of our major competitors already making a switch to a *nix based system.
However, we have been having real difficulty finding adequate commercial quality open source replacements. My recommendation was to take a "modular" approach: don't look for the one solution to fix everything and don't try to replace all at once.
The easiest to switch over will be the Web Servers: Heavy usage but it's over TCP/IP rather than hands on. Switching to a BSD box running Apache with our "existing" JRun enterprise server slapped on top should do the trick. Goodbye IIS!
Workstations is where it will get ugly. We want to keep our NT boxes for now and concentrate on finding software to replace Office/Outlook that will run on both NT AND an alternative open source OS to ease migration down the road when M$ finally pulls the plug on NT. Backwards compatibility with M$ document formats is also a must for both internal and external reason. So far - not much luck. Open Office is really nice, but its a replacement for MS Exchange that's gonna suck. Tried StarOffice and simply was not impressed. I should also point out that the vast majority of the employees are NOT in IT so Windows look&feel is also required to mitigate resistance.
One of my recommendations has been centralize everybodies personal folders on a central filesystem running Linux/BSD and using Samba to integrate it seemlessly with the rest of the NT based LAN. Coupled with tighter restrictions on who can install software on any given desktop should help to pull us away from NT.
BUT... It's the database backend that is going to be really hard to replace. Currently we use SQL Server but years of bad programming habits resulted in software that is tightly coupled to the existing system. It's gonna be hard to break that link but we're working on it. SQL Server was chosen because of its costs (free, believe it or not) but now its gonna be one of the biggest contributors to the increasing costs because of the new stupid client access licences. Does anyone know of a database system fairly compatible? Needs to handle stored procedures of course hopefully similar to Transact SQL. Heavy usage, transaction support, tight security, and all that are also requirements. Oracle was suggested by management thinks its far too expensive. And of course - it must be stable. Knock MS all you want but SQL Server has worked for us well so far.
Since the parent post didn't go into details about how to make your editor of choice the source code viewer for IE, I thought I would explain. It's easier than you think, and doesn't require registry hacking.
:)
.html or whatever file type you just edited.
.pl.)
(The following instructions work for Windows 2000; if you're using 98, please adjust slightly.
1. Go to Tools/Folder Options in My Computer or Windows Explorer. Click the "File Types" tab.
2. Scroll down until you find HTML, PHP, or the file type you are currently viewing in your browser.
3. Click the Advanced button.
4. Edit the "Edit" type, or create a new type called "Edit."
5. Browse until you find the application you want. (I use EditPlus, which does source code highlighting for PHP/JSP/Perl.) Make sure the "Use DDE" box is unchecked.
6. Click OK until you are out of all of the dialog boxes.
7. Make sure the Edit button is showing in IE's toolbar. If it's not, make it show up by right-clicking on an empty area of your toolbar and clicking "Customize."
8. Open a new browser window and go to a URL that ends in
9. The "Edit" button should show up, and you should be able to edit the page in your preferred editor. (Note: for Slashdot, you have to edit/create a file type in Windows for
The real advantage of this is that you can set different types of files to open in different editors. For instance, I set HTML to open in Dreamweaver, but I set PHP to open in EditPlus.
HTH,
Erica
When IT people at one of my clients, a company with about 200 employees, were saying that they had heard bad things about Microsoft's Proxy Server 2.0, I reinforced that and explained to them how bad Windows is in general when it comes to Internet-related stuff, and why Unix-based systems are better. I suggested that they could use a Linux box with Squid as their proxy server, and that since it would be a dedicated-function box, it wouldn't have large maintenance overhead. I explained that Squid is used by large service providers and can handle big loads.
They went for it, and have been running Squid on Red Hat for some time now. Pressing my advantage, I suggested that they could switch their use of SourceSafe (version control) to CVS and getting much snappier operation across the Internet when developers are working from home. I demonstrated this to them, and they were convinced. They now run CVS for version control, too, using the WinCVS client.
The same company tried out Jitterbug for bug tracking. This wasn't as successful. There's now some talk of trying out Bugzilla. But I no longer have to evangelize this stuff, they're sold. They've received the threatening license letters from Microsoft, and have even gotten to the point of considering replacing Microsoft Exchange with an IMAP server. The only thing holding them back is good centralized calendar software. Anyone know anything good? It doesn't have to be free.
Another area where this company has moved in a more open direction is switching from Microsoft's ASP for web apps, to Java-based JSP. By now being thoroughly sold on the benefits of Free Software and Open Source (since they have developers and even admins who have been frustrated by Microsoft's lack of openness), they picked the Resin application server. Their intranet and extranet applications are now capable of running on either Linux or NT.
When their Windows-oriented vendor came to them with a $18,000 proposal for a Checkpoint Firewall-1 firewall, the IT manager said no thanks, we're thinking of setting up a firewall on one of our Linux boxes. This vendor was one of those who had been complaining of problems with Microsoft Proxy Server, and guess what, they're now showing interest in Linux also.
This company may even switch their file server. There's been some talk of this, due to Microsoft's per-seat license costs for accessing a Windows file server. It probably won't happen soon, but I have the feeling that it'll happen in the end.
Switching the desktops, though, is not considered a serious option, although it's been discussed more than once.
The important thing is to get a foot in the door. Figure out a reason to install an Open Source package - even if it's Apache on NT. Once people start having some familiarity and comfort with the idea of free/open source software, the possibilities become obvious, and it sells itself.
Since then I've used a ton of Open Source and Free software on NT. I've played around with Sendmail, BIND (as a cacheing only local nameserver), MySQL, Ruby, Python, XFree86 (with windowmaker, which confused the hell out of my local Linux zealot friend ;) even tcl... I use emacs and the cygwin bash + other apps ports (ssh, GPG, all the time. It all absolutely rocks, and best of all it's got me familiar enough with the basics of developing on and using a *nix system that I've been able to swap onto Linux, Solaris and openBSD with a minimal speedbump, allowing me to concentrate on learning the interesting bits of Unixland (system stuff, IP tables, NAT, IDS and a ton of security software that still isn't available on NT. Although (shhh!) nmap now compiles out of the box... netcat runs,too...)
In short, if you're on windows but interested in checking out Freedom, these ports make a nice comfy way to get familiar with the other universe. Most of it is also far superior (more secure, more stable, more flexible and powerful) than the point-and-click Microsoft provided tools.
The one thing I need now is the strength to have another bash at getting Mutt or Pine working. I love mozilla and use mail & news for everything now, but I'd still like the cheap geek thrills of a non-gui scriptable CLI mail client. Then I can get cron mailing me home-rolled tripwire-like security checks daily...
Though I'm a server jockey, and working on mostly server apps that are deployed on linux, I am currently being forced to use W2K at my office for development, which are then ported to linux for deployment. Screwy engineering process, but one I've learned to cope with because other developers have felt our pain, and made life better for everyone by porting the best of the open source tools.
I use Cygwin for most of my CLI tools. It provides a bash prompt and an incredibly useful set of tools such as grep, find, diff, ssh, tar, gzip, autoconf, automake, make, gcc and others. Beyond that, many other useful tools have been ported or are easy to port because of the services provided by cygwin. I have had problems getting cvs to work correctly. I have also had problems getting emacs to look correct in the console window.
I also use emacs for all of my text editing and devlopment needs. Not only does it give you a powerful development environment in conjunction with visual c++, it can also be hooked into cygwin. I tried VisEmacs and didn't like it (YMMV) as much as simply setting the proper environment variables and churning out programs with emacs 'compile' set to run nmake.
- You don't know how to maintain a station wagon either!
> For intsance, user-level applications do not
> have to be rewritten to move from FAT to NTFS
> or to support zip disks. Porting between
> versions of Windows is less effort than
> porting between versions of Unix.
Errr - yes they do if they want to do any security work - which isn't available on FAT.
Or if they want to use the many API's that are "only supported in Windows NT/2000, but not on Win9x" (just look in the MSDN - there are many of them). Locking API's are completely different between Win9x and WinNT/200 for example. Why is LockFileEx unsupported in Win9x ? Why are such basic things as locking a region of a file different between Microsoft platforms ?
Porting between Win9x/WinNT/Win2000 is a *nightmare* compared to porting between UNIX varients. Not if you're doing simple "hello world" window GUI stuff, but if you're doing anything of any complexity you run into such issues (security, file locking etc.) all the time.
Regards,
Jeremy Allison,
Samba Team.
When I used to do NT admin work, I found Perl to be pretty handy. Unix admins have been using Perl and other scripting languages to automate repetative tasks for years. NT admins by and large don't seem to be very familier with the concept, but it is doable.
GNU Cfengine is another great sysadmin tool that's also has an NT version. If you administer a lot of systems (Unix or NT) this a fantastic tool to have. Your fellow NT admins will be completely befuddled trying to figure you how you installed that latest IIS patch to 50 machines before lunch!
Firewalls are another good place to start introducing some free software. I frigging LOVE OpenBSD with IPF (or the new PF) packet filter as a firewall.
Start will small changes like these. They won't require any user training or major changes for your end user. They also won't require much buy in from management. And they'll make it easier to put more free software into place later. When the inevitable objections to a larger, more visible free software related project comes up, you can confidently inform the objector that the company has been using free software for years!