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Novell Expects Vista to Spur Linux Adoption
It doesn't come easy writes "According to the Register, Novell expects the cost of upgrading to Vista will encourage many companies to turn to Linux instead. From the article: 'Jack Messman, chief executive of networking software vendor Novell says that 2006 will see widespread adoption of Linux on the corporate desktop. According to Messman the catalyst will be the release of Microsoft Windows Vista and the high costs associated with upgrading. Obviously, if they're right Novell hopes that turn will be toward SUSE Linux.'" We touched on this issue late last month, as well.
They've been saying this each time Windows releases something. Hasn't come true yet. So you decide, is Linux adoption "10 Years Off" or will it become mainstream with Vista's release? Or are they one in the same? All of this is merely speculation.
And that, my liege, is how we know the Earth to be bannana-shaped.
What makes him thing that anyone cares about updating? Even after the release of XP, look at all the 2000 and 98 boxes still in use. Why is the release of Vista going to have any more of an effect?
Could of easily been Apple on the receiving end of the influx.
However Apple does not seem interested in corporate clients past the Xserve.
With the lack of licensing problems a company can just make thousands of copies of a hard drive to be put in the company's desktops and say goodbye to a 3 week wait to get a crashed computer back up. (Assuming they use a standard computing platform throughout the company.)
Marky Mark Killed Jason Bourne!
Its not like Linux has a billion versions for each distro of Linux, they have versions that make sense, and fit the needs of the end user. What if Red Hat had: Red Hat Home Users, Red Hat Professional Home Users, Red Hat For Porn Users, yada yada... People wont know what the hell they are getting!! But besides all that, Im happy to say that the Linux community has made some major breakthroughs lately with such vast compatibility ports to many commercial products used today for those who are "stuck" on Windows Desktops.
Just me
I guess it's time for me to learn how to do gui programming C++ and GTK? I've been spoiled with C# and VB for so long... I know unix based C++ and C, but not gui programming. This should be fun!?
self fullfilling prophecy
This could easily turn into a self fullfilling prophecy. The more the meme is repeated now, two years before Vista launch, the more it will grow in peoples minds. The more it grows there, the more thinking and the more planning.
IOW, keep repeating this! Windows Vista will make business switch to Linux. Say it enough and it becomes truth.
And there still has to be substantial per seat savings up front and integrated migration tools.
If they can pull off that package, yeah, they might a shot.
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
This'll spur movement towards Linux? Why wouldn't users just keep the OS they already have? If the point is to avoid retraining, migrating to Linux is one of the more ironic moves a man could make.
TLoM: Nerds + DDR + Rednecks for the win!
You can read *any* TCO study sponsored by Microsoft and you'll find that the upgrade to Windows Vista won't cost anything. There are *never* upgrade costs if you stick with Windows. Sheesh.
Also, there won't be any retraining costs if you stick with Windows.
Microsoft buys a lot of good research, you folks should read it more often.
Do you have ESP?
"Jack Messman, chief executive of networking software vendor Novell says that 2006 will see widespread adoption of Linux on the corporate desktop."
Just like 2005, 2004, 2003, 2002, 2001...
The real problem is (still) lack of applications and games. My home PC can't switch until Dreamweaver and Photoshop run on Linux. My office PC can't switch until Quickbooks and VersaCheck run on Linux. Honestly, I've seen more Windows->Mac and Linux->Mac migrations than anything else these past few years... and little to no evidence that shows that Linux is gaining popularity on desktop PCs, other than these "wishful thinking" articles from Linux company CEOs.
Something else to think about: The upgrade cost to Vista, for most companies, is effectively $0 because it comes with new PCs. Contrast this with yearly application updates for Photoshop, Quickbooks, anti-virus, anti-spyware, et al. which can run thousands of dollars. Microsoft isn't the only cost center on a typical PC; in fact, I'd say they're one of the smallest costs involved with a typical office PC.
Simpli - Your source for San Jose dedicated servers and colocation!
The problem with this view is that with big deployments, the Microsoft "price per seat" is always negotiable, especially when you bring a possible Linux migration into the equation. In fact we have seen this: XYZ government or company makes noise about moving to Linux, and Microsoft simply negotiates a lower price. When migration cost is the key issue, Microsoft has the upper hand. However, when other issues such as "open standards" are the issues, Microsoft can't compete. The problem is not selling lower TOC, it'' selling the benefits of "open standards". It's too bad that many Linux "evangelists" frame Linux migration arguments in the context of ideology, because governments and companies are rarely interested in these things, they have budgets to meet and people to serve.
"Who are in control, they are not in control of anything - they don't even control themselves!" - Glen Beck
From TFA:
Messman argued that Linux, having somewhat less desktop functionality, is a bonus for businesses as it discourages staff from wasting time engaging in non-productive activities, such as web browsing.
What is exactly less functional? I agree that removing the browser can increase productivity, but the fact that it can be removed doesn't mean linux has inherent less functional, but quite the opposite.
This reads like one of those "Hey, just reminding you we're still here" press releases.
Could this be the first sighting of "2006 will be the year of the Linux desktop?"
First...
"The requirements for Windows 9.x will make people turn to OS/2"
- Result, OS/2 is dead.
"The ridiculous requirements for Windows NT will increase adoption of NetWare"
- Result, NetWare died soon after.
"Novell expects the cost of upgrading to Vista will encourage many companies to turn to Linux instead."
-Result ?
It's been more than 10 years of these? Haven't we had enough?
Linux has its own niche; it is not meant to replace windoz boxes, and it will not replace them in the near future. So, who cares ?
I have just now downloaded OpenSuse 10. I'll install it and hope to see some improvements.
If Novell / Suse wants to get real desktop adoption, these are the things they need to do:
- The system needs to be more stable. Take a deep breath, slow down on the new features, and make it stable.
- THERE SHOULD BE ONLY ONE APPLICATION FOR EVERY TASK! This is so obvious and people have been saying it for years. On my Suse 9.3, if I want to control the volume, I go to Multimedia -> Volume control and I see NINE DIFFERENT VOLUME CONTROL APPLICATIONS, all of which work or don't work to varying degrees, and none of which are simple and easy to use and understand. That's crazy. That's on drugs. That's lame. Say whatever you want about how great Linux is but if my desktop has NINE DIFFERENT VOLUME CONTROL APPLICATIONS that is horrific. I bring up volume control, but the same problem exists in all the other application categories, but volume control is by far the worst offender. If users want to go crazy and install a dozen different word processors, fine, let them do it, but the default installation should have ONE and exactly ONE application in every category.
- There needs to be a good media player that is well-integrated and WORKS. I should be able to pop in a DVD which I got from Blockbuster and play it, with GUI controls, subtitles, everything, with no messing around. I should be able to go to CNN.com and look at video, with no messing around.
The first two items are not rocket science. They're not technology problems. They are management problems. Someone who is a technical manager high up in Novell should lay down the law on these two issues and make them happen. Say to the dev team, "If you think that such-and-such should be the ONE application for such-and-such task, make your case, and we'll have a decision process and at the end we'll pick one, and go with it."The media player part is more difficult because it's wrapped up in all kinds of legal licensing problems. They need to solve these problems. They are solvable with money, lawyers and time. Guess what, time to do it Novell!
In reading the posts I'm seeing extremes of the continuum: those who say yes, this is finally the straw that bows the camel's back; and those who say, yeah, like they said last year, and the year before, blah, blah, blah.
I think reality is somewhere in between. Yes, Microsoft continues to hold sway in their dominance and yes, every time they make a new release (less and less often, by the way) the silence of people rushing to linux is deafening.
But there is ample evidence of chinks in Microsoft's armor and a soft underbelly starts to show. Consider the high profile of large customers lately deciding to at least pressure Microsoft by making public their decision or pseudo-decision to go with open source alternatives (consider MA, and some foreign countries).
Historically no company can dominate forever, and eventually I think critical mass will be achieved and linux will gain the foothold and purchase it probably deserves. At least I hope so. I used to be gungho in my knowing linux would waltz over Microsoft but I know better now. It's more complicated, and Microsoft is a juggernaut and will be difficult to knock from the top of the hill.
Be patient, be faithful, Linux has legs and is learning to walk.
I'll bet they said the same thing about OS/2 when Windows 95 came out.
org.slashdot.post.SignatureNotFoundException: ewg
you have to remember the system requirements and the drag to replace things, that plus the world market for the OS.
It's like Ford/GM/etc pushing bigger SUVs on a market that is dealing with gas prices doubling in months, while someone else (Toyota/Honda) is selling cheaper faster hybrids that are mass-manufactured.
At some point, the OS price and the total price point goes beyond what the consumer is willing to pay - nowadays it's all about the Net bandwidth and you're frequently better off buying a cheap laptop or PC or just using the PS3 or Nintento whatever instead.
When PCs and laptops cost $2000 for entry and $4000 for premium, the OS cost was only a fraction, and you could raise the OS price and people would eat it up. But now that the PC retails for around $300 and a laptop comes in around $1000, the OS cost becomes noticeable.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
As great as this may seem, some companies may find this difficult. There would be a lot of proprietary software that would need to be ported.
I know, I know.. There's WINE and other similar software packages, but I highly doubt companies would want to resort to that.
One good example I can tell you of is an enviromental software package that my dad has to use at Eli Lilly, it's written in FoxPRO, and already they're having problems porting it to WinXP.
$fortune
Tomorrow has been canceled due to lack of interest.
More is less.
Won't happen on corporate desktops until installing packages becomes something my mother can do.
Most corporate desktops are locked down to 1: prevent installation of pirated/unlicensed software, 2: prevent installation of software not audited by the company, 3: prevent security threats from user operations.
Linux is fine for a locked down, centrally updated system.
It's fairy easy to setup an cron job on a gentoo system that runs emerge -u world and have all the updates as binaries, managed by the centrally by the company. That's just the kind of thing business wants.
The main problem I can see it that all of the office suites I've tried for linux aren't up to scratch yet, and many companies run bespoke software, often written in VB.
thank God the internet isn't a human right.
I've tried recent versions of SuSE, Mandrake, and Xandros, and I have to say that Xandros is the closest thing yet to a usable, decent, Linux distribution. In the past I've been a little more willing to overlook the blemishes in free distributions, but they're basically a re-badged copy of all the software that has floated to the top of the open source world. I expect a little more from an operating system, and efficiency, expediency, and stability are foremost among my list of requirements.
If Windows Vista comes with an improved ability to make it look just like Windows 98/2000 insofar as file browsing, etc, goes then the chances of me sticking with it are greatly improved. The last time I tried Vista, file browsing was a complete abomination. They've candified it to such an extent that only the dumbest moron would feel at home using it.
Linux needs a little more polish and better integration. No more klipper workarounds for different clipboard standards. One volume control. Configurable file browsers that aren't big and chunky and as slow as an old jaloppy, either!
Won't happen on corporate desktops until installing packages becomes something my mother can do.
Ah yes, the old "mom's apple pie and corporate software install" argument. Because we all know that's how businesses test their operating systems.
IT Director: "Mother, can you come here please, we have a Linux distribution to test"
Mother: "Just a minute son, I'm ironing your father's shirt."
IT Director: "Mother, please! You know we have a billion dollar company to run here. Dad's shirt will just have to wait."
Mother: Well, if you say so, but just remember how upset he was about the Windows Vista chicken soup incident."
Yup, enlightenment from a Slashdot Microsoft shill. Worth every cent of the paper it's printed on...
"I've got more toys than Teruhisa Kitahara."
Since the article indicates this was mentionned during a meeting of some sort and there is no mention of this "strategy" on the Novell site, it would seem that this "news" is "non-news" and the information was released by a PR firm to press bureaus to get their client some coverage.
Anyways, corporate desktops have a lot of custom apps. Simply switching to Linux doesn't make sense. If the apps are tested and work with Windows, why change? I could see if they buy new machines, and are forced to get Vista, but I don't see why Windows 2000 or XP should not be a problem. In the next year or two, there shouldn't be any radical technology changes that can't have a 2k or XP driver made for it.
Microsoft's roadmap shows Win2K currently in the 'extended' support phase, which means that they won't be adding new functionality, but will continue to offer paid support, and release bug fixes. Support will be dropped altogether 10 years after the initial launch. (Microsoft's current support roadmap & timelines were in part released due to the backlash after their intial rather short notice that Win98 would be end-of-lifed. They then extended support for it a bit, and released a roadmap so people knew what to expect for their other product lines.) Their current standard policy is 5 years mainstream support, 5 years extended support, then you're on your own.
I don't know which is funnier, the joke itself or the fact that it was modded 5+ informative! Haha, those /. moderators, what a bunch of kidders. :)
People will use whatever comes with the PC in the shop.
Oh well, what the hell...
For years, Novell's NetWare made PCs running MS OSes (like DOS and Win16) worth using, especailly for businesses. Novell was the network game for MS apps for most of the 1990s, even after Win95 for a while. Especially as a file/print/authentication server, anyone using MS for anything serious, from small offices to enterprises, used NetWare, especially as a gateway to any serious mainframe/mini network.
MS blew them out of the water with their unprecedented marketing of NT as a "network OS". NT was good enough to back up those claims, though not necessarily as good as NetWare. A combination of timing, marketing budget and general media infatuation with MS killed Novell in the market. For a while.
But Novell's been playing a great catchup game. Refusing to die, refusing to cash in sleazily on Linux (like their evil spinoff, SCO), refusing to get sucked down with the old Unix leviathan, Novell has arrived at the upcoming "Vista" juncture with great alternatives to MS apps. OpenGroupware is better than Exchange; Evolution is better than Outlook. NDS is better than ActiveDirectory. Their TCP/IP is better than the MS stack. SuSE is better than XP (except perhaps in overall desktop useability, so far). Of course each of those judgements is subjective, depending on one's priorities, but they're close enough for everyone, in the aggregate.
Novell has bought extremely viable techs with Ximian and SuSE, as well as others, that also integrate well into Novell's superior homegrown techs. They arrive on the scene with a brand long trusted for reliability, for "we'll still be around next year", for interoperability with Windows and others (Linux, Unix, etc). And their committment to open source seems complete, consistent and highly productive. When users get a chance to question their MS installations, due to an "upgrade now" marketing barrage from MS, Novell will be ready to catch some of the runoff. Many of which could be important beacheads inside larger MS organizations. When businesses see how well "Novell" Linux plays with MS systems, and how reliable is Novell's support (especially compared with MS), we might in fact see Novell turning the tables back on MS. People might again start to think about MS systems being "toys" until made serious by Novell business tech.
--
make install -not war
As a moderator for the Ubuntu Forums, I feel compelled to give you the correct information.
Ubuntu does not consider joining the DCCA because part of the purpose of that group is to keep things compatible with Debian Sarge. The group intends to rally around the newly released Debian stable and remain compatible with it. Ubuntu cannot and will not do this, because Ubuntu uses packages from Sid to form its distro.
I quote a member of the Ubuntu's Community Council governance board:
"I don't think Ubuntu is a "fork" of Debian, at least not in the traditional sense. A fork suggests that at some point we go our separate way from Debian and then occasionally merge in changes as we carry on down our own path. Our model is quite different; every six months we take a snapshot of Debian's unstable distribution, apply any outstanding patches from our last release to it and spend a couple of months testing and bug-fixing it."
Therefore Ubuntu could not even join the DCCA even if it wanted to, because using Sarge (even testing) as a base instead of Sid would break the development model. Ubuntu will stay as compatible with Sarge as Sid does, maybe less.
Have a nice day.
Open Source Sushi
Telltale Games: Bone, Sam and Max
If your employees are installing software on your company machines then I'd say you're pretty much an idiot. Doesn't matter what the OS is, you're just an idiot. Letting your secretary determine which .exe/rpm is 'mission critical' for her job (e.g., a new version of Solitaire or Minesweeper, or perhaps XBill), then giving her the big high-five to go ahead and install said software as she sees fit...real bright, that.
Ease of installation isn't a viable corporate metric. In corporate America the idea is usually to make sure that the employee CAN'T install softare willy-nilly, because the employee is the most common point of failure in security. The idea is to a) make the GUI easy to use, or at least familiar (e.g., KDE looking like a clone of Windows), and b) to be sure that the apps can do the job you require them to do.
Linux can easily do a). I know, because I've set up more systems than I care to count and the most common misconception is that the KDE GUI configuration I use for Linux newbies is a 'new' version of Windows. Takes 'em all of a day (often much less time) to get used to the minor differences (e.g., having, say, 4 desktops instead of just one - a real hit with employees who rapidly discover that means they can have 4 different sets of rotating wallpapers! Really, that's a Much Bigger Thing(TM) for most employees than any technical issue).
As for b), most Linux apps can do anything the average employee requires, since said employee doesn't use 95% of the 'features' included in MS-based software anyway. Few businesses go beyond email/calendars/word processing/spreadsheets/etc. - basic business stuff. And that was pretty much mastered a decade ago, with only cosmetic changes since then.
The most common complaints I hear are that employee John Doe can no longer download and run apps he found on the internet, usually spyware disguised as cute animals that occasionally march across the screen or whatnot. And believe it or not, that's usually considered to be a *good* thing, at least by businesses who value the idea of not letting their employees compromise their systems with bouts of stupidity.
Max
My god carries a hammer. Your god died nailed to a tree. Any questions?