Germany Publishes Windows to Linux Migration Guide

Bombcar writes "This Migration Document is also available. It has details on going from WinNT to Linux/FLOSS/Samba et.al, with less detail on RedHat/Ximian/GNOME and more on SuSE/Mandrake/KDE. See Kurt's post to Samba Technical for more details."

Comments

woes along the way

[grosa]

my university has been testing out replacing NT/2k/2003 machines with Samba boxes, and they've hit a lot of speed bumps. It's nice to see that someone is actually documenting all the necessary steps so that doing the conversion doesn't end up being a huge beast of a project.

afaik, Samba supports even the more advanced domain controller features, but it's not all very straight-forward or intuitive. this should make the PHBs with anti-commercial-solution tin-foil hats breath a little easier. documentation goes a long ways in a managed environment.

This is great

[Rico_za]

This is exactly the kind of document you can use to convince your boss to migrate to linux. It has migration strategies, and even looks at the economic implications. Great job!

my guide

[Anonymous Coward]

1) wipe the hard drive 20 times
2) get refund from microsoft
3) unlearn everything you thought you knew
4) read, read, read
5) install the penguin
6) read, read, read
7) tinker, tinker,tinker
8) convert others ;)
9) goto step 1
10) pay the SCO guys ...

Re:my guide

[JamesOfTheDesert]

4) read, read, read

4a) Have spouse tell you the kids have started grade school

5) install the penguin
6) read, read, read

6a) Have spouse tell you the kids have started High School

7) tinker, tinker,tinker

7a) Have college-bound kids tell you that your spouse has left you.

The IDA Open Source Migration Guidelines

[jsinnema]

The IDA Open Source Migration Guidelines

Re:The IDA Open Source Migration Guidelines

[danimo]

(Tiny rant about the EU guide following:)

I read both quite carefully, the EU as as well as the German one and I came to the following conclusion:

The EU one does not:

• go in-depth
• contain retability calculations (which points out a very significant strength of OSS: the price)
• is mostly a (quite incomplete) listing of solutions, especially in the groupware or database area (Kolab, SAB-DB?)

Another important aspect of the German migration guide was that it always kept the comparison to the "continuing migration" which shows the trade-offs and advantages of OSS migration and thus gives a balanced picture. I can't really blame the EU guide for this, since it simply didn't have this goal.

But I think there is a very significant point of critisism left: The German migration guide had co-authors from experts (see co-authors section in the PDF for reference), which ensures that the descriptions are more in-depth and exploit all features of new version (This is very important for Samba for example. The EU guide is more a list of applications with features listed "as advertised". The EU left out Debian completely. While I am not a Debian zealot, I know of quite some successful migrations to Debian and the German migration guide acknowledges this. It doesn't take a RHAS or SLES to migrate to Linux!

Migration = Salvation

[heironymouscoward]

Not in any religious sense, but just from the tedium of managing a PC park.

Like many techies, I help friends and family with their PCs. I've started saying, "it's Linux or nothing", and we install a nice distro like Xandros or Knoppix on the PCs. No device problems, no viruses or spywarez, no calls to the "help desk".

The only problem is that people are used to just switching off their machines, and don't shut down correctly. This seems to have caused a couple of machines to loose configurations. So I'm looking at using a pure CD-based install like Knoppix with a USB key for /home.

Re:Migration = Salvation

[lgftsa]

USB drives are block devices(512bytes/block for the few I've used) and can be treated like any block device. They usually appear as SCSI disks(/dev/sda, etc) and have partitions(/dev/sda1, etc) which can be fdisk'ed, mkfs'ed and mounted with whatever filesystem you care to use.

I usually use vfat for compatibility, ext2 for deliberate incompatibility, or a raw device/partition for a bestcrypt container.

Even though modern [USB|IDE]/FLASH bridge chips use tricks to spread writes across cells(to stop bits wearing out too fast), I also mount them nomtime,noatime to reduce writes. Oh, and ext3(or any journaling fs) is a good way to prematurely wear them out, too.

Re:Migration = Salvation

[Hektor_Troy]

The only problem is that people are used to just switching off their machines, and don't shut down correctly.

How about using APM and make the power button shut the system down properly? It can't be that hard to do, can it?

Re:Migration = Salvation

[grosa]

i did this as well, and it worked out great. i got my folks to use linux/kde for about 8 months, and then when it came time for hardware upgrades, they decided running unix at home was a great idea, but they bought an iMac instead of upgrading the PC.

can't say I blame them, while PC Unix was great because they didn't get viruses and I could do software upgrades and minor fixes remotely (they have DSL), it meant that they were entitled to pester me about it as much as they wanted. I got pestered a lot with questions like "How do I do X like I used to in Windows?", and lots of times the answer was "well... you don't"

it's particularly bad with more savvy users because they have their pet software titles, and often the open-source equivalents have very different interfaces, or just different enough for them to shun it.

Re:Migration = Salvation

[Spy Hunter]

You can set it up so that the power button does a proper shutdown instead of immediately cutting the power. Some distros do that by default.

Re:Migration = Salvation

[Ed Avis]

If 'just switching off' causes problems because of disk corruption, you could try ext3 with data=journal. This makes sure that _everything_ is committed to the journal as soon as it's written. Another way of looking at it is a 'no lies' property - if the operating system says to the application that the write completed then you know it did complete and isn't just sitting as dirty buffers waiting to be flushed. So you could switch off the machine immediately the 'save' command finishes. (This assumes your hard disk isn't doing its own slightly dishonest buffering, of course.)

If the corruption is caused by the applications leaving things in an inconsistent state if they don't get closed properly, then obviously no filesystem can do anything about that. Using a USB key for /home would stop the system being corrupted but still the user's files might be, and that's probably more serious.

Google Cache to the Rescue

[robbyjo]

Here you go.

Network effect

[ultrabot]

This all is just wonderful. Public money is invested in migrating systems to Linux, and the findings are give back to the public. Each migration team will learn the lessons of the previous one. What's more, the private sector can learn from the findings and mistakes of the public sector.

This marks the beginning of a new Europe. Now we should just start teaching Python at elementary schools, and we could be kicking some serious US ass as far IT goes :-).

Re:Network effect

[ajs318]

Exactly. With Open Source, everybody benefits when anybody contributes. The dividends are shared, yet not diminished by the act of sharing.
Consider a bank paying interest at 5% and run along traditional lines, but with just three investors: Anna, Bob and Charlie. Anna invests $1000. Bob invests $200. Charlie invests $3000. A year later, they get their interest payments.
Anna receives 5% of $1000 = $50.
Bob receives 5% of $200 = $10.
Charlie receives 5% of $3000 = $150.

With a bank that worked the way Open Source works, Interest Calculations would be done more like this:
Anna has $1000. Bob has $200. Charlie has $3000.
Anna receives 5% of $4200 = $210.
Bob receives 5% of $4200 = $210.
Charlie receives 5% of $4200 = $210.

Re:Network effect

[ajs318]

It doesn't work with real money, because money gets diminished by the act of sharing. If I have to share $100 with another person, we only end up with $50 each. On the other hand, if I have a lit candle, and someone else lights another candle from it, that does not make my room any darker, yet we both have lit candles: the light is not diminished by the act of sharing.

I respectfully suggest you keep reading until you understand.

Re:Network effect

[ultrabot]

And banks would be going bankrupt pretty fucking quickly if they followed your idiotic logic.

That's because banks operate on a scarce resource (money). Knowledge/code/data is a scarce resource only artificially, and therefore sharing it increases the total amount that is available.

Obviously, this reduces the bottom line of huge corporations that charge lots of money of what should/could/is starting to be a commodity (OS and Office Suite vendors). Most of them are in the US (MSFT and SUNW), so Europe doesn't really have that much motivation to preserve their status. Europe loses nothing and gains jobs, expertise, openness and wealth.

Bad for economy

[ultranova]

In my humble opinion, migrating from Windows to Linux is bad for economy. Think about it. While new versions of Windows are packed full of advanced, bleeding-edge innovations, the new Linux versions are mostly indistinguishable from each other. Or can anyone here claim that migrating from Linux 2.2 to 2.4 brought a single new icon to their desktops ? Maybe 2.6 will bring a much-needed improvement to this. Back to economy. It's a well-known fact that a healthy economy demands an increase in spending. This, in turn, requires people to buy things. If people can get what they need for free, then they don't pay, spending decreases, economy suffers, and so do people. Therefore, it's the duty of every patriotic citizen to help economy by avoiding "free" stuff. Furthermore, it's a well-known fact that Linux lasts almost forever without maintenance; there's still people running 2.2 ! Obviously, this is a bad thing for economy. With Windows, there's the healthy drive to update every few years, followed by an equally healthy drive to update your hardware as well. Besides, think about it - the biggest Linux distributor is REDhat ! Now what does that remind us of ? That's right - when you're downloading Linux, you're downloading Communism !

Re:Bad for economy

[arcanumas]

Thank you for opening my eyes! How could i have been so blind all those years!
I am deleting my Linux partition and i am buying WindowsXP as we speak.
I too want to take spending away from trivial items and spend all my money for WindowsXP.

Re:Bad for economy

[Ralph Yarro]

Therefore, it's the duty of every patriotic citizen to help economy by avoiding "free" stuff.

Indeed! I'm glad you brought this up, because the REAL damage to the economy is being done by people using supposedly "free" air instead of buying proprietary Canopy canned air. I thikn a lot of people have no idea how many jobs are being lost over this.

But it's even worse than you may imagine. When people do use our proprietary canned air, some of it can leak into the atmosphere and mix with so-called-free air. That's right, the atmosphere of the entire planet is a derivative of our product, and people are not paying licenses to use it.

If you ever breathe then please respect our IP rights and pay our one time $699 license fee and we promise to almost definitely not bring any legal action over this against you in the future.

I ask you, do providers of "free" air indemnify you against this sort of action?

Re:Bad for economy

[adrianbaugh]

Why would people put icons in the kernel? (Well, other than the Tux boot logo..)
I suggest you try tunning a distribution from 2 or 3 years ago, maybe Red Hat 6, and then comparing that with Red Hat 9. Or the equivalent Mandrake numbers or whatever else. There is a huge difference.

Oh. Sorry. I have been trolled, I have lost :)

Now...

[t4b00]

If we could only talk M$ into converting over....

Sounds like a good idea

[ajs318]

This is one massive case study, and it should be inspirational reading to anybody who has ever wondered if there was an alternative to Microsoft.

As the migration progresses in Germany, so it will be copied in many other places - and mostly without the mistakes Germany will inevitably make {though, arguably, none of them will ever come close in magnitude to actually ever letting closed-source software anywhere near their machines in the first place}. Once somebody with some real clout has made a hard commitment to GNU/Linux on the desktop, then we will see real change.

I wish every success to all who choose to wrest back the control of their destiny from the hands of the evil corporations. Theirs will not be an easy journey. I, too, have a little experience of what they must be facing; and yet, my humble effort - to do without Windows at any price, even if that prevented me from using a computer at all - just seems so insignificant compared to Germany's task.

I'm also more than a little humbled at realising I don't know how to say "Good luck!" in German.

Re:Sounds like a good idea

[Anonymous Coward]

"Good Luck!" translated to German: "Tretet den M$'lern ordentlich in den Arsch und seht zu das eure Euro's EURE Euro's bleiben."

Re:Sounds like a good idea

[Sique]

No. Gluck was an bohemian-austrian composer. There is nothing to say against "viel Gluck" per se, but you are surely meaning: "Viel Glueck". The u-umlaut gets transcribed to 'ue' if not available, according to the Duden (german official orthography), Vol I pp. 105.

Re:woot!

[Swift(void)]

Still on windows, no doubt

This paper is long overdue

[BillsPetMonkey]

The core of the problem with Linux is it's PR. There's this gulf of understanding between us tecchies and the people who make "really important" decisions.

The number of times our company (large retail group) has tripped up because of decisions based on convincing salespeople rather than technical merit make for shameful reading.

This document has a stamp of officialdom though. Better still, a government stamp! Written by bureaucrats for bureaucrats! Yippee!

There will be a copy on my Director's desk Monday. Whether I can get him to read it is another matter. But that's a different battle. I imagine there's a few UK government bureaucrats swotting up using this document too. I'm amazed and rather humbled that it's written in English as well!

stop the conversion!

[golgotha007]

i don't understand why all the linux folks want the mainstream public converted over to linux!

i like the fact that because i run linux, i have more capability than the average windows joe.
i like the fact that i am part of a technical movement that helps each other in times of need (newsgroups, forums).
i like the fact that when my rights are threatened or otherwise, that it's this same group of folks that stand together (SCO?).

one of the things that MS doesn't have is the 'comminuty closeness' that *nix users have.
this closeness is why linux innovation is an par with the biggest software company in the world.

i'm afraid that if linux were to ever win the desktop war, this closeness and community won't be as friendly or as helpful.

sure, we embrace IBM now, but for how long? you do realize that the way we feel about MS is similar to the way our fathers felt about IBM in the 70's.

Re:stop the conversion!

[IamTheRealMike]

i don't understand why all the linux folks want the mainstream public converted over to linux!

It's fun, we like Linux and want other people to be able to enjoy it as much as we do, more users == more apps == more users etc

i like the fact that because i run linux, i have more capability than the average windows joe.

Running Linux should not be a status symbol, period. If you want the respect of your peers, if you want to be seen as "elite" then learn to hack code - THAT is the right way to demonstrate technical capability, not simply knowing how to use the command line.

i like the fact that i am part of a technical movement that helps each other in times of need (newsgroups, forums). i like the fact that when my rights are threatened or otherwise, that it's this same group of folks that stand together (SCO?).

Those things won't disappear, even if one day everybody in the world uses Linux. The free software developer community is strong because of the shared experiences of building things together. It doesn't matter how many users you have, that shared experience is still there.

Of course the distinction between user and developer will become greater, but this is a natural progression.

one of the things that MS doesn't have is the 'comminuty closeness' that *nix users have.

*nix (god I hate that stupid term) users have no community. Sorry, that's just bollocks. There are all kinds of Solaris, AIX, Tru64 users all over the world who couldn't give a rats ass about what's happening beyond their office door as long as the paycheque comes in on time.

There is a free software community, and it centers around Linux - don't confuse the fact that Linux is roughly based on UNIX with the community aspects. The word "community" comes from Latin, "cum munere." "Munere" is "to give," and "cum" is "among each other," so, community means "to give among each other."

As long as people share what they make, there will be a community. It has nothing to do with what command shell you run, never forget that. It has nothing to do with how many people use what is built - the community will always be made up of the subset that share with each other.

i'm afraid that if linux were to ever win the desktop war, this closeness and community won't be as friendly or as helpful.

There are friendly and helpful communities of Windows users. They are called friends and family. Of course there are organized groups too, such as Protonic which is similar to our LinuxQuestions.org site.

Basically I think you worry too much. As long as there are people who care about sharing with each other, the community will remain strong, regardless of how much it grows.

Re:biased?

[Nighttime]

Coo, imagine that. Germany, a country in Europe, pushing its home-grown distribution and that of a neighbouring country. Such shocking behaviour!

Something tells me....

[TygerFish]

Something tells me that laxative sales in Redmond have just plummeted!

linux user @ 56years

[sireenmalik]

I have never got involved in MS Vs. Linux religios wars! However, this summer my mom came to visit me in Germany (from Asia) and from her experience with both OSs i have a better opinion!

I am a PhD. candidate. My work is wrapped around simulations for which I trust Linux/Debian. At house i've Suse 8.2 simply because it was the most painless installation of any OS i had ever made in my life.

My mom has an incurable habit of reading and writing. When she arrived i thought i would use the holidays to teach her to "use-the-mouse" and if that succeeds then treach her to do "google and surf" . I thought internet would probably catch her interest. I have to admit what follows was a lesson for me too.

Agreeing to the user-friendliness of Windows, i contemplated of installing XP as i thought it would make the job easier for her. It took some days before i could do that so for the intermediate phase i exposed mom to the already installed Suse. Partly because of my under-estimation of her IQ, and mostly because of her determination to prove to me that PhD is "just another degree" she could do "mouse" and "google" in a couple of days (half an hour after her first lone journey into the internet, i found 50+ empty mozilla browsers running!).

About a week later i installed XP (partition) and asked her to use it instead. Here is the summary of her questions/discussion before i switched her back to Suse!

1. Who are Carina, Angelaxxx, SusyDeep, TOM, etc? and why do you have friends like that??!?!?!

I use t-online. Unsolicited messages are norm. People familiar with these messages would know the content of these messages! No matter how much i try to convince mom that i have nothing to do with "those friends" she is still suspicious of me :-)

2. "People have lost fortunes in gambling. Its the slippery back of the snail. Stop gambling."

You see, when she opened a website in Explorer she recieved web-advertisements. A lot of them. I do not know the reason and i do not have the statistics to back it up, but i have also felt that the number of advertisements/pop-ups are far more in MS Windows/Explorer as compared to Mozilla/Linux. She had seen advertisements from online casinos!

3. There is something wrong with your computer because i can not read the text?

It is one of those things that is almost unbelievable but the website (our local newspaper in Urdu language) which she could read in Mozilla simply did not show the text in Explorer. I know you would say "font" but hey which OS had all the fonts on its side!

4. There is something wrong with your power-supply plug!

Thats what she thought was the reason for the machine "rebooting" itself every now and then. Honestly, i have not had the time to figure out why XP does this on my AMD Athlon machine- auto-reboot 2/3 times per week? Till the time i know the exact reason i would just think that there is something wrong with power-supply cable!

etc. etc.

You get the picture why i simply switched back.

I will add one thing before i pen off. I installed Suse 8.2 from DVD and it was the most painless installation experience of my life... 14-15 minutes and everything was working, including nVidia card and the DSL! I got to tell you that it went so smooth that i really thought that something was wrong! Once the system was running i could update everything (patches etc.) within half an hour with 2-3 clicks of mouse. I love Debian's "apt-get" now i love YAST too.

I have a much better opinion now. Thanks mom.

p.s.
Back home, she is insisting that my younger brother install the "soosey" too :-)

Re:linux user @ 56years

[c4ffeine]

Actually, it's never rebooted the entire machine for me. It just kills the process called Explorer, my screen goes blank except for my background, and everything flickers back. Is that supposed to happen? Sorry for my idiocy, but I don't have time to discover what's wrong with xp

For the love of God

[p3d0]

Please stop using the acronym FLOSS. That's the dumbest acronym I have ever heard, and I am including "GNU" so you know I'm serious.

If we learn anything from the likes of Microsoft, I hope we learn a little about self-promotion.

Help ! - I need to migrate !

[bushboy]

After reading this article, I really feel the need to migrate !

Of course, if anyone could supply me with information on getting the following working under linux, I'd be very happy ! :-

1. Microsoft Encarta
2. Microsoft Golf
3. Internet Explorer 5.0
4. Windows Media Player
5. Zonealarm
6. Adaware
7. Nortons Anti-Virus

I'd really love some help - I need these quality applications to run in a Linux box, otherwise I just can't migrate !

Arrhghgh !

No Exchange Killer Yet.

[LazloToth]

From an administrator's point of view, it is refreshing to see an analysis of OSS alternatives that does not gloss over the difficulties of migrating away from the Outlook/Exchange groupware architecture. Too many "analyses" by OSS advocates seem to say, 'Oh, go ahead and give this cobbled-together approach a shot - - you'll work things out one way or another.' If it is your responsibility to guide executive decision making where your company's groupware product is concerned, you know that this is one place where a misstep could easily cost you your job. As much as I would like to look at something like Kroupware or OpenExchange, this report bears out my own investigations - - there's nothing in the Open Source world yet that can take the place of a well-managed Outlook/Exchange infrastructure. This is the crown jewel of the Microsoft monopoly, and they guard it well. When OSS can provide a confidence-inspiring mailbox mass-migration tool and a back end that fully supports Outlook, that's the day you can sell your Microsoft stock.

Re:No Exchange Killer Yet.

[pe1chl]

With every migration, there is always the issue of "does the new product implement all 25000 features of the old product".
When you start your migration with the assumption "the new product must do everything the old product did plus possibly more" you will not only limit your options, but you will also migrate to more and more complex systems.

Instead, you should look at the requirements of the organisation, and define the properties of the system that will be implemented. Maybe Outlook/Exchange implements them, but that does not mean that it is the only solution to the problem.

Don't try to implement an Outlook/Exchange replacement, but define what your company needs and implement that. Possibly it does not need all the features of Outlook/Exchange and thus they do not need to be present in the "replacement".

We run an IMAP mailserver on Linux, with LDAP address book, and a separate web-based calendaring system. All are accessed from Mozilla on the (Windows) desktops. It works fine.
The only thing I would want to be improved is the maintenance of the LDAP address book by nontechnical users.

Re:Hurray for inherent disability

[hanssprudel]

But, seriously, that is so sad. Does anyone realize that we've already lost the war against viruses and are now to the point where we are trying to overthrow firmly entrenched tyranny?

(Likewise with spam and Microsoft)

And DRM (I knew it was coming, never thought it would be Apple...) And ISPs limiting what you can do with an account. And proprietary file formats. And software patents.