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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!
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 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
He can find linux users to work for him! He makes booze!
RTFA again for the best results.
*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.
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!
So is this free as in wine or free as in speech?
The more you know, the less you understand.
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.
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.
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.
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.
"No kernel before its time."
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