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Telstra Considers 45,000-Seat Linux Deployment
stressky writes: "Looks like major Aussie telco Telstra are looking at deploying Linux as the new Standard Operating Environment across their 45,000 desktop LAN workstations." An anonymous reader offers evidence that Telstra isn't alone; apparently, many other Australian businesses are considering a similar switch.
This is awsome! I hope it will go across the globe!
And once people start having to use Linux at work, and see that it's a perfectly usable system and a nice desktop, they might start switching over at home.
People are lazy, they know windows, they're not likely to change to something they don't know unless they're forced. But if they've already had some exposure to Linux, they'll be much more willing to try it out at home.
Telstra simply evaluate the alternatives. That's normal business procedure. OK, it's nice they consider Linux instead of just ignoring it, but that doesn't (yet) mean that they'll actually select it.
You can be sure that MS will throw in their full marketing weight on such a business...
Oh well, we can hope...
Hopefully this might fix their failing ADSL servers, which are jacking up the prices and enforcing the infamous 3gb cap, but this is Telstra and since the Government is trying to sell it off let again, it can only mean that it's more savings and price rises to attract buyers on the stock exchange.
Given Nortel's pathetic state, you think they would do this instead of making Mr. Gates richer. But noooooooo ... what little money they have left is going straight to Redmond. What is their problem?
Half the time, just mentioning the phrase "RFP" to your vendor will get them to offer an immediate 3-8% discount.
I'm not sure if this is extortion on the part of the client or bribery on the part of the vendor... It's just something you've got to do if you want a half-decent deal on equipment and services.
I hope this leads to a success story in a year or two's time. We need to make linux show up more on the desktop/workstations. Which window manager are they using?
From the article from Australian IT:
OK, sounds reasonable. However, when asked about this, M$ came up with (also from the Australian IT article):
This doesn't seem to tally. Perhaps he meant the middle finger on each hand?
Telstra have been MS junkies a long way back, Bill G made a point of wowing the Australian Government with presentations to Cabinet in the early days of the commercial net (1996/7 - early for MS) and with that push went the Govt owned corporates, of which Telstra is one.
Telstra nearly lost their commercial ISP business due to faillings in Win NT's stability in those days.
They also got extremely upset with MS publishing criticism of their Broadband strategy earlier this year (they'd thought they were buddies)
At a guess though I'd say Telstra are using this bit of smoke to help their negotiations with MS, negotiations on a number of fronts.
'There is a Light that never goes out.'
Considering when I was last with Telstra they didn't even offer support for Linux with their broadband offerings, I can't imagine this will really come to much.
Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean there isn't an invisible demon about to eat your face
Rather, each organisation that deployed Linux was doing so for specific, discrete reasons, Mr Beck [Microsoft Marketing Manager] said.
so does it follow that there was no reason for using Windows? or...
in other news, following MS marketings logic, RMS declares there is no trend towards people using Windows, they were using it for specific reasons.
I doubt that if those workers at Telstra are exposed to Linux at their workplace, they gonna switch over to Linux at home. There are a lot of people using UNIX flavors like Solaris at work, but I don't think SUN sells a lot of $995 Sun Blades 100 to them.
On one level Linux is really just an operating system, and will not neccesarily promote world peace. But on the other, Linux has won the "hearts and minds" of people with an anti-corporate image. If large evil companies like Telstra (which I hear is even worse than Qwest, if such a thing could be imagined) start endorsing it, Linux may be seen as just another corporate tool.
Hopefully I didn't put any [] around my words.
One monopoly getting pissed at another monopoly....that is what makes it a good story, Microsoft say's Telstra's Broadband is too costly, then Telstra say's MS office is too costly... maybe they will do a deal and pass the cost of the deal on to their other customers.
Whether it's Telstra or not, one of these days I'm sure there will be a big Linux desktop rollout somewhere. What will be interesting to see is the choice of desktop (KDE or Gnome). I wonder what effect a couple of high-profile coporate adoptions of one or the other might have?
is like knowing where you've been.
/usr/share/doc/myapp) ....
The problem with the current Linux desktop is that it's almost very hard to 'know',
You never know exactly what cut and paste is.(crtl+insert, drag over , crtl+c{things are sure to break!} anything else).
Or how the printer options are going to come up. {KDE print dialoge, configure lpr dialoge}
What a right click will do.
Where the help is (man, info{ahhh the great info},kde help or
Things are far better than a few years ago..
Some things that might help would be:-
Put some UI, design (aesthetic and technical) principals into the LSB
and have a LSB certification for applications.
Resolve the GTK,QT issues (should hopefully happen over the next year or two)
Ask other people if they could kindly implement there GFX toolkits/widgets using QT or GTK.
thank God the internet isn't a human right.
Sounds like a bargaining chip deal to me, and yes, I am quite cynical. The company did recently choose a Sun Java solution over MS and IBM offerings recently though, so maybe they are trying to move away from MS. If they do go with linux, you can safely bet on the solution being provided by Sun as they appear to greatly admire Mr. McNealy.
Without starting a war, I think that in order for linux to be deployed successfully in a corporate envrironment, someone is going to have to build a highly functional, standardized desktop environment. Gnome and KDE are the obvious choices, but what kills linux (for the newcomer) is the overabundance of choice! Abiword, Kword, OpenOffice, StarOffice, Applix (if they are still around). Pick one! Now do that for the multitudes of packages that provide duplicate functionality. This is the only way that someone is going to get Linux in the front of the day to day workers in any corp. Choice is great for geeks, but not for the standard fare business environment. Someone will ship a distro with one shell, one office package, one browser, one mail client, and they will be the company that puts linux over in the workplace.
*squints his eyes and sticks out his tongue*
Ha ha!
Seriously, can we stop the "GNU/Linux will never make it on the desktop" arguments now?
But then again, some people will argue that the sky is green and that Americans never landed on the moon, too.
When linux is loading it says
...
Giving linux a good kick in the arse
Instead of seeing the word LILO it shows
XXXX
Instead of reporting your CPU type and speed in megahertz, you will see
AMD Athlon with 2000 pounds per square inch of biting pressure
The desktop randomly says "Crikey. Look at the size of that one!"
The distro will be released under the GPL, however you must pay heaps of money to a team of rugby league players every week.
The suggestion that Tel$tra might resent Micro$ofts monopolistic rent seeking price practices is so ironic that it is not even ironic (as Baldrick would say).
Tel$tra's business practices make Micro$oft seem a paragon of open access in comparison. Telstra is little more than a revival of the old (and justly reviled) Roman practice of tax farming, and it's massive profits come at the expense of decent information infrastructure and impose a disproportinate economic cost.
Of course there are many Telco's around the world who similarly abuse their monopoly control of the local loop. Governments should wake up and realise that Telecoms constitute startegic infrastucture and that the short term windfalls that might arise from the creation of private monopolies and cartels come at the expense of massive flow on costs to the economy as a whole through communication costs being much higher than they should be.
If we privatised all roads and allowed them to be run by gigantic vertically integrated transport conglomerates with no restrtictions on their prices the result would not be difficult to predict, a starving economy dominated by hugely profiatable transport congomerates. To see what this looks like one has only to go to modern day afghanistan, the ubiquotous "toll gates" are the sign posts of an economy there are no public goods exist and the result is a diminishing of private goods as well.
....but the slick installer has definitely arrived. I am a Debian kind of guy but I recently had the opportunity to install Redhat 7.3. I must say that its polish took my breath away.
Of course, once my install was complete, I discovered that a simple thing like locking the desktop was not visible on the desktop (annoying - it was in the desktop menu) and didnt work anyway (grrr! I guess I'll have to see which package needs to get installed. Even more annoying was the fact that it didnt let me know that it failed due to a missing package - it just did nothing.)
I also looked at the Debian Woody instaler. The fact that I could select from so many locales had me impressed too (I'm sure this will win points with multinational corporations), but a graphics mode install like Redhat's would definitely impress the unitiated more.
There is no such thing as luck. Luck is nothing but an absence of bad luck.
As anybody living in Austalia knows, Telstra are scum. They gouge every cent they can, and they're single-handedly responsable for making broadband here almost prohibitively expensive.
I almost hope they'll decide to use new Windows $3000 (per MB RAM required, min 512MB) so that they'll go broke, the gov't will resume full ownership of the infrastructure, and we get a working telecommunications system again.
I can dream, can't I?
Well it is, until it isn't (staroffice anyone?)
Sensible companies have methods to centralise document storage and management.
Terminals in business are commodities. Paying a premium for all the features in Windows is expensive.
Does every terminal need Digital camera capabilities when you've got 100 terminals in the room?
When every penny counts the case for sticking with windows for the clients grows harder. If you've invested in servers you can probably keep those going while you phase in alternatives.
A feature rich client is an expensive extravagance.
There are places where the networks are not touching,and there are places where they are-Boeing's Lori Gunter
I don't think the majority of the Linux community are anti-corporate per se, they tend to be anti-corporate-abuse from what I can see. Obviously just about any useful tool can be used for evil as well as good.
The advantage of open source software (including BSD, etc) is that it is apt (or can be made apt) for your purposes as opposed to someone else's, while the advantage of libre software (GPL and other "strong" licenses) is that it's resistant to abuse in certain common ways, albeit sometimes at some cost in flexibility.
Those are the things which make Linux appeal to the rebels out there, and even if one Evil Empire or another adopts it as well, those advantages will still accrue to the Light Side also.
Life is good, when you're a winner.
yeah, Linux downunder...
atleast some people know better than to be 0wn3d & r00t3d by a greedy corporation...
Doens't matter, don't let it fool you, Telstra are an evil monopoly, they are the microsoft, of australia, they inflate broadband prices to absolutly insane levels and inflict us all with 3 gig (thats right, 3 gig) a month for horrendous amounts of money and with absolutly no stability, dont let this ever make you think telstra are a decent company, visit www.whirlpool.net.au for more info on how they exploit there monopoly posistion in australia to keep broadband prices high
Microsoft IIS is to webserving as KFC is to healthy eating
OK, i take the windows bit back ;-)
However telstra's costs falling only translate to one thing - greater profits for telstra. No better service or anything, I'm confident of that.
Telstra wouldn't bother producing anything that a prestigious publication like Eweek says there is no interest in would they?
So they will have, what, 1 year of unprecidented employee productivity before all the popular games are ported to Linux.
It is a sad fact that customers will often appear as though they will switch. This gives the individual company bargaining power in contract negotiations with the incumbent.
See Nutrasweet in the early 90's and Coke.
What matters in these scenarios is how credible the threat of switching is. Normally, the incumbent has a serious advantage of the rival, eg switching costs, brand reliance, compeititve reaction (between customers).
The real kicker here is that the 'rival' is not a corporation/supplier. As such, it is difficult for MS to work out how much the rival is tendering and hence, how credible the threat by the customer is. MS can estimate the cost of implementing and rolling out Linux at Telstra, but this is just an estimate by a third party and not certain.
Should MS price low? If it does that, other companies can threaten. Should MS price per normal? And risk losing _the_ big Australian client, therebye destroying MS' hard fought network effects.
Maybe these businesses are bringing up the L word so that MS will drop their prices.
www.ltsp.org
45,000 saved harddisks ... wow
If you are a developer, your job will be lost becuase we are not moving to linux fast enough. By the time that american companies figure it out, overseas will have developed on linux and own it. MS will go the same way the MVS and Novell went (I suspect though, that their fall will be even more spectacular than was IBM - and I doubt that MS will really recover)
Some quick thoughts about Microsoft, and Linux. First, Microsoft, as the
richest company in the world, HAS to keep INCREASING profits. A company
that has made so much money for its stockholders has to not just keep
making money, but increasing profits. Its the nature of our economy. If
you're not growing, you're not making money for your shareholders.
This is maybe true only more recently, where dividends are less and less
the reason that people invest in corporations. People invest because they
expect the market value of their shares to increase. (especially with
Microsoft, who IIRC doesn't pay dividends to shareholders)
Microsoft has accumulated so much cash, so quickly, that if they don't
continue to do so, their stock value will go down.
I don't write this as justification...Just something I thought about when thinking about why MS would be so aggresive with new licensing and pricing strategies.
On a completely different, but relatively ONTOPIC subject, I think that
corporations judgement of Linux as a desktop OS has so much to do with the
window manager, especially KDE. Not to start any flame wars here, but I
think more minimalistic window managers (while not as attractive) have the
potential to be much more simple and stable on the desktop. (And much more
customizable). People say KDE is customizable, but I think its very
difficult to do correctly. With something like blackbox, and a simple file
manager, it can be very easy to create custom desktop PC's with options
only for the apps you are supporting. If this is a desktop PC, all you
need is a right click menu with OpenOffice, some email app, and a web
browser.
As others have noted, this is probably just a ploy to get a better price from Microsoft. I wouldn't be surprised to see an announcement, in a new months, that Telstra have negotiated a new five year deal with Microsoft.. and Smith is no longer CIO.
No, I did not read the f***ing article!
Don't they know that Linux is a geek OS that's already dead on the desktop?!
pr0n - keeping monitor glass spotless since 1981.
Haven't they heard that Desktop Linux Is Dead? I read it on Slashdot, so it must be true!
</sarcasm>
Sounds like Telstra is going after some MS licencing discounts. End of story.
> Gnome and KDE are the obvious choices, but what
;)
> kills linux (for the newcomer) is the
> overabundance of choice! Abiword, Kword,
> OpenOffice, StarOffice, Applix (if they are still
> around).
How is the matter of abundant selection going to hinder corporate adoption? It's not. In a corporate environment, users don't have any choices. Do you honestly think I'd CHOOSE to use Outlook 98 as my corporate e-mail client? Hardly! The average bloke in most organizations gets to choose whatever the folks in the server room stick on the box. Large scale corporations have IT departments that are responsible for making the decisions about which software makes it onto the desktop and what does not. Nobody, not even the CEO, gets to use Eudora when the rest of the company is committed to Lotus Notes or Outlook.
Choice is a good thing and is nothing *but* a good thing.
What the killer is, of course, is interoperability with MS products. I'd love to have a 100% Exchange Server-compatible NON-Microsoft mail client available for free (as in beer). That might convince me to attempt to do the OpenOffice on Linux thing that I've dreamed about for years.
As for work versus home use, I agree that few people will bother to upgrade to Linux from, say, Windows Me. Why? Because no matter how you slice it, the vast majority of computer users in this century are almost completely computer illiterate. It takes some brain power, confidence and familiarity to make Slackware, for example, install on a Compaq 3200 Series system that was only ever intended to run with Windows Me.
What do Joe Average and Suzy Creamcheeze do when their system goes south for the winter? Grab that QuickRestore CD-ROM and get the box running the way it was from the factory! Even if they don't know what they're doing, they know that much. The interface is familiar and that's all that matters.
Now, when you're talking IT guys and assorted geeks, they (like me) will have been using Linux on their own time long before it finds its way into a dark corner of the server room or, God forbid, sees actual desktop use in the main office.
When you talk of people en masse adopting Linux in the home, you need to have an installation routine that does all the hardware probing, configuration, etc. better than Windows. And even more importantly than that, when something does need its own driver, there'd better be some Linux drivers staring 'em in the face.
That's the world of Joe Average and Suzy Creamcheeze, folks.
That said, if/as/when Slack's installation routine changes much from where it is now, I'll be gravely disappointed. After 7 years of Slack, I can't imagine doing it any other way.
I see a plethora of distro's that do only a specific task. SuSE is good at this by providing separate packages for mail servers, database servers and what not. These packages al work just great, but what makes Windows so great on the corporate desktop?? Hardly anything Linux can't do today, or even yesterday. The typical corporate desktop contains the OS, Office and some online reference data like phone directories. Hardly anything more because if it gets more specialized, the IS department takes it out of the pool of standard desktops and treats it like a "workstation" or whatever because of the added complexity even if it's only a single app. What amazes me so much is that not a single distribution builder has come up with a plain vanilla corporate desktop. Openoffice, Evolution, most phone directories can be run using Wine since nothing fancy goes on under the hood, and you're done for 98% of office desktops! Provide a seamlessly integrating distribution for servers alongside with that, so that those hundreds of desktops can connect to it by default and as far as I know you'd be ready to kick some serious ass within your corp. It shouldn't be the corporate IS department's job to assemble a stable distro for this purpose. SuSE, Mandrake and Redhat have shown great skill at building special purpose Linux distributions, they just left this one gap open. Windows has done this for years.. Windows NT Workstation and Server were a great couple, need I mention the different breeds of Win2K? From your laptop all the way up to the biggest iron Intel has to offer. Linux does a great job at competing with the NT-based server products, and it'll be a long while before it gets dummy-proof enough for home users, but with an artificially limited set of applications and tech support staff only a phonecall away I'm sure Linux is already mature enough for the corporate desktop. From there on it's only a small step to the home PC, the same happened with MS-DOS way back then..
Learn from the mistakes of others. There isn't enough time to make them all yourself.
Anyone who has delt with Telstra would know it would take at least a year to make a descision on the subject let alone get the work order through. Telstra is one of those companies where nothing happens fast.
Will Telstra BigPond now actualy support Linux and not just tell you to switch to windows?
Will Telstra BigPond get rid of thier extremely-unreliable mail servers for Linux ones?
"With Microsoft, you get Windows. With Linux, you get the full house" - unknown
If this is just a bargaining chip, the question is, what sort of saving is Telstra looking for and will Microsoft be able to cut a good enough deal to meet that?
This is not being driven by the CIO, make no mistake about that, it's being driver by the CFO. Smith is quoted in the article as saying the driver for selecting Sun to provide a J2EE solution is TCO over 6 years.
It is quite clear the bean counters are involved here and with a per-desktop cost of $0 for Linux with KDE and OpenOffice, Microsoft needs to shave a lot off its per-desktop toll to compete. The article suggests that Microsoft would need to cut their price tag by at least 20%, but would that cut, on a once-off be enough? Tough to tell.
That aside, I'm hearing reports from other fellow countrymen that similar sorts of things are starting to happen elsewhere.
Could the tide be at its peak for Microsoft?
BWAHAAHAHAHAAAAAAA!!!!
MAN! you crazy open sores zealots crack me up...
"...your job will be lost becuase we are not moving to linux fast enough"
How about this:You'll lose your job by trying to push crappy open sores shite
leenux-straying developer:"But boss,this is OPEN SOURCE!!! Not that brainwashed m$ junk"
Boss:"But our Microsoft software has always been fine,this company has grown rich using it."
leenux-straying developer:"You're just a pointy-haired m$ slave,not l33t like me!!"
Boss:"Jeez johnson,you're such a dick..you're fired..."
I'm getting a little tired of all this KDE vs. Gnome crap on slashdot. Who says that either one [will|needs to] come out on top?
A window manager & widget set does not a desktop make
recompile.org
Then just don't subscribe. It's that easy. I think cable TV is a rip off here in the states, so I just plain don't subscribe, even though I would like to have it and could afford it. I choose not to.
If/when enough people don't subscribe to something, the company will have to consider why...
"When people look at free operating systems, they know free doesn't necessarily mean good. The upfront costs are cheap but in the long term it won't be," Mr Beck said. "It's a risk to take the Linux route." When people look at propriatory operating systems, they know that they are not necessarily good just because they pay for them. The upfront costs are steep and vender lock in could accelerate the costs over time. In the long term perspective there is also a risk that the OS is discontinued for some reason. In free software this doesn't happen. It's a risk to take the Microsoft route.
God is REAL! Unless explicitly declared INTEGER
In practice, it's operated like a private monopolist for about a decade now.
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo
--Andy Finkel (J. Klass?)
"Telstra Retail CIO John Pittard said that while Telstra was not using Linux at present, it was considering the OS in its wide ranging IT review that will dictate the future direction of operating platforms supporting Telstra's 45,000 desktops"
They're only considering Linux for
"supporting Telstra's 45,000 desktops"
Re-reading the article: I took it to mean using Linux as the user-services-oriented file/print/mail server platform. I think don't think they'll be replacing or have any intention of replacing Windows on the desktop. On second thoughts, I don't think they *could* if they tried. The learning curve would be unbearable for most people.
They just signed on with Sun for their back-end infrastructure, so UNIX on the desktop might make more sense. Sun press release
Exactly. GNU/Linux has gotten big enough (with IBM's, HP and now SUN support) in bussiness to make it irrelevant to post a story telling us that some big corporation is considering deployment of Linux desktops. What's the point ?. Help this company negotiate with M$ ?. Slashdot editors, please, post the story if it happens, not if it might happen. No news here ...
Let Raster "Linux is dead on the desktop" roll this up and smoke it.
(+1 Funny) only if I laugh out loud.
One tends to only hear bad things coming out of telstra - so this is a refreshing change... But one can bet that M$-AU will be hot on the FUD machine tomorrow... Hope it does come off it will do my site www.linuxware.com.au wonders. Hmmm.... 45,000 new users in .au...
The great thing about linux in an enterprise is the ability to use file systems in a much more dynamic way versus NT. Doing a large scale deployment under Linux you could mount the whole damn system via NFS with a single CDROM in the drive to start the system boot. By pooling all the drive space and perhaps integrating many processes to run in a distributed fashion you could increase performance on a large scale.
/Home/Boot/MachineDrive and /Home/Boot/Personal. The /MachineDrive was the dynamic install of the OS, user's terminals would mount that in the boot process as root and such (I am not a Linux guru so I don't know if other mount points were also loaded from there). The /Personal became the normal /Home/USERID. The wicked thing was when you booted the system you picked what version you wanted to load for your machine (If you were on a Dell GX you could load CAD, OFFICE, ACCOUNTING) and walla! it mounted and booted from the network drive. They setup a local swap file and did some cache tricks and then as an additional layer when you logged in it mounted additional mount points so you has access to the applications you were supposed to have. It was the coolest thing I had seen. I hope these aussie-types do a good implementation. This could become a huge black eye for Linux if they have problems. The community better give them a hand. Business' here in the states WILL be watching with a critical eye.
BUT (Love that word, it encompasses all that is real, there is always a 'but' looking around) with centralization comes less points of failure and failures become exponentially more damaging as the points of failure diminsh.
The ideal usage that I have found for Linux in a corporate desktop environment is as such: Linux is effective as a hybrid Thin Client with applications running (and or cached) on the local client much like the old dumb terminals. With applications parsed between a application server and the local client, plus utilizing the clients as execution nodes for distributed tasks Linux as a desktop OS has a great amount of potential.
One of my old clients has a setup with a master data server with a drive structure of
-=[ Who Is John Galt? ]=-
Linux has worked very well for Networking the Nation (a government initiative to supply internet access to rural Australia). If Telstra is looking for an example of a succesful deployment of linux they do not have to look very far. If I were MS, I'd be taking this very seriously.
but I suspect that this is going turn out to be little more than a bargaining counter in Telstra's license fee negotiations with Microsoft.
And though we all know, in the words of the article, that "IBM, HP and Sun are all pushing Linux as an alternative to Windows for a corporate IT environment", those vendors' concern is principally to position it in the server space, and that mainly as a defensive strategy against the encroachment of Microsoft.
I don't think any of them are ready to seriously push Linux as a desktop environment (yet).
From the System Reqs:
Connection to the internet (via Enternet PPPoE software supplied by Telstra, Windows XP PPPoE, Speed Touch Pro PPPoA, or MAC PPPoE)
this requirement only needs to be met in order to get telephone support for self installation, it doesn't explicitly say you can't use anything else.
Just out of interest, from the FAQ on internode.net.au (one of Telstra's competitors):
Internode prides itself on being highly supportive of the use of ADSL on any computer system that you have which runs TCP/IP.
We are pleased to support most flavours of Windows.
But we also strongly and explicitly support MacOS (OS-X and OS-9)
And we also support the use of Linux and FreeBSD to access the Internet using ADSL.
From the System Reqs:
Connection to the internet (via Enternet PPPoE software supplied by Telstra, Windows XP PPPoE, Speed Touch Pro PPPoA, or MAC PPPoE)
this requirement only needs to be met in order to get telephone support for self installation, it doesn't explicitly say you can't use anything else.
Just out of interest, from the FAQ on internode.net.au (one of Telstra's competitors):
Internode prides itself on being highly supportive of the use of ADSL on any computer system that you have which runs TCP/IP.
We are pleased to support most flavours of Windows.
But we also strongly and explicitly support MacOS (OS-X and OS-9)
And we also support the use of Linux and FreeBSD to access the Internet using ADSL.
Everybody understands that this is the traditional accepted way of asking Microsoft for a discount, right?
Maybe the state's highest function is to grind out insoluble problems. (Zelazny, Hall of Mirrors)
As a StarOffice 6.0 reseller..
:-
,Shwag)
We have
* No access to site licencing
* No OEM product
* No Marketing Tools (Posters, Leaflets, Handouts
We have lost heaps of tenders and quotes because we were just unable to provide site-licences!
Oh yeah, sure, lets just send our business over to Sun so they can take the business that we advertised and marketing for.
Basically, Sun think the product is SO good, it will sell itself.
When I try and get Staroffice into retailers, it pales in comparison to just have a box on the shelf, when their shop is plastered with A1 and A0 Office XP posters that MS gave them.
The tough part is application support, speaking of which if anyone knows of a good MS Project replacement (that can run on either windows or Linux) I would be greatful..
If I can get the developers onto open source stuff (I have already given them Dia and took away Visio) first, than proposing a new OS would not cause a riot...
it's called MultiDesk
thank God the internet isn't a human right.
Do you sell stickers/shirts or know where to get them in .au ? =\
Linux on the desktop at home is no different than at the office.
It all depends on what applications you want or need and how much you are willing to pay.
And, Linux on the desktop has come a very long way. And, with Lindows, Xandros and apparently RedHat getting into the act, Linux on the desktop will improve significantly.
The old Linux versions were pretty much limited to a corporate environment where some high paid expert was required to set it up for use.
That is no longer the case.
Witness Lindows Click-n-Run. You may not want Lindows for your own machine but you will not find an easier way to install thousands of software applications. Of course, you can get most is not all of them on CDs. But, how are you going to get a new application next week or next month? Get another CD?
Lindows has illustated a very important concept for Linux. And, the concept is not simply an easy to install system. Rather the concept is that the many Linux distributors will be working hard to develop easier systems to use. And, no one distributor is going to be restricted by some idiot at the top nixing something that is not decided to be forced upon everyone.
That simply means that Linux is in a situation to deliver a full range of distributions. Some extremely difficult by high powered. And, some extremely simple to use.
And, "extremely simple to use" is going to be the key to putting Linux on the desktop. It will not be the power machines. It will be the simple to install, simple to use and simple to install additional software systems that will be the key.
If RedHat does not do it, Xandros will. If Xandros does not, Mandrake will. If Mandrake does not, Lindows will. On and on.
The desktop market is completely different than the server market.
But, Linux has a clear advantage in the desktop market. It is a different advantage than in the server markets, but it is a real one.
NexuSys - Linux support by the best
Know what would be really cool? If all these companies that use Linux to save millions of dollars would each hire one or two full-time open source developers to advance the cause (Helping save them more money down the line.). HP has lead a good example with their shining support of PERL, time for us to encourage others to follow.
The article says that the company is considering Linux for the machines "supporting" their 45,000 or whatever desktops. As I read it, this is something very different that deploying Linux on each of them, and probably refers instead to the company's internal servers.
They *do* talk about the company evaluating StarOffice as a replacement suite for their desktops, though, which to me makes it even more clear that they plan to continue to run Windows.
Actually say one response from one person in a country of several hundred million is typical of an entire nation is aslo closed minded. .net CLR gets ported to Linux even they will be okay.
As for developers lossing jobs. Those that program in c, c++, or java will have little to no trouble moving to Linux if it catches on as a desktop here. Those that use MicroSoft only languages like VB may have some real issues. Even then if the
I am all for Linux and us it everyday. I know the rest of the world often gets bent out of shape by statements like the one I am about to make, "The USA has more computer users than any other county."
The US is the 10,000 lbs Monster. Notice I used pounds instead of kilos. We are so big that we can stick with that nasty system instead of going metric like the rest of the world. I am not saying it is right it is just the way it is.
As to what does it matter to him? Well maybe nothing. Would it matter to some one in Austraila that say Cox Cable rolled out a bunch of Linux desktops. I personaly think it is a good sign but it is not say as important as if the US gov went to all Linux.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
I've just checked you kind of scenario and
the cell doesn't have to be reselected with multidesk.
thank God the internet isn't a human right.
As an Australian, I know the true reason why Telstra is considering Linux Deployment. The simple answer is cost reduction.
t elstra.com/
Telstra will not embrace Linux but use it to reduce the costs in software licensing.
You think M$ was bad, research more in Telstra. Some links here:
http://www.telstraexposed.com/
http://www.anti
To top it off, I have 1 Phone Line in this home and I mostly use it for the net. There is quite a few people trying to get through on the line constantly BUT I ALWAYS TURN OFF CALL WAITING. Guess what I find it turns back on automatically from time to time. Hence people ringing will make my modem drop and redial constantly.
In addition, Telstra has a control over ISPs, forcing ISPs across Australia to drop users every 4-6 hours.
If the company makes the switch to Linux that is great, they will be saving millions of dollars and they should be encouraged to donate a portion of the savings to help fund open source development/improvement.
If the company merely uses Linux as a bargaining chip to get a better deal on MS products, then the company would be wise to contribute a portion of the savings to open source as well. This move will help to improve open source and the company will be able to see even larger savings next time around.
I know there's a lot of cynicism out there this being just smoke to get M$ to lower their price--quite frankly, that's still a vicotory for Linux. But I think if a company like this wanted to adopt Linux on the desktop, they probably want to look at a company like Redmond Linux because they've gone really far out of their way to make something windows-like.
This is less of a win than getting everyone on Gnome or KDE, but it's a good argument for a low-cost switchover: little-to-no retraining (better cut-and-paste, also).
Every time a programmer loses his job, be sure to thank the kike Richard Stallman for starting the free (as in communism) software movement.
Typical non-american response. Completely clueless, completely inflammatory.
when everybody uses linux you will all stop feeling special and find something else 'alternative' to show people
linux is good
dont you want to keep your advantage to yourself?
think about it
if everybody started liking your type of music as well you would probably want to change wouldnt you, you crazy characters
poo + wee
much for thee
so do a pee
on the key
one, two
do a poo,
three, four
then some more!
huzzaH!@~
by the way
there is a duck outside the universe
just one, and its a normal duck too
VirtuaWin
I use it on a daily basis on Windows XP. Great stuff.
One hears all this talk about new filesystems like ext3fs and new vm systems, which misleads people into thinking that linux has all this cool things happenning. The truth is that the current filesystem and the current vm suck and are buggy and unstable. People are just fooling themselves and their friends and doing all these businesses a disfavor by urging them to switch to an inferior inadequate operating system.
If you were a reseller why didn't you speak to someone from SUN? That would be interesting to know as well.
Why don't you sell them a Site Deployment of OpenOffice, together with Support?
I don't really see the difference between StarOffice and OpenOffice.
We (http://www.eurekait.com) just recently completed a linux pilot for a multi-hundred user site in Sydney Australia. Although we were paid handsomely, and came up with a large amount of the required implementation, the end result was that with a proper pilot in place, MS had to really come to the party on price.
The client possibly intended that route from day one but they sure gave Linux a 'fair go' as we say here. I'd say we probably cost MS a few hundred thousand maybe even more just by being there. I think that if every big Australian business did the same thing, MS would be forced to continually bargain on fees and, as time went on, they wouldn't be able to give it away - we came close, very close.
I'd be interested to hear how you approached this.
Last time I looked at Dia it was pretty rudimentary
-- Entropy isn't what it used to be.
A lot of the core of .NET is based on or is FreeBSD code, this dramatically reduces the work needed to do the final port to Linux. So it isn't really a question of if the .NET CLR gets ported, it is a question of when.
I can only assume Telstra must be about to renogotiate its contract relationship with Microsoft. This sounds more like a pre-negotiation ploy to put the negotiation into a more competitive context, than it does a serious proposal. I'd suggest Telstra is waaaaaay too reliant on MS software and architecture to seriously consider ditching it all in favour of deploying an entirely new desktop environment.
Telstra deal + Sun does linux = Telstra does linux
So does Anonymous Coward have good karma?
You have yet to start the growing pains
but only using one or two apps in a monkey fassion?
thank God the internet isn't a human right.
Who got caught by the troll this time?
Read the responses and it's easy to see that this is a troll there is absolutly no substance in the post
YOU think that's bad you orta see what I have to put up with COPYING and PASTING text (particulary URLs) on an Amiga!!
FIRST, I Highlight the particular URL (or text), then after clearing the URL SLOT on my browser I use the F1 Key to 'PASTE' it in. (Using a Tool called 'ConPaste' for the Clip-board output).
BUT, for COPYING text from the browser I usually have to open a 'EditPad' Window (simple text editor), PASTE it in there, before then doing what I want with it!
And don't get me started with HTML Emails!!!!! I have to SAVE the contents to the RAM Disk, open 'EditPad', OPEN the SAVED contents here, DELETE the Mime Header down to the start of the HTML proper, SAVE it back to the RAM Disk, then point the browser at that as a LOCAL File!
(Wish they'd stop sending me HTML Emails).........
.
(David Bowman, EVA near HUGE Monolithic Win-PC in orbit around Jupiter) "My God - its full of Malware!"