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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."
2001: Most Linuxes have a very friendly desktop, with lots of productivity apps, but I swear to Linus, it's about twice as slow as Win2K/XP on the same hardware.
I'd love to have Linux running everywhere if it didn't require massive hardware to run smoothly.
The article failed to mention the cost of support to Linux platforms. Heck, I'd like to see windows replaced in the work place myself. But the fact remains--windows based sysadmins are a dime a dozen, and most of the sharp linux/unix admins don't want to be resetting passwords for morons.
It would be hard to find enough linux admins willing to do this kind of work.
-- yawn. --
low cost of Linux offerings compared to Windows based-solutions
Linux is cheaper? Really?
I wish that writers would make other points. This one is blatantly obvious, and every linux user knows it. How about some other points that most IT Managers don't know?
Good quote, too many chars. Seriously, the slashdot 120 char limit sucks!
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.
Windows cause sun glare in everyone's monitor, hence decreasing productivity.
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."
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?
Plus, for user management and the ability to set granular rights, Novell is far ahead of Linux. Try setting linux to give the following permissions to the file myreport.doc
managers can read, filescan and change but not delete
secretaries can read and filescan
bob can read, filescan, change, and delete
john can read, filescan, change, delete and assign ownership of the file
jane can filescan
filescan is the ability to see the file if you do a dir or ls. Sometimes useful. And yes, you can change a file so that it is empty, but that is different than deleting.
Plus, got to love novell's salvage utility.
Sorry, just trying to plug a good nos.
All but one of the servers they were using ran Linux (the remaining two were running Solaris and NT for software requirements). I worked under the network admin, and during the whole time I was there we never even had a glitch with the network.
All of the engineers were using Linux on their desktops and it worked beautifully. The remaining desktops were running Win98 for the HR, marketing and finance groups because the software they were using required it.
It's not quite the Windows-less office that the article was discussing, but it was pretty close. I've seen the wonders of the Linux-based network and I like it.
There is no escape from The Muffin.
My office is now 100% Window-less as of about 6 months ago, but we're instead 100% Mac OS X (currently 10.1). It's great. I don't miss Windows at all, and the myth that you "can't get applications for the Mac" is such a load of cr@p.
In fact, the new Office for Mac OS X is, in my opinion, much BETTER than the Windows version.
Networking has been faster, too, and that's important to us. You'd never believe it, but it's cheaper too. No more calling for technical support or having someone on duty to fix problems with our systems. You just don't need it with a Mac because the hardware and software is so well integrated.
The machines themselves have been CHEAPER for us. $1199 iMacs as clients and G4s to handle some of the heavier loads. It's worked great.
And by the way... that 22" Apple flat screen is not only beautiful for working with, but it impresses customers too. I know it seems like a detail, but people have gotten the impression we're an upscale successful business because they see those screens and comment on them.
I know I seem like a troll ranting about this or that, but I just want to get the word out, because I'm a very pleased Apple customer... and I'm laughing at myself for ever having used Windows for so long.
The next comment I write will be ready soon, but subscribers can beat the rush and see it early!
One important component I still find missing is a free desktop database a la Access. This is a very important tool for every company, and it will be missing from Open Office 6.0 (not sure about Star Office 6.0). There's a commercial contender called Rekall from theKompany (and a port of Paradox 9), but only a couple free beta apps. This should not be that hard to write, though, since scripting languages, database backends and form designers already exist in free versions.
Sorry, but if I added up all my time spent fixing broken Windows, and compared it with the cheerful hacking I do on Linux or BSD, Windows would come out far more expensive.
Of course, YMMV, but in our 300-plus node network of Windows boxes, you can always guarantee one thing: they break when you need them most.
Personal computer systems are brittle as hell, and, as far as I'm concerned, running Windows is no guarantee that your day won't be wasted. Perhaps NT decided to blue screen because there wasn't a PS/2 mouse plugged in (true story).
My personal obsvervations indicate to me that it is a fallacy that Windows is easier to maintain. Tell that to our IT guys.
-- clvrmnky
Why is everyone trying to shoehorn Linux into something it's bad at? I use Red Hat Linux exclusivly for my web servers. It scales well, I'm happy with it's security and it simply works helluva well? in that capacity.
However, I use exclusivly Win32 on the desktop. I have a digital studio box that uses Me, and will soon be upgrading that to XP. A couple dev boxen with 2000, and an older box with 98se. For my needs Win32 works helluva well? on the desktop. (Not to mention that I like to play games).
Now, *I* use win32, because I have a choice and I pick win32. But that's not why I think this is a bad (and stupid) idea.
Show of hands, how many of you have parents and grandparents could go to work tomorrow and use *nix without a hitch instead of Win32?
Business want their workers to be *productive*. And yes, I know you can argue that many of the powerful features found in *nix desktops make a user *more* productive. But only the top 5% or so that will ever figure them out. I'd venture to guess that 99% of *windows* users never figure out *it's* features.
Right clickable context menus are something that the average secretary or insurance broker or customer service rep has probably never heard of.
The file structure on win32 is a mystery to these workers. If their copy of word somehow winds up pointing to a diffrent working directory than C:/My Documents/ then half of them will have no prayer of navigating back to where it was and will declare their files "lost". Until someone comes along and fixes it for them.
It all boils down to this: If I gave my mother a Porche 911 Twin Turbo tomorrow, I know that she would drive it to work every day exactly the same as she drives her Subaru Outback station wagon. It's only certain people that will take advantage of the extra power. This analogy isn't less applicable to computers, it's MORE applicable.
The point? Win32 is easier than *nix. And Win32 is STILL TOO HARD for the masses. Yes, I am well aware of the fact that your average geek can use it. Your average IT guy can use it, but they're not 99% of officeworkers world wide. So why would you want to take a step backwards and make these poor saps use somethign that will make them hate computers even more?
It seems a lot like cutting off your own nose to spite Microsoft's Face to me.
Touch everywhere, even when inappropriate.
It's been done.
Most geeks work in offices without windows. The window offices are usually reserved for upper level execs.
To bad i still have to use Windoze at school. The administration doesnt know a good OS when they see it. Thats why they run mostly Win95 on a Novell network.
Sigh. These kinds of comments from know-it-all kiddies are _really_ annoying.
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.
this is getting old. how many times are we going to go over this?
- the people reading slashdot are not the ones who need convincing, this audience is well aware of the capabilities of linux.
- if you need articles like this to convince your boss, you don't know enough about linux and wouldn't be able to implement this type of solution.
thank you, good night.
is getting it to work with all the hardware. by the time i got all my stuff configured on my own systems, my head was swimming. hunting down drivers on google and editing config files by hand was very educational, but not particularly speedy. when i imagine doing the same for every machine in even a small organization, my head wants to explode.
of course you could just buy a machine with linux pre-installed, but then you get the choice of a dell latitude model X, or dell latitude model X. and installing linux on a machine that came with windows on it rather mitigates the lower cost argument, since you've already paid for the windows license. or you could buy individual components that have linux support and form a santa's workshop to assemble machines. again, not particularly cheap or speedy.
so, it's not the lack of windows app alternatives that's holding linux back in the workplace, because staroffice, gimp, etc., cover 99% of what your average user would need to do. it's also not the vaunted inertia that everyone makes a big deal out of, because the interfaces for open source alternatives almost completely mimic their windows cousins. believe me, the learning curve is no higher for telling people how to use the OSS version of a spreadsheet program than the windows version itself.
imho, once it's as easy to get linux running on a given machine as it is windows, the major obstacle to moving your business platform from windows to linux will be gone. until then, all the security, stability, and financial arguments in the world are not going to outweigh the perceived headache of having all your tech staff running around for years trying to get the workstations config'd properly.
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.
I'm surprised the article does not even try to address the basic issue of file compatibility. Fact is, a normal office would have tons of documents in MS Word or Excel files. Excel is a complex and powerful piece of software: people write applications in it complete with menus and buttons. I know document conversion programs exist, but they never do a good job even with simple documents, let alone mega-apps-in-Excel and such. In addition, your business partners, suppliers and clients will want to collaborate with you using Word/Excel/PowerPoint files, and you are not in a position to dictate what they use. This is the reality of business. Even if you want to switch, and even if suitable Linux apps are available, you may not be able to.
Besides, StarOffice is a bloated monster.
Both OpenOffice Impress and kpresenter are stable mature applications that can do most things a rational person would ever expect in a presentation.
So if you write
" There's no open-source software replacement for PowerPoint."
you are right. There is not one, there are TWO GPL apps to replace powerpoint.
Now if I look at the fact that SVG is a vector format (not a presentation format) and the fact that openoffice641 opens all ridiculous powerpoint stuff I get mailed by people, I think you should look harder before you propoese new projects to other people.
See http://www.openoffice.org and http://www.koffice.org for the apps.
Moritz
It only works for them because you're there to administrate it for them. Have they every tried to add a printer? An external hard drive? A sound card?
If it's all setup for you ahead of time, Linux is about the same as Windows for a user that just wants to surf or word process. But you're assuming that someone 'manages' that computer for them - 95% of people DON'T have a sysadmin to take care of Linux hardware and software installs for them, they have to do it themselves!
Can you imagine mom reading the man pages and recompiling the kernel to get her USB external hard drive working? I can't. I can, however, imagine her following the Windows instructions: "plug it in, and a drive letter will appear". See? Linux COULD be that easy, but certain people have acted to make sure that it ISN'T.
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.
Of course, anyone who's ever worked in a company with computers knows that's a load of crap. It doesn't matter what type of computers you run, you're going to have to hire people to take care of them. Your IT department deals with OS installs, hardware failures, virus eradication and miscellaneous end-user issues.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
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.
On the linux-audio-dev mailing list, many things are discussed and software developed such as Ardour, digital audio workstation software for Linux, JACK (JACK Audio Connection Kit), a low-latency infrastructure for connecting audio applications, and several wave editors. Dave Phillips maintains a list of Linux sound applications--many are not that advanced but some are.
Work in this area is progressing, and many smart people are involved. In particular, Paul Barton-Davis, author of Ardour and the main force behind JACK, seems to be pursuing commercial possibilities of selling linux-based sound workstations under a company named Linux Audio Systems. You can read Paul's slashdot comments to see some of his opinions on the situation of Linux audio.
It's not. What the article was really replacing was MS Office. They could have just as easily simply installed the Windows version of StarOffice and the Gimp. They called it a Linux comparison because Linux still rakes in the hits.
The only real reason to run Linux desktops is if you are planning to leverage X Windows and use thin clients. Saving money on client licenses is good. Saving money by lowering administration costs is golden.
Comment removed based on user account deletion