Linux Desktop Deployment Postmortems?

duffbeer703 asks: "My employer runs alot of desktop and laptop computers -- something in the neighborhood of 40,000 PCs. Currently they are all Windows 2000 & XP managed by Active Directory and other big, complicated enterprise management tools, all of which can support Linux in one form or another. I'm looking for ways of making Linux (and maybe Unix or even Apple desktops) an option as we replace or add PCs. The problem is, most of the resources that you find online about deploying Linux focuses on server environment, and the articles that I do find about desktop Linux focus on standalone developer workstations, the IBM conversion to Linux (which doesn't seem to have happened) or things like LTSP, that won't integrate well with our infrastructure. Is anyone out there successfully using Linux for regular users? How did it go, and how did your IT and user communities adapt to the new kid on the block?"

Comments

Ghost et al.

[meisenst]

I was able, at some point a few years back, to produce a Ghost image with Red Hat, OpenOffice, and a login model that used my office's Windows infrastructure to authenticate users automatically. It worked very well. I used it on several test PCs and was able to boot them up, ghost them, and have them come up connected and ready to use.

It was fairly straightforward to set things up with simple additions to /etc/skel. The only real kneebiter was the fact that the vast majority of the office required Outlook, and for some reason (I don't recall what) Evolution wouldn't quite cut it. I seem to recall problems with lookups in the Active Directory using Evolution, but for all I know that's been fixed by now.

I ran this thing on my PC for months before my employer even noticed. I used VMware for my Windows needs (as I was a network administrator, I needed to run some troubleshooting in Windows for user support) and Samba for all of my day-to-day shares and printing. In the end, the only reason anyone knew what I was running was that I was sick one day, and someone tried to sit at my desk, with very small amounts of success.

Now if only I'd kept a copy when I was let go!

Desktop Linux in the Enterprise

[John the Kiwi]

I've been trying to get Linux instaslled on the desktop for a few of my customers, but had problems finding a suitable model for deployment. Say what you will about Microsoft (and here most people do) but their deployment tools are pretty good. All of my new deployments utilise RIS (Remote Install Services) which greatly reduces client installation times.

Roaming Profiles and publishing applications via Active Directory also greatly reduces on site time. Workstations can be restored without anyone technical being required on site at all.

I've looked and looked and haven't been able to find any resources for doing similar tasks with Linux based desktops. The closest I've come up with is to use custom built CD Rom desktop OSes, but these are much slower than using a workstation with the OS installed on a local hard drive.

I'm sure it can be done, perhaps by remotely mounting common application and /home folders to a central server. But I've never seen any Howto's or even descriptions of anyone having done this in the enterprise before. Not to say it hasn't been done, just that noone's written how it's done (that I've been able to find).

Not much help I know, but it shows why my company is still an MS shop.

John the Kiwi

Disaster

[TedCheshireAcad]

I used to work at a private high school in the Northeast. You can probably figure out what one by looking at my user name. Anyhow, we (read: I) tried a rollout of Linux on our file servers and routers. Here's what happened:

The Linux file server worked beautifully. We had a simple NT4 domain, setting up Samba with proper permissions was easy. It was easy to administer, very reliable, and fast.

The Linux router(s) worked well, too. I had a nice collection of scripts run with cron that would turn off internet access to the dorms at a specified time, and then turn it back on in the morning (remember: this was a high school).

I was even in the process of developing a grading system with the LAMP stack, since at the time, teachers did their grading manually, and often complained about it.

Everything was running beautifully for months, until politics entered the game. Some higher-ups bought software without consulting the IT department (me and one other guy) that of course only ran on Windows. They also decided that we were going to go with FileMaker for a grade database, that was maintained by some high-price consultant. In the end, they wanted everything to be Windows for some reason or another (misinformed about how Open Source works, you know, the whole deal). My wonderful little Linux environment disappeared, and eventually, so did I.

Moral of the story: technical challenges aside, your project can always be torpedoed by someone who is self-important and more powerful than you.

Re:Ubuntu?

[HolyCrapSCOsux]

Here's my story. I worked in a callcenter. VERY M$-centric. They were using MSAccess to handle all their supervisory overhead. (write-ups, time tracking,HR stuff) and it was horrible. the damn thing crashed EVERY DAY.
This is a server story--->
I got permission from my boss (who was not in the IT department) to build a proof of concept web based replacement for 200 users.

system:
Compaq Armada 7400 Laptop
PII 300
64 MB RAM
Slack 10

Now, Everything was going well for months. All the supervisors were happy. The system was operating flawlessly. Then one overly ambitious assmonkey decied that he could curry favor with the site manager by filing a complaint against my "going against IT policy by having an unauthorised server".
The IT department was fully aware of the server being on the network. Obviously. They knew I wasn't going to break their infrastructure. They merely looked the other way, as it filled a need.
Nonetheless, the project was scrapped. Everybody who used the system got pissed at the guy who filed the complaint because it tripled their workload. That guy resigned. Ha Ha. But it still terminated the project.

Moral of the story: if you want to try to help people and "increase productivity" get top-down approval of the project.

Re:Ubuntu?

[Robert The Coward]

Old data. The client is now free and included with both Fedora Core 3 and 4. It doesn't work well at all it is slow and crashes way to easilly. If they turn on IMAP support the problem goes away thought. As I use Exchange All day long using IMAP without any problems at all.