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Winemaker Drinks To Linux
An anonymous reader writes "Australian winemaker De Bortoli is a firm believer in Linux. CIO Bill Robertson says he's 'bemused by any notion that Linux is poorly supported in the enterprise since he has never had any trouble finding support for De Bortoli's open-source systems', and says that those IT managers having trouble simply 'aren't looking hard enough.' There are also some other good case studies here -- telecommuncations provider TransACT, online hotel booking service Wotif, engineering contractor Coates and investment and funds management group Aviva."
A lot of people in this country pooh-pooh Australian table wines. This is a pity, as many fine Australian wines appeal not only to the Australian palette, but also to the cognoscenti of Great Britain.
"Black Stump Bordeaux" is rightly praised as a peppermint flavoured Burgundy, whilst a good "Sydney Syrup" can rank with any of the world's best sugary wines.
"Chateau Bleu", too, has won many prizes; not least for its taste, and its lingering afterburn.
"Old Smokey, 1968" has been compared favourably to a Welsh claret, whilst the Australian wino society thouroughly recommends a 1970 "Coq du Rod Laver", which, believe me, has a kick on it like a mule: 8 bottles of this, and you're really finished -- at the opening of the Sydney Bridge Club, they were fishing them out of the main sewers every half an hour.
Of the sparkling wines, the most famous is "Perth Pink". This is a bottle with a message in, and the message is BEWARE!. This is not a wine for drinking -- this is a wine for laying down and avoiding.
Another good fighting wine is "Melbourne Old-and-Yellow", which is particularly heavy, and should be used only for hand-to-hand combat.
Quite the reverse is true of "Chateau Chunder", which is an Appelachian controle, specially grown for those keen on regurgitation -- a fine wine which really opens up the sluices at both ends.
Real emetic fans will also go for a "Hobart Muddy", and a prize winning "Cuiver Reserve Chateau Bottled Nuit San Wogga Wogga", which has a bouquet like an aborigine's armpit.
Cue the wine jokes...
Does his wine run linux? Imagine a beowulf cluster of linux wine bottles.
Does he offer wine packages for many distributions?
Will his wine run Internet Explorer in Linux?
Procrastination -- because good things come to those who wait.
Of course, wine makers support linux! Oh wait. wrong wine.
There are lives at stake here!
That Wine and Linux go together?
"Teleporting Rodents with D-Cell Battery Displacement" theory -- IgnoramusMaximus (692000)
So wait, are they a wine company or a Linux gaming company?
I don't doubt the ability of Linux to be everything a company needs to run their software. After all, it is based on Unix, which was designed for ease of use, and has been standardized upon across many industries. Linux is absolutely a useful operating system, a great, working cog in the networks across the world.
But support is one of those things that ought not be something that ought to be sought "hard". Support should be easily purchased from service companies dedicated to the task. Support should be available from any number of certified engineers who have made it a priority to understand the system. Support should not be intricately tied to Google (though it certainly has its place there), but rather it should be supported by professionals.
And really, in all but the most remote locations, it is. Linux isn't difficult to put into place because support is difficult to find. On the contrary, it is easy to find companies willing to provide support. The drawback is that typically these services come at a price higher than similar service contracts with Microsoft support professionals.
Then again, you get what you pay for.
Jesus saved me from my past. He can save you as well.
This is a crappy case study amounting to little more information than "Company A uses Linux well for what they do." If this is a real case study it should go into details not just "hey it works."
If this is supposedly marketing then show me a case study for a company using X and I can find one for a company using it's competition Y.
"Not knowing when the dawn will come, I open every door." - Emily Dickinson
"and says that those IT managers having trouble simply 'aren't looking hard enough.'"
word!
Yes, it's a pain in the ass to go on IRC or users groups or read, post and interact with people, learning sucks,.. and it's hard too.
just someone, make it work for me.
"...those IT managers having trouble simply 'aren't looking hard enough.'"
Isn't that EXACTLY the point of buying from a vendor? So that I can EASILY and QUICKLY get the support I need WITHOUT HAVING TO LOOK FOR IT?!?
I can see the MS and Sun and IBM ad campaigns next week..
"Choose XXXX because our support staff is a phonecall away, 24/7x365... Or make sure you have a good newsgroup feed and bookmark all the good OSS sites because that's your other option!"
Ugh. With friends like this wino, who needs enemeis?
If a pion (n-) collides with a proton in the woods & noone is there to hear it, does lamdba decay into the source pa
that this boss is not a psychopath...
Homer: Every time I learn something new, it pushes some old stuff out of my brain. Remember when I took that home wine-making course and I forgot how to drive?
Marge: Homer, you were drunk!
Homer: And how!
I'm a big tall mofo.
Click here or here.
Having trouble finding support? Use Windows and you'll have a million windows techs begging for a minimum wage job.
I'm surprised nobody's stated the obvious yet:
Coders drink to Linux.
I'll turn into a supernova and burn up everything. Well I'll turn into a black little hole and you'll turn into string.
I would argue that they're not looking at all. Not only are they not looking, they're not taking sales calls from companies that do support and customize OSS apps. They're making an effort not to know.
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
Mod parent up +5 Funny!
Please, for the good of Humanity, vote Obama.
.. Czech Budweiser.
; -- the corruption of government starts with its secrets. a truly free people keep no secrets. --
He can find linux users to work for him! He makes booze!
RTFA again for the best results.
In today's world, it isn't the truth that matters. What people perceive as the truth is what matters. I will give a few examples.
When I was young, I thought Africans are black because of the "intense heat" on their continent. As such, I'd think twice before visiting. How wrong I was! There are places on the continent that are cooler than my own country...whose temperatures never go beyond 28 degrees celcius. And there are rivers formed by snow! Who knew that? In fact, the hottest places on the continent do not have black people. There, you find Arabs.
I also thought that America was the best place to be, and that there was no suffering. How wrong I was. There is corruption in the USA too. Sometimes I think it is more than that of a banana republic.
One computer based example would be that Linux is hard! It took me some time to figure out that Linux is just another way of doing things in the computer world. So I am not surprised about this. Monkey Boy is exploiting this and to some expent, he's been successful.
*LATER TODAY AT OSDL HEADQUARTERS*
Intern: We've detected a trademark disturbance.
Linus: Who is this time?
Intern: It's De Bortoli winemakers of Australia.
Linus: Tell Maddog to unleash the enraged pengiuns on their grape fields.
Intern: Right away Sir.
SpecOps Labs is at it again and they can't find talent.
It seems to me more like a random winery that uses linux. Big deal. I'm working in a company that uses linux. My father works in a company that uses linux (once-largest beowulf cluster in the world, actually).
I don't see why it's a surprise to anyone that "gasp" Linux is usable in an industry.
+5, Truth
FYI: you cant get Koolaid in Australia anyway and the only close subsitute is called Cordial...its basicly thick flavored surup that you add to water...its really sickening stuff.
Don't ya hate it when the correct spelling of your favorite screen name is taken?
I think I see a lot of Linux-is-great stories here and Microsoft-is-bad stories here.
Gotta start keeping score and start ignoring my customers so I'll know what to buy.
Cogito Ergo Sum
Advisory effects against the consumption of too much Linux wine.
After the first glass, you'll start believing that Linux on the Desktop is a good idea.
After the second glass, you start to think Laura DiDio is hot, at least when she's not talking.
After the third glass, you find the Linus Torvalds blurb on how he pronounces "Linux" once again mildly amusing.
After the fourth glass, all your interfaces look like Windows- and you like it!
After the ffith galss, you wlil wsih you had a bettar spllchekr for Linux.
After the sixth glass, you'll re-experience glasses six through one, and will experience a very productive Perl coding session in the process.
Imbibe at your own risk!
change
free as in beer
to
free as in wine
won't we?
I have a really elegant proof for Fermat's last theorem. If this sig was only a bit longer...
...why do we need an Australian wine maker to tell us that Linux is a good OS...there is a big fricken penguin on the menu bar for crying out loud!
Don't ya hate it when the correct spelling of your favorite screen name is taken?
So is this free as in wine or free as in speech?
The more you know, the less you understand.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
A fine choice. Don't forget Paulaner Salvator!
Doesn't this depend on the problem domain, though? Sure, Windows and MacOS are easier to use for everyday desktop usage, but when it comes to running a backbone of servers, is the ease of use that Windows gives you really making it simpler to manage the network? I'm going to say (from my non-sysadmin perspective) that it would be easier to lock down a Unix network than to be stuck constantly chasing the latest service pack patches from Microsoft.
I will be the first to admit that I run Windows almost exclusively, but I am willing to accept that running a network on Linux/Unix is easier and safer than running it on a Windows-based server network. Does anyone have any stories either in support or in contrast to that opinion?
Jesus saved me from my past. He can save you as well.
It wasn't even a direct quote.
From TFA:
"In the early days we bought a support contract from HP, and they've provided us with gold-plated support all along," Robertson says. "All in all, five external organisations have provided support to De Bortoli's open-source software -- we've had no trouble finding help, and no trouble implementing on-site training."
It sounds like he is saying those that are having trouble aren't looking at all.
I always thought this Australian winery was a more natural fit for Linux.
Life is like a web application. Sometime you need cookies just to get by.
A subtle biblical change of liquid composition has happened to Australian Linux somewhere between an article earlier today and this current one...
Hmmmm, I think that Amazon.com is pretty fucking usable, and that runs on Linux. At least UNIX.
Ease of use means NOTHING unless you specify who you want to use it. If a credit card processor made a system that would process one payment with a simple click of a mouse, I would not call that easy to use. You could probably train a 5 year old to click the mouse and use the interface, but he's going to have trouble doing that for all the billions of payments in a day's worth of transactions. Suddenly your GUI is really sucky, and a batch system implemented on a UNIX box is looking more and more friendly.
Unix is user friendly. It's just very picky about who it calls a friend.
Fascism trolls keeping me up every night. When I starts a preachin', he HITS ME WITH HIS REICH!
The thing about support of Open Source Software is that quality support demands above all else a stable product. No, not one that doesn't crash very often, one that doesn't change very often. Every change a programmer makes to a program introduces a risk of retraining for the support staff. The last thing a customer wants to hear from Technical Support is "your programmers changed the source and that's why it doesn't work any more.".
That's why it's important for enterprises to keep programmers away from the programs unless the company is prepared to support itself. This is not a problem for proprietary software because the programmers don't have the source code. For open source, though, the temptation to "change that routine so it works better in our environment" is pretty overwhelming and absolutely toxic to the support scenario.
'aren't looking hard enough.'
Anyone who uses Windows knows that if you want to find something about a problem, you often have to go through several loops to get there and spend plenty of time weeding through the confusion and plethora of data. [never thought I'd use 'plethora' naturally in conversation, but whatever] If finding solutions to Linux problems requires more work than finding solutions for Windows problems (ie - not "looking hard enough") then forget it. It's not worth the extra labotomies...
Eric Idle, I believe, doing his Australian accent.
Good choice... just had one of those yesterday! One of my favorites as well.
He says there "are no easy answers".
I say "He's not looking hard enough!"
i think it's somewhat it industry's basic principle that running linux/unix in servers works better than using windows for the same job. :)
:)
;) ), but for servers it is almost of no use. you can do a lot more in cli if you must perform a lot of changes or unified actions.
provided the person responsible knows his way around, of course
it's not only locking down the systems, but also maintenance required - we have here some servers that have been running for a lot of years without single failure - only a couple of easy software updates/upgrades.
these are linux boxes, but then when i think about it... we also have netware boxes that have been running for even longer periods of time and only hardware failures have interrupted them.
though now novell has gone linux path, so you can also say that they fall into linux cathegory of the mantra "linux and unix are stable and perform exceptionally well at server side"
workstations - actually there is nothing hard about using a linux box once it is properly set up. and it is becoming more and more easy to set them up (novell, mandrake and a couple of other distributions installs are very, very easy to perform, other distributions also are improving).
also, ease of use differs a lot for different people and needs, so probably distinction between knowledgable and first time users should be assessed before evaluating (for exmple, advanced user will feel that slackware is easier to use because it is easier to make changes at lower level, but a new user will better like mandarke's ability to easily make simple changes).
for workstations good gui is important (well, those couple interesting people that would like everybody to use cli exclusevly we will not take into account
so, ease of use for workstation will be mostly determined by ease of use for gui tools, for servers it would be more functionality than straight ease of use that would determine overall ease of use.
for example, sed is far from easy to use, but it would be much more useless if it was easier to use, but had less functionality.
oh. now when i start to write sentences like this i probably have to end this working day at 20:00 =)
Rich
Exactly. My second choice if I can't find Optimator.
"Eve of Destruction", it's not just for old hippies anymore...
Comment removed based on user account deletion
The vast majority of applications are built to run on Windoze, deego. Just because he wants to bring some half decent applications that were built for the Windows OS to the Linux kernel doesn't make him "less of a believer."
Imitation is the best kind of praise you can get. If there's applications for Windows that are being ported to or being given some form of compatibility with Linux, it speaks for both the application and the OS as being worthy of each other.
To each his own.
All you really need to turn water into wine is a good ol' grapevine and some yeast :-)
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
The problem with Linux isn't it's ability to run as a server in the enterprise and hasn't been for years. While it could probably use some very high-end work, the fact is that Linux will soon completely own the datacenter unless players like Sun really step up.
The Linux issue is business desktops and client applications. If we manage to finally make a good desktop Linux distro with good standardization of interface and ease of use, Linux will finally knock that joke of a server OS (Windows) out of the water and finally start making some inroads for general usership share. Windows only has it's semi-simple GUI administration and it's tie in to the installed Windows desktop base going for it. That's a huge advantage, make no mistake, but it *should* be surmountable.
Yeah, IBM and Novell sure are "business novices"
Means you can't find kids in high school that know how to fix it.
MadOgre.com
Well of course the creator of a leading oss Windows emulator for Linux is gonna like Linux, and make claims about good support.
We need good impartial testimony.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Unix is user friendly. It's just very picky about who it calls a friend.
From an HCI standpoint which is the only scientific view that exists for such things, you have just made my point. Amazon isn't usable because it's built on X, Y or Z, it's usable because someone sat down and though about the interface and how a user goes about deciding on what they want to buy and then actually buying it, and then did a user study and retuned the interface based on that. It's called User Centered Design, not OS centered or anything else.
From wikipedia:
The chief difference from other interface design philosophies is that user-centered design tries to bend and structure the functioning of a user interface around how people can, want or need to work, rather than the opposite way around.
An interface should be designed independant of the actual underlying processor/operating systems implementation.
"Not knowing when the dawn will come, I open every door." - Emily Dickinson
"No kernel before its time."
I don't know what will become of it in the future if a lot of money gets involved. But then again, I think that Linux will always be for the geeks, and learners.
Now to prove this...
I've got a server that I'm trying to mount to. How do I find the device name in order to put it in my smb.conf file? I'm running Slackware.
Time is comparison of movement to other movement.
Well the ease I was discussing was between GUIs and cml. Not OS Foo that is GUI driven and OS Bar that is cml driven.
:)
A particular GUI may be harder to use than a particular cml.
Is windows harder to admin servers than Unix? perhaps. does it have to be? no. It's just how 'they' are.
Imagine two scenarios. You are told to lock down two server networks. One is windows one is unix. You got to the windows machine, see an icon on the desktop or in the start menu called 'Manage My Network' and click it to run the app. You look around and see something called 'lock down the network' maybe even in red font. you click it, network locked down.
You go to the Unix machine find a prompt and think 'uhhh' you types 'man -k network' get about 80 entries and start sifting through them... you get the idea.
Now rehash, this time the network app doesn't have a big Lock the network button and you just kinda give up.
GUI's lock you into what the gui developer gives you access too and into the 'control paths' they decide are best. While a well designed GUI could give you easily discoverable ( hci buzzword) and usable ( just click a button) access it also potentially prevents you from doing a number of other things the software is capable of but the interface is not.
With cml, you more or less have acess to every combination, but finding the right one for your regular tasks is not obvious or easily discoverable.
That's all I'm saying
I'll amend this with the fact that I'm an OS whore, I use them all for various different things.
"Not knowing when the dawn will come, I open every door." - Emily Dickinson
Sounds like DeBortoli just earned my business.
GJC
Gregory Casamento
## Chief Maintainer for GNUstep
firm Linux believers look long and hard for their drivers.
long. hard. firm. that article has a great summary. If only we had some booze...
Koolaid started out as a thick, flavored syrup sold in little glass bottles. Mabey Cordial is slowly evolving into Koolaid =]
Everything I need to know I learned by killing smart people and eating their brains.
I think the point of the phrase in question was not necessarily that people it's easy to solve Windows problems, just that it's easy to find people who will work on them. :)
Oops! Meant to say "I think the point of the phrase in question was not necessarily that it's easy to solve Windows problems, just that it's easy to find people who will work on them. :)"
Hey, what about Greek Ozo! When I was in the Marines and went over to Greece, that stuff was killer. Strangely, a search on Google mostly shows stuff about people with bad breath. Did I spell Ozo wrong?
If Tyranny and Oppression come to this land,
it will be in the guise of fighting a foreign enemy. -James Madison
agreed, this is actually quite good for the linux operating system in general, even the trademark thing I think, keeps people from pushing crap linux and then blaming good linux for problems. I was speaking through my sarcastic mouth above, it's been a long time coming, some sort of organization to the OSS movement that plays like the big boy. PR pieces like this and all of the other things that work on enhancing the legitimacy of OSS (ie: Linux) will start to pay off dividends soon, and I don't just mean red hat stock.
The rock, the vulture, and the chain
Try not to get into too much trouble with that stuff.... :-)
\/\/oobie
Sorry to reply to myself. But for those who have never heard of it, I heard it pronounced as oooooh-zoe to where it rhymes with you-zoe. Any Greek-Geeks, please correct ; )
If Tyranny and Oppression come to this land,
it will be in the guise of fighting a foreign enemy. -James Madison
I understand that this is not a case study or white paper, but the statements that he makes in the article are very vague.
The article doesn't even mention HOW he's using Linux. Is that just his website host? Is it his file shares? Billing and CRM? Are all of his employees' workstation 100% OSS?
I would love to know how much such an organization as his spends annually on IT. What are his payroll costs? Hardware? Software? Training? Consulting? How does that compare to a company of similar size using Windows? Which one is better off?
-David
Actually, the best beer in the world comes from Belgium: it's the Westvleteren 12.
Unfortunately, the monks who brew it have run out of stock since it has been rated the best...
main(char O){O++&&(((O-291)*O+27788)*O-868020?1:putchar(O++
"The pale, stale ale with the foam at the bottom."
http://www.rustycans.com/oldfroth.html
I turn wine into water with a lot less equipment than that! Oh wait....
"I've got more toys than Teruhisa Kitahara."