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Updating Free Software in the Enterprise?
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?"
Very easy. Create Rapid install package and deploy. We updated firefox to 1.0.4 the other day to 80 clients in a matter of minutes.
Zenworks for Desktops (ie Windows) is now a pretty advanced and mature product. It works pretty damn well. Zenworks for Linux is pretty immature by comparison. I've seen Novell making LOTS of noise about it, but then again, they would. From what I've seen though, its the only enterprise-grade software from a major vendor to offer a central control system. Most others are very fragmented.
No No NO! Just say 'no' to imaging... Debian supports preseeded configured values to be passed to a blank system during its install and a very easy method to run a script before and after the second stage installer. Do yourself a favor and actually track the tweaks you perform on a client when you build a system. Document them and put them in the install scripts. Then you can rely on the hardware detection method built into the Debian installer to allow you a diverse hardware ecology, consistent packages and a sliding target going forward as the repository ages.
Just my $0.02 from a fellow sysadmin who has left imaging and never looked back!
DaGoodBoy
My God! It's full of Voids!
I'm looking for help doing this in smaller steps without losing enterprise-level management I have with SUS, group policies, etc.
No, no, no, definitively NO! This is NOT funny. This is insightful. What the hell do you think institutional education is there for, anyway? It's not to shovel money into a gaping corporate mouth; it's to teach students (IE, the future leaders of society) how to think.
:)
Computers are just a tool. They help people get work done more quickly in all manners and fashions. They are also a wonderful tool for teaching - both specifics and general concepts. One of the excellent skills which will be gained by giving students the task of installing/updating/upgrading machines - and not just CS/IT students, though I'm sure many of them could use the hands-on experience as well - is that it will help them conceptually visualize abstract structures. This is basic common sense. If people can recognize abstract structures and work within these confines, they can then apply this information applicably in the rest of their life. They'll learn how to be more organized and more systematic in their every-day approach, potentially making them better citizens and employees in their future lives.
This is very, very good advice, not "funny".
Now, granted, this would probably end up with many lab systems unfunctional for a good period of time, but that might just get them to work more diligently on getting the systems up and running.
~/ssh slashdot.org ssh: connect to host slashdot.org port 22: too many beers