Ubuntu On The Business Desktop

rchapman wrote to mention a Mad Penguin story about a consultant who installed Ubuntu on his work PC, and managed to use it for over a month before his boss even noticed. From the article: "This is not a typical review, because you've read enough of those. Instead, lets pretend I'm a typical worker, who just happens to have a soft spot for Open Source software. I want to use Linux, but I have a job to do. The price of Freedom should not be my salary. I don't have time to fiddle, all I care is whether or not it can do what I want, right now. So what do I want out of my system?"

Comments

Re:I worked at a place one

[Anonymous Coward]

snitches get stitches, faggot!!!!!!!!!

Re:Me too

[AppyPappy]

I do a lot of Access development and it's a waste. I'm a programmer. Access is supposed to be an end-user tool. The end-users can't figure out Access for snot. So I have to do all the devlopment of reports, forms, modules and queries. I SHOULD be using a better tool and database than Access but we are sold on Access because it is a good end-user tool.

Freaking circular logic. We would be better off creating a real database in MySQL or Postgres or Oracle and using an ODBC link into Excel since the users understand Excel...somewhat.

Access is a PIG. It pisses me off.

And I'm not using Ubuntu because it just don't sound American.

Re:Haven't used Linux...

[eno2001]

Suffice it to say that when my Linux using friends are scrambling to figure out how to get their machine to boot, figure out how to do simple things like change the screen resolution and griping about .config files, I'm always up and running without a glitch.

Apparently they don't know much about computers then. Do they? And neither do you...

You are a wage slave, deal with it.

[Anonymous Coward]

Hahahahahahaahahahahahahah!

You... think... you get..... a.... CHOICE???? HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAA!

You use whatever tools the company uses. You are a WAGE SLAVE, nothing more, nothing less. Keep your Open Source dreams in your basement at home, and when you go meet with other geeks.

Corporate America (and probably every other state) will NEVER adopt Open Source technologies without accountability. Period. If there isn't a single phone number the boss can call to say "Your database software just crashed and wiped a month's inventory... fix it today or pay for our losses", they'll never use it.

Small business.. sure. They can't afford all the big gun software, so they'll take the risks. Internal mail servers... yeah, again... it's the guy doing the backups that takes the fall if the internal mail server eats the CEO's golf digest newsletter. Multi-billion dollar transaction servers that handle credit cards, banking services, or missile defense codes? Not a chance.

I'm not saying Open Source is better or worse quality, I'm just saying that business always wants a place to point the finger and expects immediate response times. Filing a bug report in bugzilla and waiting a week for it to be acknowledged by the dev team of a free project is NOT acceptible to upper management. They want a live human they can scream at and get reassurances (and that's all the get usually) right now.

So until there's a 1-800-GNU-HURT number the pointy hair boss can have you call and get an immediate response, just learn to live with BillyOS and keep collecting that fat paycheck so you can buy Open Source toys at home.

Re:Prior to getting fired

[Anonymous Coward]

I was asked to clean out my desk and leave that day

Bummer. Just as well that MS gave you a job shilling on /. then!

Re:Haven't used Linux...

[eno2001]

Then you have no business commenting on things you don't know about. If you're a business user, why are you commenting on this? What input do you have in this discussion and WHY are you even reading this article? In other words what do YOU have to prove?

Re:Haven't used Linux...

[eno2001]

And you're also the same loudmouth dumbass I dealt with many times a Trolling4Dollars. Your the same guy who loaded up a bunch of credit cards to operate your PORN (not that I have anything against porn) "business" and who actually thinks that being in debt is a great thing. Oh and by the way... ninenine.com sucks. If you want you want good and REALLY FREE pron, check out Sublime Directory. Stick it up your craw NineNine. You and your whole neocon self righteousness.