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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.
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.
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.
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.
> 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.
Well, I'll give you some examples that I battle with dayly:
I browse using Opera, use GnomICU for ICQ and OpenOffice.org as my office-suite.
If I get a ICQ message with a web-address, it doesn't make a link from it, so I have to copy it by hand. This involves marking the address with the mouse, then waiting ~4 seconds for KDE to figure out, that the text that is marked, just might be a URL, and ask me what I want to do with it. I want to copy it to the clipboard (which I can't seem to do any other way).
Now I go to opera, where I happen to have another page open, so I doubleclick in the address bar and curse loudly, because now that address is in the clipboard, and kde again asks me what I want to do. Press delete to clear the address-bar
Go back to the ICQ message and repeat.
Go back to Opera, press paste and HOPE it's the right clipboard that I'm accessing this time (because I've only been using linux as a desktop for roughly a month, I keep mixing shortcut access to the various clipboard up). If not, I can delete the text by depressing backspace until the text is deleted. Then try to remember how to access the clipboard that the URL is located in.
OpenOffice is worse and better. I spent four hours writing this and then had to spend 15 minutes trying to figure out how the bloody hell I could move that text into Opera!
Sure, blame the programmes of the programs I mentioned for being sloppy programmers. Blame me for being a stupid luser. But don't blame the developers for enabling more than one single clipboard in a system at a time.
My experience with just the clipboards leads me to believe, that the developers and programmers have never heard of the concepts of concurrency and deadlocks. I haven't seen a deadlock of the clipboard, but I have seen the precursors of it.
Sure, I know how to change clipboards (but not on a system wide level), but would your mom know how to do that? Would Mr. Johnson, the accountant at 3H, who has been blessed with Linux on the desktop?
If you take the time to read through the abstract I linked to, you will see, that I'm not just your average luser, and even if I was, you can take your "holier than thou" attitude and shove up your ass. Both of them.
We do not live in the 21st century. We live in the 20 second century.
Isn't that funny?
Thoughts like this were known already.
Weren't people saying something like?
Linux as a server yes, but there's no way to use it on corporate desktop.
And this thoughts aren't even one year old
Signature Pro version 1.13.2-3 release 83.5 beta3try7 after-breakfast edition
"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.
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? ]=-
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)
To further Hektor's question, is there a (preferrably easy) way to hack X so that selecting text doesn't copy it? The thing with Opera happens to me a lot too, Konquerer even has a button to clear the address line, something definitely not needed in Windows.
Perhaps a program can be written that would see a Ctrl-C (or any other combination) and copy whatever is being selected at the moment, and wait for Ctrl-V to insert whatever is in its buffer. But it would be yet another clipboard, and some would find it fascinating/moronic when you realize that after higlighting some text, it would be in X's clipboard, and when you press Ctrl-C, it would be in some other clipboard as well..
What time is it/will be over there? Check with my iPhone app!