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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?"
This article was posted a little while ago about a user who used Ubuntu in a completly MS environment without his boss noticing for a few months. (linked article from the story)
My experience with it is that it's one of the most mature Desktop distributions, coming complete with most of the tools one would need to perform most jobs. Easy install, and you can use Syntaptic/apt-get for upgrades and additional installation since it's Debian based. You should check it out.
IT's probably best to dive into a Linux or any OS migration for users head first, all at once, so everyone in the office has identical migration problems and can assist each other if the official tech support is busy. It's like the choice between staying with paper, or going with computers, that businesses had to make in the '70s, '80s, or '90s. There will be some people who would never bother to learn unless they are tossed into it kicking.
Saskboy's blog is good. 9 out of 10 dentists agree.
Your employer runs a pretty hefty workstation. Although I have worked for, or known people that made similiar switches the scale was not even close. So it worked pretty well as the community was close-nit and excited about the change.
In your case though, there will be more disruption, not everyone wants to use linux... Id suggest just inserting the new computers in one department, preferably one where the employees are already interested in linux. I would also suggest taking a workgroup poll to get interior feedback interest as well.
prof
Take a look at the Ernie Ball guitar string company. They made the switch several years ago. It is only 300 +/- people but they did it cause they got hit with being out of compliance with M$
Read Rockin' on without Microsoft
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.
/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.
It was fairly straightforward to set things up with simple additions to
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!
Green's Law of Debate: Anything is possible if you don't know what you're talking about.
You could just give Red Hat or Novell a call and either one will be more than happy to give you their dog-and-pony show for their desktop offerings. I mean, they do do this kind of thing for a living these days.
s p
Do you have must-keep Windows apps? Try CrossOver Office
http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1895,1886920,00.a
or
Verasora/Win4Lin
http://www.versora.com/
I've used and deployed them all in small businesses with AD management, and they've all worked. There's no reason why they wouldn't work in larger businesses. After all, as IBM and Oracle are showing, they already do.
Steven
There's a few reasons why an IS department won't roll out Linux into an Active Directory environment.
:)
First, is that they cannot control the desktop using policy. This is the biggest selling point of using Windows in a workgroup domain, and especially to manage as many servers and end users as they have. Active Directory, while not perfect, is awesome in its capabilities -- all stolen mostly from Novell's NDS
Next, is expertise. Why would you introduce something into an environment that nobody really knows how to use? Your executives aren't 100% sure but they know 100% that they need to hire staff that can take on Linux servers/desktops and supporting them. That means paying a premium for that labor, and it's not necessary when you can get Windows guys on the cheap.
Lastly -- companies are hesistant to change. Financial companies in particular go with the mantra, if it works, don't touch it. You will see lots of these smaller shops on NT 4 still because to them... it works. Larger corporations that have to meet with SOX compliancy issues are forced into upgrading. That's what happened where I work.
Anyways.. best of luck trying to introduce Linux into your environment. I am going to say that you will crash and burn trying, because a company that large doesn't likely have a *need* for Linux. And if's not a necessity, a good business decision is not to let it happen. Again the mantra, if it ain't broke...don't fix it.
The price is always right if someone else is paying.
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.
/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).
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
Not much help I know, but it shows why my company is still an MS shop.
John the Kiwi
Let me state that I love Linux, and I am fortunate enough to be able to use it for my work.
In the past I've been responsible for switching a small company over (circa 150 desktops) from -- what was it now? -- DOS to WIN 3.1, or WIN 3.1 to WIN 95, I forget, I've burned it from my memory. And it was a nightmare. Not cuz it was Windows, cuz we were switching, period. Accounting gave us hell ("what are the cost benefits again?"), users gave me hell ("Time is Money, Y'Know!"), and Super Senior Mgt tweaked me more than once ("If you weren't switching us to this, um, upgrade thing, what is it that you would be doing, hmm?"). Learned an AWFUL lot about wacky boutique Accounting-Inventory-Shipping-Graphics-YouNameIt programs that all ran lovely on the OLD system but had to be bludgeoned into submission on the new.
Not saying you should not upgrade. Not saying Linux is not an upgrade from what you're using (not saying it IS, either; you really need to examine the apps). Just saying that you really need to look at this upgrade from every direction short of Sunday before you dive into the change. There's a large, cold room reserved in the House of Pain for Linux Evangelists who push their companies to make The Switch without having a whole pond worth of ducks in a row.
Good Luck, Bud, and God speed! And better you than me.
I can't believe PHB's are using "postmortem!" The term they are looking for is "After-Action Report", or "AAR" in mil-speak. Tell them that using military terms makes them sound bold and dynamic, while using medical pathology terms makes them sound weak and dying.
If you don't know where you are going, you will wind up somewhere else.
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.
I have successfully deployed GNU/Linux networks, both servers and workstations. If you are at all serious about deploying a large amount of GNU/Linux Workstations the first thing you should do is replace the Windows Servers.
/home directories, especially when you use LDAP for the User Database. If you attempt to deploy Unix type workstations in a Windows Network enviornment you will ALWAYS be fighting with the servers.
It is much easier integrating a Unix type workstation if you use Unix type servers. It is trivial to have nfs mounted
Especially in a company with that many desktops. When talking about a migration to Linux in a large environment like that means a bunch of things:
1. What do you do with ANY of the custom apps used on the desktop. Most large companies have at least a few apps their internal developers built for them, and I'll bet they weren't built with cross-platform use in mind. Sure, it may work for now in WINE, but what about when it throws a weird error? What about when a new feature is needed? Recoding the app isn't really an option for most places.
2. Time to fire and rehire your desktop support staff! And any IT group that is directly tied to desktop products, cause you're doing a complete 180 degree switch on them. You can argue that anyone worth paying should already know Linux, but the reality is a lot of people in IT are tied to MS, because that's what their company has bet the farm on. You would probably have to either rehire or retrain most of the desktop support group.
3. Your options are RedHat, or SuSE. A company that big is only going to switch if they can buy Linux from a vendor with the chops to support a large organization. Mom & Pop Linux Support Inc isn't going to be taken seriously since they may be in business today, but might not be tomorrow. Business wants a large company backing a product so they have someone to go back to when something goes really wrong.
4. Retraining Costs. Sure, there's adjustment when moving users from Windows Version X to Windows Version Y, but generally the user experience remains fairly consistent. Moving to Linux, unless you reskin it to look exactly like Windows and hide away anything that would hint that it wasn't Windows is going to require significant user retraining. Then there's all the new apps that they'll have to learn to use. You'll lost a LOT of time and money here.
5. What's the real benefit? Yeah, Microsoft is evil, vendor lock-in, security vulnerabilities blah blah blah and so on. But honestly, does Linux provide a real business value? Does it save money in the long run? Does it make the work easier to do? Don't answer these questions as techno-geeks who are already biased, look at it from a semi-objective standpoint.
I don't think you can make an effective case to begin the switch-over of 40,000 desktops to linux, even in much of a phased approach. Best you can probably hope for are a few pockets of Linux users within IT. The average user would probably never even get whif of its existance.