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IBM Desktop Linux Pledge, One Year Later
Blue writes "It's been more than a year since the bold announcement from IBM that they planned on dumping Windows for Linux throughout the company. InfoWorld is reporting that not all is well with IBM's desktop Linux push. What went wrong?"
http://www.redbooks.ibm.com/abstracts/sg246380.htm l
In my little corner of IBM the push for Linux on the desktop is slim to non-existant. It's pretty much limited to the techies who already have a penchant for Linux and most of those who have converted spend a big part of their day in a Windows vmware image. I don't even run Linux on my ThinkPad and I'm a Linux certified geek!
Linux gets tons of lip service, no doubt, and is praised as a server OS. Some of the internal tools run on Linux but much of the intranet (i.e. the expense report tool, the travel tool, etc.) is still tied to Windows, IE (Firefox doesn't even work) and/or the MS JVM (!!!).
On the upside two weeks ago we had a Linux InstallFest where 2,000 lucky individuals got to try their hand at installing Linux -- RedHat or SuSE -- albeit in vmware.
I was wanted to purchase an IBM ThinkPad without the proprietory "windows" OS. I failed to see Linux as an option and was not even able to uncheck the "windows" box while trying to place the order online so I called IBM customer service. I spoke to several customer service reps who all told me the following: The only way to buy a ThinkPad without paying for the windows software is to request a "windows refund" check from IBM after placing the order.
Is that how IBM supports Linux? Does this give IBM the rights to brag about supporting Linux on their computers?
I am still holding off on that ThinkPad purchase because the good news is: IBM will begin shipping ThinkPad notebook without windows by February 15. I haven't been able to find out the exact price difference but was told that it will be in the $150 range. There will be no software on those machines and a disclaimer that the harddrive has not been tested. I was also told that an Linux option is being discussed but nothing has been decided yet.
This is finally a step in the right direction. I just wish IBM would have lived up to their word sooner and you would not have to speak to a dozen people first before getting someone on the line who knows what you are talking about.
Theses.
Haida Manga
Lotus Notes seems to be by far the biggest thorn in everyone's side. While it does run(ish) on Wine, most people who would be adopting Linux early prefer to handle their E-Mail themselves, and no one could ever convince IT to enable the imap servers on the Notes servers.
The thing no one seems to understand about IBM is that they tend to work in 5 year cycles. All the platform planning that's going on now won't be deployed for 4 or 5 more years. That means that the Linux push, which is only a year or two old, still has some time to go before it reaches maturity. Getting a company of 200,000+ people to change course is not a quick process. I would not be surprised to see a huge deployment of Linux company-wide in about 3 years. They'll probably still be running Notes using Wine then, though.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
Actually, my personal experience in running Linux exclusively at IBM is different. I haven't had any issues running Firefox for well over a year for all of my internal intranet stuff (POs, boss reviews, web classes, web certification, training, etc.).
The problem is that as far as I can tell, none (or very few) of the stand-alone apps I use* have been ported to Linux. I run Notes on Wine (which is fine -- it's slower but not enough to be a problem on my work machine, a 1.8 Ghz PC), but occasionally have to run one Java (ironic! should be easy to port, right?) IBM custom application that doesn't have a Linux client. So, I have to boot Windows to run this app, maybe once or twice a month for ten minutes.
But the web has never been a problem for me. The closest thing is a news service we have from another company that complains about possible problems since I'm not using IE. It was especially ironic once, as I was reading an article posted on the front page of our intranet portal complaing about IE security, urging people to switch to Firefox, and I had to click on that stupid button for the "you're not using IE" warning to go away. The web page, however, has always renderd 100% ok though. I'm annoyed that IBM doesn't slap this vendor around for stupidity -- all the articles are presented in plain text anyways and render fine on non IE browsers.
* Big company, I guess they haven't gotten to porting the specific stand alone apps *I* use, anyways, to Linux.
Ah, but a community is more than any one organization. Thus, while Slashdot itself may be unwilling to address this problem, other members of the community may already have solved it for you. Try the SlashFix extension for Firefox.
Breakfast served all day!
I can honestly say that a lot would have to be done with their own internal applications to bring them to Linux. Domino client won't run. Neither is a Sametime client available. Both were in heavy use in IBM Global Services, at least.
There are several linux Sametime clients available, ranging from Java to the Gaim meanwhile plugin. So that is not a problem (I run a different internal client which I find is superior to the Windows client).
The Windows Lotus Notes client runs fine on standard WINE (as in available from www.winehq.com) and internally packaged versions are available for employees. That is not a problem either - indeed I believe that the almost flawless execution of the windows client running on WINE has removed any immediate need to port the client to Linux natively.
As I still work for IBM, I see active communities of employees moving to Linux. I don't believe that the original pledge said that everyone would instantaneously move to Linux - for the most part, its a quiet revolution for us developers. I can't speak for other parts of the company. I do know that DB2 UDB continues to spread to more and more Linux platforms (x86, x86_64, IA64, PPC, z/OS) and that is clearly an area where IBM is pushing hard for complete coverage. Both my key productivity machines are 100% linux and I do not have to use Windows unless I am debugging Windows problems.
Cheers,
Toby Haynes
Anything I post is strictly my own thoughts and doesn't necessarily have anything to do with the opinions of IBM.
Press ctrl+ then ctrl-. That will reflow the page and all will look correct. The fix is in the current gecko devel tree.
Well, if you are trying to do something with a BRAND-NEW computer, about which you know nothing (most likely, you don't know by heart what video card it has, what ethernet card (if not integrated into motherboard, and in that case, the drivers for motherboard) or what sound card it has---and these are basic things), you are going to struggle. For me, the first-time formatting my computers was always a pain (and yes, I was installing "user-friendly" Windows), because I never knew what hardware I had until then...
Actually, do you know what I do when I can't figure out what video card, etc. I have and I don't really want to open up the computer to look up the serial number? I boot up my computer with Knoppix---except for that one time when I was booting my roommate's computer with a gigabit ethernet card ("cutting edge" so to speak), it found all the hardwares correctly, and I just look at the system message (which, as it happens, is more informative than Windows system messages are) so that I can figure out what to do.
If IBM of all companies is developing their internal applications to require Internet-Explorer dependent technologies like ActiveX... What does this say about their commitment to Linux?
Is developing? Nope.
How about legacy apps and small internal projects that grew beyond their original scope? Some of it might be IE-only, but most of the intranet works fine with Firefox -- I use it every day. The only problems I have are with applets and that's because I don't want to install Sun's JVM. When I hit an applet, I just fire up IE. If I didn't have IE, I'd get Java working in Firefox.
BTW: All of our webapps are required to be cross-browser compatible and fully accessible.
couple things. ..
.. wow. Since IBM made the announcement that it would roll out linux across the company two things have happened.
I've been using IBM's internal use only "linux client for ebiz" for years now. For the most part its a pretty tight distribution.
It has..
1. Lotus Notes (wine)
2. Lotus Sametime equiv called sanity
3. mozilla,
4. open office, msviewers
5. realplayer
and a peguin in a BLUE TUX
I've been using that combo for about 5 years now
1. Some nice beta work has been created. linux ebiz 3.5, w/ a nice knoppix installer.
2. Its been very hard to find out whats going on, the whole project is very hush hush now.
potential problems??
1. IBM has only a few billion internal apps that are not centrally managed ( hard to port )
2. they are trying to figure out whether to go w/ redhat or suse or both.
I have also seen IBM internal apps moving very fast to work w/ mozilla/firefox.
Its a big company boys, I just joined when win95 was being rolled out, and that took forever. Dont expect a linux desktop overnight. My guess is atleast 3-4 years from announcement. Mainly due to other dependencies like lotus workplace etc.
The good news is, if you want to use linux at IBM, its available and working well.
I would think that Slashdot, being such an open-source advocate, would at least make their page render properly with the most popular open source browser.
But if Slashdot can't be bothered to do it to their page...
How. Many. Fucking. Times?
IT'S A BUG IN FIREFOX!
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=21752 7
Note the completely valid HTML testcase that exhibits the same problems as Slashdot.
Yes, we all know Slashdot markup is shit. It was shit back in the 90s, it's shit today. But this particular problem is all Firefox's fault. And yet people persist talking utter bollocks when it comes to this bug. I swear, for every comment that mentions it's a Firefox bug, there's twenty that blame Slashdot. Get a fucking clue, people.
A troll, but I'll bite:
/etc. The registry is a horrible idea- editing it is not simple, and if you screw it up, there goes your system. Files are easy to edit.
You've either never used linux, used it a *long* time ago, or expected it to be exactly like your favorite windows machine so you wouldn't have to relearn anything.
1.) Remove all file extensions- Most linux programs use file extensions, and with a graphical file manager, you can double-click files to get them to open with the "right" application.
2.) Export registry into 40374 files and scatter them around hard drive for no reason.- They're not scattered around the file system, they're in
3.) Remember to name those files random things, like trontabs- No one said you had to use the commands, if you don't like a cli, you can use gui programs to do the same time.
4.) Use a program to then scrable those letters,
4.1) Remember to make all folders in the root only 3 characters long with no thought to human organization what-so-ever
- Root directories are well-organized, and what goes into them each is well-definied.
5.) Downgrade to Windows 3.1 to get that box window feel (and jaggy-font feel)- Or use KDE or Gnome, which is probably the default on your distro.
6.) Get rid of your printer driver and use the standard linux one. All your ~ are now @'s- Use the basic CUPS install interface, difficult to screw up.
7.) Remember to type in lowercase- If you don't like the cli, don't use it.
8.) Create batch commands JUST to copy a file!- Or use one of the many graphical file managers that exist.
9.) Run only text games because your graphics card doesn't have a driver for Linux
- Very few graphics cards don't work in linux. Not all games run in linux, but that's a completely different issue
10.) Oops! You can't use the backspace key without editing a file in VI, which you dont know how to use anyway- If you don't know how to use VI, don't use it. There are plenty of graphical text editors that work like you think it will
11.) Realize Windows is easier and get your XP cd from trash.- Or realize that linux is different form windows, and things are usually set up to help you get started on the right foot.
It seems like you installed Linux because you wanted it to work exactly like Windows. Just becuase you were a Windows power user, doesn't mean you automatically know everything about linux. If you had used the graphical configuration tools, you wouldn't have had any of those problems, and you could eventually learn to use a command-line interface if you wanted to.
>> My ultraviolent Linux switch video.
1. Click Preferences. ...)
2. Tick the box [ ] Light (reduce the complexity of Slashdot's HTML
3. Slashdot becomes readable.
Thanks for the info, but next time please make your links clickable.
2 7
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=2175
Terrorists can't threaten a country's freedom and democracy. Only lawmakers and voters can do that.
Client for e-business. Basically a standard package of software for day-to-day business operations.
Mod this one up - FP is just slush spouted from a bovine rectum
Check out my PHP Url Validator
This is actually a Firefox bug (or whatever the rendering engine is).
/., this problem will show up there also.
/. editors isn't going to get them to fix the problem.
As you've noticed, the problem appears when the site has to load separate content at different times. So the Slashdot main page loads half of itself, Firefox renders it the best it can, then Slashdot sends the rest of the content which Firefox sticks into the already-made template.
The fix needs to be on the Firefox side so that it will update the layout if further content is received that changes the layout. Slashdot isn't the only site to use separate processing of its pages and on sites that do similar webserving as
Unfortunately, this is a Firefox bug. Complaining about it to
The IBM VPN solution does work on Linux. I run Debian with the IBM VPN, Notes via WINE, and VMware for the two applications I need to access that don't work without IE.
GCHQ Quantum Insert installed. If only our tongues were made of glass, how much more careful we would be when we speak
The problem is very very well known to the Firefox using regulars. The preferences and sections on the left hand side will often overlap some of the clients. The equally well known workaround is to do Ctrl+ followed by Ctrl-. This forces the text to reflow correctly. Someone even wrote an extension to do this automatically when visiting Slashdot:
f ox -extension.html
http://www.hardgrok.org/blog/item/slashfix-fire
There is plenty of mud to sling on this. The Firefox devs have to had plenty of reports on it and the Slashdot maintainers have consistently ignored it as well. This has been going on since at least FF's 0.9 days. I'm running 1.0 on Debian and it occasionally happens to me.
NO, we are not imagining it. YES, the problem is real. Search through your own comment database. You'll find plenty of complaints about it going back for months.
Time and money.
In a company the size of IBM, with many, many years of technology legacy, a conversion to any set of standards, open, closed or half ajar is bound to be fabulously expensive. I mean, there are still app front-ends running on the mainframes, although I haven't had to use many since I started two years ago. Not Firefox, not IE, tn3270 . 8)
"Even if you are on the right track, you'll get run over if you just sit there" - Will Rogers
The problem is not with IBM despite everything everyone is saying here - it is the same problem experienced outside the company. People are habit forming. Windows is one of those habits. Breaking habits takes time and good reason. Despite this a lot of people I know here plan to switch to Linux or at least try it, especially when I tell them about my experiences, and I've acted as 'Gentoo Support' for a few people making such a transition here. Many need more convincing on "Yes you can do that in Linux" mind you.
I think the question posed by this article, and many people's conclusions are unfair - Linux support at IBM is probably higher than the general population outside IBM and rapidly climbing. Also this formal initiative was only set a year ago. How is that not a success?
Until IBM ports Lotus Notes to Linux and starts using it, anything they say about the Linux desktop should be absolutely ignored.
It's called iNotes. It is officially supported under Linux too. Check out the spec page. Retargeting large pieces of software is not something that happens over night. This is the direction that Lotus is supposedly heading though.
There are internal deployments of iNotes too. However, notes under wine works so well for me that I doubt I'd switch anytime soon...
It's not as easy to destroy all data as usually thought. In theory, three things might go wrong during resizing an NTFS partition and setting it up for dual boot,
1. NTFS resizing by ntfsresize.
2. Repartitioning by fdisk, cfdisk, Parted, QTParted, DiskDrake, YaST, etc.
3. Boot manager setup using LILO, GRUB, etc.
In all cases, we have met, the problem was introduced in either step 2 or step 3 and not by the use of ntfsresize. In most cases this means, your data is still intact but you can't access it.
Most often a Windows boot problem occurs if one edited the partition table by Parted version less than 1.6.12 or a libparted based partitioning tool. This is especially true if a Linux 2.6 kernel was used. The Linux 2.6 kernels report different disk geometries as previously for the same disk an incompatible way therefore fooling softwares like Parted. Unluckily many partitioning tools weren't adjusted accordingly thus in some cases they might render Windows unbootable and even your data inaccessible by saving an incorrect partition table. Known major distributions having this problem are but not limited to Mandrake 10, SUSE 9.1, Fedora 2.
If you used a distribution having this problem then please check your vendors errata or see below for possible recovery solutions. We'd like to emphasize again, this is not an NTFS related problem and it is not caused by the usage of ntfsresize.
The problem was fixed in a recent parted what QTParted and most other partitioners use internally.
So do what most people do with windows. Hire someone to set it up, make a ghost of your install, and if everything goes to hell, reinstall from that.
-1 Uncomfortable Truth
Do you truly, honestly think that Windows detects all hardware on all machines? Believe me, when it comes to servers I often have to identify SCSI chipsets, network chipsets, RAID controller chipsets in order to download and create a driver install disk so I can get Windows 2000 or 2003 server to install. Sometimes I have to do the same with Linux, but it is less common than with Windows at the moment.
"IBM is using Wine to run Lotus Notes software on thousands of clients, according to sources, but ironically, the company's internal use of the open-source Windows operating system emulator did not translate into a ringing endorsement in a guide to migrating to Linux clients, published recently on IBM's Web site."
W - Wine
I - Is
N - Not an
E - Emulator
Wine is an Open Source implementation of the Windows API on top of X and Unix.
Wine Myths
I get a feeling that somehow this article was pushed by Microsoft or Microsoft supporters.
geek n performer who performs morbid or disgusting acts, as biting off the head of a live chicken
The article is clearly quite incorrect about many things, especially regarding IBM's web based tools.
Most web apps inside IBM work just fine on all browsers. There are a few that don't, primarily because they use Java Applets that require the MS JVM. There are a few sites that just have really poorly written HTML, but all in all, the IBM intranet is very friendly to all browsers. Almost all of these "broken" sites were written before IBMs directive came out or they are tools managed by a 3rd party (e.g. Amex) IBM has very strict rules regarding intranet sites. In summary, they must be XHTML compliant, work on all XHMTL compliant browsers, and pass accessibility guidelines. There is an exception process if you have valid reasons for violating these rules. Part of that exception process is a plan to fix the problem. That doesn't mean it'll be fixed immediately. Everything costs time and money and everything has a priority. I think most people don't grasp the breadth of IBM's intranet and the amount of tools that run on it.