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Linux Desktop Migration Cookbook from IBM
almondjoy writes "I was project leader for publication of this recent IBM Redbook, available for free download here: Linux Client Migration Cookbook: A Practical Planning and Implementation Guide for Migrating to Desktop Linux. At this point, I'm gathering input for what we could improve on, and what additional topics should be covered in a second version of the book. I realize this is a broad topic to cover in a rapidly changing environment. And because these books are developed by IBM there are some content limitations. Nonetheless, in the next version we want to continue making the book as useful as possible for anyone considering a migration to Linux on the desktop."
Don't forget to buy your $699 licensing fees you cock-smoking teabaggers.
So when is IBM going to put this into practice? I'd like to know when, for sure, IBM is going to eat its own dogfood.
I'd like to see IBM endorse the Linux desktop as a solution of all tiers of business.
Preheat the oven and wait 2 years?
HHOS, we are looking into this at work for a corporate desktop and there are some serious issues.
v4sw6PU$hw6ln6pr4F$ck 4/6$ma3+6u7LNS$w2m4l7U$i2e4+7en6a2X h
well thats a LFA (long fucking artical)
for the couple of pages I read, it's a pretty nice book.
A quick scan of it shows that it's relativly simple (It had pictures!). And seemed easy to understand. But it seems a bit too much for the average user. I mean it feels a bit like preaching to the choir. The guide will be most popular among people that already have the ability and desire to move to linux, not necesarily the average joe who is dipping his feet in the water to explore.
Just a boy doing unproffesional IT work that's way above his head.
Recipe for Linux Step 1: Download and Burn Knoppix Step 2: Reboot from CD Step 3: ?????? Step 4: Profit!!!!
Then why the hell did it sell it's desktop division?
You'll need to start over with your Favorites and they will not remember your logins.
Yeah, and once you start over, it remembers them. Your argument is specious at best.
Step 1: Don't tell SCO.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
Now, what can IBM do?
The answer is obvious. Enter the Linux desktop market; its margins are still relatively fat. The software is free, so IBM can low ball the price and still sell a product that has nice profits.
What the Linux desktop needs badly is connectivity: e.g. AOL client. The #1 application on desktops these days is the e-mail client. A sizeable chunk of desktop customers still use a dialup modem. For e-mail and casual web browsing, all you really need is a 56K baud modem.
Unfortunately, Linux does not have an AOL client. There is a freeware version of the AOL client for Linux, but AOL does not support this particular client. When you are tech-ignorant customer, you absolutely need the handholding of AOL: America's Online service.
And do they mention that migrating must be done in december - show the users xsnow and they'll forget windows in a second...
Slashdot - Mutual Assured Discussion
I might be easier to build on OS X's momentum. Not that I'm a rabid Apple fan, but I think the linux desktop is going to languish for a while. Even another Java desktop attempt has a better shot at this point. The desktop market just isn't getting behind the penguin, though its a shame. Look elsewhere.
Oh, how I wish /. had satire tag.
>And because these books are developed by IBM there are some content limitations.
Please refine further what you mean by that.
"Piter, too, is dead."
What utter nonsense. IBM has decided to stop making PC systems (desktops or laptops). It has not decided to abandon the Windows desktop (read, 'software') market.
Generally, bash is superior to python in those environments where python is not installed.
How about a chapter entiltled "McAfee and Norton: Terminating Enterprise Contracts with no Hard Feelings"?
The one that gets sold on an IBM server with an IBM support contract.
Step by step - How do I update the video drivers?
Step by step - How do I make firewire work?
"Unlike Secure IE, both FireFox and Opera do not support these time saving features. You'll need to start over with your Favorites and they will not remember your logins."
Ummm I thought FireFox imported my favorites but I have been using it so long I could be wrong. And yes it does rember my logins.
" They also both don't use industry standard displays, which means lots of new quirks to get used to!"
What the heck are you talking about industry standard displays!!!!
You are not a paid shill you just play one on TV?
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
Yeah, I know. Don't feed the trolls, especially the stupid ones.
You want feedback on a book so you ask the folks at a site where they never read the articles they post about.
You're job is in jeopardy, my friend.
-Peter
Am I the only one who thought of this when they saw this article? Sco being the flying fish of course.
I notice that you leave out the potentially greatest problem: Very Complex Excel spreadsheets migration to OO.org.
This, for most companies, and especially for financial companies, will be an enormous deal-breaker.
If the book is challenged on that point, then you will lose credibility.
"Piter, too, is dead."
It's nice to see The GIMP given some recognition, in that it is broadcasted as a replacement for Paint Shop Pro, which is IMHO fair to both programs. I'm glad they didn't say the same thing of Photoshop, which would have been altogether a bad move. The other choices (Firefox, OpenOffice) are predictable.
I'm not sure how I feel about seperating "Component Desktop Environment" from "Desktop Environment" from "Window Manager", but the seperation is arguable. (GNUStep! Whoohoo!) It's clear they're recommending exclusively using either KDE or GNOME, if the user environment needs to be tightly controlled. Fine by me.
*is run over by rotten tomatoes*
I don't think IBM is looking to bring an AOL linux client to the market. AOL isn't looking to support linux either. The OSS desktop needs something new, a new "killer app," maybe a variation of ITunes for linux. Unfortunately Apple has its own operating system. Frankly, I don't see much opportunity for desktop linux anywhere. Back to the drawing board.
If an office is serious about migrating, especially call centers, there has to be good software on the new desktops that can support VoIP phone networks. We are forced to use a broken implementation of Wine to get our phone software to work, and we are almost forced to go back to windows because of the proprietary phone network that isnt going anywhere.
Phone software is a must. If I had the skills I would write some myself but I wouldnt even know where to begin. We have to rely on one stupid piece of shit app that crashes consantly, and is barely functional, in order to log into the phone network. Whats worse, we are forced to pay for upgrades that contain only minor bug fixes. More often than not the bugfixes break other parst of the software, like the "LOGIN" button. Are there no open standards in place for removing the dependency on proprietary software for phones?
You are about to give someone a piece of your mind, something which you can ill afford...
URL: http://www.secureie.com/c/002/guides/browser_compa rison/compatibility.asp?source=slashdottroll
Cute...
The huge impediment for us implementing a Linux or Solaris-based thin client system has been the relatively crappy support for media streaming (primarily ISMA-compliant MPEG-4). Yes, there are lots of MPEG tools, but most of these are libraries, command line tools (essentially for ripping/stealing content), or "players" that lack any sort of polish, instead prefering to have "sci fi" interfaces or such nonsense.
There is already a suitable alternative to the Windows desktop: Mac OS X. They get the whole media concept right.
There exists no way of exchanging information without making judgments. --Bene Gesserit Axiom
Release the drivers for all thinkpad components and chipsets - even a binary version should do.
Note to mods too lazy to click thru to Amazon - it's a book entitled "The Ultimate Guide to Anal Sex for Men"
I've got a fever and the only prescription is more COBOL.
Linux desktop is dead. Long live OS/X desktop, and all the BSD goodness.
I applaud IBM for this Redbook. It is very detailed in terms of providing an IT Administrator the ammunition to begin a pilot project for a Linux migration.
I've never seen a great book for migrating to Linux on the desktop for enterprise users. What really sets this book apart is its discussion on the ability to move Linux to the desktop while maintaining Microsoft products on the server side. While most organizations start by adding Linux servers, and never migrate their clients, this provides a strong start point for desktop migration.
IBM is very committed to Linux. For most of their server products, like WebSphere, Tivoli Access Manager, DB2, etc., Linux is certainly a preferred platform. This book, and the sale of their desktop division, confirms that they're trying to dethrone Microsoft from enterprise dominance and assert their place as a Linux (and AIX) software and services company.
You might perhaps include under the Application porting information about things like cygwin, vmware, crossover office, etc. for running windows tools under linux (and the other way around, i.e cygwin). I am still looking at the document so you may already have this, but it would be really really helpful if you could include resources for converting from various microsoft proprietary formats -> some other format as well. I am in the process of migrating people off of an exchange server (and probably eventually totally off of outlook) and migrating address books, folders, etc isn't much fun.
I Am My Own Worst Enemy
Probable GNAA sympathizer :)
The greatest impediment to migration remains the level of IT knowledge in the prospective user base. My superiors make their decisions based on information (and mis-information) given to them by Microsoft based vendors.
There exists a compelling need to build the Lnux market (and awareness) within the educational community at all levels- if the book can tell not just an IT person, but also a non-IT person why Linux is truly a compelling choice, migration will make more and more sense. Students working on a Linux desktop will become the corporate users.
So, any treatment of the subject would be enhanced by an awareness that the younger users will become the older users.
I've got a cadre of students who have moved from Windows onto OpenBSD for educational purposes, and they are rapidly becoming advocates of open source and alternative desktop choices.
Don't forget that education is an enterprise as well, often deploying thousands of desktops.
befuddled (noun) 1. Unable to create a pithy sig
1. burn custom knoppix iso
2. remove local hard disk
3. insert knoppix in cd rom drive
4. boot
5. connect to network disk drive
Now we all know what stratjakt is into. Pardon me while I puke....
The reality is that those things do exist and are show stoppers. I was thinking the way to tackle that is to have a citrix server/farm for people to connect to for those apps that require Windows. Over time, you can migrate away from those applications.
This is a very thorough article and most likely will convince more than a few companies to take the plunge.
Jerry http://www.syslog.org/
So I jump to 4.7.2 page 82:
Section 4.7 titled "Un-migrateable applications" is about five pages. Are there nother red books, white papers, or HOWTOs that would fill this gap? I nominate section 4.7 to be improved.
I am a subcontractor hired to IBM Glabal Services and an avid Linux fan. I find IBM's desktop Linux support for "employees" is abysmal. It's almost impossible to get the apps needed to do your day to day business outside of the standard Koffice - if I wanted to VPN from home or a client site, so sorry not supported.
I can give you my view, after been running Windows2000 on clients and Windows2003 on servers for a year.
/via SUS(Software update services), very simple, does the job.
We decided to move from Windows NT4(on both workstation and server) to Windows2000 on desktops and Windows2003 on servers last summer.
We have about 800 workstations and 15 servers.
We are 8 in the staff, and with very various experience/skills.
Migrating workstations was a fairly simple task.
We use RIS(remote installation services) to deploy Windows, just boot from a floppy, enter username/pw and 15 minutes later Windows is up and go.
We deploy our programs using ActiveDirectory, this requires MSI packages, me make MSI packages for those who hasn't.
ActiveDirectory hasn't failed once on us, I'm pretty satisfied with that.
Every settings the users need(My documents redirection, IE homepage, startmenu and so on) we configure in ActiveDirecty. Very clean and well working.
Patching is done
Setting up this system was a fairly simple task.
So far, if something hasn't worked as expected it has been hardware failure.
We haven't have _one_ malware/spyware case so far.
(No one run as local adminstrator, if a driver isn't working we fix it with ACLs)
As much as I like Debian(I run it myself, on all my (personal)production servers and ws), I couldn't imaging Debian replacing our system at work.
Those who are saying Windows2003/2000 is unstable seems pretty unserious to me.
If there's one thing wanting us to switch from Windows2003/200 is the yearly 1Billion bill to Microsoft...
(Please I'm not a Microsoft troll, but I wanted to tell you this)
You might want to run a spell checker on it. I caught a couple errors. (Page 137)
or with no OS, will I believe that IBM is sincere.
A few months ago I tried to buy a ThinkPad T41 with either Linux pre-installed, no OS, or at least a breakdown of how much the Windows OS contributes to the total price.
I sent a very friendly email to the IBM customer support asking for either of the three options.
I got a one line response:
IBM ThinkPad's are not sold without Operating System. Thank you for your interest.
(Or very similar in wording).
Words are meaningless if not followed by actions. Of course IBM wants machines of *other* vendors to be converted to Linux. As soon as there is some impact on IBM offerings, it seems to be a different story.
Sorry, directed comment:
This is all nice and well, IBM, but what's really a sticking point for my workplace is the fact that there's no native Lotus Notes client for Linux. So far, IBM's solution for Notes is to run it under WINE.
I actually *despise* Notes. As a Notes developer I met said "It's great for lots of stuff, but email isn't one of them." Unfortunately, that's how most corporations I know of use it.
So, until I can convince the powers that be that Notes royally stinks, I'm afraid, we're stuck using it. Which means that we're stuck with Windows, 'cause they won't go for WINE either.
So, IBM, if you're listening, it sure would be nice to have a native Notes client.
I think the real answer is "because these books are developed by IBM there are some content limitations." IBM does a pretty good job of not participating in the distribution wars. In the section titled "1.6 Linux overview and distribution choices" the only mention of distributions by name is this sentance: "Some of the most well-known distributions include Red Hat, SuSE, Debian, Mandrake, etc." IBM has technology aliances with both Red Hat and SuSE so they cannot publicly endorse one in favor of the other. A quick search of the pdf showed that Red Hat was mentioned 110 times and SuSE was only mentioned 15 times. Debian and Mandrake were mentioned six and seven times respectivly. I doubt that really proves anything.
Insert Generic Sig Here:
The grandparent post's content is an excerpt from the linked site. If you think that excerpt is bad, just read the rest of that page. And get this -- the program is $50. (But hurry! You ARE saving $50 off the normal price.)
Page 27: using smbmount to map network resources. You could mention you can do this via a gui very similar to the network neighborhood thing if they are in Gnome or KDE.
You might want to add Mac software to the list of *nix equivalents.
Add a section on locking down the workstation. It won't take people long to figure out they can ssh to anyones box and start messing with people. Any users familiar with setting up windows shares can only share certain folders (barring administrator access to c$, etc), but they probably won't know that if they use a crappy password, someone can gain access to every folder they have. Which reminds me, mention password rulesets and how to implement on the authentication server solutions listed.
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I - I took the one the bus load of girls just went down.
How about a Lotus Notes client for Linux? You cannot completely migrate to Linux even if you work for IBM.
WINE is not the answer. I say this from experience. NUL (Notes under Linux) is complete crap. IBM does not even offer the web based solutions internally.
How does IBM compete in the Windows desktop market? ... Lotus Notes? (snort)
I wish I had mod points to mark this insightful.
If they were supporting it on their own hardware, people would expect free handholding. Now, when Dell or HP or whomever drops the ball, IBM can charge for every second they spend picking up the slack.
500GB of disk, 5TB of transfer, $5.95/mo
I find this astonishing, especially since Codeweavers product provides excellent compatibility for MS Office and other Windows applications. Maybe this is what the author was referring to when he said "...there are some content limitations"?
It's much easier to reach the back of your ass when you're not sitting down. Get off your fat ass and wipe your fat ass, I say.
Basically MACs are Free BSD boxes with propriatary device drivers for their propriatary devices.
If you get drivers the Linux will work just as well.
I think that for the artsy people who need to do art, then if you have the money do the MAC thing.
Otherwise, go with Linux.
i think a key result of the book could be to identify all the ways that developers can make the process easier for users. when you find something particularly egregious in the installation process, you could make a note of it in an appendix. that would help evolve linux to a position where you don't need to read a book to use it...
Novell also has released a wonderful migration checklist of sorts. It's a list of important factors to consider before trying to switch your enterprise to Linux. Thought someone might be interested in it.
Last I heard you have to have a password to ssh over to another box.
If you give out your passwords then you know what you can expect if you have aholes working with you.
The only way that you can really get forked if you ssh is to do an ssh from a root to a root of another machine. Then if someone on that other machine is there as root and wants to do mean things to your machine, then they are able to if (and only if) you did not do some command line flag to prevent this.
This is a very stupid thing to do. This stupidity is why there is not SDLinux (a kernel with NSA patches).
So, ssh isn't that bad a thing, now, is it.
And it won't be a problem unless you are stupid as a user and do what they say not to do.
OK, are we clear on that?
Red Hat was mentioned 110 times and SuSE was only mentioned 15 times
I'm currently working with IBM consultants on a POC and they mentioned to me (unofficially) that they use SuSE for their development and once their code is working there they port to RedHat. This of course does not mean anything more significant than the number of references to RedHat over SuSE in the article.
I just loaded Slackaware 10.0 for the first time and am pretty fresh. I did have a few months experience on IRIX a few years back and loved it. Slackaware is pretty sweet but I would find it difficult to recommend to anyone who does not have some serious curiosity and or insight.
.02
My biggest complaint is the complexity associated with simple tasks when approached as a neophyte. My first few hours were spent playing with "man", it took me a day to figure out haw to start the GUI. I don't know what I would have done without access to the net. My skills are improving by the hour and the more I look the more info I find. I am a curious individual and think that most of the problems I have encountered so far could easily be a show stopper for someone who just wants there computer to work let alone someone with few computer skills other than surfing the web or using a word processor.
Again I am very fresh with little knowledge of what is available but I think some sort of configuration manager with a checklist of functionality would be useful. One could be directed to the list initially and systematically set up all the packages they are interested in running and put a nice big checkmark next to the application when it is running properly.
There is a great deal of information available but one should not have to read an entire book to get the web browser running. It would seem to me that for Linux to go mainstream that the housewives and non tech oriented individuals should be able to get a system running without taking a class at the community collage.
I personally chose the trial by fire method: find cool distro, download images, burn to disc, install new hard drive... I also purchased a copy of the distro and plan to reinstall when I get it, I consider this a practice run.
Mike
I work in IBM and I can tell you that IBM has no corporate "standard" linux distribution for developers to use. Different projects use different distributions. For example I have both Red Hat and Suse installed on my workstation for testing and customer support, but I manly use Debian when I do my development work.
IBM *still* has a boatload of software that SHOULD run on Windows only. What I'd like to see in Version is words saying the following software is NATIVELY supported on Linux:
* Lotus Notes
* Sametime
* SmartSuite
If you're going to support Linux, support it completely, fer cryin' out loud!
IBM doesn't make Thinkpad's anymore.
180 user Law firm with:
.NET-based web time-entry interface that absolutely, positively requires IE.
Large vertical-market accounting system (Elite) with
Word using Interwoven Desksite Content Management System. Call me when an Open Source CMS can intercept OpenOffice File-Save and File-Open to present a metadata profile dialog or folder structure that assigns metadata based on the folder in which the document is stored. No frickin uploads.
Anything else could probably run in Wine.
There is an effort to put together a Law firm Distribution (LAWnix) but right now it's just picking the best pieces.
I would suspect more than a few companies are in this situation.
If you don't want to repeat the past, stop living in it.
...Lenovo, a Chinese company that brutalizes its workers
Lenovo is not mentioned anywhere in the linked document.
when you are trying to rollout a new desktop, give them a hundred dollars and some slack. Say "yes, we know you might have to learn as few new things, but give it an honest try for a little while, and here's a bonus to help pay for your personal training".
Cash talks, market speak BS boss orders walk.
People are at YOUR work because they want to MAKE MONEY, not because it's a hobby for them, you are asking them to keep doing their jobs they are doing now PLUS learn an all new system to them (most likely), so pay them for it, at least something. A little extra, a bonus. What cash you now don't ship to Redmond, shoot them a little bone for their efforts. Cash really perks people up and gives them a little enthusiasm, because humans are stubborn and they don't like to change. Grease the wheels of inertia a little. You pay your sales weasels bonuses for a "good job" above and beyond, same with all the other PHBs,so do it with the rank and file grunts, too.
Recognize that humans are humans and you are putting them out-even if it's for their own good and the companys own good in the medium and long term. they don't really understand that, they understand "this much work daily and NOW I have to relearn all this crap and..." You get the picture. Pay them for new things they have to do.
And technically, I don't think you can beat a live CD distro with a stick for a transition period, even if it's just setting up a few generic boxes with it running in the break room in advance of the switch, let them play with it before they are under pressure to produce on it. Give them free CD install disks they can take home and put on their own machines if they want to, the same stuff you will be running at work. That can't hurt either and is certainly cheap enough to do.
Others have noted that this point is addressed. The author conservatively steers clear of such dissasters.
"Very Complex Excel" migration is a failure, even if you stick to M$. OLE and calls to other functions are each invitations to something not being on the next version of Winblows. Worse, M$ changes their scripting so you can be sure you will have work to do no matter what. I know a guy who was doing Nuclear Power Plant thermal balance calculations with a big nasty sheet. It even called the local high school to get weather information that was then used for regulatory purposes! The thing was a tremendous pain in his ass that needed constant upkeep and had all sorts of quirks that could give you wrong answers. He was using the wrong tool for the job and needed to replace it with proper and stable tools.
For normal sheets, OO, gnumeric and even kspread are doing a very good job with opening complex sheets. I've been very pleased lately when trying to open old cross section calculation sheets. I've seen my old graphs. They are doing about as well as M$ junk itself did with my older sheets. In the worst case, I've got the nasty old things on an http server, so I can go get them on a Winblows box and see them. A company could easily keep a few Winblows boxes or just use Xandros with it's excellent Crossover Office setup.
If the book is challenged on that point, then you will lose credibility.
I don't think so. The author said it would not work. He was being conservative but surely knows as well as I do how things are going.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
Why aren't IBM notebooks some of the first dual boot machines on the market? You can't convince me that with IBM's resources they can't produce a neat little laptop. Buy Xandros and tweak that if they had to.
Hello, McFly! Anybody awake in Atlanta? All aboard the clue train, leaving on track 9.
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
The approach of "these advantages will go away" makes it look like you expect "I love you" style network instability from free software. That's not going to happen and we should not act like it will.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
Well, I'm working in IBM and tho I'm not commenting on this officially, I can say that we take the distro part seriously. That means we don't favour any distro over another. Some departments test on suse first, then redhat. In other deptartments it's the other way around. Suse has had better support on power cpus than redhat, but with red hat enterprise linux version 3 that has changed to a large degree.
:)
;)
When you develop something, you must have some base level versions of compilers and libraries to develop on. Then you test on different versions to check that everything work.
As another poster pointed out; whatever sells our servers, software and services...
As any big corporations, we're pimps. I just like to think that we're honest about it, and as good pimps we try to make our customers happy.
ouch, maybe not PC....
//TheToon
Since IBM is doing all this work on the Power architecture, why not just use OS X..easy transition..everything works..
I've worked and consulted in lots of places with all those silly little one off apps in the popular desktop fat app environments (Fox, Access, VB, Delphi, and PowerBuilder). I think a lot of them could be dealt with by using something like a single (two if you like redundancy) beefy servers and MetaFrame.
Put the ones you need on it, and then immediately start evaluating rewrites on them. You'll probably be able to onsolidate/eliminate several of them and port the rest.
It's healthy, really. Spring cleaning so to speak.
This is the killer for lots of companies.
Ubuntu !
Reasons Gimp is runing out of features to add only the more complex ones are left. The next version should at last have 99% of photoshops features. The last major feature left is greater than 8 bit per colour processing ie program build from the gimp source code has this feature just has not been merged back in yet. Yep 2.2 should have this at long last. After this is mouse angle tracking brushs with textures this can be hell to code.
Also next version of gimp has console level processing with out X11 nice.
Speed of development matchs to the features that can be added. OpenOffice should keep crusing for a few years yet.
For mass deployement not software vender linked it is only hardware vendors go back prewindows software developers where manly Unix and C64 and other strange systems. Linux will clone this will become more of a problem as clone software appears on windows so software vendors will have to fight opensource anyway and Opensource will not die as long as it has a home ie *NIX.
Last years many major movies used software based of gimp for image processing ie once this merges back in Photoshop will have a problem.
Now, if only IBM would actually give us a useful Desktop, like.. oh.. PORT THE WORKPLACE SHELL TO RUN ON X11.. please? Give me the code, I'll do it, if you don't want to spare the resources.
"Champagne for my real friends - and real pain for my sham friends!" http://ericblade.postalboard.com/
What about IBM's own Lotus Notes? I know a number of companies that could convert a large number of desktops to Linux if only it ran Notes. IBM really needs to fix this if it wants people to take Linux on the desktop seriously.
Man, I certainly hope that with the money from the sales of their PC business IBM can finally afford to get a spell checker.
I'm four chapters into this book. While there's a lot of great information and ideas, it reads like a rough draft. Given that I haven't seen a story on cnn.com with FEWER than 3 major spelling or grammar issue (most frequent error on cnn: Sentences that missing word! (yes, that's intentional)) in years, I suppose this book is not all that terrible. There are several pages so far that have not had any significant ones...
this is getting old and so are you
blog
this is absolutely the biggest joke in linux - support for multiple, co-existing languages on the same desktop. No logout/login to change a paragraph into farsi, please! Macs and even poor shlub Windows manage this fine, but talk about a wide-ranging lack of support - internationalization exists in little splintered bits from the kernel to OOo, and is very* inconsistent.
Whether you need multiple languages daily, or just to open/deal with a multibyte font in excel (even though the whole of the file was typed in english), until this is working much* better in linux (crossover office comes close, but not quite), it just isn't going to be an option onn an increasingly-internationalized desktop.
http://www.shonenjump.com The world's most popular manga, now in English!
Given that IBM has sold their desktop division to Lenovo, and IBM involvement with Apple is widely rumored ... what might be their motivations for releasing this Redbook now? To put it another way, the only IBM interest I can see in this matter is to generate as much IBM GS work as possible.
Pardon the naysaying but when a post is done anonymously, when it neglects to mention what the saves-the-day Linux tool was, when it is incredibly vague in every respect I become suspicious. I understand being vague when not anonymous and I understand being anonymous when mentioning specific tools in a negative light or when mentioning engaging in question behavior. But anon and vague smells fishy.
/b" can manage that. So I'll assume you meant to say that you wanted to combine two individual and complete movies into one.
Cancatenate two files. Surely this was not simply concatenating two binary files, as would be the case when a large movie is split into pieces for download. DOS's "copy
What Linux tool saved the day? What's the harm in mentioning what it is? Nothing improper about downloading the source and building it. Could it be that this tools builds under both Linux and Windows, like so many useful tools that seek a large audience?
Again, I apologize for being so suspicious but something about this post just struck me as very weird.
From TFSummary:
...At this point, I'm gathering input for what we could improve on...
/. do we get people WHO MODERATE WITHOUT READING THE ARTICLE SUMMARY.
Only on
When you look at the state of the world, how can you not become a radical, liberal anarchist?
What I would say (IANAL) is:
- You may limit the distribution of modified code to within your organization.
- If you redistribute code outside of your organization, it must include access to the source code.
- Recipients of source code (original or derivative) must receive the same redistribution rights as you had to the original.
____Typo on page 8: I'm thinking that that should be:
Free Software: Like love, it grows best when given away.
Personally, I think they bailed out on the PC market because their cell processor probably kicks so much ass its going to make PC's obsolete. No doubt it runs Linux also. I see better days ahead, my friends... Of course this is just wild speculation on my part.
Clickety Click
Ouch, cheap shot :-) IBM produces many 100s of Redbooks a year and there is a standard toolset to maintain consistency. However, the source material given by the authors to the editors could have been done on any platform, in most any format...
catch (ModDownException mde) {post.modUp("Interesting")}
to a Chinese company. I think this will make a difference.
I am graduating in June of 2005 from the Ohio State University with a BS in computer engineering and a business minor. I have a great amount of experience dating back to my days at an ISP when I was 16 through my engineering/IT co-op with a very large company. I'd love to send you my resume! Send me a message, thanks!
PS: Don't look at my comic linked below if you would ever consider hiring me... haha
Berto
I too have written tech manuals, but for a different segment of the electronic industry. That was many years ago. I, however, have seen IBM pubs for many years. They follow a pattern, a mindset or cultureset if you will, that fills every page of every book that they produce. Where some err on the side of 'brevity', IBM is the opposite. Every author who writes for IBM must evidently conform to certain style rules or they simply do not last as a tech writer:
a) Ease into the subject of the space of
hundreds of pages of trivia not even remotely
related to the subject;
b) Pointedly leave out critical details of
the hardware and software environment by assuming the readers know them, and do this to the point where progress is impossible without separate help;
c)Write the book in legal technobabble so that all meanings are ambiguous and pointedly vague.
d)Bury useful information in the middle of
unrelated topics such that it is unindexable, unfindable, and once encountered, is so unrelated to surrounding material that it is either dismissed or easily forgotten.
e) Base many concepts on other IBM products and other manuals and 'incorporate by reference' this other information so that you have to go out and try to buy these in order to begin to understand the stuff in the ten pound slug that you have in your lap;
f) Redefine the whole language of technical english so that a whole new culture of scientific related 'kant' has to be learned;
g) In short, one has to be an IBM customer engineer and has to have gone through IBM field engineering schools and absorbed IBM culture in its entirety in order to make sense of any IBM pub
--and by then you know the true value of
all of these books....they make very fine
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I'm not responding to the article moron, I'm responding to the post titled "Greatest Need of Linux: AOL Client" You dumb fart!