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Updating Free Software in the Enterprise?

Posted by Cliff on from the one-is-easy-one-hundred-isn't dept.

wallykeyster asks: "I'm an IT Director for a small private university in the U.S., and we are largely a Microsoft shop. We pay over $15,000 each year for our Campus Agreement so that we can upgrade the desktop OS to our version of choice, run Office, and have some Client Access Licenses. I would like to move to FOSS solutions, but I'm having trouble finding support for Enterprise management. For example, OpenOffice and Firefox (both of which I use personally) would be easy first steps, but IE is updated automatically via our SUS server (and settings pushed to clients via group policies) and Office updates will be included soon. How are other larger organizations (i.e. more than 200 desktops) dealing with software deployment and updates? Is anyone using Zen with Novell Desktop Linux?"

5 of 367 comments (clear)

  1. At $15,000 a year...... by ARRRLovin · · Score: 3, Insightful

    ......You're getting off EXTREMELY cheap. If you switch to a different OS, or OSS, you'll easily spend more than that (many times more) in hiring people to support the new infrastructure.

    --
    -Randy
  2. Same boat by Jett · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I'm in the same boat where I work. I'm trying to get Firefox officially supported, the biggest sticking point is the lack of an easy method to push updates. I think this is one of the biggest reasons Firefox isn't widely deployed in the corporate environment yet, sure it's easy to install it yourself and update it yourself - but that's not a solution in a controlled environment.

    1. Re:Same boat by Verteiron · · Score: 4, Insightful

      That gets it on the client systems, sure. But how do you keep a user from (for example) changing their proxy setting? With IE you can lock the user out via Group Policies. With Firefox, well.. I'm not aware of a way to implement similar restrictions.

      It sounds like a Windows Server Administrator Template Policy would go a long way towards Firefox acceptance in corporate environments. You'd need some kind of plugin for Firefox that makes it read values from the Windows registry, as well.

      Alternatively, a Firefox plugin could read the Group Policy restrictions targeted at IE, and "translate" them internally to the Firefox equivalents, but such a solution would be a sloppy hack at best.

      --
      End of lesson. You may press the button.
  3. Re:$15,000 a year... by tekiegreg · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Not really, assuming: 1) You're paying students $8/hour 2) You work students 15 hours/week (they gotta study sometime) = $6240 I can do 2 students with room left over for a trained chimp (we'll assume $2,500 worth of bannanas and computer repair bill from feces thrown at computer). With 2 students you could probably upkeep a small university ok (say 150 computers per student) after that I'd put the students to work finding an automated solution.

    --
    ...in bed
  4. Stick with Windows by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

    You're getting Windows and Office on 200+ desktops for only $15,000 and you consider that too much? Are you on CRACK? That's like quibbling over whether you'll pay three peanuts here or walk 1000 miles to pay two peanuts.