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."

Comments

which flavor?

[mabu]

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?

Sun worry, why?

[steelerguy]

They just have to convine Lockheed to use Sun Java Desktop, aka SuSE.

YA know...

[MisanthropicProgram]

However, Utah Unix company SCO could throw a monkey wrench into Lockheed's Linux plans. According to our source, Lockheed's lawyers "are like a deer in the headlights" because of SCO's legal threats over Linux usage.

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!

Re:OpenOffice

[mr_burns]

Instead of 2 computers on each desk (a unix workstation and a pc running office bugware) they could save money by replacing both machines with 1 G5 running their unix apps and M$ office at the same time.

For that matter, they could run M$ office via codeweavers crossover on their linux box and get rid of the extra box that way.

Either way, you could sell the windows box to subsidize the replacement plan and save a buttload of money.

I guess I shouldn't be surprised that a defense contractor made the expensive choice.

Something doesn't make sense...

[hndrcks]

"'Every engineer has a Microsoft PC sitting next to their Sun Blade,' said their source."

Why arent they using these?

Re:Lockheed Martin will never run OpenOffice

[sloanster]

So forget it. It's not good enough, they have to interoperate with too many subcontracters, government agencies, etc, etc

Sure, let's just ignore all the problems and incompatibilities that plague those using different versions of ms office...

At any rate, I hate to break it to you, but we are finding that we like open office better than ms office - and have been using OO 1.1 to share ms docs with coworkers and vendors, as well as reports to management, for some months now without a single problem.

This silly ms-office elitism really needs to stop. standards, not vendor lock-ins, are the key to interoperability.

Thats assuming even MS Office is compatible

[Vicegrip]

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...