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Bugzilla on Windows?
slipandfall asks: "I just started work at a 100% Windows shop (no chance of changing this) and would love to implement Bugzilla for issue tracking but statements like this - 'Making Bugzilla work on Windows is still a painful processes.' in the
OS-Specific installation notes don't make it seem reasonable. Since there is no chance of using Linux/UNIX here, can I get people's experiences using Bugzilla on Windows or experience with a tool (open source or not) on Windows with similar notification, discussion and issue tracking features?"
We just went through this recently at my company.
Our first though was Bugzilla, of course. But after looking into actually deploying it we realized it wasn't going to be that easy. So before we buried ourselves, we looked around to make sure Bugzilla was actually the right choice for us.
Turns out it wasn't.
We found Atlassian's JIRA. Installs like a breeze, easy to manage, no headaches, even actively tied into Atlassian's JIRA bugtracking system for itself! (And it works, seen bugs that we have submitted fixed in short order!)
We're not a really big shop, so I can't speak too much from the large scale deployment end, but aside from that this was a fantastic choice for us and I highly recommend it. (I am in no way affiliated with Atlassian or JIRA)
No Comment.
We use Mantis too, using Apacha and MySQL running on Windows. No problem. I don't know how it compares to bugzilla concerning features though.
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Of course, one could argue that there have ever been a handful of viruses for Linux and that a Linux box can be configured to automatically upgrade itself - or easily upgraded manually.
But you're right that Windows shops don't want to have to employee a Linux administrator because of one application.
I've seen companies with Windows workstations and servers get roped into being a VAR for a Linux app and from that experience setup an internal Linux server. The number of Linux-based solutions increased since my hire, but it was always an issue of who else could support it if I wasn't there (sick, dead, quit, etc). Meanwhile, there are some people who you will find are viciously pro-Windows with a higher rank.. some people don't care what something does, how much it saves, but care that it isn't from someone that they trust.
Luckily, many killer business apps are now coming from IBM, Novell, and Sun.. and they're working on Linux. Considering Exchange? Consider GroupWise. Considering Microsoft Office? Consider OpenOffice.
I find that it is a lot easier to push Linux and Linux based solutions to management if it isn't from "Linus Torvalds", "ESR", or "RMS" (etc).. but from trusted sources like Novell.
I've convinced users to move from Microsoft Office to OpenOffice on the premise that they aren't using "freeware", they're using software from Sun Microsystems.
The idea used to be that to get users onto Linux there would need to be a killer app only for Linux. However, to convert users you don't want to give them a reason to leave Windows, you want to give them no reason to keep paying more money to run the same software.
We need applications to run on Windows AND Linux from brands (Windows) users already trust. I've found that users don't want a new word processor AND a new instant messanger AND a new web browser, etc. Firefox, OpenOffice, and other applications are making themselves available under Windows and will give users fewer reasons to stay with Windows.