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Will Novell's Desktop Linux Catch On?
Laura writes "Novell says its newly released Suse Linux Enterprise Desktop 10(SLED) can replace Windows for the average office worker. But will enterprises embrace a widespread migration from Windows?" From the article: "The desktop market is a very mature market, and Microsoft has a very strong presence there, which makes it hard for customers to move off [...] However, Jeff Jaffe, executive vice president and chief technology officer at Novell, said at the SLED 10 launch Thursday he is fairly confident that if enterprises have a chance to kick the tires of the new desktop OS, mass migration from Windows is soon to follow."
For the FOSS Means Business event, it was suggested that we get Microsoft to take part and make a big controversial event (since Perens and Stallman would be the other keynoters).
We decided against because MS have it too easy. They don't have to prove their offering is better, they just have to raise enough FUD so that transitions to free software are delayed for one more year. Just like last year, and probably like next year. So we decided against, and instead of controversy we'll concentrate on showing the business value of free software, and why it is sustainable.
Please help publicise swpat.org - the software patents wiki
I think Ubuntu has a far greater chance of replacing Windows for average office
or desktop users. Novell do make valuable contributions to Free Software, but
everyone would be better off if they threw some more money behind Ubuntu.
Especially with Dell saying that they would support Linux if only there was one
"major" distribution... I'm afraid that Novell are probably doing more harm than
good, here.
Well it all depends on how well supported and sold SLED is, doesn't it?
Right now I doubt that Novell/Suse Desktop will "catch on" in the view of the open source or linux advocate. However I see these steps as a necessary push in the right direction. If you stop and think about it, proprietary operating systems will eventually replaced by open source/free systems as hardware becomes more widespread and people's needs can't simply be met by a "one-size-fits-all" windows concept. While things like windows will quite possibly never go away, the competing open source or free systems will inevitably conquer a strong enough market share to have broader relevance and influence on the technology industry as a whole.
What with all the time we spend here proving P=NP and creating world peace, we've been neglecting idle speculation about Whether Linux Can Succeed On The Desktop!
If novell ships its Novell Client for Linux to all major distributions there are infact an incentive to use Suse Open Enterprise even in Linux only shops. It also makes OES an excellent gathering point for various desktop versions. Companies will always be off sync on some desktops and having server software that handles this in an easy way is worth much IRL.
If on the other hand Novell tries to tie SLED against OES they make a big enormous mistake. Even if SLED is nice i will not use it if its the only choice. Why would i want to lock myself in again coming from another lockin? Before i go SLED i want to see Novell supporting other client dists than SLED.
So basically its not how good product Novell ships but more about how good they interact with the rest of the Linux ecosystem that will doom or raise them to the sky.
HTTP/1.1 400
According to novell.com, all you can buy is Novell Linux Desktop 9...doesn't sound like a new release to me. Do we have confirmation on this?
Bloomington North High School is piloting about 120 linux machines in their school running NLD, Linspire and Edubuntu. 700 students are using them. The Bloomington Linux Users Group is helping them by providing support.
Rumors of any Linux desktop distribution "catching on" in any meaningful way have, unfortunately, been greatly exaggerated.
mass migration from Windows is soon to follow
That guy is so delusional. It's sad, really.
I'll probably get modded down for this because I know Linux users don't like to hear this -- but Windows XP is a pretty good product.
It rarely needs rebooting, it lets even computer illiterate users be surprisingly productive, and it really doesn't cost very much. In fact, it effectively comes "for free" with a $500 Dell desktop PC.
For a Linux desktop to be preferred over Windows, the Linux desktop experience will have to provide something new and innovative that Windows does not, rather than just knocking off Windows features.
Hackers like me and you like Linux for many reasons -- but none of those reasons are particularly interesting to Joe Office Manager or Mom and Pop User.
Get innovative, people -- invent something new and useful that Windows *doesn't* have, and then they will come.
boxlight
is a good support mechanism and a good documentation that can help glitches people usually face while using linux. Asking someone to search on google or news groups can be very frustrating for anyone. Specially for applications which are targeted as windows replacements, which lack many things die to legal constraints.
They called me mad, and I called them mad, and damn them, they outvoted me. -Nathaniel Lee
For that you just have to wait. Ubuntu Dapper Drake is coming!
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Dell has started offering it on their website, maybe it will catch on. People need to be able to try before they buy, so they can see how it works, then it might catch on. There is a link to do this, but most people would rather not have to install it to try it.
I don't know where you can try Linux in a retail outlet, but it would help convince people to buy it if they could, IMHO.
He who knows best knows how little he knows. - Thomas Jefferson
In fact, it effectively comes "for free" with a $500 Dell desktop PC.
What on earth do you mean by that?
Swedish plasma phys. PhD student; MSc EE; knows maths, programming, electronics; finance interest; seeks opportunities
Commercial:
1. Sell upper management on the idea
a. emphasize savings, lack of viruses, etc. (things that an MBA can understand)
b. repeat 1 about 10 times
c. repeat at least once again to the new management
2. Point out the overall savings in the corporate environment:
a. savings due to protected deskstops
b. savings due to no virus recovery issues
3. Do a really good job integrating with business processes
a. point of sale
b. factory control
c. management and financial
d. powerpoint compatability
4. Security, stability, reliability, data protection
5. Protection of the company's IP (plans, procedures, the formula for Coca Cola, etc.)
Government and Contractors:
1. Get the government to adopt it.
a. emphasize the security
b. emphasize the long-term savings
c. emphasize the requirement for non-proprietary data formats for long term archive
2. Get government contractors to follow the government.
3. Get the infrastructure that supports the contractors and the governement to do it.
At school:
1. Point out the cost savings of OSS
2. Repeat #1 about 10 times
3. Support eduation softwar and speling softwar on the dektop
4. Do pilot projects
5. Get your kids to use it for their projects (science fair, papers, etc.)
6. Beat the administrators over the head with the advantages of OSS
Same thing applies to almost universal availability of manufacturers' Linux drivers on the same CD with Windows drivers.
They say the first thing to go is your penis. Well, it's either that or your brain. I forget which...
". . . . Apple prepares for astronomical server sales as more network administrators decide that Mac isn't really a silly little toy after all."
How much is it going to cost? That's the answer that the rest of us who havet o justify this type of roll out. I love open source, I run it on most of our production servers but on the desktop we're a Microsoft shop. The OS is a tax that is just paid with the hardware from Dell, and I don't have the time to retrain 70 users on Open Office or whatever office suite they are going to ship with it.
If the cost is right *see not red hat prices* then I would be willing to do the extra work if I can save a nice chunk of change. Hell if the savings is high enough to off set hiring another person I would definately jump to it, but I doubt they'll price this at an attractive point that factors in retraining, more head aches with typical stupid office staff, etc...
I'm always hopeful though.
An article on a new, Windows-destroying desktop environment and they have how many screenshots? None.
It doesn't say if it's based on Gnome, KDE or something else, nor name any features. What a crap press release.
...I use Suse 10 on my PC but the rest of the office still uses Windows XP (personally I don't have a major preference either way as using Eclipse is the same in Windows as it is in Linux). But I'm sure the rest of my office will continue to use Windows until something else is preinstalled on the new Dell machines the company buys in the future.
Perhaps what we need is for one or more major companies supporting it to put out some bucks and do a bit of television advertising to get the word out to more than just those of us currently "in the know". It would be a nice chance to get the word "linux" out to the uninformed masses and head off any MS FUDD.
I'm sure the word 'FREE!' would grab Jow SixPack's attention as well.
Staples
Gah! Is that the new Clippy?
Swedish plasma phys. PhD student; MSc EE; knows maths, programming, electronics; finance interest; seeks opportunities
if enterprises have a chance to kick the tires of the new desktop OS, mass migration from Windows is soon to follow.
Yeah, this has worked real well for Mac OS X. Seriously, what is the target market percentage that SLED10 is going to have in one year, two years? Will they be happy with 3.5%? Or must "success" be something much bigger? (maybe a video of Ballmer throwing a chair at a Novell booth?)
But it is a good sign that they refrained from calling call it SLEDX.
$nice = $webHosting + $domainNames + $sslCerts
It happened with WIN98 to 2000 and I've seen it with "interface issues" upgrading desktops from NT4 to XP.
Putting aside the REAL issues of a major migration, the answer to successful change is to not fight human nature.
Forget about pre-changeover sessions for enduser input and all that. Upgrades succeed in environments where
management doesn't let after-the-fact moaning and groaning be effective tools.
Everywhere else you selectively put shiny new computers (and OSes) on certain peoples desks and just wait.
One hour later when the inevitable jealousy and pettiness reach full force, the users are ready to realize they
can keep their old/slow/loud/ugly computers or be upgraded on schedule. Unfortunately, human nature rules.
Having seen Novell's demo on XGL, I'm utterly impressed. It will be great if Suse Linux Enterprise Desktop 10 comes with Compiz and XGL.
w00t
Yeah, those dudes at IBM don't know what they are talking about. Neither do Lowes, GM or other great big companies who have already migrated. Sleep tight, Steve Bally Boy, everything is just fine. Your employees do not use Ipods either.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
Why would they want the state of the desktop to change? It works. Linux, in a lot of the same ways, doesn't for the average user. There's definitely a larger learning curve (yes even for Ubuntu). Most people are simply not willing to have to learn new stuff when the old way works fine and is cheap enough.
Judges and senates have been bought for gold; Esteem and love were never to be sold.
A unified desktop Linux that is supported by a range of companies, that might catch on. As long as Linux is fractured into a dozen distro's, each only supported by one company, you're better off with Windows which any IT service company can support.
Novell no longer has the marketing might to make such a switch happen. They're in a significantly smaller share of the business market, and can't incentivize the switch.
I think that something along the lines of an OS platform switch will have to start with companies who outsource their entire IT infrastructure to a company like IBM Global Services, where all of the "figure it out" and "just make it work" bits are Someone Else's Problem.
I know that IBM has financial ties to Novell, and has an interest in keeping it alive. I just don't know that they'll be willing to make it Their Problem on thousands of desktops.
Ok, different company, different distro.. same marketingspeak, same arguments... Can somebody copy all comments on such a previous article on slashdot to this one?
Nothing to see here...
Also, I think the end user should not have to use the command line. (...here comes the flame...) As much as I think any self respecting geek should be able to survive without the everyday comforts of his GUI, it is unreasonable to expect everyone to be capable. Now, before I get a slew of 'everyone should be able to handle the terminal', consider this: Not everyone that should be able to drive can replace a hose on their engine. And the terminal is scary to many end users, especially ones that only mail and read a gossip rag online. Until you can really get everything automated, Linux will not be a viable alternative for everyone.
If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be.-TJ
I hate to poo-poo anything linux related, since I am a fan. I am a big fan of the penguin, but at the company where I work, it just won't happen.
Here's why: we resell cellular phone service for one of the BIG providers, and their web-based interface to activate phones ONLY works on Internet Explorer. Period. They actually check for other browsers and REJECT ALL OTHERS. They claim security reasons, but I think their web gurus are just morons.
Additionally, our point of sale requires Terminal Server Client (RDP), and we need to have printer support. It is also a windows only application. They also highly recommend Citrix Metaframe, but that's out of our price range (the terminal server licenses are costly enough).
As long as we are an authorized agent for this company, we are required to meet their software requirements. This 100% means Windows, and Internet Explorer. We have managed to cut our MS Office Installs by using OO.org, but this hasn't been without troubles [whining idiots that can't use a mouse reliably, let alone figure out a slightly different interface--good thing MS Office 12 is going to be even more radically different].
There are a lot of small businesses in a similar situation, and as long as this is the case, linux will be a limited use OS.
Now, if someone would release a terminal server client that supported ALL attached peripherals (at the client end), then I would use that (and we might be able to get rid of windows at several points).
"We don't know what we are doing, but we are doing it very carefully,..." Wherry, R.J. Personnel Psychology (1995)
Most companies already have thousands of dollars worth of Microsoft productivity tools that their employees don't need to be retrained to use.
The nail in the coffin will be a distro that can run all those applications, plus their own. Until then, I can't sell it to management. They won't even look at it. And I'm sorry, but OpenOffice is NOT a replacement for M$ Office, if it looks slightly different then what people are used too, they won't touch it with a 10 foot pole.
The same goes for Mac.
Granted Codeweavers have the tools, but the licensing will kill a project like this. I've tried to use their setup, but it's just not stable enough for the Admin environment.
My opinion is this. People who are ready to use Linux in this situation will continue to use free open source versions for quite awhile. http://www.novell.com/products/desktop/howtobuy.ht ml this pricing structure is unlikely to lure people away from the "proven performance" of MS. MS may have proven themselves to have several problems, but the bottom line is that MS-Office, and MS-Windows will work 95% of the time for most people. Linux requires tweaking, checking and special configuration. Once you get that done it is very stable but the ROI just isn't there yet. I would also like to hear some examples of Sysadmins and desktop support folks supporting the "typical user" on Linux; this seems to have enormous potential to be either divine or a nightmare. I think Linux can overcome MS but it's still a several years out.
From TFA:
find -name "*base*" -exec chown us {} \; ; ln -s
Inviting MS has two potential advantages. First, it can make the event more controversial which helps spread the news into the mass media, and second it can allow the event to be a non-partisan event which shows both sides.
To make either of these possible values happen, MS need to be addes near then start of the organising. You should make sure they fund the event too since it will be you gathering the best audience possible and then handing MS the microphone. Finally, put them on early or mid-day and make sure the closing speaker can rebut an sooth the FUD that was spewed.
Please help publicise swpat.org - the software patents wiki
Linux will never get a large presence on the corporate desktop until the "big-brother" tools are there. Thanks to SOX and GLBA, we have auditors in our department twice a quarter. Due to the standardness of windows and active directory, we can be sure that we are in full compliance by implementing standard operating procedures. There are no such widely accepted procedures for the Linux world. By introducing Linux, you introduce audit and regulatory scrutiny. No one in business wants to draw unnecessary audit and regulatory attention to IT - it costs money, time, and causes headaches while distracting you from your business.
Ironically, I run many linux based tools to audit my windows machines for SOX and GLBA.
-ted
This is the breakthrough we have all beeen waiting for. We've turned the corner. Bill G will go to his grave with "Bloomington North High School" written on his heart.
It wants its story back.....
joab
Not because of any windows functionality per se, but rather because our chosen mail client is Blotus Notes.
And, yes, some of my co-workers use WINE to run their mail client, but I'm not up for doing that at work (at home, use OpenSuSE 10 x86_64 and Solaris SPARC for all computing), but I can't afford to fight the good fight at work; I'm too busy trying to bring home the big evil!
Still, between efforts like this, Linspire and a whole bevy of others, I suspect that Microsoft's dominance of the desktop is becoming less of a carved-in-stone given and more of simply being the way it is now.
For the FOSS Means Business event, it was suggested that we get Microsoft to take part and make a big controversial event (since Perens and Stallman would be the other keynoters).
......
We decided against
I'm rather disappointed, If you could have gotten Steve Ballmer to attend on behalf of MS as well as Richard Stallman I would have be willing to pay for the privilege of watching the event. I'm convinced a debate between those two would end in a world class chairthrowing duel.......
Only to idiots, are orders laws.
-- Henning von Tresckow
Oh, my bad. I should have just called it velveeta. Perhaps it even qualifies as jello.
"You can either have software quality or you can have pointer arithmetic, but you cannot have both at the same time."
Novell's version of Linux won't be a hit on the desktop, and for the same reasons no other Linux distribution has been a success among average users. Linux does not have the application support or the standardized interface necessary for it to be embraced by office or home users. I want Linux to succeed, and I really hope it will supplant Windows. But it won't. As it is, there are two major Linux GUIs: Gnome and KDE. Plug and play works, but only sometimes. There are few business apps för Linux. But Linux adoption and development may take a different route. Except for its traditional server role, Linux could be used in very specific business systems, in public kiosks, and for web apps. And come to think of it, maybe that's where we're heading next.
IT people would love to see desktop Linux take root. I know I would; it could potentially solve a lot of support headaches.
Here's one thing that's holding the Linux desktop back...standards. Non-technical users know a superset of the following things about their computer:
- To log on in the morning, I press Ctrl+Alt+Del, enter my e-mail address and password, and click OK. To log off, I use Start -> Shut Down.
- To read my e-mail, I use {Outlook | Notes | GroupWise | something else}.
- Ctrl+O opens a file. Ctrl+S saves it. Alt+F4 closes a window. Alt+Tab switches apps, etc.
- To write a document, I use Word. I know 500 key combimations and tricks to get my work done.
- To use a spreadsheet, I open Excel. I also know 500 key combos and tricks.
- To write a presentation, I use PowerPoint. If I'm in sales, I could practically code the next version of PowerPoint. If I'm a normal user, I know a few tricks to get slides written.
- To browse the Internet, I use IE.
- To use my USB flash drive / iPod / scanner / printer, I plug it in and go. (Microsoft really works with vendors to make sure devices work as advertised in all but the screwiest of configurations.)
What people in IT don't realize is that users do not care what technology is new or cool. Users want to do the job they are hired for, go home and spend time with the family. Their computer is a tool, nothing more. It's like a phone or copier to them. They learned Windows and Office, and if a replacement doesn't work exactly as the old one did, they'll resist it.
If the Linux distributions put their strength behind one core set of applications, and also made Linux all but invisible to users who don't want the command line, then a real contender against Windows will emerge. Even Microsoft is worried about people adopting Vista at the corporate level because of the huge system requirements. A well-organized, standard Linux with no complexities exposed to the end-user would be a welcome change in some companies.
Why doesn't Novell look at its own Cool-Solutions web site (http://www.novell.com/coolsolutions/feature/16798 .html)? And why doesn't read Novell this LXer article (http://lxer.com/module/newswire/view/54009/index. html)? Then they would recogize their chance to overtake Microsoft. Sure enough they will anytime in the future but only after they have done their homework.
O. Wyss
See http://wyoguide.sf.net/papers/Cross-platform.html
Novell has a long history of not being able to get out of its own way. From the bumbling days of DR-DOS after they acquired it from Digital Research, to the "Univel SuperNOS" project (brilliant idea -- they were going to fuse together Netware and Unix -- and they simply abandoned the project and let Microsoft eat their market), to their latest move of letting Ximian take over SuSE (let's be realistic here, that's how it ended up happening), there just doesn't appear to be anyone over there who knows how to actually execute a plan and drive technology into marketable products.
So what's going to happen? My guess would be that the new technology like Xgl and its associated compositing managers etc. will find their way into the pool of open source software, and then someone like Ubuntu will drive it into a slick, easy to install, easy to use desktop that people will actually want to use.
And then when Novell's revenues continue to slide, even these technologies will lose their staffing, when the next round of layoffs will cut those who are not working on products and services that directly generate revenue. Seriously, the whole Novell organization ought to be divested and sold off as pieces to other companies who can work with the products and services that still have some value.
Tired of FB/Google censorship? Visit UNCENSORED!
I'd take them more seriously if they made it part of their Value Bundles for the ALA/SLA programs. Without that, it's just an added cost to an existing Netware environment.
I can give you a list if you like, but just for starters (this is based on SuSE 10): (1) Installing applications must be much easier. Editing .profile to add a line like "export PATH=$PATH:blah" is out of the question - even if it did work predictably, which it doesn't. (2) Must support common file formats like MP3. (3) Must react in user-friendly ways when "funny stuff" happens. (4) Here's a funny one: Plug in a USB thumbdrive as a user. You can plug it in - but you can't dismount it! You must log in as root and do a umount! Stupid, stupid, stupid. I can give you LOTS more. Give me ten minutes and I can make you a list of ten things that should have been fixed a year ago.
I showed my co-worked the XGL demo the other day, and he thought it was really need. Then he asked me how to get it, and I said it only runs on Linux, and he completely lost interest.
I've had that experience too many times. If it can't run on Windows, they see it as off-limits. They feel safer thinking within their box. It's unfortunate.
And I'm talking about a lot of people I met. And quite a few are professional programmers.
I'm sorry, but OOo isn't there yet IMO. The VBA Macros that the enterprise linux supports is a BIG step, IMO, but that's not all.
= Grow a brain...
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Isn't this trading Microsoft desktop for another set of proprietary services (Novell's services which run on Linux) for another?
Once you commit to Netware you're locked into your investment, how is this different from buying Microsoft? You will still have to PAY to license all your desktops, servers, and users to use Novell's suite of services.
I would also be careful given Novell's history with product acquisitions, remember WordPerfect and Quattro pro? Novell also continues to lose money, how long can this go on before the venture capital dries up? The last time I went to Novell training everyone from various industries commented on how Netware seemed to be less stable now than previous versions, and these are people who believe in Netware...
I guess I wouldn't gamble my job or company on a platform with an uncertain future...
Novell is daydreaming, once great distro is dead at their hand, maybe some other distro but not Nowell's SuSE
"2006 will be the year of the Linux Desktop" get's a smack. Look, we all know a Linux desktop can replace a Windows one; many of us have proven this for years and years by running a Linux desktop in corpy-corp environments. When they allow it all I ask for is an IP - and from there I need no support. Still, it's going to be the decision makers, you know the old adage, "no one was ever fired for buying IBM"? It's the same for MS. While managers want to play it safe and have the $ to buy into MS's lockin, nothing will change. I can only hope that IT departments can have MORE say in what kind of infrastructure a corp has; only then will new/inventive ideas come to the forefront. As for now the MS FUD machine will stop all but the small copanies from even considering a widespread migration to free software on the desktop.
fak3r.com
If they could get a few commonly used commercial application ported then they would have no problem becoming mainstream. For instance -- if Quicken ran on Linux I could have converted my sister's Doctor office. But alas she uses Quicken and even if there are Linux alternatives to it, she's used to using Quicken, so that makes all the difference.
Other key apps are QuickBooks and PhotoShop. I'm sure there are a number of others. Novell should really get after these companies to support them.
:T:R:A:N:S:
You're right. It doesn't, just because there IS the Linux alternative.
Weren't there any more reasons to love Linux (there ARE), it would be more than enough.
Let's be honest: we all have a bias in favour of Linux because we all hate and fear monopolies.
I'm a Linux user and fan, but knowing what the average business PC user does with there computer, I do not see Linux offering them any real substancial reason to upgrade. And it is a big upgrade, most have trained with a select few applications such as Office, Adobe Photoshop, and CRM software like Act. So they would have to not only move from Windows but from those application too (Though some maybe supported through Wine). What compelling feature or enhancement does Linux offer to the Desktop users? It has clear compelling features for the server room, since it a very powerful network operating system, supports a dozen or so files systems, and has clustering capability. Plus its cheap. But on the desktop those features are not very useful, what does it give you? I think the open source community should focus on coming up with exciting features for the desktop user. I think Xgl and Beagle may add points, but I think some truly revolutionary features could be the real turning point here.
They have more Linux on their shelves than they do OS X. But it just stays there.
Microsoft force upgrades on user about every four years anyway then four years after that they wont support the product before that. so over a 12 years all desktops will have to upgraded at least twice.
I dont think novell could seriously expect to take a lions share of the market anytime soon - linux adoption will always be a gradual process. I think a big problem is that a lot of windows admin would be out of a job if they had to use linux. there is a big learning curve for moving from windows to linux especially when something doesnt appear to work.
but there are plenty of places where linux on work desktop could start, especially when user have restricted functionality to a few apps anyway (e.g. call centres which genreraly restrict users severely) i would think these sorts of places would be a good place to start.
i had a friend that was working for a company which tried to roll out linux to company desktop but the user revloted because thopenoffice wouldnt run excel macros and they were a finance company. there are always going to be a plethora of issues doing a migration like this and most users will say linux doesnt work (simply cos they're used to windows and are too lazy to figue things out) - so there would have to be a deegree of training to offset this.
so, in summary, for a company generally there will be an increased cost in training/administering linux in the short term but i would say the TCO in the long term would have to work out in linux advantage in the long term as windows always forces upgrades of its products and as we all know is prone to all sorts of security holes/bugs.
2 wrongs dont make a right - but 3 lefts do
Notes supports IMAP, you can use any mail client. There's also a webmail interface that works with Firefox.
I don't think anyone has established that there is a market for an "enterprise desktop", whatever that is. Sounds like something cooked up in the marketing department. It would be interesting to know what Novell's sales figures for their "enterprise desktop" editions are so far. Just my 2 cents, but I wish Novell would drop this stuff and concentrate on a single, excellent distribution called SuSE Linux whose cost range from free (no support) on up, depending on the support wanted and the software actually used, etc. The kind of installation required should the choice of the user: the result of a granular installer and policy/lock-down tool. It should not be the result of the marketing folks trying it on which just leaves the user feeling powerless. Considering Novell's rather precarious financial situation they might not have much to lose by taking a few risks such as, gasp, not doing exactly the same as everyone else right down to the droidish marketing babble about "seamless integration", etc.
Las qué passoun
tournoun pas maï
If SUSE, or anyone for that matter, wants to succeed in the business desktop market they need to replace the Office/Exchange/Cell Phone relationship with something better or cheaper. I have yet to meet a client that told me, "I don't like Linux". They say things like, "How can I tie that in with Exchange? Can I replace exchange with something? How can all of my users devices syncronize email and calenders."
The desktop has never been important in the workplace. Look at all of the shops that have Windows and Mac users. Getting work easily done through document, information, and financial exchange is the only thing that is important.
Novell has their groupware and SUSE has OpenXchange and Evolution. When they make it easily integrated with handhelds and desktops they will begin to win market share.
If they make something that is a "drop in" replacement I'll be there.
Having to work for a living is the root of all evil.
k thx
Office 2007/12 looks more than slightly different from even 2003. Yet in 12 months from now a lot of people will be touching it with their shortest poles.
I work with dozens of small business clients in NYC, and every single one of them has one or two industry specific applications that are just not available on Linux. Believe me, I'd love to switch everyone to a Linux desktop, but frankly I can't see it happening on anything but the most modest scale. Now in larger outfits whhere there may be such a thing as the "average business worker" it may be possible, but in my experience, even the receptionist splits time running Time Slips, Team Design, Act!, Pertrac, etc.
GP was vague. Several branches of IBM have migrated to linux. Nothing near the vast majority (IBM is a big company!)
Then again, IBM isn't historically anti-*NIX.
Browsing with classic discussion, noscript, at -1 and nested
no hidden comments and I only mod UP
Microsoft has achieved the impossible.
Microsoft has pushed the cost of tech support for their products off to the OEM's selling the hardware.
Novell will not be able to do that. So, in order for Novell to match Microsoft's profit margin on the OS, Novell will have to charge MORE to pay for the Novell support techs to answer the phone calls that, for Microsoft, would have gone to Dell.
And there will be MORE tech calls to Novell because Dell pre-approves all the hardware they ship for Windows, but not for SLED.
Novell's only hope is to release and support a bootable floppy or CD/DVD that will identify the hardware installed and provide some way for the end user/installer to validate the availability of drivers (100% supported, not supported, partial support with these problems, etc).
I have none of those problems with Debian.
Find the app in Synaptic, double click it, hit apply, and it's installed--complete with helpful icon in the start menu.
MP3 is supported just fine.
Not sure what you mean by "funny stuff", so I won't comment on that... and
USB thumb drive. To dismount, right click the icon towards the right of the kicker and choose the thumb drive, and it dismounts. Just like Windows does it, in fact.
GCHQ Quantum Insert installed. If only our tongues were made of glass, how much more careful we would be when we speak
If simple things such printing from a web browser, support macromedia flash, sound from more than 1 app at a time, and interfacing with mp3 players can work easily and reliably, then it has a chance. Until then, it is not fit for the masses.
Despite having a number of years of computer experience, these are things I have been unable to do. I can't print from firefox more than once per user profile clearing, and artsd tends to freeze every hour or two. If Novell has managed to package together very stable versions of the applications, utilities, and other programs which perform these tasks, then it has a chance.
The point being that it's not just the desktop OS -- it's the entirety of the ecosystem that's woven into the core of our business systems and processes. Migrating from Windows would be enormously wrenching and painful to the business (and, frankly, I'm amazed that some of our business folks can tie their shoelaces unaided).
Sorry, but as desirable as it may be to cut ties to MS and their licensing regime, I just don't see it happening any time soon. Hopefully I'm wrong, but I doubt it.
It's obvious that P!=NP
Yast sucks! Then again, I guess you could install "y2pmsh"... Yast still sucks though...
Anyone I have ever talked to about this program hates it, especially non-technical office workers. I have yet to see an enterprise grade email client that does not absolutely suck, but outlook has slightly less of a bad taste than groupwise.
Slashdot: Where anecdotes and generalizations can be freely substituted for facts, logic, or intelligence
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=175800&cid=146 12128&threshold=5
It is hard to see it happening. A major Fortune 50 (fifty) company I am familier with, has invested millions of dollars in proprietary software to run on Windows 2000 machines. They are neither keen to, nor perhaps able to update the enormous quantity of code generated. They have not even migrated to Windows XP due to the expense that would be incured, not by Microsoft, but rather, by in house updating. In many ways they have fallen into the same trap that they did with mainframe software. As much as some people would like to be rid of it, it is simply impracticle to do away with them. The costs are too dear.
Sorry, can't make Belfast this time.
Igor Presnyakov stole my hat
Wow, that's a really broken and limited way to think. Linux has a totally different way of handling drivers AND software packages than Windows, and the Linux way is better by far.
A single package manager controls all the software on my linux system, and it does a damned good job of it, much better than the situation on the Windows end. And all the drivers for my harware come built-in to the kernel as generic drivers with PNP IDs for the different flavors and branding of the hardware.
If hardware vendors want their drivers distributed to Linux users, they should contribute to the kernel, release the specs so others can, or package blackbox binaries according to the system outlined below.
As for software packaging and sales, it would make a LOT more sense to purchase software PACKAGES online and use your handy package manager to install them. I'd rather buy a TurboTax-2006-1.0.1.ebuild with a unique security key for my account than 'go to staples'. Ideally the distros and the software vendors would meet in the middle on a package format (or set of formats) and an API to securely distribute licensed software, the distros could make nice GUI or CLI interfaces (i.e. 'TurboTax requires you to register and pay Intuit, Inc., would you like to purchase TurboTax? Y/n).
"Sometimes, I think Trent just needs a cup of hot chocolate and a blankie." -Tori Amos on Nine Inch Nails
Most people will have learn something new when vista and office12 come out anyway. Have you seen those screenshots? They look nothing like windows XP. For most users it's easier to switch to open office from office 2003 then to switch to office12. Open office actually tries to look similar to office 2003.
Having said all that this is the corporation we are talking about. Either your employees learn what you want them to use or they get replaced. WHere I work there are a dozen goofy programs an employee has to learn all written by different people, and most of them with goofy interfaces because they were written for a vertical market. If an employee refused to learn them then they would be canned because you need to use them to do your job.
Hell if a high school dropout can master a POS terminal in a retail store your office workers ought to be able open office right?
evil is as evil does
Is there an easy graphical tool to install and manage entries in an LDAP/Samba configuration right now? I just started looking into this.. kicking through Samba configuration scripts isn't fun.
Do you know why Firefox is the most successful OSS application? Because its a cross-platform application which looks and feels nice on any platform.
O. Wyss
See http://wyoguide.sf.net/papers/Cross-platform.html
I tried out the Live CD with it and I was shocked. Many of the features where USEFUL. Not the wobble windows but the rest of it really was very useful. I think it is better than Vista's Aeroglass. And yes I tried them the same day. When it is stable it could be a big winner.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
I'm so impressed I just bought 500 NOVL shares ;-)
Zen tips: Pay attention. Don't take it personally. Believe nothing.
There's more than just mail to be considered here. Databases, availability/scheduling. Our lockin is to Lotus Notes - not the Lotus Notes mail client.
Eat any good books lately?
Dont hold your breath.
Even if it was the perfect answer, the prospect of "mass migration" isnt practical.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
And MS will offer backwards compatibility (IE windows XP classic mode) again, and everyone will remain satisfied. (That is, if vista succeeds to begin with). Either way, right now it works.
Judges and senates have been bought for gold; Esteem and love were never to be sold.
I'm IT manager for a small software company that has its roots in pure Unix/Linux development.
Yet, we run XP, Active Directory, Exchange, and the rest of it. Why? Because although our engineering team is extremely capable of handling Linux desktops and everything that goes with it, our executive team is not, and as a one man IT shop, I don't have the time or resources to handhold them through that transition.
Nobody has ever accused me of being a windows fan boy -- in fact I have quite the opposite reputation, but sometimes windows/AD/Exchange is the path of least resistance.
When your average CEO or VP of Marketing can handle a Linux desktop, then and only then is it feasible for us to switch.
I, for one, can't wait!
If you want to get MS off your systems in a company environment you need to stop trying to convince your Co-Workers who don't even know what Linux is and don't care... You need to talk to the Bean Counters who manage the purse strings. Get the numbers for them and don't expect them to look anything up. Show them in a spread sheet. One column the cost for Windows XP or Vista, Office, and the other commercial software that you guys use... Then total that up and multiply by as many workstations and deduct any volume liscense discounts. Then in the other column you can just put a big fat ZERO for the cost of Ubuntu (or other distro like Fedora Core) and then list the open source alternatives to your software with those related (usually zero) prices. This will take the laugh factor out of the equations... Hit the bean counters with the numbers and let them do the rest of the math. Who cares if DELL doesn't offer anything you want... build your own systems with Fedora or Ubuntu or Slackware whatever you want. Show these numbers to the beanie and bowtie guy and he will listen.
MadOgre.com
Even with backwards compatibility moving from 2K to XP took training especially with the firewall.
I don't know how stupid your employees are (our are not too bad) but as I said if a high school dropout can learn a POS your employees can learn open office.
evil is as evil does
I do all of these things regularly from SUSE Linux 10.0 - and have since it shipped.
Insanity is a gradual process; don't rush it.
It would be so nice to just plug it in to Exchange/Active Directory and have it work in one shot. The current Ximian Exchange Connector is broken to the point of being unusable in Suse 10 and Ubuntu and probably everywhere else. Ximian developers, you listening? This bug is a real show stopper. Had to switch myself and all of my Linux developers to IMAP. Looking forward to hearing the typical Slashot solution "just get rid of Exchange." Like I wouldn't if I could.
This guy is way out there
Being a Gentoo user, both at home and work (nice job I've got), I'm pretty rapt with Linux. For quick installations I try binary distrubutions, such as SUSE and Ubuntu. They're sweet, until that awful point that something doesn't work. Then you're completely in the shit. I can usually fix an issue using my intermediate experience, but to hell, I'd hate to imagine a non-tech-savvy user trying to solve the problems. And for this reason I've yet to convert somebody to Linux. (right, I'm not a willing SSH in to fix a friend's problem, just as I'm not keen on fixing Windows issues. Besides that, who the heck can be SSHd into when on ADSL?
I don't know where you can try Linux in a retail outlet
Microcenter has PC's running Linspire (or is it Xandros?) in their prebuilt PC section, at least in the Columbus, OH store. I'm not seeing them online though.
This MIGHT work for a smaller company (100- employees let's say). But it's not going to get a foothold in large corporations. Banks, for instance, which have 10's of thousands of employees, and therefore 10's of thousands of desktop systems, would shudder in fear. Heck, where I am, we're still on Windows 2000, I fully expect to switch to XP about 1 year after Vista comes out.
Retraining 80,000 employees on the use of a new operating system is not a pleasant thought. Throw in a whole new world of security concerns (there may be less vulnerabilities, but a bank has to audit EVERYTHING, and quadruple-check for holes) and it's not happening.
Next come the apps. No Linux Office. No Excel. WINE? Are you serious? Ask someone, who's barely able to log in, to use an emulator? And the spreadsheets made in Excel get sent to to other companies and clients who use Excel. Mix in company-wide e-mail changes, the variety of custom trading/market applications, and it's not happening.
Nope. Until Linux can offer a transparent switching experience, and 100% compatible applications, it WILL NOT CATCH ON for big businesses.
- In hell, treason is the work of angels.
Correct me if I am wrong, but Novell's "eterprise" desktop is unable to have single sign on to Novell's "eterprise server something...".
I have worked with Netware and Dos/Win95/98, and even with client for netware that have to be installed on every workstation it was pretty good solution. As "enterprise" as you can get with those operating systems. It was unusable with Winnt and as far as I can see it is still unusable with linux. Again, correct me if I am wrong but one has to log on to local linux machine (with what user account? shared between all other users?) and then additionaly log on (with different password) to NDS to gain access to network resources. Can anyone imagine hundreds of "enterprise" users knockin at your door ever day, asking for explanation what password to type and where.
Unless they make their server OS and their desktop OS play together more easy than self made solutions with pam_ldap,nsswich and others, "enterprise,buisinnes,something,...." is just empty marketing rubbish. Most of their products seem unusable without Windows. That's what killed Novell at the first place, their dependance on their own competition.
IMHO making their own OS's play together (just like WinXP and Win2003)is theirs top and only priority.
Sometimes I beleive that they secretly hope that those Windows, Linux novelties would pass, DOS would come back, and they would rule again.
I use Windows XP at work all day and Linux at home -- both are stable, although I still find I have to reboot XP from time to time when installing applications (which I tend to do a lot of). This isn't as much of an issue in Linux. My opinion is entirely my own and I don't expect it to necessarily be relevant to others. For me, however, the major difference is the stability of integration between applications.
I've had nothing but problems with Windows applications, and trying to get them to work together. Even Microsoft applications don't work well with other Microsoft applications, and I suspect that 80% of my day job is fighting with applications that don't want to work nicely together.
The reason for this, as I see it, is the development model. Every application provider is in it for themselves. They don't share their information unless they have major partner agreements, they usually don't share their source code, they certainly don't let someone tweak their application and distribute it on their behalf.
The entire OSS model, which includes Linux, is the opposite of this. People release their software. If it's an good, it's expected that others will pick it up and tweak it -- not necessarily to fork it, but simply to get it to fit in with an environment. Some of the individual applications are a bit awkward to use and administer when compared with their Windows counterparts (the degree of which depends on who you ask), but in general I've found OSS to be much easier to get a genuinely integrated system working where different software cooperates with its neighbours.
I use Debian at home as a preference, but there are several good major distributions to choose from. Different distros don't always work perfectly or consistently together, but I can be much more sure at home that if I apt-get install some-package, then it won't break my system.
The configuration, although arguably more awkward for some people to edit if its badly documented, tends to be much more open, too. In Windows, applications throw around registry entries and binary files that are unreadable or incomprehensible by anything except the application. If I'm having trouble getting two apps to play nicely in Windows and want to integrate or centralise their configuration somehow, it can be very difficult to impossible. In an open source distribution, it's much more likely that I can quite easily write a script that might parse things, move files around, or do whatever's necessary --- I could even recompile the application if it's that difficult. Chances are I won't need to, though, because the distribution normally gets it right.
Does this make it a good distro for non-techies to set up in their homes? Probably not. When things go wrong on my home system, I still rely on a certain amount of technical ability to fix problems when others might simply choose to re-install. But if I was using Windows, I'd more likely have to reinstall the OS to fix the problems, because after a point it's just too complex to diagnose. The integration factor makes OSS much less of a headache for admins who understand what they're doing with it, though, in my opinion. It's not for every admin, though, and the fact that so many offices rely on specialised Windows-only applications means this isn't always an option anyway.
XP just has become too much of a hassle to keep alive, if you need it once or twice a month - the first 30mins is spent patching and booting, then possibly cursing and fixing.
For servers, they are nearly all Red Hat, various versions from 7.2 to RHEL4. Some little servers debian 3.0/3.1, some hacked-together kludge servers ubuntu. SUSE has too many SUSE-specific ways to configure things, and YAST in server environment is painful.
SUSE 10 is nice, but it's nowhere as polished for desktop as Ubuntu is, and nowhere as familiar for servers as RH.
'Once scientists, even the dim-witted social scientists, get muzzled, the Western Civilization is finished.' - oldhack
"For vendor, the true cost far exceeds ~$10 because of support. Hordes of people call vendor tech support lines because of problems with Windows, whether such problems are viruses, spyware, or other operating system defects."
Granted Linux doesn't suffer from viruses and other malware, what makes you think (at this point in time) their support lines wouldn't be flooded with questions about how to do X. Hardware fails too regardless of the installed OS.
"For user, the true cost far exceeds ~$10 because one typically must factor in the cost of antivirus, perhaps antispyware too. Not to mention the time spent dealing with these programs, or time spent dealing with spyware and virus infections. Oh, and that doesn't include the cost of whatever proprietary software you'll need to get Windows to do anything truly useful."
Antivirus: AVG - free
Antispyware: AdAware SE, Spybot, MS's tool - free
CD Burning: usually comes free with your CD/DVD burner.
productivity tools: Open Office - free
Photo editing - GIMP for Windows if you wish, there are lots of other free alternatives.
Most of the software on my Windows box was free and the times I needed to purchase something, it came with free technical support, easy upgrades and a nice streamlined interface that sometimes only a commercial vendor can provide.
So I guess, for me, Windows is "effectively free".
The only way linux will make serious headway is if a distro manages to include for whatever price increase, a VM that can contain a windows OS. It will also have to be able to windows network right out of the box with a setup much like windows' resource manager. That means positively identifying just what a Samba Daemon and a lan daemon is by the names of the files involved. It also means, for those reluctant to deal with configuration textfiles (most windies) a menu system for configuring home networks that ....WORKS!!!...and not just one that walks you through some feel good guess and gosh menus for 'lan/ioslave' or whatever, and then refuses to work and gives the excuse that some daemon needs to be started by the 'system admin'. Linux does that and becomes able to run windows main stream games right out of the box, then linux competes. Linux does it NOT, and linux fails and them becomes marginalized.
And in this corner Steve "The chair throwing Madman!" Ballmer and in the challengers corner Richard "The social zealot" Stallman! Watch them battle to the death in the first MS vs. GPL cage match! No holds barred! Two egos go in, one ego leaves!
GEEEEETTTTTTTT READYYYYYYYY TO RUMBLE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Well, I've just seen the screenshots on the Novell website and the font rendering is just the same, plain ugly, half anti-aliased mess it always has been with Linux. "Similar to Mac OS X"? Where did they cook that one up? Mac OS X has first-rate font rendering due to its PDF rendering engine. Linux doesn't come anywhere near. I use Linux for all my server work, and that's where it shines. Please give this desktop Linux nonesense a break ..... or get someone to re-engineer the xfont server or whatever else is required to make desktop Linux at least look decent on the eye.
If not, I'm afraid it's not going to fly...
It seems that most of the Linux distros fail to address an ugly fact about many of our corporate environments these days: Active Directory rules the roost! You can't just drop a Linux box in the middle of one of these environments and not be able to join it to the domain. At the very least you need single sign-on, and I'm not going to even going to go into group policies, file sharing and such. Yes I know there is eDirectory and Zenworks, etc, and I'm sure that's what Novell is really trying to sell, but they're fighting an uphill battle getting corps to pony up $$ to implement these things when Active Directory is already in place.
I love Linux, but I think some of these companies that push the Linux desktop fail to realize some of the realities and requirements of businesses. It's very difficult to swim against the tide of Windows inertia, especially if you can't integrate the OS into the existing network and authentication scheme. It doesn't matter if Windows sucks, blah, blah. PHB's are not interested in disrupting the whole infrastructure for the sake of an open source OS. What they might be interested in, however, is a pilot project where the advantages of using Linux can be proven. But if you can't even authenticate to the domain, or share files with Windows group permissions, you're pilot project is dead already.
And yes, I'm aware of the fact that Xandros Business Edition supports Active Directory correctly, but unfortunately there are quite a few unrelated things I don't like about their distro. But they do have the right idea. I wish the other distros would get the message.
If it's out of Dell's box, you may have a point.
But if you mean out of Microsoft's box, then you're on crack. Out-of-the-box XP simply does not work. You might have a chance if you also have all of your out-of-the-box driver CDs for all your components. But if you're in my boat, and have to install XP on mom's bare PC that she bought from who knows where, and has no clue what a driver CD is or where they might be, then you're fucked.
Unless of course you have a Knoppix CD, which will recognize almost everything, tell you what the hardware is, allow you to download the drivers and burn them to CD, just so you can get XP to realize that it has a video card and NIC. Linux's out of the box hardware support is light-years' beyond Windows.
> Non-technical users know a superset of the following things about their computer
Subset, not superset. Superset implies that they know all that and perhaps something more, while subset means they know only some items out of that list (or perhaps all if it's not a proper subset). I haven't seen many non-technical people who know *all* those things.
Really? I wonder why. Mandriva has some interesting enterprise products.
The answer is NO.
This is Novell we're talking about, not some semi-competent software company that knows how to sell, market or capitalize on good software. Novell has a long history of fucking up, and NLD10 will be yet another failure.
Why? Because Novell always produces badly debugged half finished alpha software. Then it produces a service pack which completes the bits left hanging because it needed meet a deadline artificially set by the morons in charge.
Then it produces a second service pack to fix the problems caused by the first service pack and the original release.
Then a third service pack which starts to look good, but for real functionality you need to wait for the next version. The fourth service pack is for nerds only and usually involves some esoteric security problem that nobody cares about. The fifth service pack is usually rocksolid stable, but nobody cares because the next latest and greatest release is just around the corner, and you're already two full versions behind in the Linux kernel.
Nobody bothers after that because if you stick with Novell, your user memory is filled with patches for the things that didn't work, and someone's just discovered that Ubuntu does the same thing only miles quicker.
20 GOTO 10
Remember kids: Nobody ever got fired for dumping Novell.
Tubby or not tubby. Fat is the question
I've been writing mainly Linux desktop how-to pieces for the last year. I run Fedora Core 2, shortly upgrading to 3.
I've found that while in general, adding a capability (e.g. multimedia) to a Linux box takes half an hour to an hour, finding out what to do most of the time takes from a full working day to several weeks worth of full working days.
I'm not talking complicated or obscure, I'm talking things like image and archival backups... I finally gave up on finding OpenSource apps that would do what I was looking for and figured out how to script dar and rsync. Getting multimedia working was a nightmare. It isn't supposed to be.
In my experience, getting the right answer back from the various Linux help forums in response to inquiries almost never works, if you can't find the answer via googling to somebody who ran into the same problem, the options are to invent a solution or give up.
Could Linux multimedia apps that have dependencies that can't be distributed with the distro announce what the problems are and let the user point and click her way to a downloadable solution? Yes, but they don't.
I don't recommend desktop Linux at this point to anyone but companies who can control what apps and peripherals are used and support everything in-house, or to end users who can get computer help in person from local Linux experts, whether out of friendship or for a high hourly consultant rate.
Peripheral drivers are a major issue, having the basic set of apps a desktop user needs (multimedia, backup, etc.) are the other.
Tech Public Policy stuff
IBM are apparently going to do a linux version of Notes. Sadly we just moved to Outlook...
A realistic comparison is the organisation's inevitable migration to Vista with one to linux. Many of the costs are the same (e.g. training users to use a substantially different interface) and hardware costs will probably favour linux.