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Lockheed Replaces 10,000 Solaris Seats with Linux
bl8n8r writes "Citing hardware and software TCO, a source close to Lockheed Martin says the aeronautics giant will be replacing 10,000 of its Solaris seats with Linux. The article mentions AutoZone, IBM, SCO and Daimler Chrysler and what may be in store for Lockheed Martin.
'Every engineer has a Microsoft PC sitting next to their Sun Blade,' said their source. 'That's for business applications, and Linux is no threat there. It's Sun who has to worry.' Wait till they find out how much they can save running OpenOffice."
The whole "article" seems to depend on the word of "a Lockheed employee who is close to the transition." I have my doubts about their source. For example, the source says this about Lockheed's lawyers:
According to our source, Lockheed's lawyers "are like a deer in the headlights" because of SCO's legal threats over Linux usage.
Are you serious? Lockheed is a defense contractor, a major government supplier. Their lawyers aren't going to be "deer in the headlights" against these or any other litigious bastards. More like "alligators in the swamp," if you want to use nature as a metaphor. If SCO so much as puts a toe in Lockheed's water, they're going to lose a leg.
So after calling BS on this, can the source be trusted? He's competely ignorant of the real legal threat, but knows a lot about what's on and under the engineers' desks.
I say their "reliable source" is the janitor. He's probably the guy who stole your lunch out of the fridge last week.
Stressed? Me? Of course not. Stress is what a rubber band feels before it breaks, silly.
But won't they lose money by not using microsoft products? I've seen microsoft's stats...
Where can I get a linux powered seat?
Business Apps don't necessarily mean "MS Office."
We consider business apps where I work:
Bioinformatic software
Data Analysis software
specialized inventory management software
I'm sure Lockheed uses CAD as well as a plethora of engineering apps that have no-where-near equivalent versions in Linux.
With desktop penetration like this, it is no wonder M$ is taking FOSS seriously. How much longer until we see another "Halloween" memo?
Go Tux!!!
Does anyone know what flavor of Linux these guys will be installing? I saw some reference to Dell - I'm not sure if they're the supplier or they use a particular brand. I know Red Hat is on NASDAQ; are any of the other major Linux distributors public companies?
Linux could be renamed to 'Eclipse' just based on what its doing to Sun...
If Jesus wants me it knows where to find me.
...that the real threat from Linux is to the proprietary unices and NO openoffice is not a replacement for the MS office suite. This MS-workstation-next-to-the-unix-box phenomenon is only a couple decades old.
Wait till they find out how much they can save running OpenOffice."
We've only got ~100 PC's, and we pay about $160 for Excel/Word/Outlook. I can imagine Lockheed can work something out for the few users that need Powerpoint (managers that make presentations).
The very FIRST issue you have with OpenOffice, whether it's a formatting issue, file conversion, or other imcompatiblity, will cost MORE than Microsoft Office in the loss of productivity and IT staff.
Now will they be hiring some Linux Admins with Solaris migration and Open Source familiarity? Hint hint? Right over here, boys! *waving*
Unless of course they plan to contract it out to some consulting firms, where all the capable ones (IBM, EDS, what have you) will be grossly underbid by consulting firms using offshore admins. *sigh*
But I'm bitter. Don't mind me.
El riesgo vive siempre!
Haven't we got to the point where these kinds of stories aren't news any more?
Surely we don't need to have any more "another company using linux" news flashes.
Lots of people use linux. Lots more companies use it every day.
In order for the Linux community to accept the level of success that we have achieved already, it's time to realise that we don't need to bash out these stories all the time.
Jolyon
Please read my Canon EOS tech blog at http://www.everyothershot.com
Oh ye of little faith...
They just have to convine Lockheed to use Sun Java Desktop, aka SuSE.
They're laughing because they know they're next and there's nothing they can do about it?
They may just find that it will be cheaper to run VMWare, or now the Free qemu, to run their office apps.
I hope that one of these days Wine will be the solution of choice.
Wait until they see how they can run most of their Windows software under GNU/Linux using Wine.
I know an attorney (like everyone else) and if you threaten her with legal action she'll just laugh. Yes, it's expensive for us regular people, but it is not a big deal in the grand scheme of things. After all, I would coutner-sue for something and settle out of court. Yes, yes, I know, it's sad that it has to come down to this, but that's the system - sue to bury he other guy ----and if he has the resources to fight you --- settle out of court.
That's America!
It sounds as if nearly every other news story I read regarding Sun Microsystems make the picture for them look progressively more grim. They have been trying to realign themselves and have changed their strategies somewhat but is it too late?
I recall years ago working with Sun/Solaris systems alongside i86/Linux systems. I was amazed at the hardware costs associated with servicing some of the Sun product line. The prices were outrageous. Something like 5 to 10 times what the i86 servers were demanding. What's the point? I even recall when Sun started deploying supposedly lower-end, lower-cost i86 hardware. The costs were still 3 times what I was expecting.
Can't say I'm sorry to see them hitting hard times. Java will be the only legacy they have left over looking back at this 3-5 years from now.
So forget it. It's not good enough, they have to interoperate with too many subcontracters, government agencies, etc, etc..
And, like it or not, the world uses MS Office formats. OO.o isn't good enough.
They wouldn't save anything. They'd waste a lot of time and effort reformatting documents sent to them, resending documents to others, etc.
Seriously, it's called reality, you all might want to look into it.
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
[[ Insert obligatory joke about Windows and planes crashing here. ]]
I work in a company that does work for Lockheed, and they've been using Linux for quite a while. Even without this, they could still be targeted by litigious bastards. Good luck to SCO targeting Lockheed though. They're humongous and build fighter planes and nuclear submarines that could level the SCO headquarters with the push of a button!!!
The perfect sig is a lot like silence, only louder
Free/Open Source Software
+1, many TRUE business apps (Read: not some excel spreadsheet that manages your 2 employee home business) only come in windows versions, because lets face it, a HUGE majority of workstations are windows, and you have to cater to the biggest source of income. The tendency toward non-OS specific software is moving along nicely, but a lot of big apps are nowhere close.
I see a lot of articles here where the slashdot crowd thinks that open source should be used everywhere, just because it's open source. Or just because the TCO is lower, or the licenses are cheaper, or the quality is higher.
I believe in free markets. Specifying software based on license, or even TCO or ability to meet requirements is *WRONG*. Lockheed martin should level the playing field and use every major OS on every employee's desk. Is it fair to Microsoft and Sun that just because their stuff costs more and has more bugs they should be locked out becuase of arbitrary decisions?
"'Every engineer has a Microsoft PC sitting next to their Sun Blade,' said their source."
Why arent they using these?
Everyone will start to cheer when you put on your sailin' shoes.
to move clients from MS to Linux on their workstations and servers. My score so far:
Internal Mail Servers: 6
Firewall/Routers: 8
File Servers: 5
Workstations: 1
There used to be more file servers. When we moved them to Linux file servers we would find that a critical software application would migrate to some server-side-critical application (like a run-time of MS SQL) and we would have to move the entire box to 2000 server.
Workstations are even harder. We migrate them and the users bitch about not being able to use their "favorite software". Only once, 2 weeks ago, did we find users overjoyed to get Linux. A local Aquatic Park had the lifegards surfing on their XP box until it was unusable. Since it had to be blown off anyway, I threw a Knoppix 3.4 disk into the CD and did the install, configured the users, their email, the printer and the network, and showed them where the apps were. So far they are still happy with the functionality. Plus no viruses and no spyware.
It is very difficult to move people away from even the "standard" apps (Office, etc.). When it comes to specialized applications it is impossible; for now.
No one ever had to evacuate a city because the solar panels broke!
"The very FIRST issue you have with OpenOffice, whether it's a formatting issue, file conversion, or other imcompatiblity, will cost MORE than Microsoft Office in the loss of productivity and IT staff."
$160 x 100 = $16,000
One document that doesn't convert or display correctly will cost a loss of productivity of $16,000?!? If such a minor problem costs that much to resolve, how much does a major problem cost at your company? And, after paying $16,000 for MS Office on every desk, how much does it cost to prevent and/or fix security problems that you get to pay for ON TOP OF the $16,000 you already spent?
How do you stay in business with such high IT costs?
In anycase, it sounds like they have a similar setup there as we do here with most engineers having a Sun system and a PC. I personally have a linux PC and a sunblade, both of which run open office, and I don't see any need at all for a MS PC other then for some website tools that ask/require IE (but are easily spoofed with multi-zilla plugin). It will be interesting what comes of this. I don't actually see us making a change like this away from Sun simply because there are no true replacements for the types of servers we are using from an x86 standpoint. However, as opterons become more and more available in server class systems, then maybe some of the systems will be converted over, but I don't see this happening anytime in the next 3-4 years...
We were all warned a long time ago that MS products sucked, remember the Magic 8 Ball said, "Outlook not so good"
You're exactly right. MS Office isn't the only thing businesses use Windows for, these days.
:)
I work in the APM field (Application Portfolio Management) and I can tell you that there's almost no limit to how many (large and small) custom applications a company like Lockheed might have. There's no way they could just switch from Windows to Linux without massive expenditure.
For example, a company I've done work for, which I'd say is approx. 1/2 the size of Lockheed, had over 1500 (!!!) custom-built Windows applications in their portfolio. Most of these are nasty VB/Access apps, and some are even the dreaded Excel Spreadsheet Macro Apps. Imagine having to "port" all of that to Linux?
Yuck. There's so much redundancy, too. Most of the applications do similar things, but for different business units... or else a manager will have a favourite technology, and will insist that his/her versions of every business application be re-written for Domino or somesuch.
Bah! Back to work with me
Visit the Game Programming Wiki!
You just slander the english language.
Linux seats have more leg space than Microsoft seats or Solaris seats. I'll be travelling Tux class on my next flight.
An Indian-American Hindu committed to non-violent thought/speech/action alarmed by the global explosion of radical Islam
Did you know that the founders of Lockheed..., Allan and Malcolm Loughead, changed their name to "Lockheed" because they were tired of everyone pronouncing their name as "log head".
As well, it is common sense that Sun-provided hardware is higher-quality and magnitudes greater efficiency in architecture, fore-casted power consumption by performance per gold dollar than is possible by a lesser x86+Linux platform and a Sparc+Linux.
Is there a "-1, Inscrutable" option?
Your message was intended to be humorous, but I feel compelled to give a serious reply.
/. had predicted the demise of Sun's OS and SPARC. The predictions are coming true.
At this point, Linux should not be compared to Windows. Linux is intended for technical people like engineers. Windows is intended for consumers who have little knowledge of computer science.
Therein lies the threat to Solaris. It is targetted at precisely the same market at which Linux is targetted. The supposed qualities of Solaris are high reliability and efficient operation. Today, Linux has both qualities -- due to IBM. Linux on an IBM mainframe is rock solid and highly efficient; IBM has poured a huge amount of money into ensuring that Linux and any other OS sold by IBM will meet the standards of 6 sigma.
The future of computing sees 4 surviving standards, ranked in order of marketshare.
1. Windows on x86 (including both Intel and AMD)
2. Linux on x86
3. Linux on PowerPC
4. MacOS (FreeBSD) on PowerPC
Numerous people on
In our last upgrade cycle we got to choose from Dell/Windows, Dell/SuSE, Sun Blade/Solaris, or Dell Laptop. Previously everyone had SGI Indy/O2/that_one_purple_box or a Dell laptop.
In engineering, I'd say 80% went for Windows, 18% Linux, and 2% Sun.
Sounds like the kind of sabre-rattling corporations do, when they want to negotiate a new contract with better discounts. Have other corporations threatened to move to Linux when they wanted lower license fees from Microsoft?
Vintage computer adverts: http://www.vintageadbrowser.com/computers-and-software-ads
Hello there,
I'm the reporter who wrote the Lockheed article. Any chance I could talk to you a bit about what your perspective from your LM branch? Phone, fax, IM, IRC, email whatever.
Curtis Lee Fulton
curtisf@neurocrat.com
Moral: There are many ways to set up IT in an organization. It may be that giving every person two computers is one of the dumber ways to go about it.
When I do work for Mallinkrodt they are very specific about what file types they accept. They call the shots because they have the deeper pockets. Lockhead is in a similar situation.
Why would you do this? A Sun dual Opteron workstation would be a nice CAD upgrade. Run windows, JDS, Red Hat or Solaris 9/10. Cheap as anybody's WS. Dual boot whatever combo you want.
Single Opteron Ws, same deal.
Server's same deal. Solaris, Red Hat, SUSE or Windows server, you choose. Sun's X86 and Opteron servers are as cheap as any out there. Same with the software, Linux or other.
Sun could easily install dual boot JDS on the PCs that run windows. Sun also sells RH, all flavors.
The whole thing strikes me as wishful thinking.
The future of computing sees 4 surviving standards, ranked in order of marketshare.
1. Windows on x86 (including both Intel and AMD)
2. Linux on x86
3. Linux on PowerPC
4. MacOS (FreeBSD) on PowerPC
Nice troll. What in the hell makes you think that Linux on PowerPC will surpase OS X? Are you talking about servers or desktops?
I have a shitty sig!
'Every engineer has a Microsoft PC sitting next to their Sun Blade,' said their source. 'That's for business applications, and Linux is no threat there.'
Such a sad pair, don't look for this marriage to last long.
I can say that MS isn't going away anytime soon. Not only (in my particular division) does Exchange run the back end, but our engineers have integrated the authentication across the board. Want to check your pay stub online? Use your exchange domain\username and password. Want to check your training records? Ditto. Check the status of a referred employee? Ditto. Change health care coverage? Ditto. Pretty much the only thing that doesn't require that login is access to the 401k/pension site.
The division I'm in is heavily involved in software development for the government. Sun gets a lot of the business here because of the massive data storage requirements we have. 10's of terabytes is not an uncommon need. The government is also pushing towards more COTS solutions so until there are ready-to-deploy applications on Linux, Sun will still be around. Unfortunately, ready-to-deploy doesn't mean easy-to-deploy. My current project is a nightmare of integration...but that's a story for another day...
Linux development is backed by IBM, HP, and Open Source Development Lab. In addition, a small army of programmers across the globe are developing and improving Linux.
MacOS, supported solely by Apple and its smaller group of FreeBSD developers, is no match for Linux. No way. No how.
Both IBM and HP sell servers and workstations to commercial customers. IBM and HP will ensure that Linux meets 6 sigma reliability.
MacOS will survive simply because the Apple fans are rather diehard.
we use a windows pci card in our solaris cad workstations. solaris has a native software that links you into a windows environment to use outlook and access network drives. it is only a 700 celeron though :)
I agree with the former poster...
Your post was a troll.
Now the worlds largest weapons manufacturer runs Linux!
I agree. I'm an SE with Lockheed. Equipment is not purchase company wide like this. Each project purchases what type of equipment it needs with its only money. We have several Solaris machines, and there is no plans to change them. As for MS, we all have PCs on our desks, but they are mostly for e-mail and the like. Most development is done on the solaris machines (we have xwindows clients running on the PCs).
Anonymous Cowards suck.
What about the first (and 2nd and 3rd) issue that a user has with a Windows box, like a virus or BSOD or sudden inability to print?
I work in an engineering group with a mixture of Windows and Linux machines. The Windows boxes need virus scans and updates all the time, while the Linux boxes rarely get touched.
They're just using an artificial heart.
A post a day keeps productivity at bay.
I've recently had the joy of trying to open a number of MS Office documents in Office 2003. Guess what, according to Word 2003 those Word 97 documents were corrupted. Loaded fine in Open Office though. Go figure.
So much for ubiquitous office formats.... not to mention, of course, that Word is such a pleasure with large documents to begin with. It's so much fun dropping a picture on a word page-- talk about having to bloody reformat my document all the time...
Do not spread "09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0" over the internet, thank you.
Anonymously due to politics...
I've personally seen LMCO replace AIX with Linux on a large project, so it doesn't surprise me. That doesn't change the fact that the system will still be many, many times the cost of the system it's replacing, and won't even be fully operational when the (US military) customer is forced into accepting it. We're talking tens of millions wasted on this particular project alone.
In short, switching a few computers to free software doesn't begin to make up for incompetence, poorly conceived systems, and a political climate that won't allow anyone to admit their mistakes.
Sorry if I sound like a troll, but I am troubled by our military's use of Linux. Are there any movements in the free software community that advocate licensing that would prevent military and/or other unethical use of free software? This is deeply troubling (at least to me) to see our hard-earned creation being used in such a fashion.
Same here, I work for the IT division of Lockheed and I haven't heard anything either.
LMC/Syracuse once did our system development. The system was a highly integrated Sun/VME data acquisition system. We wanted them to look at rehosting the command and display terminals with Linux boxes. They were very reluctant to consider any possibility outside of Solaris.
:)
I even remember one of the managers commenting on a site visit that they had heard that "linux was going out of business". It would be interesting to see if this same manager is now getting RH training
Anyhow they lost the contract (in part due to their reluctance) and now we are in process of doing the rehosting ourselves.
Hey Brian :-)
How's the cluster coming?
Karma: Bored. (Thinking about resurrecting the "Anyone else is an imposter" joke.)
Wait till they find out how much they can save running OpenOffice
;) Just you, know... saying.
Which would be completely negated by how long it takes OpenOffice to load?
When the airforce tells you to provide a document in X. That's what you fucking provide the document in. No one ever has, or ever will, tell the airfoce, "Yes, I understand that the Joint Strike Fighter is the biggest arms program ever, and will provide many billions of dollars of revenue, and employ tens of thousands of people including myself, and that the other option for Lockheed is bankrupcy and a massive restructuring, but we're commited to open source at any cost, especially to prove esoteric points that most days, no one gives a flying fuck about."
IBM (the big Cadence user) just went to Cadence a couple years ago and insisted that cds5.00 should be released for Solaris and Linux *simultaneously*.
They did.
Paul B.
P.S. Cadence is a huge Electronic Design Automation (EDA) CAD system.
While this is true to an extent, dont forget that microsoft software has the same sorts of issues, if you are not running the same version of office.
Try reading a 2003 word document on word 97 sometime...
And wait until they goto 'trusted documents' and try to open something with a version less then what is 'trusted'.. it wont.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
So far, SCO hasn't sued anybody that wasn't contractually tied to them in some way. DaimlerChrysler is a former SCO customer. AutoZone is a former SCO customer. They were getting ready to sue former customer Bank of America. IBM was a former "strategic partner" in the Sequent project.
Doesn't anybody get it? Every single lawsuit bar none (correct me if I'm wrong) that SCO has initiated over Linux was against former clients/partners. If you've never had anything to do with SCO, you're safe. Use Linux all day every day. Darl's threat to sue end users has been nothing but bluster. I can't believe a journalist would fail to put 2 + 2 together like that and foster more ignorance that big companies like Lockheed somehow have something to fear.
What a crock!
"Stop throwing the Constitution in my face, it's just a goddamned piece of paper!" - George W. Bush Nov. 2005
but you won't actually be using it. Every time I open a .doc file with the thing, I wonder in what new and exciting ways it's going to look goofy, or even be unreadable.
Your reply had absolutely nothing to do with your parent post.
As such, it is neither serious, nor a reply.
I doubt that any serious businesses would run FC2 since it's too bleeding edge. Heck, even I'm willing admin that XP is more stable than FC2. I think that you should give Linux another try by trying another distro.
1f u c4n r34d th1s u r34lly n33d t0 g37 l41d
...need to run "business applications"?!
If someone says he and his monkey have nothing to hide, they almost certainly do.
What I don't get is why Lockheed's engineers all have still two boxes on their desks. Four years ago we were the same way with a SUN for CAD work and a PC for other applications but with PCs as powerful as they have become that ended three years ago. Everybody in my company who uses a CAD package that is supported on PC (eg Unigraphics) has only a PC workstation. And these guys aren't doing trivial things either. Maybe Lockheed is just so big that it's taken them a long time to get with the program and ditch all the expensive Sun systems for cheaper alternatives...or maybe as a government contractor they are rich enough that they don't need to worry about saving money.
-Pinkoir
So you're going to vote for one war-criminal over the other?
Face it, voting in the US doesn't matter anymore. It's a rigged game, and probably has been for awhile, but it's pretty much out in the open now. Kerry won't get us out of Iraq, if anything he'll get us in deeper. He won't reverse Bush's disastrous policies - he'll make them even worse, if possible - on every front.
No matter who you vote for, the government wins. Waste your vote? There's no way not to.
... and it is BIGGER than any company around! ;-) And the Gov't agencies get to choose in which formats they send out their BAAs and in which formats do they accept proposals. I know, I work for a similar company... ;-)
The good thing is that PDF becomes more and more of a standard, but to really change the whole MS vs. open standards balance one would have to start on the federal level.
Paul B.
I dare you to come after these guys! They've got frickin' MISSILES!!! "Deer in the headlights" my ass!
"Every engineer has a Microsoft PC sitting next to their Sun Blade"
Huh??? If they need both Unix and desktop applications why not replace these two boxes with a single Mac running OS X? A mac is one single computer which satisfies the requirements of two. Its both a Unix workstation and a personal PC which runs common desktop apps. And it does both of these jobs better than the competion. Is a dual G5 vs Sparc even a contest? Maintaining one single machine per user is easier and cheaper than maintaining two machines per user. Purchase price for one fast G5 is probably the same or less as for a Win PC + Sun Blade. Macs are durable, quality hardware. Kickass OpenGL video cards also, that' got to help with CAD.
So with a Mac, you get equal or lower initial cost, lower TCO because you only have to maintain one machine, not two, and one architecture, not two. Much, much faster hardware. Half the power consumption because you are only running one computer. Great user interface.
I'd think going with Mac would be a no-brainer in this particular situation. What's the deal?
Ceci n'est pas une signature.
The article mentioned that a lot of the engineers now have both a sun and a X86 box sitting alongside each other. Maybe they're thinking they can replace two with one X86 box that dual boots linux and windows. They'ld then be ridding themselves of a bunch of boxes, saving money in support, and power bills. 10K boxes would use a lot of power themselves, and would be increasing the air conditioning bill. Chances are that the engineers would be mosly using the Linux. Its not hard for software companies to add Linux support to an app that already probably runs on HP-UX and Solaris and other Unix variants. I'm sure most of those companies have already done so. Even so, this article about Lockheed-Martin switching appears to be quite speculative. I know someone who works at L-M, and maybe they'ld be able to verify it or deny it.
Hey Tim. Its getting there :P Waiting on the benchmarks still from the hpl code, but it blew through the find all prime numbers from 1-10,000,000,000 in under 5 minutes :)
We were all warned a long time ago that MS products sucked, remember the Magic 8 Ball said, "Outlook not so good"
Sun now sells x86 workstations running redhat or solaris and can run windoz. Could be a BIG order for the new box.
http://www.sun.com/2004-0726/feature/
with JES and JDS only costing $150/user that is a lot of $$ saved...for a lot of Software.
Yeah, they can keep PALing around with M$ and get replaced. Or they can work with free software and sell a lot of excellent hardware.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
Why not one of these?
The cost of MS-Office problems is usually huge amounts of wasted productivity and forced upgrades and documents that just don't look the way you want them to. Outlook has lots of hosery to it, Cutting and Pasting between Word / Powerpoint / Excel is supposed to "Just Work", but MSOffice isn't a Macintosh app so stuff _doesn't_ Just Work. (Yes, I know you can run MSOFfice versions on Macs, but it's the same suboptimal stuff a couple versions older.) You can get training for it, while there's less training available, and there are people who are wizards at the stuff, but at a company the size of Lockheed they're probably not real handy.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
Seems you're contradicting yourself with your own facts. Excel, and most of the 2-employee apps run only on Windows. Serious financial software like Oracle Financials, etc tend to run anywhere with perhaps Solaris being dominant on the server side, and Windows and Mac clients supported in places I've seen them.
A quote from that page: For Windows users, ensuring that your computer fulfills ITSS' Administrative Desktop recommendations will enable optimal use of the Oracle systems. Those with Macintoshes should be running Operating System 10.3 (OSX) or higher. Those still running OS 9.2.x should be sure to see Mac OS X Migration for Administrative Desktops ... Macintoshes must be running OS 10.3 and use Netscape 7.0.2 or above to access ReportMart and run Business Objects reports
The big apps are doing fine. It's the home-office space that Microsoft seems to have a lock on.
You have never tried have you? There's no pain involved, except templates, but there's no reason to be mailing templates around is there?
Trust me, contractors will do whatever Lockheed Martin and the US government ask.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
I'm not a hardcore gamer, so I didn't want to buy one of them, but they make chairs with subwoofers built into them for the Gamerz market. They don't care whether they're on Linux or Windows or probably even Macintosh as long as they've got a 5.1 speaker feed.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
Back around 1990 my company bid on a number of NASA jobs, and teamed with companies like Lockheed and Martin. At one of them, when we had a new team of N people working on their site, the IT department showed up with a stack of N Macintoshes, old data wiped out and cleanly reinstalled with the current software. It was extremely productive, because everybody could simply write their stuff, it would all integrate together into whatever final documents we were producing, you didn't need a manual (well, almost never) because Mac software Just Works (even back then), and it was really clean except when you needed to exchange data with people who had different MS Word versions (converting between Mac and PC versions of Word would usually trash tables because one version was always newer than another.)
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
He won't reverse Bush's disastrous policies - he'll make them even worse, if possible - on every front.
It's not clear how getting rid of John Ashcroft is going to make things "even worse." Care to elaborate?
I also work for Lockheed and I heard about this from a local Linux users group. They told me that it was supposeldy taking place in the bldg I work in. I have not seen\heard anything of the sort. I had an Openmosix cluster setup (off the LAN) for a few weeks, is that what they are talking about...There were actually only 3 machines, not 10,000
It is trivial to look at the SCO claims against IBM, Daimler and AutoZone and conclude that their claims are entirely based on pre existing contracts with those entities. In fact SCO hasn't brought a genuine copyright case against anyone in their long FUD campaign, their strategy is to sue their business partners over any baseless breach of contract claim they can dream up then vaguely assert copyright infringement in press releases. It really takes a spectacularly lazy and inept journalist to miss this. The article restating SCO's blatant lie that the law suit was brought to make Daimler respond to SCO's letter when the truth is that SCO was trounced in court on everything but the letter response time just illustrates how biased the journalist was and how dishonest Blake Stowell is.
I will believe it when I see it. It is possible on the Sun machines but the source hit the nail on the head with the Windows machines.
We use far to much software designed for specifically for Windows to even make Linux a remote possibility for our desktops. Combine that with the aversion to open-source in the military world and I'm willing to bet I'll be using Windows for years to come.
You're likely right that I should try another distro. FC2 is my only linux experience.
You've got a point. I have only used linux for about 24hrs total. I agree, not a fair trial. I should give it another go with a different distro.
Well, actually FC1 works much better than FC2. That's been my personal experience with exactly this situation. It's to the point that I hardly ever use Windows anymore on that computer. In fact, I'm very seriously considering backing up my files and wiping the Windows hard drive and going with FC1 throughout. It just works better for my purposes.
Haec merda tauri est. Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.
As I sit writing on my PC box next to my Solaris machine, I look forward to the next project which uses PC and Linux. Its a great environment.
I'd like to say that we don't use Windows for Word/PPoint/Excel. We use it for Outlook. A program I thought was shit until about a month an a half ago when I started using it in the corporate environment. The tight integration between contacts, meetings, scheduling really help cut down on the administration work I have to do to keep working.
I'd also guess that it will be 3-4 years before Opterons catch up with the current high-end Sun Fire machines - and the vendor of choice may likely be Sun.
If L-M was going to replace Sun Blades with "commodity hardware", then it would make more sense to go with Opteron based workstations than Intel based workstations - epsecially if they will be running Linux. I suspect that Sun will be selling more Opteron workstations that Sparc by year's end (though the 90 nm US-IIIi may keep Sparc in the running).
A Shadeless room is a brighter room.
The government chooses those formats because most companies have and use them. And also probably because the contracting officer that writes the BAA (or SPO or whoever), has a format in their head that they think is the proper one.
;)
I've seen both sides of this; before as a person at a small private company dealing directly with the DoD, and now as a spectator on the other side of the field. (I don't do contract stuff at my current job.)
Though I will admit that if you can convince the government that something is worth their time and money, they'll change. I see it happen every day. Usually it's the contractors that are the stubborn ones (a certain aerospace company guy strictly requests that all of the people under him use Excel and Word in writing documents). On my side... heck, if I had say in the format, I'd go with something that's easy and cheap to use, and is widespread enough or easily attainable so that folks bidding on contracts or submitting proposals or whitepapers don't have to worry.
I've also seen with certain offices that they accept rich text, html, word, and pdf files all for the same RFP.
I'd really like to be able to use something other than MS stuff at work though. Certain of our programs are things that I am wary of using, and I don't use them at home. I've been mulling over whether I should talk to the IT folks here, but I'm not sure what their reaction will be. It won't hurt to try, but I don't want to bruise egos or anything either.
.... did not you see all those people commiting sepuku the day their company went from Word perfect o MS Office or from Lotus to Excell.
Or from MSDOS to Windows.
Yeah, the bodies were piling up so high one coudl not walk.
Typical geekizoid nonsense.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
If you're looking for a smooth experience and you're a convert, FC2 (my favorite) is probably a bit much at first considering that it doesn't include proprietary or patented stuff out of the box (mp3, flash, java, nvidia/ati proprietary drivers, etc.).
I would suggest either SuSe, or, (probably better) Xandros.
If they wen't to OSX they wouldn't even have to dual boot. They could run MS-Office and all their X11 unix stuff side by side.
Lockheed Martin says the aeronautics giant will be replacing 10,000 of its Solaris seats with Linux. I wouldn't be proud. Actually, I am ashamed that one of the biggest producers of Weapons of Mass Destruction and most hypocritical corporation uses the same system as I do.
Who do you think is behind openOffice? (hint see the icon on the bottom left of openoffice.org)
Join Team Mozilla #38050 Folding@home
In an ideal world, this wouldn't be so, but this is not an ideal world.
Life is unfair. Only death is more unfair.
He's probably talking about five years from now, when Apple has 'moved on' and abandoned all that nice PPC hardware. We'll happily be running Linux on it. Run a five year old version of OSX? You're kidding, right?
resigned
Lockheed can still maintain a vendor relationship with Sun, if they want to. Sun released 1, 2, and 4-cpu Opteron hardware this month, running either Solaris or Linux. Sun is targetting the mid-to-higher end workstation market, with their high-end opteron workstation going for over $8,000 (professional graphics card, gigs of ram, ultra320 scsi, etc.).
-- "Makes Little Debbie look like a pile of puke!" - Moe Szyslak
After all, they stand to gain the most. If they can convince the software world to port to Mac OS which has a true Unix backend, and the ubiquitous MS Office is natively available, then this is a complete slam dunk for them.
Pain is merely failure leaving the body
I work as a contractor in IT at lmco... and this is not news to me ;) but the article is misleading from what I do know about it.
I worked for several years (until late 2002) for Lockheed Martin's EIS (Enterprise Information Systems).
... Yes, I know major Linux vendors have support contracts and all that, but not like Sun IMO. Sun will bring whole replacement servers down or at least whole motherboards w/ CPU, RAM etc. if the LM support tells them it's a critical failure.
I highly doubt that they're switching to Linux on *this* kind of a scale. They've had Linux machines around for years here and there, but because they rely heavily on vendor support even if only in those situations where heads will roll if a server goes down for too long, or goes down at all.
Believe me, when things go high up the flagpole there and there's a mission critical or even business critical failure, the comparisons between the monetary loss and the salary of the some poor IT person who is responsible get drawn *real quick*.
At least with Sun in the picture they can say. "It's their fault!"
We're talking about systems whose value equate into literally millions of dollars lost if there is downtime at an inopportune time.
The previous poster was right about legal threat - Lockheed probably doens't give a damn about SCO's now-crumbled lawsuits. They would eat SCO alive and crap them out as a new subsidiary if they even tried to put a suit on them.
Though Linux has been more or less viable in the small to mid size server arena for a few years now, I never once heard that LM would consider ditching Solaris.
After all, they're doing big business as the war rages on and they aren't exactly short on budget funds!
If they insist on moving away from unix and getting Linux, Sun has a great linux offering with their Java Desktop System (JDS) Release 2.
And most important, both Solaris and Sun JDS Linux have standarized on GNOME as the desktop / UI, so the re-training costs are minimum and the affected employees can continue working seamlessly with the previous look-and-feel.
That is, if they're running recent solaris instead of ages-old SunOS.
I'm getting tired of some of the press and financial analysts attitude of "let's kick McNealy some more and see if he finally leaves". Remember the wall street know-it-alls are the same people that 2 years ago said "they should drop software and should focus on their core business: sparc hardware".
Today, it's just the opposite, a very innovative software company. Do I have to mention Sun's contributions to open source (OpenOffice), to web standards (indirectly via their Mozilla support on Solaris and their JDS linux), to cross-platform computing (with Java) and to desktop standarization across linux/unix (with their support of Gnome)?.
Great. Which Lockheed aircraft have these seats?
Get real! Linux works best for non-technical people, because they can no longer break all of the stuff that they're accustomed to breaking under MS-Windows, if not directly then by reading the wrong piece of spam in MS-Outlook or clicking the "Yes, I want my computer to be anally raped" link/button on some bizarre website.
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
Ah, but it's not. Your manager has problems sharing flyers with you, but you can easily make a pdf to give her that will work anywhere the same way every time. Given a choice between the two pigs, the one that cost less and does more is the winner.
If you have a problem collaborating on the text of the flyer, you might hit her with the clue stick and ask her to send text to you instead of a dinky flyer. If you were both running Linux, you could shell into each other's machines and share your work the easy way.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
As an employee of LMCO I'd like to state the Linux is heavily used on the project I'm working with. Corporate has also been gearing us up for embedded / realtime Linux systems by bringing in contractors to teach classes. Overall they have been great, although some of the hardware we are using that is running Linux is rather, well, not field proven yet.
;)
For the curious:
www.pti.com
Can't say much else...
I didn't know LM made WMD's. Hmm ... chemical, biological, nuclear ... you sure this's LM? The same company that makes ships, planes, and some NASA spacecraft? That one?
Go back to San Francisco, and let the adults talk.