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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."
I work in an electronic music studio. I'd love to use Linux, but the apps just aren't there.
The fact that there's almost no development community addressing this potentially enormous market amazes me to no end.
But, until then, I'll use Windows. Not because it's great, but because it has the apps I need.
As reported in Slashdot this morning, Evolution 1.0 Released and ThinkFree Office an MS 2000/XP Office compatible suite that works in Linux. Combine these with the TransGaming's WineX software, there is no longer any reason to use MS on the desktop.
"I'm The Bounty Bear. I will find him anywhere. I'm searching."
NT is stable, fast, and very decently priced these days. If I'm an office manager, what's my incentive for trying to go to Linux?
This is OK for a small office, but what about a larger company? Many companies have deployed MS Exchange server partly because of the integrated global address list and the fact that you can store the email in a central database instead of downloading it to the PC like a POP3 server. Is there a Linux based mail server with these features?
It seems like every year I get infected with the pro-linux bias of slashdot and rip Windows off my machine.
I ripped Windows off at about the same last year and installed Linux. I wasn't impressed. The desktop managers seemed slow (I was running a P3-800) and the web-browser sucked and generally, the applications weren't as good as their Windows counterparts. Not to mention that I managed to crash the system and have ext2 throw away some files.
So, this weekend I tried it again. I ripped off Windows 2000 and installed RedHat 7.2. In one year, Linux (and Gnome / KDE) has improved ten-fold. The KDE browser rocks, KMail is very good and the ext3fs filesystem is much better. However, it still took me hours to get ADSL PPPOE and a VPN client up and running and the soundcard (VIA 8233) and tv-card (Brooktree) still don't work. Apparently, the concept of writing a device driver without patching the kernel is still impossible even though Windows/Mac have been doing it for many years. And the system (now an Tbird-1.33) is still slower than Windows 2K (ex., the mouse gets jerky when my apps thrash the disk).
I'm a developer, so I'm thinking of writing support for some of these things (such as an easy VPN installer). Or, maybe a universal driver installer that would automagically patch the kernel and say 'You must reboot now', ala Windows. But the thought of having to support different distributions and versions makes me cringe.
Alot of the problems in Windows can be attributed to Microsoft trying to be backwards-compatible. But with Linux, the kernel and major libraries (ie. glibc) are always changing underneath your feet. This is a major design flaw that I not sure can ever be rectified.
Jason.
windows clients, i can live with it. however, samba has evolved to the point where it's a better domain master than NT, so NT is gone. all of the other misc servers (mail, a few databases, web) are linux. everyone can use the databases from windows with the simple ODBC drivers and our custom VB (ack) programs. everyone is happy. i am happy.
>>my own workstation runs NT 4.0 just fine, and any modern flavor of Linux utterly dies.
Could it be that you are not installing properly? As an MCSE I have yet to see a hardware platform which performed better on NT 4.0 than on a good Linux install.
As an Network Administrator (MCSE certified) my incentive for NT is currently that I do not have a strong enough grasp of Samba to replace my NT boxes for authentication from windows clients (and I have windows clients everywhere). I have replaced almost all of my application server functions with a good Unixware install (if such a beast exists) I am very pleased with Unix reliability and currently use Linux for some network monitoring. I will be replacing Exchange with a Linux based platform very soon. Happy Day!!!
Life is like a box of chocolates....
Too much of it will make you sick
It's a good open source project. The initial version doesn't have to support animation, but design in the hooks, and it will probably be added by others. Perl code to read and write Flash exists, so there's something to look at. A good student programming project.
Things "get into" the office environment when they make business sense to do so. Which happens when the benefits exceed the costs, the reward exceeds the risk, and when these are exceeded by an amount greater than the next best alternative.
In the case of office platforms, the big "corporate IT" issue re this analysis in representing the complete true costs - Total Cost of Ownership - which includes the relative expense of good Unix sysadmins or the cost of retraining Win admins (clue injection), the cost of managing the environments, the cost of supporting moronic end users, the costs of reduced application availability (sure you can have a nice GUI, but where's the Linux industrial-strength Accounts Payable system?), or of building interfaces to whatever the rest of the world uses (eg., the cost of reverse engineering .doc format for word processing). The actual cost of the OS (free beer) is almost irrelevant.
On the risk side, corporate IT departments value stability of the infrastructure above all. So, the corporate IT folks are herd-following conformists. No one will move to Linux office until everyone else does. And there will have to be a huge TCO advantage before that inertia gets overcome.
It's actually a rational position, but not very cool or fun. Sticking with the herd, and moving en masse with the herd has advanatges. The herd is big enough that it gets what it wants: robust techinical support, business applications developed for the platform of their choice, peer groups and conferences in Boca Raton, whatever.
Of course, you lose out on the advanatges of doing something different/better than competitors. It all depends on what you value more.
(PHB off)
Just kidding of course. This was posted from a Linux system hiding in a 50,000 person company.
Since these boxes are going to be on a network anyhow, why not simply use underpowered machines as X terminals. Any machine with 16M of ram has enough oomph to be an X terminal, and one commodity server (with enough memory) can easily support hundreds of users.
As far as I am concerned the only real reason to take a look at Linux on the desktop is that it finally allows the systems administrators to move to a useable thin client arrangement. Imagine the joys of one box to administer and nothing but disposable machines on your users' dekstops. Linux has finally gotten to the point where it has enough applications to allow you to shift to this sort of a setup today. The fact that this sort of an arrangement will probably save you money on both software and hardware costs is nothing more than icing on the cake. The real potential for savings is in administration costs. All of a sudden you can get rid of all of your desktop support personnel and replace them with one Linux admin, and a monkey whose sole job would be to replace failed thin clients.
Unfortunately, very, very few people involved in the development of the Linux operating system care much about usability. They are much more interested in adding the latest whiz-bang feature, but it doesn't seem to bother them that their app must be installed on a command line that is unintelligible to 99% of the computing population.
The few folks that DO care about usability (Ximian) are doing great things - unfortunately, it just isn't enough. They are working on the GUI, an email client, etc. but there are so many more usability problems with the OS than just that.
Windows is only esay to use because people don't know any thing else exists. I been using linux for 2 years, and now even my mom and my little sister use Linux(Gnome) with no problems at all.
Can they run all the games that are released each year, even low-tech stuff like Roller Coaster Tycoon? Can they run all the kids' software available at Toys 'R Us? Can they shop at Internet Explorer-specific web sites? Can they run Photoshop and Premiere, if they needed to?
The bottom line is and always has been this: People want to be able to run the software that's out there. That's it. That's all. I've been a Mac user in the past, and it is frustrating any time you have to do something where all users are assumed to be running Windows. It's not worth being idealistic about it.