Slashdot Mirror
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."
What they are discussing is migration from NTx to *nix
While I look forward to the day a Linux distro can upgrade an NT system, carrying forward system settings, user passwords, domain logons and applications carried across into WINE, this isn't happening anytime soon.
I'd be surprised if it doesn't happen eventually, though.
I have been a user for about 10 years. This ends Feb 2014. The site's been ruined. I'm off. Dice, FU
Information like this has been needed for a long time, there are plenty of HowTo's and Man pages around, but not much information to help with the actual transfer from Windows to Linux. Good job IBM.
I get that same warm, tingly feeling inside as did the members of Team OS/2 in the old days.
Step 2. Console crash course I think this is is the fundamental obstacle to the success of linux in the desktop. It is completely unrealistic to expect your avg user ( the type who never even consider changing their homepage because they dont know how ) to work with a console. And lets face it, linux today still requires you to work with a console for alot of things, esp software/hardware installation and system configuration.
In fact, I just finished installing a wireless card in my linux box. Comprared, to windows, where I pop in a cd and hit install, under linux I had to:
1: make & make install the software
2: install some necessary wireless libraries
3: manually configure the wireless card's config file
4: set the kernel to intialize ath0 at startup
now to a techie following a recipie, this is a piece of cake. However, it is quite beyond the capabilities of your avg windows user.
More of a linux primer than an upgrade guide. An upgrade guide would tell you how to dual boot to see if things work, move all your applications over to the Linux equivilant, and than, if you like it, show you how to remove the Windows portion.
Yeah unfortunately this requires something Americans and most modern business-types don't have...
It's called long term planning. Sure right this instant it may cost more to move to Linux from WinNT. However, what about when license renewal day comes around? What happens when WinNT is no longer supported [e.g. no patches for the day-to-day exploits?] etc, etc, etc...
In the long run the average linux distro [say Gentoo] will cost a hell of a lot less.
And hey, if it requires the users to learn a bit about computers is that really such a bad thing? I mean for the most part people can just use KDE and be happy for it. For other things they can learn the fun way, google for it.
Tom
Someday, I'll have a real sig.
The Linux community needs to stop hiding behind "we don't have to reboot" - it's just not as compelling an argument as it was 2 years ago. And with clustered servers becoming the norm, (MS AppCenter, etc.), reboots are hardly even noticed by the end-users.
I don't think that the majority of the intended audience of this paper is asking those questions. I believe that IBM's support for desktop Linux is minimal while their server support is extremely heavy. They will give support to customers who purchase an IBM Linux server and need to get a RAID card working in it.
But their opinion, and the opinion of most non-slashdoters, is that Linux isn't ready for the desktop now for home and many coporate users.
This isn't a flamebait. It's just that the article isn't supposed to answer these questions. XP professional IS what they recommend and for a good reason. Support for wlan isn't IBMs problem. Servers don't need to have a wireless network connection. If you want support for Linux Hardware from IBM, go here.
Nice troll, but IBM has many Open Source Developers on the payroll. IBM isn't just along for the free ride, they're actually chipping in gas money.
With OSS the model is.
1. Do stuff.
2. Find problems and bugs.
3. Hope somebody out there at random fixes it.
4. Wait some more.
5. Hopefully still make profit.
The notion of treating your business computers like 'information appliances,' meanwhile, has vaporized. And that's what a lot of businesses are after. Companies don't hire mechanical engineers to build them special-purpose cogs for the copying machine that will make it produce copies 20% faster. They won't hire programmers, either.
Commercial vendors are in a drive toward standaridzation, and working to turn computer software, and the support needed to administer it, into a commodity. The notion of returning to the 1980's method of hiring 'consultants' to engage in special code tweaks on their equipment is antiquated and it's exactly what businesses do NOT want any longer.
Now, if IBM can hide all that activity beneath a 'shroud' called IBM, and certify their team of people to engage in said support activities, they'll get somewhere.
Gonna work as a drone for IBM sometime in the near future? You're not gonna get the contract to work on IBM deployments as an independent contractor.
---
What Linux version are you running? If it's 241 days old, then it is probably missing quite a few kernel security fixes.
cpeterso
Another reason OS/2 was doomed from the start: people don't like to buy technology from their competitors. That's why AT&T finally had to spin off its manufacturing arm, so it could sell stuff to competing phone companies. I don't know how hard IBM tried to get Compaq or Dell to bundle OS/2, but it would have been a hard sell.
As for Linux, IBM hasn't yet manned all the guns there either. They're selling it strictly as a server OS. You hear noises about them moving to Linux as a standard desktop, but so far these are just noises -- every IBM laptop, desktop, and workstation still comes with Windows pre-loaded!
So nothing has really changed; monopolies are the enemies of everyone who is involved in a market. Nowadays of course, we have rather better tools with which to fight monopolists. Balanced against that, unfortunately, is an unwillingness for governments to fight monopolies effectively.
Reality is defined by the maddest person in the room
This is where I agree. Linux developers should be concentrating on the server market. This is where they have the most going for it now. Fast, Stable, Secure should be the motto. Desktops will come soon enough.
Save a Life. Donate Blood. Please.
> Commercial vendors are in a drive toward
> standaridzation, and working to turn computer
> software, and the support needed to administer
> it, into a commodity. The notion of returning to > the 1980's method of hiring 'consultants' to
> engage in special code tweaks on their equipment
> is antiquated
BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAH!!!!
I'm sure the massive amount of money being made by Oracle's services division and IBM's and HP's and... Well, you get the picture.
Consultants are NOT going anywhere anytime soon - especially not to India.
Have a nice day.
Richard Steven Hack - This sig is TOO GODDAMN SHORT TO DO ANYTHING USEFUL WITH! MORONS!
A fully multi-user system would be one where both you and your girlfriend can be using the computer at the same time. Letting several users have sessions open is a step in the right direction, but it's not really multi-user if one of you has to stop what you're doing when the other wants to use the computer.
That's not to say the technology isn't there, though. Terminal Services (and 2003's "remote desktop for administration") is properly multi-user. However, that's a separate feature which you have to buy a separate license for, and then manually turn on. With Linux systems, it's there out-of-the-box.
With OSS the model is.
1. Do stuff.
2. Find problems and bugs.
3. Hope somebody out there at random fixes it.
4. Wait some more.
5. Hopefully still make profit.
You got points 3. and 4. wrong: if you need it, you don't wait, you fix it yourself and return the fixes.
Commercial vendors are in a drive toward standaridzation, and working to turn computer software, and the support needed to administer it, into a commodity.
Yes, and nothing about what I said contradicts that. If you outsource your support and administration, then the company you outsource it to becomes the participant in the OSS projects. That's actually the most common form of OSS usage, where companies like RedHat, SuSE, etc. get paid for easy-to-install (but still OSS) solutions, but they sponsor projects to fix specific bugs and add specific enhancements that many of their customers want. If anything, OSS works better in that kind of world than something like Microsoft.
The notion of treating your business computers like 'information appliances,' meanwhile, has vaporized.
No matter how you handle the low-level maintenance of your software, and no matter whether you go with commercial or OSS, for many businesses, that is suicide anyway. Business software encodes how businesses run; it basically is the business.
You can treat it like an "information appliance" about as much as you can treat the CEO like an "information appliance".