Slashdot Mirror
Constructing a Windows-Less Office
joewakeup writes "This article at CRN analyses why today is the best time to consider building a pure Linux information system, from servers to... desktop. Among all the arguments, one of the arguments is the low cost of Linux offerings compared to Windows based-solutions. Worth a read."
"People who are used to Windows will undergo a learning curve. This is no different from the changes necessary in moving from Windows to, say, a Mac."
Do people actually move from Windows to Mac's???
Windows cause sun glare in everyone's monitor, hence decreasing productivity.
When a company switches to 100 percent MS free they might have very much problems to exchange data with their customers.
This will give their competitors very much advantage and they'll finally die in the end.
Also there are very much legal problems with the GNU license and people are not sure if they must distribute their own work for free. This might be ok with open source but you must keep in might that a company cannot distribute their confidential data all over the world because their competitors would use their customer lists and have very much advantage.
And there is the problem with reliability on open source systems because a single command: umount can wipe out the whole harddisk.
A linux guy told me lately that you must do always umount to halt your computer, so a operation system which can't be switched off is not good for a company especially the running computers use much power all over the night and this is very expensive and bad for the environment, too.
So you should stay with Windows which has not these problems. And the service is very much better from microsoft because of the programs which are installed on your computer and send every you do to microsoft so that they can help you all the time.
Owner of a Mensa membership card.
It's been done.
Most geeks work in offices without windows. The window offices are usually reserved for upper level execs.
NT 4.0 has no support from MS any longer,
that's like using linux kernel 1.x
without support from Linus.
And learning to tweak out your .fvwm2rc file is half the fun!
Wow! Make sure that's a bullet point in the presentation to the IT Manager. He'll make sure all the middle managers hear it.
They're gonna be EAGER for the new Linux desktop rollout.
The main problem is financial capital. First off, most companies lease their offices, and I'd expect, can't afford not to. Larger companies that own their campuses are less likely to try something so radical, unless there's a specific purpose to doing so (testing light sensitive products or something-- but why in an office setting?).
If the money is there, simply give your contractors that are either modifying or building your office building instructions not to include any windows.
More economically, you could try putting tin foil over the windows. If you put the foil on the inner panel on the inside and the foil on the outer panel on the outside, you can even open the window if you wish. If that defeats your purpose, put bars on the windows.
Yeah, I'm sure that the only applications of any merit on Windows are Office and the Sims.
I have a corner office and found that thick canvas curtains provide a decent substitute for a windowless office.
(You could probably also hack in some cronjobs on the server and the workstations to automatically keep all packages up to date, but that's beyond the scope of this comment.)
You might be a geek if... Your comments have "scope."
It's so XP Office compatible it even requires a subscription (~$50/y IIRC) to use it. Now that's what I'd call full compatibility.
-- MarkusQ
I work at a large, international corporation. Our office has no windows at all. It's really quite depressing at times. I miss seeing the light of day.