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IBM's Linux Upgrade Roadmap
petrus4 writes "IBM have put together a nine-part series on upgrading from various incarnations of Windows (NT in particular) to Linux. Although it's mainly aimed at corporate customers, it's a good read, and could help the Linux advocacy effort in general."
While some may consider it an upgrade (and pretty much everyone here at least would call it an upgrade), most average joe PC users might not. Afterall, he loses MS Office (and yes, I'm aware of the alternatives, but again, Joe Average might not), a lot of his games (WINE/etc might not be the best option), and everything he is familiar with.
We're assuming you already have Linux installed.
While the article does point you to linux.org for choosing a distro and whatnot, any good guide to switching to linux should at least cover the basic installation methods and what you'll need to think about before installing. Since distros have different installers, you don't want to get too indepth or focus on any one installer, but it should at least cover ideas that would be universal or at least common to getting ready to install linux.
WWJD.... for a Klondike bar?
Dr Superlove 300ml. I use my powers for awesome
Which data in particular?
Forget thrust, drag, lift and weight. Airplanes fly because of money.
Installing a printer driver or a new app is beyond the capabilities of your average windows user. This article seems to be written as an introduction for the next wave of people who will be dealing with Linux, average sysadmins who can do some things in Windows but are not experts. If things are done right, average windows users won't have to worry about any of this stuff for at least a few more years. By then they may be more comfortable with it from using it at work and KDE and Gnome will have become almost idiot proof.
I see they mentioned Webmin. Goodies.
I downloaded it with Mandrake's urpmi tool. It IS pretty nice.
It lets you do everything from set up cron jobs easily, from looking at and closing running processes, to setting up apache and other servers. All through http or it seems with older versions some https thing, so you don't even need an SSH client, just a web browser. (Webmin also includes an SSH java client)
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Never criticize religion on Slashdot. You will be modded down for "Troll" no matter how factual it is.
The title of this post is a bit misleading--the series doesn't really tell you how to upgrade your system landscape from NT to Linux at all, it's merely a Linux tutorial for Windows users. I can see no corporate aspects discussed.
To start with, because the interface is so similar, plus "Hey it's just Windows!" comments from superiors means that few are taking the time to learn the intricate differences. (such as permissions and account handling)
Then you get the broken programs.
Then you get the boss who has [what he calls] critical data in an older version of Access that you must now move to [new] Access, which seems to be impossible in certain (read many) cases.
Or, I can implement an IBM-driven Linux-based solution that would force superiors to treat it differently, plus I would have more control over whether or not to continue on the upgrade path to future versions. Microsoft doesn't give me that. To stay secure, even using their loose definition, means continually upgrading, breaking software, data, and perceptions all the while sending them more money.
Oh, how I wanted to get out of that cycle at my last job. Now, I might be stuck implementing it, but at least I'm not responsible for the mess my superiors make trying to fall in line behind Microsoft.
Kudos to IBM for making it reasonably easy to know what's in store for those trying to get away from Microsoft.
"Are you on some kind of medication?"
"No"
"Well, you should be."
--Bean
Windows is NOT a multi-user system.
So then my machine at home, at which both myself and my girlfriend are logged in, both with completely different environments, both running programs at the same time, is NOT multi-user? Pray tell, what defines a multi-user system then, oh guru of all things computer?
IBM isn't giving z-series machines or the service contracts that go with them away......
Allow me to fill in the blanks:
Change businessmodel from:
1. Do stuff
2. Sell it
3. Profit!
To:
1. Do stuff
2. Give it away for free
3. Sell services.
4. Profit!
Right?
I hear there's rumors on the Slashdots
I'm assuming you have some kind of disclaimer in your sig. Please be aware that lots of people disable the viewing of sigs in Slashdot, so they won't ever see anything. Sigs aren't the place to put important information.
I call shenanigans. What are you using, Linux From Scratch? Wireless libraries? what wireless libraries? Wireless support is at the kernel level, the only user-space tool you might need is iwconfig which is included in every semi-recent distro. As for the config file, I strongly suspect you are making that up as well.
I tried SuSE a couple days ago (just to see where the "modern" distros stand compared to my usual Debian install) and after popping in my pcmcia wireless nic, a "New Hardware" window popped up walking me through the steps.
-Mark
What? That is sooo far from the truth. IBM's core business is based on services. In fact they are a bigger company (by revenue) then MS. In the end, IBM's global services will help you with whatever tasks you want. They will help you with MS solutions, Linux solutions and Unix solutions. IBM is in a great position, because no matter what, they can deliver their services on any platform. I think IBM is pushing Linux because they don't want to have to bend over for MS. I think most of the big companies are starting to get tired of bending over for MS with maybe the exception of Dell. To be able to truly leverage the MS Windows platform, you need to make some "partnership" with MS to be able to get undocumented features, API's, document formats and protocols. And MS drops those "partnerships" at the drop of a hat. And not only that, if MS thinks your core business is a big money maker, that "partnership" is over and they will "embrace and extend" your business out of the market with their own competing product. Look at all the Anti-virus and personal firewall companies now. With MS putting their own AV and personal firewall out, over the next 2-5 years, those companies will need to look for some other way to make cash since the home market will no longer need their software. So much for all those "partnerships". With Linux, all these large companies start on a level playing field and can add on top of that their "special sauce" and services to differentiate their business and we would have some great competition which means great products and technology advancing at a much faster pace.
If Tyranny and Oppression come to this land,
it will be in the guise of fighting a foreign enemy. -James Madison
Well...
Firstly, AIX is still superior to Linux in many ways (e.g. device management, LVM). Linux is catching up fast but has a way to go yet.
Secondly, IBM is doing this. For example, AIX is being made more and more compatible with Linux; Linux runs on every new server that AIX runs on and with LPARs, customers can run both side by side on the same server if they want to. I also know that IBM will help customers migrate from AIX to Linux if they want to.
True enough, but I took a little look around the Linux DevWorks and Redbook sites (haven't been in a while). There's a list of rebooks here.
Some good stuff there about making business cases, migrating Exchange to Domino etc.
No kidding! I am looking at buying a new laptop and IBM is winning in terms of performance/cost. I asked a rep if I could get Linux on the box instead of M$ and I was told that it comes with M$ only. If Big Blue wants to go do this right...offer SUSE on the desktops/laptops. Heck, they just put $50M of investment in Novell. I guess that I will just get the laptop, run Knoppix and strip off the goodies (docs and stuff) then bless the hard drive with a proper load of "The Penguin". I guess their marketing department really does not have their act together.
X -- specifically XFree86 with KWM -- does act goofy at times, no doubt. Not in the same way as OS/2 though. When an app locks or waits on a resource, the rest of the system chugs along...not so under OS/2 WPS. One workaround for OS/2 (if I remember properly) was to use a breakout switch to wake up the WPS. Had something to do with single threading on the shell even though the rest of OS/2 was multithreaded. (In any case, it's history now.)
For stability, XFree is much nicer; if an app goes down or spins it's wheels looking for a resource, the rest of the system doesn't care one whit.
As an additional Windows-ish feature to handle these apps, KDE 3.2 added an 'app not responding, kill now?' button -- though I don't see that much (IMNSHO it pops up a little too quickly, but I do know what I'm doing).
A firewall can not protect you from yourself. Turn off what you do not need. Do not use the firewall to do your work.
For stability, XFree is much nicer; if an app goes down or spins it's wheels looking for a resource, the rest of the system doesn't care one whit.
Untrue. It's still fairly easy for a program using XFree86 to freeze or crash the entire Xserver, killing any other process using it.
It is especially easy for one program to accidently starve all others of input- this will happen, for example, if a Motif program freezes while a menu is pulled down. (In a case like that, a user with an alternative means of access can kill the offending process remotely- but only experts can do that, so this case must still be counted as a severe failure of interprocess protection)
The only best way to fix this problem would require major changes to the X11 protocol- probably big enough to deserve a major version increase up to R7. It should be possible for applications to survive the shutdown/crash of the display server they are using, and attach to another one later. (Protocols like VNC and RDE allow that to a certain extent, as do some TTY consoles; X11 should too)
I don't encounter those problems. Sure, to my shame I've done dumb things that have locked the system (example: using cat on some things in /proc is a BAD idea). I've also had buggy drivers that crash X when running games full screen (fixed drivers seem to work fine). In a few cases (pre-2.6 kernel) I've even had tasks running that swamp the CPU and it takes minutes to regain control by ctrl-alt-F1 and killing the process. X, though, still plugs along once the app is taken out of the picture. The KDE 3.2 app killer seems to work well for those instances.
A firewall can not protect you from yourself. Turn off what you do not need. Do not use the firewall to do your work.
The thing is that their laptops are not only extremely good hardware but most of them very usable with Linux. I have been running SuSE on several Thinkpad models without many problems (apart from Wlan and advanced power management). So they ARE ready, usable and practical. And it just sucks when you want to buy their hardware and then get forced to also buy MS Windows. Maybe if companies (not only IBM) would finally start to let people use Linux on the desktop it would get ready pretty fast?
The short answer is "No - I can't comment". Especially about that latter part - I like my job, thanks for asking. :-)
I strongly doubt that the RPM packages I use will be made available to the public - but then again, the market can change and you never know what effect that will have. However, that doesn't mean that I can't tell you how to get Notes to run on a WINE install.
First, get a nice recent version of WINE, at least as recent as December 2003. Before that, you need a small mountain of tweaks and patches to WINE to make Notes behave.
Now you need to find a friend with a version of Notes installed on Windows. And you'd better have a license for the Notes Client (and fonts) as well or the boys in blue will be on their way. You want the entire Lotus directory which contains all the Notes.ini all the way down to the Data directory and it's contents. Grabbing the fonts off that machine and installing them in your distro for general availability is also a good start. Also grab all the Microsoft web fonts that were available on the MS website under a nice permissive license at one point (and which are now missing from their website - thanks Microsoft).
Notes 5.x runs pretty much flawlessly. Notes 6.0 is a non-starter (don't ask me why, I've beaten the front of my monitor in trying it). Notes 6.51 runs pretty much perfectly - only save all attachments silently fails for some bizarre reason. Go figure. It's pretty stable - I run it for days on end without it dying on me.
The magic part of any wine install is the config file. Or more specifically, knowing which DLLs to use from a standard Windows machine and which libraries (*.so) to use from the WINE RPMS. This is from a former Notes 5 install.
I don't have my Notes6 setup on this system. I'll try and check out the differences tomorrow.
If you are absolutely desperate to get this to run, you can email me. Now the question is: how many jokers are going to email me if I just type it in here? Probably hundreds. But my email address is public knowledge (dammit!). There is an IBM employee directory. I'm the only employee with this name. If you need help, drop me an email. I make no guarantees on any responses (I'm not in tech support...). And I work on the DB2 internals. I just use Lotus Notes. So I can't work miracles (and I don't have access to the Notes source code, so don't ask).
Cheers,
Toby Haynes
Anything I post is strictly my own thoughts and doesn't necessarily have anything to do with the opinions of IBM.
Let me see... If we drill down to the SuSE page, and then to the certification page for the ThinkPad T41p we get this:
So, I can use Linux on my Think pad just so long as I do not want to use the Wireless network connection or the power saving functionality. Which are the 2 major reasons for using a laptop...
And the only reason we know this is because a SuSE customer tried it out. Neither SuSE nor IBM have done any certification
Until the hardware is supported 100% then there is no point selling them
The two secrets to success: 1- Don't tell anyone everything.
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