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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."
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.
Step 1: Don't tell SCO.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
And do they mention that migrating must be done in december - show the users xsnow and they'll forget windows in a second...
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How about a chapter entiltled "McAfee and Norton: Terminating Enterprise Contracts with no Hard Feelings"?
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
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."
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
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.
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
Most of your Win apps-only stuff can be handled through Crossover Office. Does wmv videos, IExplorer, Notes/Sametime. Yes, it's basically Wine, but Crossover is optimized for precisely these things.
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.
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.
The delicious irony of this is that they use Wine heavily internally to run Notes.
I don't have any clear visibility into why this is; I get a lot of hemming and hawing about it, but no clear vision. I suspect some back room handshake agreement with the folks in Redmond, but have no real proof for that.
They try to raise an argument about patents, but IBM themselves know that a proven monopolist cannot successfully prosecute a lawsuit over patents (which is why IBM prosecuted no such cases from 1935 until 1985, because they got slapped in 1935 for antitrust violations when they did so).
A perhaps more straight forward explanation is that using Wine greatly reduces the amount of services that IBM can provide you with :-/.
I'm all for Linux but I'm interested in knowing what sort of things other companies are finding that are preventing them from switching.
What makes this question such a stinker is that it usually isn't the big, common things that are the show stoppers, it's myriad little things.
In my case, I can think of a couple off the top of my head. For one, the availability of a Nortel VPN client. Now, I know there's actually a Nortel client available, but my shop is already paying a flat fee for the Windows client. If they want the Linux client as well, they have to pay extra. Therefore, their position is that Linux is unsupported. Then there's the fact that there are a number of Access databases that we use, and nobody's in a big hurry to migrate them to something else. And of course, there's all the specialized, obscure little applications that create data in various proprietary formats, with no Linux version available from the vendor, and not of sufficiently large an audience that anyone in the open source community is going to be bothered to write an equivalent.
I'd say that the big things, office suites, etc., Linux already has. But it's the little, obscure, PITA applications that have evolved within the Windows ecosystem throughout the years that can't be easily replaced.