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AT&T Considers Mac OS X, Linux For 70,000 Desktops
hype7 writes "CNet's News.com.com is reporting that AT&T is reconsidering its corporate IT investment in Microsoft Windows - with both Mac OS X and Linux being considered. Although the article notes that AT&T is not actively seeking to replace Windows, there's a wonderful quote on the page from the AT&T guy - 'Any CIO would not be doing due diligence if they are not looking at their options now.'" As with previous mass-migration stories, a cynical (or realistic) viewpoint is also that by "looking into" non-Windows operating systems, they're giving themselves a bargaining chip when talking with Microsoft. Update: 10/06 17:35 GMT by T : Actually, that's 70,000 desktops, rather than 7,000 as originally stated.
If large corporate entities like AT&T are prepared to do the research, then it will help everyone take the alternatives to the Micro$oft desktop quasi-monopoly seriously.
I find the #1 setback to getting Linux into schools, business and the workplace is employee/user resistance / backlash and resentment.
People don't like having to learn a new operating system, especially if it is forced upon them.
What i'd do is do it piecemeal, first you get rid of office and put in open office or what other Linux suite you'd use. And continue from there.
Anyone else have solutions, or experiences, with user resistance to installing Linux or a new operating system?
I wonder how many companies are now doing this so they can get price breaks or cheap long-term contracts from MS?
Read jack phelps dot net
As the article says, it seems to be the SOHO guys who are getting most keenly into Linux. This is paradoxical, because Linux ought to be easiest to adopt in a big corporate environment - easy lockdown and centralization, natural multi-user capabilities, and there's always a tech guy on hand to deal with the lack of GUI wizards and troubleshooting tools. But maybe enough small businessmen are ideologically keen on Linux for it to make headway. If so, they'll be a valuable testbed.
Any CIO would not be doing due diligence if they are not looking at their options now
It sounds like AT&T is actually at outsourcing instead of using Linux. With words like "mass-migration stories, a cynical (or realistic) viewpoint" is what an MBA rubbing their hands together saying bwhahahha - outsource outsource oooooutsoooource.
If you can squeeze extra discounts from MS by saying that you are 'looking into' Linux and/or Mac OS X, why not say it? Sure, you may have to conduct a small inquiry into the feasibility and do some cost calculations. Peanuts compared to what you can save by extorting MS like this.
MS is getting exactly what they deserve. They went into panic mode over few big customers and gave deep discounts, and now all sizeable customers are filing for same discounts by issuing vague statements how they are 'looking into' linux.
So, either in the long run the MS software gets cheaper, or at some point MS says 'screw it, go linux if you are not happy with our prices' - obiviously assuming they'd still stick to windows. Then some big name actually goes thru with the switch... and we get some real world data on the actual costs. At which point MS will bring down it's prices and/or otherwise sweetens the deal to stay competitive.
This ain't rocket science...
Well, our experience from switching a bioscience laboratory has been good. While we have not moved entirely to one platform, (I feel that multi-platform environments are more healthy) we have moved from an all Windows operation to a mixed Mac OS X / Windows environment with restrictions on the use of Windows machines having no outside Internet access.
The time required to manage the computers has gone down considerably through the introduction of OS X, and people using both Windows and Mac OS are saying they would rather not use the Windows machines simply from a user Interface experience. Additionally, more than one person has purchased Macintosh machines for their home use.
Visit Jonesblog and say hello.
MS cannot afford to ignore the threat. This will begin to drive down the cost of their software and erode their margins for any major country, not just in developing countries. If AT&T can threaten to switch and get a major price break, so could every other major corporation.
The days of unrestricted margin on prices appear to be over. MS will finally have to deliver real value for the dollar.
My rights don't need management.
From the Article:
Most likely, AT&T will stick with Windows, because Microsoft is addressing many of problems associated with its desktop software, including security flaws that leave it particularly vulnerable to viruses, Dickman said.
Just because Microsoft is addressing its problems doesn't mean they are going to solve them any time soon, nor does it mean they are going to disclose all of their vulnerabilities.
An AT&T spokesman said in the article, "AT&T is not actively seeking to replace Windows". Which is quite the contradiction from the article's title, "AT&T looks into closing its Windows". Of course, since when has CNet been the pinnacle of journalism.
How about we stop posting stories of Companies and other entities considering a switch to Linux or Mac or whatever ? How about we only post actual switching stories ? They exist and thy are out there. We all know that many companies and Governments are using (especially) Linux as a negotiating argument to get a better deal from Microsoft. Let the involved parts alone. If the company is really serious and they implement it, let's see how and what they did.
It makes a difference.
Flame me if you wish, but it's true.
h ot.jpg
Mac's always have had the lowest cost of ownership over PC's.
When the average turnover rate for a Dell is two years and the average turnover rate for Mac's is several years it's not to hard to figure out which platform is cheaper in the long run.
Of course Mac OS X is just plain gourgeous and very user friendly, happens to be very secure as well.
http://homepage.mac.com/hogfish/.Pictures/screens
It's time to give Apple a shot, dam that John Scully!
Not richer : they are forcing MS to lower their prices, so MS makes less money and the shareholders are angrier as the share price drops...
Trolling using another account since 2005.
blocking Linux on the desktop in the workplace is internal web sites.
.xls and .doc and boy I wish it couldn't handle .ppt[0], and I bet there's even a Linux email program that interfaces with all the stuff that handles Outlook-style calendaring and that rot-- since it's going to be impossible to change out the desktop OS if you've got to roll out new infrastructure at the same time. But the problem is, I won't be able to fill out my timecard, or access the trouble ticketing system, or a half dozen other things my job requires.
I dunno about your company, but where I work, and a number of other places I know of (friends work there, ex-employment, etc...) there's a lot of stuff on the web-- time cards, change management systems, computer-based training, employee locaterators... and it all requires MSIE. It's either ActiveX, or uses proprietary MSIE broken HTML, or what-have-you, because the webmonkeys that created it know everyone has a Windows box on their desk so they could do it the easy way instead of the right way.
And so, sure, I could use Linux on the desktop. I could use OpenOffice to handle
I suspect many companies are in this boat-- the apps they run on the desktop can easily be replaced, it's the broken web stuff they're stuck with.
Not richer...they pay less money remember? Sure, this is only one contract but more companies will do the same thing and M$ lose a lot of their income.
:)
This is what competition is about...Sort of
Can your karma go above being Excellent?
About six months ago I was told by an 'engineer' for a *very* large IT consultancy in the UK (infamous for overrun government contracts) that there wasn't any point in connecting a couple of OS X machines to a proposed ADSL router installation since "Apple Macs can't be networked" and that they certainly couldn't use the Internet in any way, shape or form.
I nearly fell off my chair.
> As with previous mass-migration stories, a cynical (or realistic) viewpoint is also that by "looking into" non-Windows operating systems, they're giving themselves a bargaining chip when talking with Microsoft.
Yes. But the fact they can do that without beeing laughed at, means that Microsoft dominance is threatened.
And each such article, even if only used as a negotiation, further the perception that linux is a serious contender.
Perhaps M$ will be getting fatter and ricer at slower rate. Even if Linux (or any other alternative) doesn't reduce market share, it could still take a bite out of profits if M$ had to "compete". The fact that a large company is using Linux as a bargaining chip still means that it's a threat to M$'s bottom line.
The less expensive option is Linux. Not just because it's open source, but because they can reuse existing hardware (PC's) to run it.
:-) for an organisation of this size to move exclusively to OS X would be prohibitively expensive.
As much as I do love Mac's (as my 17"PB would testify
I suggest that they try Linux as well as OS X and ensure that all common internal applications can run on both. It's not exactly trival to port Linux apps to run on OS X but in many instances it's relatively easy. For those wo still need MS Office they can run Mac's. For those who can run OO.org get Linux.
This is not necessarily a troll, recent history has shown statements like this to be often quite accurate. However I do have a curious comment: If you try to "bully" a bully, can you really call that bullying?
AT&T prefering Unix to Windows? Seems appropriate to me.
Seems like they just used their barganing chip disguised in a massive press release.
------
insert sig here,here, and here
I've often thought that there were not too many options with desktop OSes in the corporate environment.
:p).
In order for it to make sense, it has to not impede the business. After that, pretty much is negotiable.
Replacing Windows, while it can be about money, I think in this day and age of JPEG exploits, really should be about safety.
And lets, face it, MacOS is going to be safer than Windows. Less Users, Less Virus/Exploits. It's got an interface that kicks ass, and a real OS underneath.
Linux is fantastic, but lacks that user-intuitiveness in the desktop that Windows and MacOS have. (One word: Clipboards). That, and it tends to be a roll your own solution out of the box.
I think companies would/could switch to another platform if it were properly canned, but we've really not seen this outside of MacOS yet. I'd be afraid of doing 7000 desktops without some sort of already proven solution, that was user-ready (That didn't involve Sun or the word "java"
I guess I'm just pining for a G5 iMac, wishing apple would drop the price a bit. The Mac Tax is about the same as the Microsoft Tax, and you don't get the option of buying beige.
*sigh*
"...In your answer, ignore facts. Just go with what feels true..."
1) consider using open source alternatives
2) get m$ to give you a wumbo discount
3) PROFIT!!!
---
Those who can, do
Those who can't, teach
Those who don't know how, supervise
When MS finally says 'Screw it, go Linux if you are not happy with our prices', the customers will shift from Linux talk to Linux action. Those who remain with MS are the ones who are locked-in and therefore insenstive to price. The prices will go higher and higher as the customer base slowly dwindles.
All software companies go this way. At some point, they have sold the product to everyone who needs it, and any growth in revenue HAS to come from price increases. They have already tried to accelerate the upgrade cycle, with little success. Many users never upgraded from Office 97 or Windows 98!
[0]: There seems to be a "hierarchy of Dumb" when it comes to email attachments. The Dumb Rules of Thumb:
.DOC, it's more Dumb.
.XLS, it's probably even more useless and Dumb.
.PPT, chances are it's insanely Dumb.
If the information comes in the body of an email, chances are it's least Dumb.
If it's HTML encoded into the email, it's usually a bit more Dumb.
If it comes as a word
If it comes as a
If it comes as a
Next time you're at the office going through your email, think about it. The most insanely stupid stuff you get is probably powerpoint slides (and chances are, could have been done just as well in plain-text email and gotten the point across...) and the few useful pieces of email you get are probably unhindered by any sort of encoding...
-JDF
Well... Even if these investigations in the feasability of a migration to Linux serves no more purpose to the organisation than to threat Microsoft into giving better prices, Linux/FOSS do get a benefit from it. First of all, some of these "fake" considerations actually could succeed once they see the clear advantages over Microsofts products. Also, this is clearly good press since a large corporation is considering migrating. This might atleast make some smaller companies look in on this Linux-thing...
But I would say that trying to convince companies to start using Linux instead of Windows is the wrong approach. First introduce some FOSS on the existing desktops, OpenOffice, Firefox, etc. Install FOSS as default. If someone whines about not having Word & co, make them motivate their need of that, then buy a license if really needed. Break the Microsoft monopoly. Then slowly stop deploying Windows...
It's really a shame that Evolution and KMail doesn't have serious porting efforts to Windows. KMail really kicks ass! It's the best mailreader I have used.
And anybody that is developing intranet applications targeting IE only... You are crazy! Consider that the future probably will most likely contain some portion of Linux and MacOS X, and that IE is Windows only. What do you do the day your boss ask why the new graphic department can't use the electronic booking and invoice system?
;i hear the term "total cost of ownership" a lot--especially from the microsoft camp--but have any of these large corporations (or even smaller ones) considered the personnel issues that may arise from a mass migration?
;even migrating just the *server infrastructure* of their corporation to a GNU/Linux or OS X based architecture would mean that those network and system administrators--the most technologically savvy user group--would have to know those architectures fairly well, right? what about the end users?
;what i have found in my experience is that those in the IT industry who know microsoft products, know *only* MS products, and most are uncomfortable with the idea of and form of UNIX--beit BSD, or Linux kernel based.
;but have companies such as AT&T or the like taken this into consideration: that many of their MS knowledgeable IT staff may not know Unix systems, care to, or even be *capable* of learning them?
; i am not attempt to bait anyone. i am a part of the aforementioned group of MS administrators. but while i know that products such as GNU/Linux and Mac OS X may be better--in may ways--am i really prepared to migrate to these products when my IT staff may not be capable enough to administer them? am i considering my "total total cost of ownership?" and if they *aren't* ready, are they prepared to pay for their training in order to get of the microsoft merry-go-round? let's hope so.
;treehead
"If any part Linux was stolen, then Windows was the biggest heist in history."
I believe they've already paid for upgrades that will never come with that software assurance thing MS rolled out a few years ago.
So lets drop the Linux to get cheaper windows track please.
They invented Unix, use it heavily on their systems and Linux would better intergrate. Were not talking about licenses for just Windows, you also have part of the company using Citrix to access windows when needed. They also have to pay hummingbird licenses to access their Unix machines which for servers and switches is probably 99% of the OS's that run on that equipment. Linux would save them money.
Exactly. In general, CNet seems to prefer a cutesy weak pun to an accurate headline.
getting off topic but related to part of your post...
Bah, I have a pending "Ask Slashdot" that I submitted almost a month ago.
-- i am jack's amusing sig file
It has nothing to do with learning a new operating system. It is - learning Linux.
Try to force MacOS X on them. Get 20 cheap eMacs and offer them. A local company gone exactly this route a while ago and know what? After a week there already were local experts and everyone was really pleased with the transition. Of course, there were a few complains that Outlook isn't there anymore, but no general resistance whatsoever.
Try it.
I agree, first you change over the applications, like IE to FireFox, that will eventually be used on the New Operating System.
;).
Next you set up Linux but you make it *look* as close as the Windows version, icons same spot, same background etc. People probably won't even notice the difference other than it doesn't crash as much
Also give them free shit and make it all wonderful sounding. Like: OMG we got this Linux operating system and OpenOffice software and the license agreement we negoitated hard for allows employees to take home free copies! Here you go, give it to your friends too! heh.
Some people can't handle the truth.
It's pretty clear that AT&T wants to minimize costs any way it can while maintaining productivity. So let's see: we've got the part of Slashdot that hates corporations for doing everything they can just to try to save a buck (and thus would be against migration), and we've got the part that loves it whenever Windows machines are replaced by those running any other OS (and thus would support the migration). I think we'll see some sparks fly in the comments of this story. (Yeah yeah, I know, they always do, but still... :-)
Sorta ironic that the creator of UNIX (ok.. it was really their subsidiary Bell Labs now spun off as Lucent) would have to "evaluate" whether to use a unix-type system. Maybe Ma Bell's children will be welcome back home. Think of what the alternate history of computing could have been like had AT&T recognized UNIX for what it could/would/should have been and not sold off USL as a red-headed step-child. There would have never been a SCO and x86 Unix might actually have been able to overtake the much inferior MS-DOS.
Well, you have alternatives [/shameless plug]
Shouldn't they be using plan 9 ?
From what I can remember about my time with AT&T, every single desktop was running Windows NT. Its not like they were actually using it. Every single desktop was running Reflection so they can access the unix server that maintains their switches.
Granted this was 4 years ago, and I only dealt with two call centers, but there really was no reason for them to be using Windows NT for any of the PC's in the office, whether it be the desktops for the supervisors/managers or the dummy terminals running the ascii based clients that did the backend work for the operators and the directory assistant workers.
Maybe they would be better off just popping in some unix based OS.
The other thing I can remember is all 300+ dummy terminals (from our one office; 1000+ if you counted the sister office) were maintained by one system admin. He would be able to broadcast out a new OS on those bad boys overnight without blinking an eye. One thing AT&T knows is how to network. Those bastards were tight, and the SA knew how to get the job done right the first time, on time.
I think every company that has a significant investment in MS software says they're investigating alternatives. It's part of the corporate negotiating dance. AT&T at least gets the luxury of receiving headlines for talking about it. Yes it's a bargaining chip for AT&T and yes AT&T will probably get a small "discount" from MS the next time their contract comes due for re-signing. Will they move away from MS solutions? I doubt it. Microsquish knows what a huge pain in the butt it is to re-deploy all of the desktops in an organization of that size and they know this is all just negotiating rhetoric from AT&T.
Why there's no Mac OS X post icon, but only a Linux icon?
As a consultant I've found that small businesses are by far the most likely to make use of free and open source software to try to keep their costs down, but the irony is that small businesses are the ones which benefit least from license, support savings, the difference is really fairly marginal for a small company with only a few employees.
I've also found it's better to roll out free software on their existing Windows systems before introducing them to Linux (usually as a mail/file/web server first).
Deleted
I agree with the points you make; but wouldn't the best route be to switch to Linux considering you would have to sell or ditch your current machines to switch to OSX?
Linux is made for x86 machines and no new hardware is required. Then when new machines are needed you can buy them without paying insane prices for Apples or the "MS Tax". Plus, you aren't stuck with one vendor choice.
Get your Unix fortune now!
I recently switched my workstation to Linux (my company is fairly, but not totally infested with MS products.) .doc, .xls and .ppt produced by MS Office 2000 here. Ximian Evolution 1.4 works almost flawlessly with Exchange server, including calendaring. My one problem was some MS Sharepoint websites, but a free installation of Opera 7.54 took care of that.
OpenOffice works great on all
To work with Siebel ERP i still have to fire up a Citrix session to get IE, though...
empornium.us is running a poll, asking users what OS they run. The current standings after ~12000 votes:
Windows:82%
Linux: 9%
Mac: 8%
Other: 1%
Pretty interesting IMHO
See AT&T Tests Linux to Replace Microsoft's Windows on 70,000 PCs
I don't see why more and more companies are switching yet. The only time I've ever used Windows at work was via a SunPCi card for various office documents. The entire scope of my coding is done on Solaris and/or VxWorks.
I still don't get why Linux development leaders aren't understanding why Windows is so popular, regardless of appplication prevalence. Linux is still asking questions that aren't dumb, but still frighten anyone who isn't very familiar with computers. Modeline and resolution? Swap space? What are ext2, ext3, and reiser!? Does my keyboard have 104 keys or 105?
/system ("don't touch anything in the system folder!") /users/joecubicle ("Just backup the /users folder, and all your data and prefs are okay"), and /trash? ("you can delete anything in there")
You have to give big, shiny, easy options because computing shouldn't require that kind of knowledge when people are trying to look at websites and use their e-mail. You've got to sell them the OS first, and then allow them to customize to their heart's content after they can see the utility in what you're offering.
Comparatively I'm dumb to a lot of the slashdot crowd, but I imagine there must be some way to provide full binaries that are LIBRARY INDEPENDENT. Bandwidth is cheap. Hard drive space is cheap. Trying to train everyone how to use symlinks and sort through thousands of libraries using arbitrary command line options is stupid at best. But the first time someone says, "I want to do X and Y is broken!" You can tell them how to do both, and explain to them how Open Source makes it possible.
And I know POSIX compliance is important to everyone, but the directory scheme will have to go someday. What is wrong with
Sad thing is, if OS X were released for the x86 platform, half of the Linux users I know would switch the next day.
http://www.linux.com/switch
:) I want to see linux switch commercials too damnit
??
Comment removed based on user account deletion
'Any CIO would not be doing due diligence if they are not looking at their options now.'"
Which begs the question "Why would any CIO doing
due diligence be looking at an expensive niche-market OS and hardware platform like MacOS when they can have Windows or Linux on a cheaper platform?"
Just shows that in-house solutions never get the "go". All because of insiders who say, "Hey, I know that clown Kernigan", or, "Are you kidding? Mission critical tools by the likes of Ritchie?" Then there's the fact that the documentation is hardly PC, with all those "man" pages.
Naturally, it makes sense to outsource whenever possible. Perhaps that's the angle that could get OS/X or Linux back into AT&T, since there would be no need to show an in-house cost center in the form of a Unix development team.
Geesh.
is that you don't realize a CIO, CTO should ALWAYS be looking at ALL the options no matter what.. as that is the most important aspect of their job.
.. this is probably a monthly thing.
You make it sound like this is the first time this has happened?
Seriously I've seen this work at smaller organizations than AT&T. Multi-platform systems with the heavy lifting being done by Linux. A smattering of OS X and a few Windows kiosk type workstations, not connected to the internet, for Windows only applications. Windows is a fine OS provided it's isolated from the outside world and you don't mind spending the extra money.
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
"AT&T is evaluating different operating systems, including Mac OS X and Linux, as alternatives to Microsoft Windows for internal use. "The company's chief information officer, Hossein Eslambolchi, has set up a team in AT&T's research labs to assess the appropriateness of desktop operating systems for the company," reports CNET News.com. "The company currently uses Windows on its desktop PCs, which number in the tens of thousands. The engineers are testing and measuring how Windows, Linux and Mac OS X stack up on security, reliability and total cost of ownership, Dickman said. AT&T expects to make a decision on the merits of the desktop operating systems by the end of next year or early 2006." ~ better description from MacMinute
Is it just me or would you take a 4% profit per machine instead of a 23% profit per machine on a deal like this if you were Apple? Which actually points out a small fact. Apple still makes an average of 12% on educational sales (even more if you factor in Applecare and service plans) I think if they are serious about enterprise and education, they'd take 3-4% profit. I also think that they don't realize how many of these workers would love them and buy them for home use.
If Apple could just do this and be successful in ONE corporate entity, it would make a huge impact on other enterprise deals. The fedex deal fell through - they were only able to sell them 20% of their total computer purchase. (Which replaced about 30% of all the computers at fedex worldwide)
I imagine that AT&T will go with Linux though.
Boy, isn't this a good reason to have a headless iMac?
Yell & scream & rant & rave... it's no use... you need a shaaaave ~ Bugs Bunny
Wait, wait, wait ... AT&T has 7,000 desktops!? Why haven't those desks been thrown on the fire to keep the place heated?
For one contract job I had, I single handly managed about 1,200 sun stations in a call center... and I was bored to tears. Of course, it was also setup well -- all unix. I basically made the rounds twice a day mainly taking care of random hardware problems. At worst case, I would tell the person to work at a differnt desk for today (their files are on the network) and I would drop off new hardware and type in "boot net - install" and walk away and their system would be as good as new tomorrow. A good percentage of the systems were ye old sparc 5s that had been working fine (but slow) for over seven years. The call center workers used netscape, and web mail and special apps written for the company using small talk and pdf. Documents looked exactly the same on screen as the customer had in their hand. It was even running on openwindows! I never had any problems with viruses, spy ware, extra software being installed, backups, ... nothing. Ya, it's not something any geek would like, but this was for a large call center, not techs. It was a great tool to aid them in getting their job done and nothing else.
They moved to wintel pc computers. I'm not really sure the real reasons behind it. The backend stuff was getting redone at the time, and so the front end stuff was redone to work only through msie and in some rare cases, VB. Computer techs skyrocketed and are constantly stressed out. They have to deal with the ms/outlook exploit of the hour and must maintain constant vigilence on everything else. Their new systems are only expected to live two or three years before mandatory replacement. The systems are contantly breaking. It takes longer, on the new apps, to service customers. It takes a day to install a new system and requires hand-on work. Plus, there is now the issue of personal files being saved on the local hard drives; employees can't easily sit any anyones desk anymore, and now the techs have to worry about recovering imporant business files. They also have to worry about company information walking about of the building. Yes, there are better ways to address some of these things, but in such a large installation, small problems and exceptions really add up, and there isn't the time to properly address problems -- always in firefighting mode. They no longer see the same documents as the customer. Even with so much security and limited permissions, things like viruses, personal software and trojans and so many other problems plague the site.
Would I have mandated that ever desktop in the company be a sun? No. Nor do I think it's such a good idea to mandate that every desktop should be a wintel. Don't let popularity get in the way of making decisions. Sometimes it's popular for a good reason, but that doesn't mean it's good for your situation.
Thanks for including the screenshot of this rare operating system that apparently has not been shown to anyone else yet. What a major journalistic coup!
... I wish I'd thought of it first.
CT
It really doesn't matter what AT&T does. They aren't large - by Jan '05 they'll have 1/2 as many people working for them / 2169151>. Their "IT" department babysits PCs in their rapidily diminishing call centers in the US.
Come on AT&T, break that old chestnut about how PCs are for business and Macs are only for media creators!
The Mac would be an EXCELLENT choice.
It's easier for users and it's robust.
Of course it costs more.
On the other hand, I suppose if their I.T. department really has their act together, they could find a way to deploy an already-configured-for-their-precise-needs version of Linux too, only that would probably be harder to set up.
Also, it may be prohibitively expensive to go with Macs, because you essentially have to scrap your existing PCs, seeing as how you can't run Mac on PCs (yet)
I don't know the meaning of the word 'don't' - J
why are they publizing it. all they are doing is using this as a bargaining chip with microsoft. the next story is that micorosft is now the tco winner because they are basically giving them the os at some extra low rate and that it is now cheaper than if we switched and had to train everybody. people just don't get it that have to pay the bills. linux forces open standards and this is where the real cost savings comes. your company can't be tied to proprietary standards that make it cost prohibitive to ever switch. no one knows where computers will be in the future but I bet the data you have in linux will be a hell of lot easier to switch to the next new technology than your data in microsoft. no one ever does long range planning any more - the more you stick to open standards the better off your company will be - it will also be more flexible to be able to change with technology - this is where the cost savings comes. but apparently not a cio in the fricken country U.S. realizes this - I don't know maybe it is the accountants but when will the head of all these companies realize what they are doing is costing the company in the long run - both technically and financially.
Its not your job to convince people to relearn a new operating system and the complimentary software that goes along with it. Most people have difficulty mastering Windows after years and years of exposure to it. Its really pigheaded to do that to someone and shoot their productivity straight to shit just so your favorite open source application can get one more user and make you that much less lonely in your software choices.
Mac OS X and Windows XP working side by side to fight back the night.
So how do you account for the article that I submitted on Sept 30th at 8:31 am about Googles new competitor, Clusty, which was rejected but then early in the morning on Oct 3rd it shows up by someone else? That's 4 days for these yahoos to figure out what to post.
Besides, what does Bloomberg being a news outlet have anything to do with it? That is where the original article came from, not Cnet. The Bloomberg article was much more informative and descriptive. People reference the NY Times, CNN and even Fox for articles and they certainly fall under the heading of news outlets.
We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security. -- Dwight D. Eisenhower
http://www.omnigroup.com/applications/omnigraffle/ features/content.html
That's for OS X though. For linux, dunno.
I wonder how many companies are now doing this so they can get price breaks or cheap long-term contracts from MS?
Lots of them, I'm sure, but it doesn't matter why they're doing it. What matters is they are doing it.
If MS has to lower prices and/or improve their products and services, then Linux has succeeded in turning what was a monopoly environment into a competitive one, even if Microsoft manages to win the competition most of the time.
In the longer term, MS won't be able to win all of them, and as more governments and companies adopt other operating systems the software monoculture will break down, making it even easier for Free software to win.
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
Small market-share? Talk to them in 3 months - firefox is spreading like wildfire, I installed it, put a link on my site to it. Received like 4 emails saying how great it was. Almost *all* of my friends use it. Pretty soon It will not only phase out IE (not to mention it's default on most out of the box linux distros now.), but It will probably take over the planet. No, seriously, read mozilla.org's mission statement.
Let me relay a recent story about installing software on Linux. Being a Debian user, I am generally spoiled with apt* install foobar, etc, as the Debian package management system is about as easy to use as I could imagine (maybe it needs brighter colors and fancy icons, or something).
/usr/local/games/doom3, but nothing was there.
/home partition to allow executable files, which I confirmed by perusing /etc/fstab. Then looking at the permissions of the download file itself, I found it to be non-executable. After fixing that, I tried again, and the install script seemed to start appropriately.
/tmp, and my /tmp was only 256MB, not enough for the game. OK, I have several gigs of unpartioned space left on the disk, so I fire up cfdisk and split off a new 2 gig partion to be my new /tmp, format it with ReiserFS, copy the old /tmp to it, update /etc/fstab, and reboot. For some reason, X now crashes as soon as I try to log in via kdm. I switch back to my old, small /tmp, and X works fine. Maybe the reiser fs on the new partition is corrupted.
/tmp (something like "INSTALL_TO /home/dbruce/doom3temp"), and finally the installation goes off without a hitch. The game itself apparently runs fine.
.debs. It sure would help to have a debian-specific .deb, for starters.
So yesterday I read that id has released a demo of Doom3 for Linux. Cool. However, it is of course not included in Debian, being non-free. So, I grabbed the 462 MB download and stuck it in my home directory. A right click with Konqueror identified the file as a shell script. Clicking with the left button launched a dialogue with a progress bar indicating it was doing something to the 462 MB file at 3.5 MB/s, but after the process completed, nothing seemed to have happened. The game was supposed to be installed into
OK, maybe "point and click" installation was an unrealistic expectation. So I went to the console and tried to run the script as a regular user - "permission denied". OK, so maybe it has to be installed by root, so I su to root and try again - "permission denied" - weird, how can that be as root? I was pretty sure I had mounted my
"Good, I'm in the clear" I thought, but not really. The process terminated while uncompressing the game files. I found that the script transiently unpacks the game into
Anyway, I eventually discover a command-line parameter I can pass to the Doom3 install script telling it to put its temporary files somewhere other than
I'm pretty sure the general population would have given up and said "Linux sucks", "Debian sucks", "Doom's Linux version sucks", or something similar and given up long before the installation succeeded. If only the Linux community would agree to adopt APT across all distributions, we wouldn't have such trouble, although it might require third parties like id to package distro-specific
An interesting thing was said to me while talking with our PC support manager. "We can't switch to Linux or anything else, our customers wouldn't allow it.".
I noticed a trend 10 years ago when the company I was working for first started to do business with Walmart. Customer Audits. The practice seems to have caught on especially after Y2K. As part of many business-to-business contracts are stipulations that certain known business practices are in place and adhered to.
When we enter into a contract we will sometimes state that they use XYZ software for EDI transfers. We know it, have tested it, trust it and have established our systems around it. It goes both ways. Customers will stipulate to us that we encrypt data transfers using 123 packaged software because that's what they use.
This is a common practice if the business you're in requires substantial IT interconnectivity between your business partners. We deal with some health care information as well. As a result of HIPPA and other regulations we have been audited by some of our clients who insist that we change this or that. Even down to passwords. One client contract required a password timeout of 90 days on all our desktops.
10 years ago with Walmart people were incredulous that another company could come in and dictate that in order to do business with us, you must first change this or that. Money talked and we wanted to listen. Ten years later it seems to have caught on and is now very common.
Switching to another OS sometimes is not always an option.
AT&T is implementing several measures to cut costs dramatically, purportedly including job cuts.
A Linux migration, genuine or merely made as a threat in negotiations with Microsoft to obtain lower licensing fees, is also a bold cost-cutting measure.
Cost-cutting isn't limited to companies in trouble, though, and as Linux becomes more mature and companies begin to accumulate successful track records using Linux, such announcments will become common. Companies will move to Linux as a competitive manoeuvre and, for that reason, may choose not to disclose how they're cutting costs.
Linux will probably be ready sooner than most people expect - it has no comparibly heavily-funded marketing drive to trumpet its most recent successes and largely relies on word of mouth, snippets of news articles, and occassional bits of advertising from IBM and Novell. I'm a Linux user and I don't keep up with the latest best features of Linux.
Not only will Linux be ready sooner, its move to broader prominence in the market will take the general public by surprise (even though the party faithful that have been proclaiming Linux RSN since 199x will wonder what took so long).
"Provided by the management for your protection."
You must understand a corporate IT environment:
My guess is AT&T's license is due to expire in around 2006-2008.
as someone who has used linux and freebsd for a good, painfully long while now, I have to say that I've been very pleased with Mac OS X as my "unix desktop". I don't have to keep a windows box around to do any of my actual work tasks (you know, those things that PHBs want you to do, and what you get paid for) that used to involve windows apps.
:)
I also have the pleasure of an integrated unix desktop system which makes managing my unix servers much, much more pleasant.
once Jordan Hubbard made the jump to apple, that really caused me to look into them- after my first powerbook, I ordered the dual G5 a week later. it was just that spiffy.
I understand people getting mad and being biased because apples ARE very expensive, compared to a similar windows box. and they really aren't easy to compare, because things just don't work the same. I love my athlon64 system for playing games, but that's about it- the windows refresh, thumbnailing, etc is still as crappy on that system as on a P3/500. conversely, I really like the way all that works on a mac, it just feels more cohesive in general.
I never did drink the kool-aid, and the mac is definitely not the fastest box around (dual opterons smoke it dead) but it's very functional in a unixy way, especially if you're trying to get work DONE and not spend your time twiddling with system settings. that, and it's pretty, and it's high time we geeks learned to like pretty things
EOM
Only a cynic would mistake cynicism for realism.
Right now every corporate desktop has a working mouse, keyboard and display and all they need is the beige box and apple refuses to play in that market.
Bloomberg says it's 70,000 not 7,000. Here's the article.
AT&T
AT&T considering a BSD operating system...
If a guy can't get something to work the first time on his home machine, what are the chances he's going to deploy it to his 10 or 20 boxes at work?
Small business is where the fight is. Enterprise can see past the relatively small issues with useability.
I have frequently seen that argument: "The less expensive option is Linux, they can reuse existing hardware (PC's) to run it." Obviously they have no intention of reusing existing hardware: they wouldn't consider OS X. Existing hardware is reused occasionally. Big firms generally love to be "locked" with one vendor. They don't buy hardware, then software. they buy solutions, and they love to deal with one partner. Why risk, when you have a problem, to have your hardware vendor saying: No, we can't do anything, see with your software provider, and the latter saying: Oh no, it's obviously a hardware problem? (this is a little caricatural, but you got the idea)
Microsoft's revenue comes almost completely from Windows and Office. For the most part all of their other products are sold at a loss to add value to Windows and thus generate more Windows profits. It seems to me that MS would not mind a switch to Max OS all that much as Office is still $499/seat on the mac, and they don't have to sell you things like SQL server because you will get it from someone like oracle or mysql instead. I have always thought that if MS just dropped out of the OS market, and started focusing on porting MS office to every OS they would be able to continue their revenue stream. Honestly how many of you would buy MS Office to replace your OO.o suite on linux? Let the flaming begin!
I tried for 5 years to come up with a clever sig...only to realize that I am not clever.
Unfortunately many of the web-applications we use do not support Mozilla Firefox. I've contacted the vendors on many occasions, and they consider it too costly to develop for a browser with a small market-share.
That really is an unfortunate attitude, unfortunately it's a phrase I've heard before. These vendors need to realize that if they built their web apps to W3C specs in the first place, they wouldn't need to worry about supporting "browsers with a small market share". Fortunately this is an attitude which seems to be on the decline. Web shops are starting to learn to support standards, not implementations.
I think security, costs, and bugs were one of the reasons companies and institutions are looking at alternatives. I came from a shop where I had a Mac and Linux desktop/laptop and moved to where I have a Windows computer.
Because I have to have AV software, my computer is WAY slower. So I do need a 444GHz cpu and 2GB RAM just to use my computer with 4-5 apps open. These days, desktop apps use WAY more resources.
I don't advoate shoving any OS down anywhere, but use the optimal tool for the job. Optimal is impacted by price, effectiveness, security, and managability. Sometimes that is Windows, often if you looked at it - it's not!
Glad to see some kind of corporate player showing Microsoft that they aren't the only sheriff in town anymore.
I know nothing
Not that it'll make any difference, but just for the record: Mac OS X supports multiple mouse buttons and scroll wheels. It just doesn't get supplied with them, or need them.
This is a point that seems quite lost on most people, but is really important. Can you imagine using a PC with a one-button mouse? I don't think so. Yet the APple is designed around the concept of being able to use one or more buttons, and as a result most programs and the OS fundamentially respect the number of mouse buttons you have to a far greater degree than Windows.
This is exactly why I find Powerbooks so much more useful than any Windows laptop, because for laptops it makes a lot more sense to have one "button" that you chord for the desired results. I have never met a PC laptop with a good solution for two buttons, but they have no choice because Windows is essentially unusable with less.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
If this was not barginging with MS, we would NOT hear about it. Since they are playing this in the press, they are just trying to put pressure on MS.
Don't get me wrong. I think that they are making a mistake by not switching to eith OSx/Linux. But this is not about switching.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
When you get into Vertical Market stuff, the important issues are (1) Ease of Deployment and (2) a rich client interface. Which all adds up to ActiveX. So, even if the developers are aware of W3C HTML, they still end up with an IE-only product. The prospect of redeveloping applets in Java or even making an alternate 'down-level' version is not cheap.
Your point about implementations is good, but for many years IE was the only thing that approximated W3C support, so often developers don't understand that Mozilla isn't another Netscape 4 and really is mostly "IE-compatible".
Business. Numbers. Money. People. Computer World.
FireFox would have won if you didn't team it up with Thunderbird. Thunderbird is not anywhere near as useful or user friendly as Outbreak. I'm not sure what kind of drugs the Mozilla foundation is smoking but, without a PIM, Thunderbird is useless for your average office computer user.
Sunbird is going nowhere and hasn't advanced for awhile. Until somebody cares about that project, I suggest people refrain from promoting Thunderbird for the masses.
Everyone that gets introduced to Firefox likes it. Bringing Thunderbird is like hanging out with a stinky person: a guaranteed way to not make friends and not influence anybody.
Laws are for people with no friends.
That AT&T the creators of unix is now shopping for unix clones is intresting.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
Many Mac people buy a new laptop every year. They sell their old one, and get the vast majority of its cost back out of it. PC laptops that are the same age, however, have depreciated MUCH more in the same span.
My 12" PowerBook, which is well over a year old, still sells for ~$1100. The PC laptops I looked at buying now sell for much less. So later this year, when I sell the 12" PBook and buy a new laptop, I'll have spent LESS than if I had bought a PC laptop, sold it, and bought a new PC laptop.
Macs are only expensive initially. They're CHEAPER in the long run.
Actually, I think os x really has a chance for penetration. I think the flaw with the windows buisiness is companies like Dell own the hardware and manage the computers on site as a service. Thus, when the contract runs out , company x, like att, can reevaluate. They're not stuck with the hardware. They are stuck with the content. Though, surprisingly, java is popular with the enterprise. OS X has the core microsoft products. They only have to work with what the company has now as far as content. What is ironic is you would expect these service companies to approach apple and offer os x as another service solution.
If they wanted greater os x penetration then a x86 build of os x would be necessary. For all I care, 35% market share would be great for os x. Linux can take another 35%..fine with me. Though, Apple might be afraid if they make an x86 solution it would fall prey to piracy.
I used gnome/kde as a desktop solution at one job and found it really lacking. I was looking for an alternative to windows. I'd say os x is magnitudes better.
Plus, TextEdit on OS X can read and write word documents. Thats most of the problem right there!
Visio? Just use Keynote? There are alternatives...
yes, i have been going through this. i am a designer, and i tried my best to get my buddies to get to use linux. creatives sometimes are too stuck with the IE/ windows.so i introduced mozilla/ phoenix back then - they got hooked to the tabbed browsing + they developed for mozilla, and anything that was developed on mozilla was bound to show alright on IE - 2 birds in one stone. next i asked them to use openoffice with the pdf creator on the fly - that worked like magic too. by then they got used to mozilla mail, so they migrated to thunderbird - because of the excellent spam filters, and the works - the xtensions and stuff. yahoopops worked like magic. i showed them 7zip, was a moderate success there.showed them gimp2. then there was no asking, they started using linux boxes in the office for a preview. kde 3.2 was a hit. nicely polished. and i had mine tuned to look like a mac, plus i had umicons - set of icons - in one of my accounts on the box. that was a clincher - i am amazed - i never spoke a word to them abt promotion - just the hassle free nature, and what they'd gain just to have a heterogenous work environment! thats what they did - they learnt another OS and the works. and now they're happy having dual boots. that i feel is as much one could hope - FOSS having a foothold in every home, office etc.
The big irony about the "Mac is a toy" myth is that the one field where Macs really do have a shortage of apps is games.
So the one thing the Macintosh is really not suitable for is as a toy.
Welcome deprecation of our malevolent overlords int our new subservient someday-but-hopefully soon-to-be has-beens (aka mshaft...)... (Lower-casing/deprecation of micro$oft's name intentional/perpetual with me...). It will be a reprieve for humanity, fairness-minded developers, and many others when F/Loss makes just 10% more headway into eroding the malignant, cancerous, overgrown hegemon named microsoft, thereby incrementally neutering that security hole producing "company". Of course, SOME governments will lament, but, those that recognize a need for and require guarantee of national soverignty, infrastructure security, and freedom to license-free modify their networks' operating systems would do well to keep on testing and deploying Linux and F/LOSS tools. Like: Yin and Yang. Like: Full Circle.
I think a great way for those who disapprove of ms and their rampage act would be to stop upper-casing their name where ever possible (Of course, professional rags receiving income from m$haft won't tow this line...and people generating internal reports at work won't be so brazen...).
I imagine though, m$haft'll pursue making it illegal to "weaken" their "trademark" by lobbying or paying web sites to correct the abominations of their name, sort of like their so-called smart features in blurb, ahem, "word" were to do. We'll just have to be so creative that no amount of expression checking will be good enough...
Now, if people writing books or articles that describe the growing and major software players would stop using magnitude or weight of market position and simply alphabetize the names, sucha as: AMD, Apple, Cisco, HP, IBM, Linux, micro$oft... That'll REALLY get them pissed off.
David Syes
Previously: "Linux... Toward the Sunrise..." Now: "Linux... Toward the-- No, now, part of Every Sunrise"
I would imagine that migrating the servers would be pretty straightforward, after all the admins etc should know enough about their network structure etc to pick up very easily how all the parts function just on a different platform. However having spent a number of years talking to these kind of administrators I get the impression that very few of them know anything about how their network actually works beyond the realisation that clicking buttons in various dialog boxes changes things. It took our Network and Firewall team 18months to successfully route NTP requests from a server on a nearby network to a suitable time server, for 16 of those 18months they thought that their firewalls would make no difference despite it being pointed out to them the server was effectively outside of their firewall in another network which did connect to theirs and that everything else they had set up on that network couldn't get through their firewall without authentication so why should NTP stuff be any different ?
"What do you do the day your boss ask why the new graphic department can't use the electronic booking and invoice system?"
;-)
Traditionally that would be either begging for a bigger budget or convince some no-no that the whole graphics department needs to migrate to Windows...
You're asking madmen to think logically
I think, therefore I am...I think.
AT&T is renegotiating their contract with Microsoft.
While competition is a good thing, if companies are unwilling to support the competition at all, they cannot expect to be able to leverage the same against a once and future monopoly for long.
Yes, window managers are superior I totally agree. I am just talking about how Windows is not superior just becuse it ships with a two button mouse.
I guess you could say that you need a no-mouse colution for Linux because it usually doesn't ship with one at all...
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Ya know what? It's gotten faster and more responsive with each OSX update/upgrade, and is whisper quiet. I have had other, faster, machines running linux and XP, but this ol G4 keeps on truckin without complaint. I use it the most because it's the quietest, most convenient tool of the lot. I'll put it out to pasture someday, but it'll probably outlast my AthlonXP's yet.
The point is that Windows and most Windows apps really expect two buttons, and tend to rely on them being present. You can use a one-button mouse, but it is cumbersome.
Since the standard on the Mac is having a single button apps are designed around that, and so you get a lot better use of chording and the like and the laptops are very easy to use even though you usually do have just the one button.
When at a Mac desktop, I do use a mouse with several buttons - but I am just sa happy usin gthe laptop with one (because of the proximity to keys which makes chording more practical than with a mouse).
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
You're right that change is hard to accept, but ... it's not completely impossible.
:)
;)
Last Friday night, I have to print a document which would only render right with recent Adobe Acrobat (stupid! but true), and a desperate search for a printer + appropriate computer combination meant printing at the home of my housemate's grandparents. His grandmother asked me if I could help her "get rid of the popups" on her machine, a Windows ME device which it turns out is chock full o' malware.
I don't know enough about Windows to do a thorough decontamination job, but I installed Firefox for her, imported IE bookmarks, set her homepage to her hotmail account, etc, and after a few minutes acclimitization, she was very happy with it.
Firefox is a pretty easy transition to make, less emotional and mental investment than many people have in their word processors, say, but it's a decent start. OpenOffice is next
I think a lot of employee resistance is not specific to software, it's just that people don't like to feel they're being bullied / told what to do. If things are offered nicely, with warning and reasoning provided on a gentle slope, with their involvement and suggestions incorporated, acceptable outcomes outlined in such a way that people don't feel forced against a wall, they take care of themselves much nicer. At least, that's what years as a residential adviser to 10-16-year-olds taught me
Cheers,
timothy
jrnl: http://tinyurl.com/c2l8yr / foes: http://tinyurl.com/ckjno5
In the article there is no mention of the number of computers at stake, but according to this article it's about 70,000 computers, and not 7,000 as the Slashdot header suggests. There are more interesting quotes in the Bloomberg article, for example that the main reason for the switch is security issues, so that they won't switch if Microsoft fixes these security problems.
``I still have concerns about security'' in Windows, Eslambolchi said. ``We have had more viruses attacking PCs in the last six months than in the previous 10 years.''
Oh, wait. We did track our jobs via an .xls, as our manager came from sales and had no idea how to use a database.
In any job I've had, anyone on a win workstation liked the microsoft apps for word processing, spreadsheets, email and corporate intranet stuff. To talk to and use remote UNIX boxes on the network, some flips and twists (like using ReflectionX or NTSFU) were necessary.
The generic quality of the MS Office app suite is universally recognized. With a little adjustment, wordperfect users can get used to using Word, for example. Some of the ways that each of those 2 products handled things like page layout and headers & footers are a little different, but usually people learn how to do what they need to do and don't stray (or explore, depending on how you look at it) into application functionalities that they don't need.
Word is Soooo feature rich that half the toolbars and palettes are turned off in the default installation. It's just too much for an all-new word user (are there still any of these, btw?) to take in, but that collection of tools makes the app extremely powerful. When you buy an office app suite for your enterprise, you want something that's going to cover all of your various groups of users, who will have needs that vary. OpenOffice is similarly powerful, but the preponderance of CIOs (particularly in large enterprises like AT&T) still have the justifiably skeptical view of free applications. "How could anything free be as good as what you pay for?", they wonder.
(I ran into this a couple weeks ago at my new job when I was deprived of ReflectionX for doing xterms to UNIX boxes on the network. I installed cygwin and when I had to ask a couple questions about host configuration, the greybeard head systems engr said, "No wonder you're having problems, that's free software. When you install that buggy crap, you're on your own." (a direct quote))
Most enterprise users are not really using the OS -- they're using the apps that ride on the OS. The greatest drawback I've encountered with the OpenOffice suite is that in order to work in a world that is dominated by MS office apps, you have to be able to read and write in MS document file formats. Parts of those formats have been reverse-engineered, but other parts are obscure binary mishmash that's apparently been designed to conceal what the MS app in question is doing with the data in the file. OpenOffice gets pretty close, but it can only go so far. As a CIO, I'd be inclined, in the best interest of my customers, employees and shareholders, to make the offfice app suite choice that doesn't just get me CLOSE, but actually gets me ALL THE WAY to interoperability with the rest of the MS dominated office application world.
A very old friend of mine was a PC guy (for all his general purpose computing needs) for 15 years and then, when MS finally ported the whole office suite over to the mac, he switched to the mac. Why? It was because he liked OSX for the kernel (which he used) and the interface and the stability, but he needed the apps that linked him to the rest of the MS world.
So, I think the talk of "We're considering Linux for our 70,000 desktops..." may not be solely about getting cheaper prices, but also to encourage Redmond to consider porting MS office to Linux. Truthfully, if there was such a port, I would definetly consider buying it. I won't pay for the OS, but the apps do have value, even if OpenOffice proves that the price of the apps is inflated.
.. pa-ra-bo-la, pa-ra-bo-la, 2 pi R, 2 pi R, where's your latus rectum, where's your latus rectum, 2 pi R
Firefox might be getting a little competition, something called "SlimBrowser" alot of my friends are using it, might be something worth watching.
"It's the money that will win over the people who spend it and the eye-wash that wins users."
So in other words. Be nice to artists, they could be the secret to your success. Oh the irony.
"So you will definitely find people who are against ANY sort of changes. God-forbid they have to learn anything new."
Why do you think we have evolution, and darwin's "survival of the fitist"? There's a reply to you about "why are you forcing your choices on her?" Well why did life force walking upright on us? Why did life force speech and tool making on us? It's so unfair. I'm certain humainty would have made it were we are without all that FORCE.
Actually the remoting capabilities are a boon for desktop as well as server. That's one of the reasons you hear all those "X sucks" stories. Someone can be "on call" but they don't have to be "on site" like a certain other OS. Throw in Linuxes legendary reliability and Microsoft's the only one who loses out.
Make that between 40,000 to 50,000 desktops after this year's and early next year's layoffs.
In this article, (sorry in German), they describe the process and the reasoning. Some highlights:
Now, I know one could do a Wintel environment with Citrix MetaFrame, in order to reduce clientside upgrade problems, but Citrix would require a larger backend.
nt
every time somebody wrote code that was flaky and because it DIDN'T have a lot of crap "entertainment" drivers for it.
If Microsoft hadn't EOL'ed NT we'd STIL be using it.
MSBPodcast.com The opinions expressed here are my own. If you don't like 'em... Think up your own stuff.
how tasty is cream that's been sitting out for six months, or a couple years?
Change it to the IE theme, if you haven't yet.
If your only replacing your hardware in several year periods, instead of every two years on average with PC's
You get more use out of the applications and hardware you already bought and at the end of that several year period it's usually time to upgrade software too.
PC users have been sucked in by lower prices, but a at a cost of quality and higher turnover which in the long run costs more.
On Linux, try dia. Not finished yet, but already very useful. It does the "sticky lines" thing just like Visio.
AT&T goes bankrupt (not because of their desktops)?
Migrating your desktops isn't going to be easy. Moving from Windows to Linux or MacOS has a lot of different costs involved. Some of them are:
* how are you going to manage 70k desktops? Does your current management software support the target platform? How will your IT department deal with the shift?
* hardware replacement. How much is it going to be to replace the hardware? If they're on-lease, it's not a big deal.
* application requirements. How bound are your applications to the current OS? Will the hardware support it?
* training. This is going to cost a whole lot. But they have to train anyway if they're moving from Windows blah to Windows XP, so that's not really an extra cost.
If AT&T is at the end of a lease cycle, then this may make a lot of sense. Most likely their current hardware isn't capable of running XP effectively. They need to retrain for XP. And if they're all web-based, well, then they aren't bound to the OS at all. If they're outlook/exchange based, then they can migrate to Entourage and MS Office Mac.
Managing these desktops may be a problem, because none of the enterprise management tools really deals with MacOS X yet. They deal with Linux some, but more on the server side.
But hey, more power to them!
AT&T runs on Unix. Everybody needing to perform technical tasks either has multiple machines to run Windows and Unix, or one machine along the order of a SunBlade with a SunPCI card in it. These 70,000 desktops are for everybody else. Whether it's a bargaining strategy or not, Windows is not the main OS deployed by AT&T, and it never will be. Internal email is Exchange, and one of the ticketing systems is Windows-specific. Those are the two big things, and if Linux or MacOS X has acceptable clients, they've got a shot at the prize. And let's face it, AT&T does not exactly need to play games to get bargaining position, so I'm pretty sure it's legitimate.
First rule of doing a conversion- your costs in terms of money, retraining, and lost productivity need to undercede the costs of not converting. Like most Germans, they just wanted to change for the sake of changing; this is why Germans make such successful consultants.
Unless you're just itchy for bleeding edge parts in certain specialized applications, the offerings from Apple are quite competitive anywhere but in gamming. Also, depending on what you're doing with them, Opterons can lose to the G5. Don't believe me? It's in more than one test, too. I'll go ahead and admit, right now, that they need the newer Opterons to test against, but it's one guy who does his best to wrangle systems out of vendors.
http://www.barefeats.com/g5op.html
http://www.barefeats.com/pentium4.html
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. -Arthur C. Clarke
Every article I read mentions that advancements in Linux and OSX are the reason. While I think this has something to do with it, I think there has been a profound change in computer use in the past ten years.
Ten years ago, all that mattered in computer choice was software. I didn't care about alternatives to Windows because Windows had all the software I cared about.
Move forward to today. Much of the computer use today is as a terminal to the Internet. For many, it doesn't matter what OS you have as long as you can surf the web and read your email. Even reading email can simply mean logging on to the Web (Hotmail, GMail, Yahoo Mail). A dumb terminal with a nice display, a high quality web browser, and nothing else would probably make a useful computer today for much of the population.
Even at the corporate level many companies have moved all or much of their applications into web-based applications. Enterprise vendors are selling products to every large company in the world, and all of them are completely web-centric.
The viability of OSX and Linux have something to do with their advancement. But, it also has much to do with the changing computing landscape.
All he has to look for is the :2eDStore file that gets created by the Mac finder in every directory that it views. There is no way to turn it off.
What's worse is that the Mac meta-files created are different and incompatible depending on whether you connect over SMB, AFP, or use some sort of goofy utility like Dave from the OS 9 days.
Is Apple ever planning on fixing this? Yes, it's cool that Macs have shiny icons and such associated with their files, but just browsing any filesystem automatically pollutes it for other users on different platforms.
It's impossible to configure a Mac so it doesn't leave "droppings" all over a filesystem, short of making it read-only.
Thanks just the same, I'll stick with Linux and Windows.
ATT is doing a study. That means that free software is obviously good enough to replace M$.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
Considering your options is "extortion"? Call RICO down on me, I do that kind of thing every time I spend money.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
IBM, Novel and even free software groups have replacements for all that jazz that work better than all that broken stuff. IBM and Novel can make it work with your windoze desktops too, so you don't have to do everything at once or ever. If you want to do it on your own, just show your web monkeys KDE, it's groupware and it's awesome IDE. That alone blows most crufty junk out of the water and most of it writes to normal html so those low on the upgrade list don't feel left out.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
Sorry folks, it's actually 7 desktops, not 70,000. Last update, we promise.
In my Dock:O fDuty/TR ON2.0/Homeworld2): Yes, I'm a Mac gamer, Mac games do exist, and these are good games ;) .mp4 files (for personal use, of course... in my case I make them available on my wireless LAN so I can view them with the PC in my bedroom)
;) )
.jar file, and there it goes. ;)
KDX: cheap fast secure cross-platform "meeting-ware"
EyeTV: TV on your desktop
iChat: AIM chat
Adium X: supercool chat client, interfaces with all popular chat protocols as well as irc
Mail.app: nice, but has all but been replaced by GMail
Address Book: all nice Cocoa apps can use this OS-level address database
iCal: all nice Cocoa apps can use this OS-level calendar with Internet synch capabilities
Safari/Firefox: Great browsers, IE is nowhere in sight
iPhoto: coolest digicam app ever
Acquisition: coolest P2P app ever (well, one of them)
iTunes: coolest mp3 app ever
iEatBrainz: mp3/aac tag fixer that searches based on the actual sound profile of the song!
VLC: one of the most versatile video players around
(UT2004/Battlefield1942/DesertCombat/Call
WebGrazer: Best, uh, pr0n app ever invented. Point and click pr0n clip downloads, by category.
NetFlix Freak: Awesome alternative to NetFlix's web-based interface to your queue
Toast 6: Great disk image app. Both this and Apple's own Disk Utility beat the hell out of Nero as far as managing disk images.
Preview: Apple's pdf and image viewer. It actually works better than Acrobat on either Mac or PC to view PDF's! (Note: You can also print to PDF from any OS X application.)
Terminal: Here you go, a CLI! Mine has a dark blue background, ANSI color, and slightly transparent.
Script Editor: AppleScript is pretty powerful, actually. Sorta like Visual Basic Script, except with fewer security holes
SubEthaEdit: Amazing text editor with color coding and very cool Rendezvous collaborative work features
Folding@home: My CPU folds proteins when idle
Console: Like the Windows event log
Bluetooth File Exchange: An Apple app that lets me send text files to my Bluetooth phone simply by selecting the file and hitting Command-Shift-B
CronniX: Great app interface to Cron, the task scheduler
HandBrake: Absolutely the best and easiest to use DVD ripping software on any platform, bar none. Excellent quality when ripping to
VPC 6: For when I need to do Windows development
X11: Self-explanatory, but a very nice implementation
X48: This is my calculator. It's an accurate emulation of an HP-48. Guess I'm just a geek, but I love it.
And that's just on my Dock. (OK, I have a cinema display, so I can fit all that
Other neat uses of my home Mac: Java apps run awesome. You can just double-click on a
Also, I was unhappy with my company's file backup solution, so I rolled my own. I installed cygwin on my work PC laptop, installed rsync, then set up a batch file to automatically synchronize my PC work files with my OS X machine at home, over a compressed and encrypted (using SSH) tunnel. Works like a charm, and very fast and efficient
Add in all the security problems I DON'T have to deal with, and I'm quite happy with the home Mac...
Well why not Plan9 Just port Open office and Mozilla and your all set. Okay maybe that was way to optimistic on my part. I do find it funny that AT&T is thinking about dropping Windows for OS/X or Linux. I hope they can find some Unix experts to help them out :)
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
The interoperability of these systems, along-side the legacy of UNIX mixed with cutting edge development frameworks, scalability and quality hardware options results in a logical progression to OS X & Linux.
From the desktop to the regional Server stacks the logical choice is OS X & Linux.
From Web Services to databases, etc, the logical choice is OS X & Linux.
From quality of professional support contracts the logical choice is OS X & Linux.
Note: Having used all 3 systems, worked at NeXT and Apple and my primary system presently is Debian, the logical choice is OS X & Linux.
Myself I will have 2 systems: G5 and Debian AMD systems running OS X & Linux, respectively.
AT&T has history with Apple via NeXT both in the wireless and Ma Bell division.
Future directional support from IBM for both OS X and Linux makes it a logical choice. Linux can leverage both PPC64 and AMD64.
You get the picture.
I'm not disagreeing with you or anything, but the opterons blow the snot out of my G5 in all the applications I run on them. the upshot here being that I can do the development for these apps on my mac, and they just *run* on my bsd servers. that's a huge plus for me, and is certainly worth the $5k the G5 box cost me.
I would like to see more benchmarks in the range of specint, fp, etc; as well as the kind of endless benchmark ranges that you see in anandtech style benchmarkfests.
but realistically, I don't really care how fast it does optimized 3d rendering of landscapes; i'm using it for server number crunching. I like the opteron more, and the cost is more or less on par with the G5. That, and I like having lots of hardware choices, and the Xserve just doesn't move me. I like ultra320 without shelling for an external box.
it's still my favorite desktop system, though.
EOM
I know I'm coming late to this discussion, but I've worked for over seven years now as a contractor at AT&T, primarily on their intranet, so I have a bit of a view from the inside.
I agree with the other posters that this is primarily a move to force discounts from Microsoft. AT&T is desperate to cut costs whrever it can; besides layoffs and facilities consolidation, they've gone as far as raising prices in the cafeteria by 50% over the last year, and employees have to pay our of their own pocket for water coolers. They jumped eagerly onto the Licencing 6.0 bandwagon, without realizing that the next major desktop OS upgrade would be delayed until 2006 or later, and they're not happy with what they're getting for their money.
As a Mac user at home, I'd love to see them adopt Mac OS X, but they have far too much invested in Wintel hardware, and their upgrade cycle is ridiculously long. (For example, my department only a year ago got around to replacing our 2x350MHz Dell Precision workstations, circa 1998, with crappy consumer grade Dell Optiplex boxes, and are only replacing the standard 600MHz ThinkPads with new low-end Dell laptops when the StinkPads die.)
However, this move isn't entirely inconceivable. Eslambolchi wears many hats, one of which is head of AT&T Labs, which is the last bastion of Unix in the company. ATT.com's servers run on Unix, too, as do a number of Labs systems and servers.
ActiveX is an issue, but the company has also chased off most of the internal development community. New projects are increasingly based on server-side tools such as Documentum and Plumtree. Most ASP devs I know have moves to ASP.NET, so porting to Mono would be possible. Netscape 7 and Firefox were recently approved as alternate browsers (and Netscape 4 deprecated). So the trend seems to be in a more standards-compliant, more platform-independant direction.
After years of acting like a wholly-owned subsidiary of Microsoft, AT&T has committed to work on integrating Mac OS X into the company's infrastructure. This is a huge shift for AT&T.
(Anecdote: Five years ago, our internal newsletter staff needed to upgrade their ancient PowerMac, and was told that just to order one with their own budget they would need to jump through a dozen beauracratic hoops; Mac purchases just weren't allowed. When the production editor insisted, the procurement folks offered to replace the Mac with a high-end Windows box, at their expense, just to keep the Mac out of the company.)
As it is now, there are more Macs in use at Microsoft than there are at AT&T, although that seems to be changing. Intranet traffic from Macs has tripled in the last year or so (OK, so it's 0.03% vs. 0.01%, but it's a good sign!) Fiscal pressures have loosened things up, to where management is forced to buy the right system for the job, rather than simply follow dogma.
Still, I won't be holding my breath waiting for them to convert wholesale to Linux. Microsoft has a policy of never losing to Linux, no matter the cost. AT&T, while a shadow of it's former self, is still way too high-profile a customer to let slip to Open Source. Gates & Balmer will do whatever it takes to prevent it.
Learn from the mistakes of others. You won't live long enough to make them all yourself.
The VT cluster uses the IBM C/C++ and Fortran compilers as does the COLSA cluster. Too bad IBM charges so much for them.
Jesus was a compassionate social conservative who called individuals to sin no more.
Well, I'd be hard pressed to show that the Opteron doesn't win at some things, and perhaps even most things. Computers are tools and you ought to use the one that gets the job done, after all, so fielding a chip that does a better job for your particular task makes sense.
The only point I was making is that the Opteron isn't necessarily king at everything, so your original statement that it stomps the G5 was inaccurate at best. Also, as someone else points out, the use of GCC sometimes limits the performance in exchange for sticking with the FOSS solution. The use of IBM's apparently wonderful XCC C/C+ compiler lends some impressive speedup to most applications, to the tune of what I've anecdotally gathered is 30-200% performance increase for some routines.
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. -Arthur C. Clarke
WOW!
This is one of the best things I've ever read about AT&T and the internal tech if not the best.
Any way I'm a former insider via proxy working on mostly R&D hiring for AT&T, Lucent, Telcordia for a consulting recruiting company in NJ a few years back. When my wife called me from the car all wigged out about hearing a news item on some news station that AT&T was looking at Linux to replace desktops she told me to contact some of my friends there about offering to help.
So I did and the guy I decided to email is a managing director at research.att.com (I had a history of working on project finding him bleeding edge Linux people mostly engineers and admin) and his responce was "Yes, I also read in the news about the Linux thing, and no, I'm not involved in it."
So I'm wondering who is testing the viability of OSX-nix and Linux.
I would have to say that IMHO that Linux is the way to go if this is for real. Based on the fact that there are loads of PC x86 stuff laying around there and that Mac Seems to be (and don't quot me on this) a closed Architecture system and there is a limit to off the shelf hardware you can use and since I'm sure there are a few hardcore UNIX programmers still in the confines of the walls at AT&T and loads of open source work done on all kinds of things there is a good chance that any hardware issues they might run into most of the work is out in the WWW somewere and small amounts of tweeking if any would need to be done to get most of the hardware / software working for this big move and as well you said that they are tight right now and the upgraded PC's can stay to live a second life.
that's my 2 cents
forgive the spelling and grammer I survived a massive head injury in my teens and now I'm only as good as my spellchecker.
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I'd Tell you all my secrets but I lie about my past
I understand they're using this as a way to lever a better price from M$, but look at it Apple's way:
Apple would REALLY love to show off a 70,000 Mac install at one of the largest Telecoms in the country. They would probably give you a far better deal.
Not that I would know.... or anything.
*Looks left and right for Steve*
I got nothin'.
Dennis Richie runs Windows NT on his desktop.
IMHO, Yankee Group's analysts are talking out of their assholes when they speculated about early SOHO uptake of Linux.
SOHOs generally use whatever software they can get running, perhaps with consultant (or a brother-in-law or their kids' help) and don't change it unless they buy a new computer or they are forced to for some reason. The exception, of course, are geek SOHO businesses. This isn't going to change until the problems with desktop Linux are fixed;
I think that the uptake of Linux is going to happen from the top down.
Large corporations and governments will adopt it and force anyone who wants to stay in their vendor chain to get compatible or get out.
If they are in a hurry to force compliance, they can start requiring responses to RFQs in OO native format.
However, until the problems with desktop Linux are really and truly solved, this is something we do NOT want to happen, only MS is served by a perception that Linux is junk, and to somebody who isn't a serious geek, who does NOT have instant tech support, and needs to find and install applications beyond Net clients and office suites, that is still what it is.
Tech Public Policy stuff
Twitter, you're a petulant cock-gobbling sycophant to Linux Torvaldyos! Quit taking DP from ESR and RMS's feculent cocks and why don't you try to stop sucking quite so much? Get out of your parents' basement and see the real world - maybe then you'll see how pathetic you sound, with your neverending stream of bullshit about how Microsoft is stalking you. Wasn't it you who said that Microsoft believes your insane ranting is actually a threat to them, so they PAY PEOPLE to reply to you on Slashdot? No sir, I don't get any money. I do it for the love. Someone has to go up against your paranoid whining. So get back in your cage and shut the fuck up already.
Twitter, you're a petulant cock-gobbling sycophant to Linux Torvaldyos! Quit taking DP from ESR's and RMS's feculent cocks and why don't you try to stop sucking quite so much? Get out of your parents' basement and see the real world - maybe then you'll see how pathetic you sound, with your neverending stream of bullshit about how Microsoft is stalking you. Wasn't it you who said that Microsoft believes your insane ranting is actually a threat to them, so they PAY PEOPLE to reply to you on Slashdot? No sir, I don't get any money. I do it for the love. Someone has to go up against your paranoid whining. So get back in your cage and shut the fuck up already.
Twitter, you're a petulant cock-gobbling sycophant to Linux Torvaldyos! Quit taking DP from ESR and RMS's feculent cocks and why dont you try to stop sucking quite so much? Get out of your parents' basement and see the real world - maybe then you'll see how pathetic you sound, with your neverending stream of bullshit about how Microsoft is stalking you. Wasn't it you who said that Microsoft believes your insane ranting is actually a threat to them, so they PAY PEOPLE to reply to you on Slashdot? No sir, I don't get any money. I do it for the love. Someone has to go up against your paranoid whining. So get back in your cage and shut the fuck up already.
Twitter, you're a petulant cock-gobbling sycophant to Linux Torvaldyos! Quit taking DP from ESR and RMS's feculent cocks and why don't you try to stop sucking quite so much? Get out of your parents basement and see the real world - maybe then you'll see how pathetic you sound, with your neverending stream of bullshit about how Microsoft is stalking you. Wasn't it you who said that Microsoft believes your insane ranting is actually a threat to them, so they PAY PEOPLE to reply to you on Slashdot? No sir, I don't get any money. I do it for the love. Someone has to go up against your paranoid whining. So get back in your cage and shut the fuck up already.
I very much look forward to a more refined mac os X that's completely 64 bit, and fully optimized for the G5's.
I didn't mean to imply that the opteron is king at anything; it certainly isn't. I'm quite partial to the PowerPC platform, really. if I could get 2U rackmount servers of a generic variety w/ dual G5 cores onboard, i'd be all over it.
really, I'm just happy that I'm not stuck between PA-RISC, SPARC, and intel at this point in time, and that I actually have some alternate choices.
I would love to see a good vendor compiler released as free beer/speech; that would really make my day.
EOM
1. Let most people use The Software (IE) by any (dumping, preinstalling) means.
2. Set the standard by yourself and don't care about others.
Internet Explorer may have created little direct revenue to MS, but it's target was to hurt the competition.
And judicial system doesn't seem to be able to enforce monopoly out of it's unlawful methods.