Moving Small Organizations from Windows to Linux?

Why? by NineNine · 2006-12-30 11:07 · Score: 4, Insightful

As always, there's not enough information. Why do you want to do this? What are you trying to accomplish? What apps? How critical are they? If you want to switch just for the sake of switching, then really, you should be fired.

Re:Why? by Anonymous Coward · 2006-12-30 12:06 · Score: 1, Insightful

Bollocks. Avoiding vendor lock-in is a sound business philosophy for a cost sensitive small business. If there are employees who can comfortably administer *nix, Microsoft boxes are an unnecessary and unreliable burden. The only problem we had switching from Windows was our proprietry accounts package.
Re:Why? by NineNine · 2006-12-30 12:09 · Score: 2, Insightful

A vendor like Microsoft has no reason to be nice to a small- to medium-sized company, and this leaves anyone locked in to a Microsoft system vunerable.

OK, let's think about this realistically. MS is the largest software company on the planet, with a financial statement that rivals the largest companies on the planet. They're not going away any time soon, and their OS is used everywhere. There are tons and tons of applications of all kinds that will work with Windows.

Case in point: basic small-business accounting software. There are tons to pick from that run on Windows. You can go down to your local office supply store, and pick one of a dozen, and they'll all do the job. If you switch to OSS, you have about one choice: Gnucash, and it's mediocre at best (let's forget that it doesn't have some critical functionality, such as payroll). If Gnucash, a piece of software being written by a handful of loosely-organized volunteers in their free time, getting paid nothing, happens to die for whatever reason (very possible), then you're quite literally, SOL, unless you're a big enough company that you can pay $150/hour for programmers to re-invent the features that exist in a $100 off-the-shelf package. If you're using Quickbooks, and for some bizarre reason, Intuit shuts down (very unlikely), then you pick up Peachtree, or any of the others, export and import your data, and you're back in business.

I won't consider going to OSS because the inadvertent lock-in from having a lack of choice is very real. If I were to switch my company to OSS alternatives, there's no doubt about it, I would be "locked-in" to using what few options there are. "Lock-in" on the MS platform is unlikely. Sure, it could theoretically happen, but it makes as much sense to worry about that as it does to worry about a comet hitting the Earth tomorrow.

I feel that is is much safer for a smaller company without deep pockets to stay with mainstream software, as much as possible. Buy whatever is generic and does the job, then move on to getting to the part of the business that pays the bills.
Re:Why? by ClosedSource · 2006-12-30 12:30 · Score: 2, Insightful

"Bollocks. Avoiding vendor lock-in is a sound business philosophy for a cost sensitive small business. "

What is the dollar value of "avoiding vendor lock-in"? That's right, you did say it's a philosphy, so perhaps it's unconnected to the bottom line.
Re:Why? by NineNine · 2006-12-30 12:32 · Score: 4, Insightful

Oh, I own a tiny company, and I spend more than that. I've got about 10 machines, all with licensed W2K or XP. The kicker is that my point-of-sale software costs $1600/workstation, and I have 5 workstations, and support for this software is no more than two years. That's a *lot* of money for a six person company. But really, I have no alternative. It's a cost of doing business. There's no free alternatives to my POS software, and the OSS ones simply don't do what we need them to do (integrated credit card processing, integration with Quickbooks, Win 32 API to hook into our web site, etc.). So, I have to look at my business. My options are to spend $8K every few years of software, or try to run a retail store with more than 10,000 items and over $1M/year in sales with some kludged together OSS stuff that would take a *lot* more effort, and may not even be possible without spending about 20 years worth of licensing costs to pay somebody to develop something.

If I owned a white-collar business that used computers for basic word processing and email, then sure, it doesn't really matter what you use. But how often is that the case, in this day and age? My friend, an attorney (basic office job, right?), needed some good way to handle scheduling, contacts, email, etc. Of course, he went with Exchange. Why? After spending about 6 months looking for OSS solutions (and don't forget, he could have been using those hours to bill clients at $150/hour), he had lost a ton of money, he pissed off the other lawyers in the office with all of the software mess, and he looked very unprofessional when whatever he was using wasn't working, and he couldn't respond to his clients. Finally I told him to spend a hundred bucks a month on hosted Exchange service, and get on with his law business. Everything is running pretty smoothly in that office now.

Maybe, MAYBE if I ran, hmm... maybe a... hmmm... catering company, then OSS would work. All you need is some basic financial tracking (ooops... still no payroll), and something to print pretty estimates and invoices. But really, I can't think of a lot of businesses in this day and age that would be willing to do something so dramatic to save such a small amount of money (I spend about 30 times more on rent than I do on software).
Re:Why? by TeknoHog · 2006-12-30 13:23 · Score: 2, Insightful

What is the dollar value of "avoiding vendor lock-in"?
It depends on the timescale. Philosophies rarely pay off during this quarter-year, but they can make a big difference in the long-term survival of the company and the society.

--
Escher was the first MC and Giger invented the HR department.
Re:Why? by RobertLTux · 2006-12-30 13:23 · Score: 3, Insightful

What is the dollar value of "avoiding vendor lock-in"?

i don't know it depends on what %Nextversion of the app will cost you ie
Oh The new version has some many %shiny features that we have to charge 12X to upgrade but we will charge you only 10X if you upgrade NOW (and in ?months oh Old version is no longer supported and your upgrade window has closed so you will now have to pay 20X and purchase a legacy migration tool at $$$$ per seat)

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Re:Why? by greenguy · 2006-12-30 13:51 · Score: 3, Insightful

WTF? A comment poo-pooing considerations of vendor lock-in gets modded to 4, and replies pointing out the importance controlling your own data get modded to 2 and 1, respectively?

Anyone who sneers as philosophy as being disconnected from real life (including "the bottom line") deserves to be modded into the ground. Exactly what do such people think philosophy is?

--
What if I do the same thing, and I do get different results?
Re:Why? by ClosedSource · 2006-12-30 15:19 · Score: 2, Insightful

You can't just invoke the word philosophy and expect everyone to stop thinking. There's nothing unethical about getting locked in to a single vendor if it makes sense for your business. If your philosophy doesn't believe that the "bottom line" is key element in business, than your business will most probably fail.

It's OK to have a failing business and it's OK to have a philosophy that rejects basic principles of business, but philosophies get disconnected from real life when an individual's profession is in fundamental opposition to his philosophy.
Re:Why? by sjames · 2006-12-31 04:24 · Score: 2, Insightful

What is the dollar value of "avoiding vendor lock-in"? That's right, you did say it's a philosphy, so perhaps it's unconnected to the bottom line.

Avoiding vendor lock-in is a matter of risk management. There's an industry full of insurance underwriters that could probably put a dollar value on it, but since I'm not one, I don't really know.

However, It's not hard to understand the position vendor lock-in puts a business in. When a business has it's critical data locked up in a proprietary format and one and only one vendor can grant them the right to continue accessing it, that vendor is said to have the business "by the short hairs".

There are always costs and pain associated with switching vendors, even in the absense of lock-in. Compatability goes only so far. The question is how much is that pain worth. A vendor that practices lock-in tactics generally knows about how much and calculates the ongoing costs to fall just short of that mark FOR NOW. They are well aware that they can, in practice, extract many times that much by spacing things out far enough. All they have to do is present you with a bill for 80-90 percent of the cost of switching and make sure you percieve the next shakedown as non-existant or in the distant future (better yet, as coming from someone ELSES budget next time).

Of course, if you can afford to look just past the annual report, you'll save a substantial sum of money by accepting the pain NOW and reaping the benefits later.Simple economics will tell you that when multiple vendors offering approximatly the same value have to compete for your business, you win.

So, it's not always directly connected to the bottom line, particularly to the bottom line THIS quarter or THIS year. However, it IS connected indirectly and the effects are real. In part they are masked these days by the high prevalence of the lock-in. It can be hard to realize how badly you're doing when everyone you can see is in the same boat.

Re:Start with your applications. by wynler · 2006-12-30 11:30 · Score: 2, Insightful

Absolutely 100% correct. If you have a small company, and applications that require Windows. You don't switch to Linux.

Provide the complete analysis first by tftp · 2006-12-30 11:38 · Score: 2, Insightful

One computer costs $1,000 in hardware. One employee costs $120,000 per year, with burdening. One "mission-critical" application costs anywhere from $800 (AutoCAD 2007) to $5,000 (Inventor 11, non-pro.) One WinXP Pro license costs mere $150 even if you buy it at maximum cost, as a retail box. Now, aren't you putting the cart way ahead of the horse? A single wasted hour of any of your employees' time (or your own) will cost as much as an XP Pro license. Have your numbers straight before switching, and have very good reasons to switch.

The problem with businesses is that they are not very open to OS theology; businesses just want to do what they are doing, and if the job requires computers and OS and apps and stuff, well - that's just the cost of doing business. It will cost money to run a Linux shop, and it will be probably *more expensive* to run a Linux shop, considering that every Windows app -- that normally would be "install and run" on any Windows box -- becomes a WINE nightmare, to see where it crashes and how to work around those crashes. Do you really want to buy a $20,000 app (there are plenty of specialty apps in this price range, all mission-critical) just to find out that no, it won't run under WINE, and no, vendor support in such environment is not provided. Do you want to lose the support on such an expensive app? You are risking not just your job, you are risking jobs of your coworkers too - if the company loses a contract because of OS troubles then some employees may need to be laid off, starting with you, of course.

If you have dreams about using RDP for those few apps that you must have on Windows, it depends on what those apps are. Some apps do not permit running under RDP because that would be inviting to buy one copy of an app and then have the whole company to access the server and run the thing. I personally know of some examples, so check before you buy into it. And other posters already said that the cost of a terminal license is as high as WinXP, and you have all the eggs in one basket (server.) Server dies - the whole company stops; are you OK with that?

Again, businesses don't want anything that deviates from tried, tested and true path. Cost is not a concern here; labor and apps cost uncountably more than the OS. If you want to migrate, you still can do that; I tried myself, starting with a 3-man company, and guess what eventually happened? Once we started growing, the total cost of maintenance of a mixed network shot through the roof (and disappeared among the stars.) Now we stick to Linux on firewalls, and Windows XP everywhere else. We do use Linux on our embedded systems, and it's perfect there. Desktops are a different matter.

Re:Provide the complete analysis first by Anonymous+Brave+Guy · 2006-12-30 14:54 · Score: 2, Insightful

The problem with businesses is that they are not very open to OS theology; businesses just want to do what they are doing

Some of us would argue that this is not a problem, but a feature.

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Look at the "why" first. by mrscott · 2006-12-30 11:50 · Score: 4, Insightful

Ok - since this is Slashdot, I expect to be thrashed for looking at this from the business perspective (I'm a CIO with 13 years of IT experience). The first question to ask yourself is this: "Why?"

Ok, I'll be the first to admit that there is a tremedous lure to FOSS software and have rolled it out myself in a number of situations, but not to desktops. I've replaced web servers, database servers and Windows file servers with servers running Apache, PostgreSQL and Samba. However, before I considered something like this in my current environment, I'd need to do a serious cost analysis that went way beyond licensing costs. For example, what will this mean to the user that has been using Windows and MS Office for 10 years? And, you mentioned that some of your core applications are Windows-only affairs. Sure, you can use RDP/Citrix to run these apps, but then you're throwing the Windows licensing costs into the mix. Not to mention the possibility that your apps won't like running in this way.

So, how much is your infrastructure *really* costing you?

How much would retraining cost?

How much would it cost to possibly have to give up your core vendor support due to running in an potentially unsupported configuration?

This may sound like I'm anti-FOSS. Actually, I'm not - I love FOSS in the right situation. WHat I AM against is FOSS for the sake of FOSS. While I "grew up" on the IT side of the house, I'm a big believer in the business needs dictating IT's role and responsiblity rather than the other way around.

My advice: Think this through before you put a lot of time into it. You may end up saving a whole lot more (not just money) by sticking with what works.

Re:Real world vs. fanboy fantasies by altstadt · 2006-12-30 11:57 · Score: 2, Insightful

The plural of anecdote is not data -- Frank Kotsonis

Now, here are the facts as they're found in ONE PREVIOUS PLACE OF WORK:

We had roughly 150 people working in a branch office, 110 of which were a mix of hardware and software engineers. The rest were either support or upper management.

We had roughly twice as many computers as people, with the computers in the lab area shared among many people depending on who was using a bench on any particular day.

About 80% of the computers were running a couple of Unix variants, mostly Solaris. The rest of the computers were running Windows.

We had 3 full time IT people who had to support all the workstations, servers, and communications equipment.

The IT people reported that 80% of their support tickets were for the 20% Windows machines.
Since we didn't have root access to the Unix machines, many of the remaining 20% support tickets were spent in either shutting down Unix machines so we could move them to another bench, or for installing new hardware and/or software.

</anecdote>

I have yet to talk to anybody who has actually experienced a situation where Windows support and development costs were less than Unix (or Linux) support and development costs for the same staff at the same location. I figure these places must exist, because SEVERAL INDEPENDENT RESEARCH INSTITUTES seem to stumble over them all the time. I'm glad I've never worked at any of them though.

Re:AD by Realistic_Dragon · 2006-12-30 11:58 · Score: 2, Insightful

Oh, and when putting machines out for testing you have a good opportunity to help manipulate the users.

Make the test machines pretty spiffy. Get some flat panel displays for example, if you haven't already got them deployed. Draw lots for who gets the 'first upgrades' rather than allocating it out like it's work.

Properly set up (if your office is anything like mine just set the default screensaver to the 3D matrix one and make them dual screen machines) you will get huge enthusiasm for 'the upgrade' rather than bitching about how everything is now insignificantly different.

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Re:Look at costs, Servers first by secolactico · 2006-12-30 12:15 · Score: 2, Insightful

Having said that, you might be able to run your critical apps under WINE, and use Linux X clients to run it via SSH.

... after making sure with your software/support provided that this is a supported configuration. Otherwise, they might use it as an excuse when something breaks (even if it's not a wine issue) to wiggle out of fixing a particularly difficult problem (if they are anything like the provider of a company I used to work with, they probably sold you the Windows licenses and might not be tickled pink to see the OS upgrade revenue going away).

Don't rush things. Break in the users nice and calm. Set up sample workstations for each environment and ask them to give them a try and get their feedback. That way you'll be prepared to deal with the little (yet annoying) issues or even better, you'll be able to avoid them. For example, in Windows, the U.S. International keyboard layout differs slightly from the Linux version in the way they handle the entering of special characters. It's no big deal, but for a fast touch typist, it can really wreck your pace while you retrain your finger memory.

Good luck. If you do succeed, please post your story and let us know.

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Re:Have your numbers straight by anomaly · 2006-12-30 12:47 · Score: 2, Insightful

Ok. You're right. That means that 2 hours of employee time make up for the cost of one Windows XP license.

Please don't misunderstand - F/OSS provides LOTS of great software, but I don't see any way you can pencil the cost of Linux as a desktop replacement for Windows. Linux makes just about everything possible. (FWIW, I have been a daily Linux user since 1994.) Just because it's possible doesn't make it a good idea. Just because it's cool doesn't make it make any business sense, either.

All of the software/hardware vendors work their butts off to make sure that Windows compatibility is met. This doesn't mean that they do it well, but they don't care about any other OS. You can care, and if you select peripherals well, it won't be any issue at all. What happens when one of your "important" users goes out and finds a great deal on a digital camera/printer/trackpad/some other device which is completely unsupported in Linux?

It's not worth fighting the battle for the desktop. Linux is not complete enough yet for non-technical users to have. Linux on the server makes great sense, and I highly recommend it. (Although at home I just migrated all of my services to OS X.)

Respectfully,
Anomaly

--
But Herr Heisenberg, how does the electron know when I'm looking?

Moving small organizations from Windows by westlake · 2006-12-30 12:53 · Score: 3, Insightful

I am looking for creative ways to introduce Linux as my desktop and server OS of choice

Hold up, there, cowboy. That is the wrong question to ask.

The systems and servers aren't your personal plaything. They are there to meet the needs of your employer. The small organization. The all-Windows shop.

There are often reasons for choosing the proprietary app. The predominant OS for a business of your size or type or location. Reasons that are not always narrowly technical, not always narrowly economic.

Almost total Linux shop with 1000+ employees by SQLz · 2006-12-30 14:53 · Score: 2, Insightful

I actually don't work for the group in charge of maintaining the systems, but I know a few things about how they are maintained. Basically, all systems have the same exact same RH4 image and sync up against an internal yum repository for software updates. There is basically zero maintenance for each machine besides that. Users can't write to the hard drive, all data is stored on netapp filers. When you are hired, you get really basic classes on how to use KDE, the internal wiki, Open Office, get on mailing lists, etc. A caveman could pass these classes.

We have over 7000 linux machines and 4 people to maintain them, plus 1000+ technical and non technical employees. Using Linux saves us millions of dollars, which pays for a couple of those netapps. The thing is, Linux just works, not to mention the vast amount of free software that is available for it.

Truthfully, and its a sad truth for some people, anyone who says Linux isn't ready for the corporate world has no idea what they are talking about. Its been there for while.

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