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Desktop Linux Mass Migration
Rob writes "With many Linux vendors attempting to push the open source operating system as a
desktop alternative to Windows, Computer Business
Review reports on Novell's migration to Linux on the desktop. From the article: 'Changing any mission-critical technology is a daunting task, and despite the growing maturity of Linux as a desktop operating system, it is little wonder that the vast majority of businesses are sticking with Windows.'"
ACL? Wazzat? Anyway, for groupware, Novell has GroupWise running on Linux servers with a Linux client for it (and for OS X, which M$ doesn't deign to do) and Win32?
;-)
When can they expect your check?
That, and the hundreds/thousands of Access/Excel/Word apps/macros/templates that a lot of businesses rely on. Yes, they can be recreated in other platforms, but it will take a significant amount of work to do so.
Power users with legacy applications and current Office licenses can be handled for $40USD or less in volume. The key is to make sure folks understand that path is deprecated.
+++ UGUCAUCGUAUUUCU
Already been solved. Try a nice, recent Linux distribution like Fedora Core 3/4 or Knoppix or SuSE 9 with good autodetection. Running Fedora 3, and even with lots of oddball hardware, the only thing that failed to detect properly was my free webcam from Comcast. Lots of other USB webcams, digital cameras, my Epson C66 printer, various pointing devices, DVD+RW drive, USB flash drives, etc., were all automatically detected and installed.
My blog
http://www.stuff.co.nz/stuff/0,2106,3348057a28,00. html
New Zealand's Ministry of Education has inked a deal to provide GNU/Linux under the Novell banner for public schools.
I feel that this is nothing other than an incredible breakthrough for us Kiwis. By giving our kids the opportunity to become aware of alternatives, we could definitely see some great change coming soon.
"if my ISP would provide the same kind of support, for Linux, that my ISP provides for Window, I would switch my AMD-powered desktop over to Linux"
And what exactly would that support be?
Everybody who uses Linux has Internet connectivity. Linux is a network OS from the ground up. What doesn't work on Linux concerning the Internet that you need ISP support for?
Are you saying your ISP doesn't provide help desk support for Linux? So what? When have you or anyone else ever needed that?
Any current Linux distro will connect via dial-up/DSL/cable in a matter of minutes (once you figure out the stupid little connector app with the cable plugin icon in the System Tray, which seems to be a really stupid interface that I wish they'd fucking get rid of since it's brain-dead.) After that, I've never needed any sort of ISP support for Windows or Linux.
Richard Steven Hack - This sig is TOO GODDAMN SHORT TO DO ANYTHING USEFUL WITH! MORONS!
Most office drones that I know and work with seem to have rather simple needs on their business PC. They use Word for documents, Excel for spreadsheets, Outlook for email and IE for surfing the Web.
As long as those programs work and the navigation is similar to Windows, they're happy. The fact that they don't have to worry about virus infections, spyware, random crashes is a bonus.
From the CIO standpoint, it's a win (as long as all your core applications work and people can transition easily to the new "look and feel." The CIO/CFO are now off the forced upgrade merry-go-round each time Microsoft decides to foist "upgrades" on their customers.
I have converted my company to the following:
CentOS 3 (clone of RHEL 3)
OpenOffice
Thunderbird for email
Firefox for web browsing
We have a few people with Compaq presario laptops that didn't seem to mix well with Linux (driver issues) so we're swapping in Linux friendly notebooks and donating the Compaq units to charity. The tax credit for the charitable donation makes the purchase of the new notebooks pretty much a wash. We also had to punt a couple of printers and replace them with Linux friendly postscript networked printers. That was rather painless and surprisingly cheap. (Again, we donated them to charity and took the tax credit.)
The next step is to migrate all our servers off of Win2K server. That includes office file servers and web servers. We migrated mail and DNS to Linux a few years ago so that will be a painless move (to CentOS). So every system in the company will be running the same OS and we'll maintain our own internal yum repository to keep things in sync and up to date.
Prior to this, we were probably spending a few hundred thousand dollars a year just in software licensing fees. The IT folks are pretty happy about the change since it makes their life easier in terms of support (we sent the entire group for "RH linux certification" as an incentive to be good sports about the change. After some initial grumbling from the hard core MCSE guys, the overall mood seems to be one of relief...both from the "guys on the ground" and from the "guys who pay the bills."
Cheers,
It summarizes the article with "despite the growing maturity of Linux as a desktop operating system, it is little wonder that the vast majority of businesses are sticking with Windows." and then provides two examples.
The first states "Novell had made savings of $900,000 on Microsoft Windows and Office licences as well as maintenance costs from the move." and "A voluntary migration also saw the company beat its goal to get 50% of users onto Linux by the end of October 2004." and the second says ""We came to the conclusion that our requirements are really only met by a commercial distributor" - that commercial distribution being RedHat.
How the fuck did any of this get spun as 'vast majority of businesses are sticking with Windows'?
-- I care not for your foolish signatures.
I have no idea what release of Linux you are using, but I figured I'd try out a couple of things you mentioned in your post. Our desktop machines here at work run SuSE, they haven't been upgraded in a while so mine is still running SuSE 9.2.
i on.jpg i on-after.jpg
I went and hunted about in the server room here at work for a USB mouse, and found an old microsoft one in a box of junk, I plug it into the front USB ports on my PC. A dialog box pops up which I have taken a screenshot of here:
http://db.osoal.org.nz/screenshots/new-mouse.jpg
The mouse is actually working at this point, and I can use it to click on the "Yes" button.
Okay how about changing resolutions, I click on the "Screen resize" applet in the tray and choose a resolution, it changes and a second later I'm looking at 800x600 rather than 1600x1200.
http://db.osoal.org.nz/screenshots/change-resolut
http://db.osoal.org.nz/screenshots/change-resolut
I agree adding USB devices and changing resolutions used to suck, it doesn't anymore.
I used to be quite mystified by people complaining about copy and paste on Linux until I went and used a windows machine for a few days. People in windows have to highlight, right click and select copy ( or the corresponding keyboard shortcut ). I have been using Linux for about 10 years now and for the whole time I have been highlighting text to copy and clicking the middle mouse button to paste. It works in just about everything on Linux. I can see that the windows method is totally busted across most Linux applications.
Configuring printers I agree is rubbish in Linux I have no problem with editing the cups config to add stuff, but the GUI frontends SuSE provide had me absolutely bamboozled the last time I tried.
Anyway just trying to add some more data points.
I am a lawyer and this constitutes legal advice and I shall indemnify you against any losses arising from taking it.
Woah man, what year are you from? This was fixed so long ago, I can't even remember when...
Oh well, what the hell...
it's a simple game of tetris. it actually works pretty well, although i can't figure out how to move or rotated the falling pieces.
i, j, k, l, and space (q to quit)
3 answers ;)
./ ;)
1. Ubuntu does provide a build of wpasuplicant (latest version is 0.3.8, I believe), which provides WPA support.
2. When I have them. I picked up a lot of Thinkpad X21's (700 MHz PIII's) and a handful of NC4200's (1.8 GHz P4 Compaq subs). I'm down to the last of the 4200's right now and am searching for my next supply. Regardless of the OS installed (Linux or Windows), any laptop we sell is ready for war flight.
3. Not really. Our website is sorely out of date and doesn't currenty handle any commerce. I'm just beginning to focus on sales. If I can move another 5 to 10 units as quickly as this last lot... I'll look into the whitebook market. At this time, it's primarily EOL and rebuilding for local clients.
However, if you'd like some help moving in the right direction... I'd be more than happy to offer any assistance I can. Pop me an email at serviceATcompletepcDOTbiz.
Funny thing about all this... I just spent nearly an hour on the phone Friday w/ MS propoganda division. The nice lady on the other end of the phone was trying to make sure I had all the information I needed to help convert any Mac and any Linux clients over. Everytime I look at my MS Action Pack, I get a wee shiver down my spine. But I suppose it's good to have one foot in the shadows... if for no other reason than to bring it up on
Nice site, btw. Love the "Got Evil" bags. Might have to pick one up for my wife.
#SickNotWeak
Joking aside, though: Sure, if you want to use your special webcam, blinking USB cupwarmer or the supermouse with three scroll wheels that you bought on Walmart, Linux may well have a problem.
However, for almost any kind of mainstream hardware, drivers aren't a problem in Linux. You'd have to go to pretty serious lengths (like the things mentioned above) to not get your hardware detected by the latest and greatest distros.
All in all, it sure wouldn't hurt having a good way to distribute drivers for Linux without requiring having a compiler installed on the target system and so forth, but for the most part, it really isn't a problem anymore.
It is much more complicated to install XP than my favorite distro, SuSE. SuSE is largely a point-and-click-and-voila! (but you can go to advanced options and change pretty much anything). It installs in 75 minutes on my old laptop- slow for Linux but smokin' fast compared to XP. XP has a pure text-mode installer until the base system (PE) is installed anyway, few Linuxes besides Gentoo and some Debians don't have a fully-GUI installer. With Windows, I have to dick around finding drivers. It's darn near impossible if I don't have my restore CD because my Ethernet NIC (Intel PRO 100/VE intergrated) is not supported in XP out of the box. So I have to either find the bloody CD or get somebody to get me the driver on a floppy or CD from the Intel site. Can't download it myself. In SuSE, everything fired up perfectly right from the start. Which is easier for you?
Just "gittin-r-done," day after day.
Oh, and read ubuntuguide.org first - there's a wealth of helpful info and FAQs there - should be more than enough to get you on your feet!