Slashdot Mirror
Moving Small Organizations from Windows to Linux?
chris1646 asks: "Currently we are a small organization that is entirely a Windows shop. Next year much of the server and desktop hardware we run will need replacing. I am looking for creative ways to introduce Linux as my desktop and server OS of choice, however a couple of our core applications run exclusively on Windows. Has anyone had any success hosting Windows applications via terminal server while using Linux as the client OS? Has anyone handled a AD to open source LDAP migration?"
Look at your costs before migrating to Linux clients for RDP. Terminal Services Licenses cost nearly as much as a full XP license, so you will likely spend more to do it this way. Having said that, you might be able to run your critical apps under WINE, and use Linux X clients to run it via SSH. I would definitely focus on the servers first though. Check out the O'Reilly books for LDAP and "Linux in a Windows World" for guidance, but it really depends on how many people need to use those critical windows apps, and what apps they are. Let me know what type of apps you are talking about, as there may be replacements or documented WINE support for them. AD to LDAP isn't likely to be much trouble with only a few users, and any mail, file, and print services should be relatively simple to implement, whether you convert or use winbind to maintain AD integration. Having been on both sides, though, I would definitely prefer switching to LDAP first, as AD can give you plenty of headaches down the road. Also, regardless of which path you take, be sure to make use of NTP to maintain your clocks, since a small drift will eventually wreak havoc on anything using kerberos, and it might not be the first thing that comes to mind when something suddenly stops working.
--That's the point of being root, you can do anything you want, even if it's stupid.
We have a single W2K3 system which serves up a couple of legacy apps over RDP (Rdesktop) and integration with Samba, etc. has gone well for us. The standard KDE applications work fine although you do have to choose your distribution, largely because Flash can hang and/or crash Konqueror on a regular basis (blame Flash, not Konq).
The only issue we have run in to is that Windows will only let you log in with RDP so many times before it will blacklist your machine's hostname for not having a genuine MS license. It's a pain but we just more or less randomize the hostname regularly. Good old Micro$oft... they won't even let you administratively remove the blacklisting without delving into the Registry (haven't tried that, but I figure it must be possible). This happens infrequently, by the way, W2k3 will probably accept a good 100 connections before it whines.
...Steve
My current boss, a close friend of mine, single-handedly began a FOSS migration in our 3-location 100-desktop 20-offsite-laptop-user office about a year ago. I came on board about 3 months ago, almost through the first stages of the process. We now have 99% of our users on OpenOffice (one holdout, and I am going to fix his missing feature ASAP to get him off Excel), and 100% migrated away from IE+Outlook (most on Firefox+Thunderbird, a few people requested Mac desktops and are using Safari+Mail). We transitioned to Open Directory on an OS X Server with nary a hitch, with the added bonus that OD supports LDAP which means it plays nice with all of our new extranet and internet services (LDAP login to our helpdesk, CMS, etc).
Eventually Windows XP will lose support and we will have to consider sticking with unsupported XP, or moving to Vista/Fiji/Vienna, or a complete migration to Mac, or a final alternative that I am starting to push slowly up the list of possibilities... Linux. My boss is a Mac user, he dislikes many of the problems with Windows. He had the popular misconception that Linux is hard to install, hard to maintain, and hard to use in general. My first day, when provided free reign over my own desktop, I let him watch me go through a Kubuntu installation. Cleared up all that nonsense right quick. From a blank hard drive to a better-than-Explorer GUI, with both of our network printers completely configured, desktop shortcuts to our network shares, Firefox and Thunderbird installed as well as a GUI terminal (we have legacy apps requiring telnet to our SCO UNIX machine), all in under 30 minutes, and without touching a text console.
Running actual GUI Windows applications in Linux CAN be difficult, but often is not. There is a VERY good chance that they will 'Just Work' under WINE or Crossover Office. If you need terminal services functionality, rdesktop has worked great for me. There is also the VMWare/etc option, if the programs are old enough for the perfomance hit to not matter (and if you're developing "core" applications that only run on Windows TODAY, then youve got other problems).
However, if I were to add to that first bit as a reply to the submitter, I'd seriously consider the question of whether or not this small shop can continue on servicing a Linux deployment with a complex mix of Windows/Linux after you leave. After all, you don't plan to work there forever and given that you have to ask others for advice, how likely is it that:
A) you can seamlessly make the transition yourself; and
B) someone else can easily pick up where you left off?
Unix-based servers are absolutely great and typically rock solid at doing server kind of stuff... much more so than Windows presently is. However, I'd actually advise you to stay with Windows. It's what a lot of people know, you know it currently works, and unless there is a serious compelling reason why you can't just continue with the status quo, it's the cheaper to use what you have than try and make changes with potentially unknown complications.
If anything, I'd setup a parallel network running Linux and host some services off of that, gradually migrating services one at a time over to it while you transition off. And if things go south and you run into issues you can't resolve, you could always pull the plug and you still have your original Windows network.
Want to improve your Karma? Instead of "Post Anonymously", try the "Post Humously" option.
No one wants to waste time and money switching for the sake of switching. Most open-minded IT folks understand:
In my work, I helped a school switch when they moved to a new building. Previously they had on-site personnel to manage hardware and software. Now they can go many months without intervention. The conversion costs over and above the new hardware which they were going to buy anyway was $5000 and an hour long introduction to the new software. By now that cost is all recovered. They should not have to do major hardware upgrade for ten years and software is continually upgraded from the distro in a few minutes as desired. By not installing Windows, the cost of the IT system would have been cut in two except that they had a sum in the budget and spent it to get twice the capability. There has been no downtime since a faulty memory module was replaced after some weeks of operation. Earlier we did need to replace a driver for video. That was done in the off hours.
Granted we had no "specialty" apps, but we have way more software now than we did last year.
The librarian did insist on using proprietary software. The shrinkwrap was lost in the mail and her library is still not functional although we had a FLOSS web app available early on if she had chosen to use it. What is the cost of delayed implementation of a major component of our business?
A problem is an opportunity http://mrpogson.com
Software and hardware costs, rent, business licenses, salaries and taxes are your business expenses. It does not matter what names you use; it only matters what you pay for. If you rent a tool, it's out of your pocket. If you hire an employee, it's out of your pocket. Money-wise they are the same.
The rest of your analysis is based on the presumption that Windows works. If that was true, no one would be considering a migration.
Modern Windows works, that's not the problem. IMO, one of primary motives to migrate to F/OSS is costs of licensing. Windows-only infrastructure may be expensive if you go beyond the desktop and start buying PDC, BDC, TS, SBS, Exchange and other servers that MS will happily sell you. That's where the real cost is - server license, CAL licenses, TS licenses... start counting. That's what I consider a motivation. Cost of a desktop OS is nothing. Cost of several Win2k3 servers, each with full complement of CALs for all your employees, can be devastating.
Oh please.. I can rip a *BSD, Solaris, or Linux box to pieces and figure out what went wrong. Even using WMI, WSH, and everything Sysinternals has up for grabs still is a pain in the ass. And yes, I've been doing all of the above for quite awhile (12 years in the MS camp, 16 on the UNIX side).
Burdened (or, as I learned it, "loaded") employee costs are those which the company pays on top of an employee's salary. Some costs are required (unemployment taxes, social security, medicare, etc). Some are voluntary (health insurance, retirement plans, etc.). And the rest is overhead and G&A (things like computers, software, chairs, desks, rent, heat, electricity, telecom/datacom, coffee, pens/pencils, et al).
Most companies have a loaded/burdened employee cost of 1.5-2.25 times employee salary. Meaning that--for instance--$2.25 is needed for every $1 in employee salary...just to break even.
Frankly, technology costs are not the primary driver in this equation. Taxes and withholding are (in the US at least), followed by health and retirement. My monthly tech costs (depreciated over three years instead of five) is only about $100/person (desktop and server hardware and software, storage, and networking). Meaning, only about 1.019 times average salary is technology related.
The point here is that while technology costs do have an effect loaded employee costs, they are by no means the biggest chunk. In fact, they may actually be one of the smallest--even with Microsoft's licensing.
For my business, I use a mix of OSS and MS; but if you really want to help, drop the healthcare, tax and withholding costs. The IT side is negligable.
Good point, however your assumption is incorrect. Most of the Windows machines were co-located with a Unix machine on the same desk, with a few more running dedicated Windows-only applications in the lab. Roughly 95-98% of the staff were regular Unix users. I can only think of three people who had only Windows machines at their desks. One admin assistant had started in the department using only a Unix machine for a few years (typing reports using *roff).
As I stated in the original comment, we didn't have root access, therefore we couldn't solve our own Unix issues. The IT people worked on 100% of the Unix issues which came up. Many of these issues were nothing more than getting a machine cleanly shut down so it could be moved.