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Corporate America Not Ready For Vista
thefickler writes to point out a TechBlorge article about a study indicating how few corporate computers now deployed are capable of running Windows Vista. The article says that the study, by Softchoice, will be released next week. The study found that 50% of the PCs inventoried (from a sample of 112,000 from 472 organizations) are below Vista's basic system requirements. Roughly half of those PCs will need to be replaced outright to run Vista. 94% of corporate PCs are not ready for Vista Premium Edition. The article notes that the need to upgrade hardware "could... mean that organizations will hold off upgrading to Windows Vista until their next hardware refresh," as some analysts have been saying for a while now.
Corporations aren't ready for IE7, either.
This stuff takes time. Let's do IE7 first, Microsoft. Then push Vista down our throats.
I'm a 2000 man.
...and the workplace is really Windows' main market. I'm willing to guess that at least half their profits come from corporations. The question is, why do they seem to be switching targets?
Why do Microsoft always release to businesses first? I know that businesses will not use Vista until SP1 at the earliest surely one of the worlds largest companies should know this. I would imagine with their inside knowledge of Vista they will be staying away until SP2 anyway.
They are like corporations, size-wise. Heck one of my last schools just recently made the switch from Windows 2000 to XP SP2. I begged them to get rid of Netscrap and use Firefox on the computers, but the IT department said no. I don't know why Universities want to hang on to Netscape so much. Nescrap and new Win XPSP2. That's the computing life in public US Universities. So it will be at least two years before Vista makes it to computers there.
"article about a study indicating how few corporate computers now deployed are capable of running Windows Vista"
That's exactly the point. They want businesses to toss away the old computers and buy new ones with Vista. The know that if they try and release Vista into the public market first, it will flop as badly as ME did because it brings no significant improvements over XP, while it takes away features, and adds bad things like PVP DRM.
Oh You POS
How's that different from Win2K and WinXP? Same thing happened then. Microsoft's monopoly isn't on good software it's there ability to tie up all the major hardware vendors into all or nothing licenses to push Windows on new computer sales. It must be another slow news day.
The article notes that the need to upgrade hardware "could... mean that organizations will hold off upgrading to Windows Vista until their next hardware refresh."
... duh.
Well
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
... that I have worked for that has changed operating systems on anything besides their servers except when they did a hardware "refresh" (read: PC broke). I know the company I work for is getting ready to start using Vista on their new PCs that they order when Microsoft stops letting HP put it on their PCs but until then it's XP.
Hell now that I think about it, I got rid of the last NT 4.0 machine just two months ago. Unless your corporation is very small you keep PCs around until they die or become so obsolete they can no longer run the programs you need them to. In this case we had an active directory upgrade so we had to get rid of all the NT 4.0 machines as they were no longer going to work with the upgrade.
I keep telling myself I'm not the desperate type.
"94% of corporate PCs are not ready for Vista Premium Edition"
This analysis must be right, because there is no Vista Premium Edition. Outside of Home editions, there's only Business and Ultimate.
I've been running Business and Ultimate for a while, on machines with 512M-2G of RAM, and haven't had issues on any configuration. I install it because I'm a chronic early adopter and because I work for a software company.
Anyway, like home users, businesses will upgrade as they buy more machines that have Vista pre-installed. No new news here.
1) My users are finally getting comfortable with XP.
2) My staff doesn't need the hassles of a mixed environment right now.
3) I'm not seeing what Vista will actually *do* for me over XP.
4) I don't the the budget headroom for an off-cycle hardware overhaul.
5) I'm unwilling to perform the carnal acts necessary to get that extra funding.
6) I'm not deploying another MS OS before the first service pack.
Large/medium sized corporations rarely "upgrade" their workstations. They roll out new hardware periodically. I imagine that most will roll them out as Vista PC's.
Corporate Africa? Are they ready?
Last place I worked, All the PCs had at least 512MB, and those were 4 years old. That vast majority had 1GB and the ones that just came in this year had 2GB. 4 year replacement cycle and every PC in that building should be capable of running Vista.
Fly me to the moon Let me sing among those stars Let me see what spring is like On jupiter and mars
Ooo man the floppy drive is broken. No wait. The computer is just upside down.
Upgrading to Vista from our current XP standard is a non-starter. There is no way that I'm interested in upsetting my worker's day-to-day productivity by having a desktop admin perform an upgrade. If my employees cost me $500/day each (with salary, benefits, and per-employee expenses such as office space), and they lose a day's worth of productivity, then upgrading to Vista is an extreme waste of money (since I don't see any benefit).
I'm sure I'll start to move to Vista once I start procuring new hardware. But I have good equipment now. The benefit of brand new Desktop PC's for my people isn't clear at all to me. I'll replace my old equipment once it makes sense to do so, but I'm not going to drop $2000 on a new desktop until I can see a clear benefit in doing so. I'd rather allocate that money to something that can make a real difference to operations (like bonuses).
Maybe I'll see a Vista productivity benefit in six months - or maybe in two years. But right now, I say "no way" to an upgrade - it looks like a money sink to me.
The OS itself is priced way out of line but then when you factor in all new hardware, it's insane.
I've talked to several customers of mine and many of them just bought new machines in the last 18 months.
They have no intentions of replacing them all over again just to run this new OS that's not all that revolutionary.
I'll bet that's the general consensus. In general of course.
The Linux crowd for instance. If this doesn't drive more companies to Linux, I am not sure what will.
$2000 desktops? Good lord.
Few organizations are going to go and re-image every computer with Vista. What's going to happen is that every company of significant size that regularly purchaes machines from a large vendor is going to start getting Vista LICENSES shipped to them with their regular purchases of hardware. Your large-organization IT staff is going to keep deploying the standard image while stockpiling Vista licenses and working on the "when the suits are ready" Vista image.
And, those $500 Dells that big organizations give to their employees - they're all quite up to snuff for running Vista. Optiplex 6xx series desktops have been good to go with Vista for while a while.
Oh, sure, some organizations might never move to Vista, but they're going to be buying Vista licences (and Office 2007 licenses) when they buy their machines. That's the nature of the beast for people far enough up the ladder to be VLA/Select. It doesn't mean we'll deploy them - but we're sure going to be buying those licenses.
Our standard will remain XP for the next, oh, two years. Then we'll start delivering new machines with Vista, and making an effort to retire any Windows 2000 machines still in service. Of course, we're still about 2% Windows 9x, but it takes time to change out 25,000 desktops running hundreds of different pieces of software at dozens of different facilities.
Our company isn't in any hurry to upgrade, nor are a lot of companies I talk to. Most like ours, have spent a lot of capital in the last 24 months upgrading from NT4 to XP, from Office 2000 to Office 2003. We have XP tweaked out, locked down, patched up and running perfectly, sort of the way we had NT4/Office2000 tweaked. If we were to upgrade to Vista, to get the same performance, we would have to dump an extra 512 meg of ram into every box, since we have them running 512meg now. XP for our purposes runs pretty well with 512 meg of ram, but on a couple of test boxes, 512 meg with Vista is like running XP on 256. Yeah it runs, but you do a lot of swapping. For now, we are holding off on Vista/Office07, until at the earliest Q2 of 07. Any NEW computers bought/built, will be built with an OS update in mind, but will come configured with XP, NOT Vista.
As we are looking at moving to a 3 year rollover on hardware most of the hardware will not be Vista ready for at least the next two years, by which times there will be at least 2 service packs and numerous packs for the inevitable MSism in the OS.
Personally, I think the Vista requirements are insane for business machines. They are pretty stupid even for gaming machines. I have no idea how they are going to build Vista-ready laptops that actually get some hours of battery life. There is no need for these specs, except that MS needs to give users a ''new experience'' by any means necessary, since theri business model is fundamentally flawed.
What MS forgets, or has to ignore, is that a PC is a tool. A tool schould behave the same over a long time. You don't want a new ''experience'' every few years. You want to mater the tool once and then keep using it for a very long time. Hence you want it to work the same over a very long time.
This will prompt more people to look for alternatives to MSes greed and insanity.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
94% of corporate PCs are not ready for Vista Premium Edition
1. There is no such thing as a "Vista Premium Edition".
2. If they mean the closest -- "Vista Home Premium Edition", that's not supposed to be a common Vista edition for corporations.
3. Are these talking about meeting recommendations or requirements? I see few corporations being willing to run Aero Glass, and without that, you can easily get by with 512 MB or 1 GB RAM and no special graphics card to speak of (assuming it meets XP requirements).
Beware: In C++, your friends can see your privates!
That is a lot like getting comfortable with a thorn in your foot. It is not comfort; merely numbness.
They are going to have to switch to Linux at some point. There is no time like the present to start the process.
Why, it will run the very latest spyware and viruses, of course
Even with the budget, why waste the money? Switch to Linux. Lower TCO. No need to waste money on new hardware.
Clearly your CEO is not a hot babe
We are not deploying another Windows O.S. ever. We would have to be fools to move to Vista rather than Linux!
Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
Let's start with some facts:
t ml= /library/en-us/wmpsdk11/mmp_sdk/glossary.asp Search the term "component enforces those rights." on the page.
Vista's *six* SKU's are sold in various states of disabledness. For example, if you want to use a DVD burner, you must upgrade. Hmmm,.no matter the version of XP you could use a DVD burner... That's just one of many restrictions.
Let's move to your clearly uninformed question: "Is there some magic mechanism which disables your ability to play unencrypted content?"
Why, yes there is! The latest WMP phones home to MS when you play a song and catalogs your content. When the inevitable OS reinstall happens and you attempt to play the same songs you get some bad news. It seems it's okay to play the music on that "other" OS install, but not this one. You agree to this when you click-through licenses. Here's a link to a guy that experienced it. http://www.bandddesigns.com/blogger/arch/002942.h
Here's Microsoft's SDK http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url
Now, Microsoft and their media friends are taking away your right to first sale as secretly as possible. Vista will help them meet that end very nicely. Set top boxes and a variety of media subscription models will help greatly as well. Add in dragging some children into court and consider it done.
I assure you, this is only the beginning. Please consider using another OS that ensures your current freedoms. Many Linux distros are good,
I'm sure the above-average PHB senses this anyway. Which is part of the reason the Vista uptake will be so slow.
http://www.maxineudall.com/2010/02/should-economists-be-sued-for-malpractice.html
Proposed justification of Visat/Hardware purchase:
How about less power use by the newest generation of CPUs and hard drives, when a company has 1000's of Desktops that power bill is a factor.
"Vista Ready" machines are going to suck more power, not less. The demand much greater clock rates, video support and RAM. Compare this to the average coporate network full of PIIIs more or less. "Vista Premium" of course is much worse.
I'll believe the better power management hype when I see it in operation. If M$ cared about your electric bill, ACPI and WOL would already work. When I can buy a desktop from Dell that works that way, I'll say it's about time.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
There are some things Vista could have that would really draw me in. Sadly, I can't seem to find out if any of these are part of the product or not. In posting this, I'm hoping someone can either answer or point me to an answer for some of the questions.
Number one on my Windows Vista wish list is that they virtualize the screen more.
What I want is actually very simple. I want to tell Windows - in one place - that my screen resolution is not 72dpi, but is in fact 125dpi. Once that is accomplished, all Windows elements should be scaled to that result.
For any application which does not specify drawing size, but rather specifies pixels - the new AERO graphics engine should do a simple calculation "X pixels * (125 / 72) = Y pixels" and draw it as Y. For fonts and other "vector" based drawing objects, this should be even easier as the curve calculations are already based on this kind of math.
If this is done properly, an 8pt font will take up the same physical area on a high resolution monitor as it does on a low resolution monitor. What's more, it will fit properly in buttons because the number of pixels on the button have been properly sized and should match.
Some people may WANT that optimized screen real estate. That's easily handled. They just need to set the DPI setting on back to 72, and their ultra-sharp tiny little fonts will be right back again. The only thing that could suffer - in theory - is looking at pictures. If something is supposed to be 10 pixels, it ends up being 17.36 for me. Rounding is where you get the "fuzzy" aspect.
Why does this matter? Right now, I'm looking at a 19" monitor which is optimized for 1280 by 1024 pixel resolution. The laptop is more extreme. It's a 17" monitor that is 1920 by 1080. Making some simple assumptions that the pixels are square and aligned uniformly (which they are not, actually) the two monitors come out to about 86 and 125 pixels per inch respectively.
LCD screens are not like the bulky old "tube" based screens. The pixels aren't projected onto a phosphor screen; they are actual hardware - like little light bulbs. If you decrease the display resolution, you're getting less crisp representation at each point than you would at the optimize resolution because the dots themselves cannot change size. They must therefore be approximated.
Where this becomes a problem is that many aspects of the Windows screen are designed to be a set number of pixels in height or width. The unit of measure is in pixels, not inches. This includes fonts, title bars, buttons, icons, and all kinds of other things. Much of the time, Windows doesn't know how many of those pixels fit on a linear inch of screen space on my screen. What people don't realize is that the old standard has been to assume about 72dpi for screen resolution. That means on my laptop, with nearly twice that resolution, things tend to be on half the ideal size.
The problem with quotes on the internet, is that nobody bothers to check their veracity. -- Abraham Lincoln
Microsoft isn't ready for Vista, let alone corporate America.
spoonerize "magic trackpad"
Well, clearly you're just an M$$$$$$$$ shill.
"$500 for a complete PC system installed? Your $500 machines aren't nearly as powerful as my 2.5 year old equipment!"
A new Dell GX6xx in quantity is about $500. I'm not sure what machines you were buying 2.5 years ago with core duos, but, I'm sure you might have been buying things that powerful. In our environement, a box from Dell shows up post-sysprep with our enterprise standard image on it (imaged AT Dell from our prepared image). A technician takes it out of the box, types a machine name, it auto-joins the domain, and policy (through BMC Configuration Management / Marimba) deploys any extra non-standard software for the users based on geographic and user-specific identifiers.
"I need something that will last for several years with near-zero fuss. I really can't afford to buy equipment that was obsolete last year, or that needs constant tinkering and upgrades and support."
Which is exactly why turning over a brand new Dell every 3 years (which matches the warranty period) makes sense for us - and for many, many, other large organizations. No tinkering -- we made the image. No upgrades needed -- it's new. And we're already the support. No fuss, no muss.
Also, as an added bonus, since the process we MAKE our enterprise standard image comes from a single unattended DVD (with a plethora of driver support, updated by us), when my "Developer" system was deployed, in dual-proc, 15k SCSI glory, it too ran the standard image, and got non-standard software deployed automatically.
"Assume that this machine will be in service for at least 3 years with near-zero maintenance."
From a hardware standpoint, we do. A rotating stock of 0-3 year old PCs is greatly cheaper than trying to stretch them beyond that age with upgrades, or to try to over-buy them with bleeding-edge technology at purchase time. We have similar support to our machines in terms of upgrades and maintainence (low), and I pay [for hardware], under $200 a year for PCs. If you're paying 2,000 but can stretch your PC lifecycle out, you'd better be getting 10 years from a PC without any upgrades. I assume you splurged for 64 megs of memory on the machine you bought in 1996? $200 is *nothing* for a productivity tool for an employee for a year.
This is pointless, of course. This is HOW large enterprise organizations are going to acquire Vista licenses and O2007 licences. Select agreements work that way. You can't buy a Windows 2000 license with your new PC - even if that's what ships on the disk. You just maintain enough OS/App/CAL/Exchange/whatever licences to match the NUMBER of machines that you have. Someday we'll have enough licences, and someday the suits will want to change the standard...just like we did from 2000 to XP a few years ago.
[For what it's worth, we embrace open source and open standard initiatves at our company. They honestly aren't mature enough yet, and the programs available aren't specific to our industry yet. We keep moving closer and closer, and someday, we'll divorce ourselves from Microsoft -- but that day isn't exactly tomorrow.]
This shows how deeply embedded M$ spin is in the memes of the masses. For years evryone asked "Is Linux Ready for the Desktop", not "Are Desktop users ready for Linux." Now, M$ releases Vista, and the question is reversed?
Is Vista ready for Corporate America? No, it never will be! I am a Vista Beta Tester, and I can tell you that Vista sucks wind. It is garbage. It offers nothing that Linux hasn't had for years, lacks some important features Linux has had for years, forces DRM on an unwitting public, and requires a hardware upgrade in most cases in order to be marginally useful. The new approach to security is to exude the appearance of security , rather than simply ignore it per the old policy.
I have one question for M$ execs. Linux is secure without having to ask the user "are you sure you want to do that" ever. Why does your "wonderful new OS" have to ask the user 752 times a day? It is no longer good enough to do the spin in the press. Now the OS is doing the spin as well. If the user can use an "OK" hotkey to authorize an action, what stops a virus from emulating the hotkey-press? Answer: It does exactly one thing. The same thing M$ always has done. It gives the uninformed user a false sense of security.
Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
Biggest questions with switching to Linux, from a firm of 3000+ computers. This is all written from the standpoint of a discussion I, the IT director, has had with my current staff and my direct manager, the CFO. These are honest questions raised by the CFO and myself, who don't know enough about Linux yet to answer them.
Application compatibility - Most applications that our users currently run have been written for Windows. How do I run those inside Linux, without resorting to a Windows emulation program? (Not just talking about Office, but also about client-server accounting/payroll program from a vendor, HR software, federal and state government tax and retirement plan submission software, video editing, photo editing, and more). If I have to use an emulation program, how seamlessly does it emulate the speed and functionality of the real Windows application? (If we have an attendance secretary who inputs 2000 students attendance a day, and each entry takes her 2 seconds longer to do, that adds another 5 hours to her work week... Expand that across the board to the other positions, and I start having a lot of decreased productivity)
Do I still need to pay Microsoft for the yearly licenses for Windows, or is the emulation program running on just a emulation layer that does not require a full install of Windows?
If I have to look at conversion to separate packages of software, including retraining of employees and support staff on new packages and dealing with missing functionality, that severely impacts the morale and productivity of employees in company in supporting the new software.
Training of New OS - How high is the learning curve (and by that, I mean users who are very reluctant to major software changes, such as most secretaries of executive-level officers) of switchng from a Windows 2000 to Linux, as opposed to the learning curve of switching from Windows 2000 to Windows Vista? How much will I need to do to retrain my support staff to handle these issues?
Support by established company - There are multiple brands of Linux (Ubuntu, Redhat, Slackware, Suse, Fedora, Debian, Knoppix, and many more). How many of the brands offer same business day support via call-in phone number, similar to a Microsoft support incident contract? Is there a single established site that contains an exhaustive knowledge base for incidents?
Upgrading of new OS versions: How different is the versioning of OS's like Redhat, or Ubuntu, or SUSE, from that of Windows? Is the Redhat of 3, or 5, or 7 years ago essentially unchanged from that of today? Could the Redhat of today run on a computer of 5 or 7 years ago without the disabling of any functionality? Can the OpenOffice of today run on the RedHat of 5 years ago? We're looking for uniform versioning across all our computers. One of Linux's big points that we keep seeing toted, anecdotally, is the ability to run it on a P3-600 without any degrading, and we need to know how true that is. If we're making a decision to install an OS that will run for the next 5 years with no upgrade, we need to answer these questions now.
Peripheral compatibility - Yes, Linux supports printers. But does it support existing and future peripherals, (such as Paperport single sheet scanners, business card scanners, PDA synchronization, digital camera synchronization, dv camera importing and editing, etc) for peripheral companies that do not and will not provide Linux drivers, and are in some cases the best of breed or the only company that supplies these peripherals? I do not want to hire on an additional staff member to program drivers for these.
Employee Use at home rights: How much of this software is available under use at home rights? How will an employee purchasing a new computer for home get Redhat, or Slackware, or whatever, installed on their new computer from Gateway, or HP, or Dell?
And since our company is also in charge of supporting computers inside a college computer environment:
Application compatibility: Many educational CD's
Jeff says it all.
2. If you emulate windows in linux, you still pay the microsoft tax.
3. Too high a learning curve for what you're doing.
4. Many different distros make their money on support. Fedora, Suse to name a couple.
5. I've used many different flavours of Linux. The faster the computer the better. Linux just never seems to be as fast as I want. It's not really the linux but the desktop (KDE or Gnome) that are the processor hogs.
6. Printers.. good luck.
7. Windows Apps.. good luck.
8. Real World. Windows on the desktop, linux in the server rooms.
Honestly, I hate Microsoft the company with a passion. I'm currently using the best thing they ever made and that's windows 2000. I've tried, Lord knows I've tried to use Linux. I have 10 computers at home and probably 50 Linux distros on cd that have made it onto a machine at one time or another. I have yet to see one distro do everything I want. I either get printing problems, or it doesn't want to play with my windows network, or it's slow or it crashes. You'll hear tons of fanboys in here probably mod me down for such remarks but the cold stark reality is that Linux right now is only good for home users who want to surf and check email or as a server platform. None of those dumb Windows screensavers, games, apps etc. that users like to download will work. Very few games will work and not many home users are proficient enough to play with emulators.
Linux is remarkable in the server areas though. They just blow windows away. I'll never use anything else for a webserver again. SME server is an excellent replacement for a windows domain controller.
Bottom Line: Most businesses use accounting software that is not compatible with Linux. That reason alone is enough to seriously curtail any large scale Linux adoption. Therefore, since it's gonna be a while before Linux really makes it into the real world, and your students WILL be using Windows when they leave school, and it's a fair learning curve to administer Linux machines... forget Linux on the desktop for a while. When software companies start writing their accounting software for Linux, then it's worth it to start.
Disclaimer: All the above is only MY opinion. You may not agree. Use at your own risk!
I'm not anti-social, I'm anti-idiot.
circa the 200MHz era. Except for gaming, these CPUs were quite fast enough for word processing, accounting, internet access, email, etceteras.
Faster CPUs have given us more glitz. I'm not convinced they've given us more functionality: Word 2007 doesn't do a whole helluva lot more than Word 6, MSIE 7 doesn't do a whole lot more than MSIE 3, not in terms of true-blue functionality.
So I can easily imagine most businesses are in no rush to upgrade their machines en masse. Why should they? They're just gonna end up spending thousands of dollars in new hardware, software, re-training for the new software, and endless technical support as the bugs are ironed out of the new network and installations.
Vista is rightfully regarded by most businesses as an obvious case of a high-risk foot-meets-bullet fuckup just waiting to pounce on the dummy who decides to champion the idea of upgrading.
--
Don't like it? Respond with words, not karma.
So, remind me which corporations of notable size are known to be early adopters?
Well, I recently finished a project at a rather large corporation (which I'll mercifully not name here) that hasn't quite finished upgrading all its W95 machines to W98. They also have a few NT machines, mostly in the IT dept.
No, I'm not joking. And this isn't the first case like this that I've seen.
Funny thing was that the project I worked on involved migrating software from a big IBM mainframe to a flock of distributed unix servers. Talk about having one foot in each world.
Those who do study history are doomed to stand helplessly by while everyone else repeats it.
Here's the information according the one of the developers.
0 2/dpi-scaling-in-windows-vista.aspx
http://blogs.msdn.com/kamvedbrat/archive/2006/12/
The problem with quotes on the internet, is that nobody bothers to check their veracity. -- Abraham Lincoln
I'm not sure what you mean by "staying relevant". For me, they are becoming more and more irrelevant all the time. I've never been a big PC gamer, and Wine is getting pretty close to running all the games I do play. Plus there's all the wonderful DRM, overtures toward "trusted" computing, and Vista requiring signed drivers, which are all slaps in the face to anyone who actually wants to control the machines they own.
And for other people I know, the same is happening, but can be summarized as "Mac Mini/Macbook". They use their computers for e-mail and the web, and Apple makes a damn good computing appliance for this purpose.
Of course, businesses are a whole different story.
The argument would be a lot easier if I didn't actually run RC2. Applications not compiled with DPI-aware manifest look like a steaming pile of shit when scaled due to blur. And that, of course, includes the vast majority of your "old" apps, and even some "new" apps as well, even the ones that ship with Vista - e.g. Calendar. Even apps that _are_ compiled as DPI aware show broken UI and ugly icons in places. I didn't even have to dig deep for this. If most of your apps are not DPI aware, you'll probably be better off running your LCD at a non-native resolution. Which kinda defeats the purpose.
It remains to be seen what Apple's implementation will look like, but if you know Steve Jobs at all he'd rather eat broken glass than release something that doesn't look good.
Never mind, I'm sure the usual mixture of blackmail and bribery will see vista deployed in some high profile corporate site before too long.
Don't let THEM immanentize the Eschaton!
Disclaimer: I have done lot of migrations from Windows to Linux, so I have experience to talk about. In short - Windows to Linux is doable, and it is not so nightmarish, as someone would like to paint it. However, it asks one thing from your IT departament - discipline, which is very rare thing to find among Windows sysadmins. So usually you should look for human factor when something is blocking your migration.
.NET enviroment then you should check out Mono goodies. All Novell/MS deal contraversy aside, Mono is really serious project. Also lot of apps can be ported via Python/GTK, which combo is very very easy to use and learn. For example, check out this project http://www.moeraki.com/pygtktutorial/pygtk2tutoria l/index.html.
1. Windows apps, custom apps - WINE simulator is aimed to be fully blown simulator of Windows libraries, are still in active development, but progress is made everyday. WINE also have two commercial offsprings - Crossover Office by Code Weavers, really good product, and Cedega, not-so-good, but still solution for lot of Windows software, mostly games. Any of these settings you can achieve that your apps run flawlessly in emulation environment. No Windows license is needed, unless explicitly cited in EULA. I would go with Crossover Office, they are not cheap, but not very expensive either. As side note, for advanced users WINE is a bless, because you can make actually work a lot programms with little or even no configuring or hacking. Use lot of small tools with WINE with default configuration (as installed) and I am fine. Of course, EVERYTHING must be tested, so there would be any surprises down the road. Also if apps are coded in
2. As I already said, emulation layer requires no Windows installation nor license.
3. Retraining - if your users just need to do a job what they should do, simple retraining will do just fine. Windows are still Windows. Web browsers are still the same browsers as in Windows, and OpenOffice is very similar to Microsoft Office, yes, there are differences, but if pointed out in retraining and later manuals, it is usually no issue. All is needed is good manual for most visible changes, and helpful admins. And no, you don't have to learn them how to thinker with console.
4. Support by established company - there are several ways to get support from commercial entity. First of all, there is RedHat with RHE and it's contracts, Oracle with RHE support (less expensive but still lot of money), Novell with SLE and Novell Linux Desktop (prices are more SMB oriented), IBM (big iron and large and medium corporations) and then comes Cannonical with it's interesting version of support - they provide platform for various support groups - local, noncommercial, user-based, commercial, group-based, etc. They have their register of commercial supporters of your area. Of course you can't forget Debian, which has community support, which is proven itself in action. Ubuntu is built upon Debian. So more or less, covered distros are RedHat Enterprise, SUSE Enterprise, Ubuntu Dapper (stable, 3/5 y support version), and Debian. If I have to choose from this list, I would go with Ubuntu/Kubuntu Dapper with local commercial support. Why? It is very strong and good community support + lot of references and kb collections. There are no one BIG place, but there are several big places - Ubuntu WIKI, Ubuntu Forums with HOWTOS and manuals, and more. There are also very friendly support ticket system in Launchpad, also IRC channel #ubuntu at irc.freenode.net will provide your admins (or your commercial supporter) with necessary info.
Go with Novell/RedHat, if you need heavy-weight support behind our Linux desktop (They are serious companies with smartest of minds in Linux/Free software world on payroll), or Oracle/IBM, if you are big corporation and wanna do "right thing" for your shareholders.
5. OS upgrades
SLES/NLD (Novell offer) and RHE (RedHat of
user@ubuntubox:~$ stfu This server is going down for shutdown NOW!
I think that Microsoft should be the first ones to adop this as a corporate standard across the board.
Not only will they gather valuable experience dubugging the problems first hand, with the actual user in front them, but they are costing everyonen else money every bug that stops some piece of business fulidity from happening costs the company that loses the advantage money. They have the joy of live data. What fun!
Microsoft is hoping to pawn off the cost of being the early corporate adopter because it would hurt their business to do so.
Now, who's business, then, wouldn't be inancially disadvantaged compared to a competitor who just... waited?
I personally couldn't recommend a comporation going to vista any time soon.