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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
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?
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!
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.
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.