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10 Years of Pushing For Linux — and Giving Up
boyko.at.netqos writes "Jim Sampson at Network Performance Daily writes about his attempts over a decade to get Linux working in a business/enterprise environment, but each time, he says, something critical just didn't work, and eventually, he just gave up. The article caps with his attempts to use Ubuntu Edgy Eft — only to find a bug that still prevented him from doing work." Quoting: "For the next ten years, I would go off and on back to this thought: I wanted to support the Open Source community, and to use Linux, but every time, the reality was that Linux just was not ready... Over the last six years, I've tried periodically to get Linux working in the enterprise, thinking, logically, that things must have improved. But every time, something — sometimes something very basic — prevented me from doing what I needed to do in Linux."
For how long have we been hearing that the lack of Exchange connectivity is what's preventing Linux adoption on the desktop?
What really astonishes me is that open source has made such great leaps in other areas yet there's no apparent replacement for Outlook & Exchange. For a huge number of folk in business, having an open office suite is useless if they don't have calendar sharing, resource scheduling and email/contact sharing amongst groups. Is this really so difficult to achieve?
Push email has already taken off - where's the open source version mobile operators can take up (Though I presume this needs to be developed outside the US to avoid software patent litigation)?
We fricking know it's difficult to intergrate Windows apps on Linux machines..
no it's not. Install a small group of citrix servers and use a linux client. works great.
your incredibly important windows apps (no do not allow office, only the vertical apps) work 100% on that linux desktop.
It's half assed linux transitions that dont take account for ways to run those applications that fail and get an article published how "they gave up"
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
I wonder how his car runs, since obviously his whole family buys nothing but Fords and he insists on putting Dodge parts in there. I bet Dodge has gotten real tired of hearing him kvetch about how their perfectly functional air filter for a Dodge Magnum won't go into his Ford Focus without using duct tape, or how when he tried to put the seats from a Caravan into an Astro, it didn't quite fit right, or how even that someone had posted instructions on how install a Dodge factory Radio into his Ford, but when he does, the retractable antenna doesn't work. I mean, pretty soon he'll prolly give up on Dodge parts for his Ford vehicles altogether!!!
Yup. The obvious inference is that Dodge makes the worst cars in the world, since their parts won't fit into a Ford...
This is NOT an issue of linux integrating into an BUSINESS environment. It is an issue of linux not integrating into a MICROSOFT environment. Although often the same thing, NOT the same thing.
grape - the GNU free, open source rape
Now, I understand that not all IT people have the power and control that I have and they are saddled with what their company offers them. But that's no reflection on Linux. If there is an application that you MUST have on your desktop to get work done and it only runs on Windows, then by all means use Windows. But again, don't blame Linux for restrictions that come from your software vendor or market segment. Hell, if there were a professional job that required you to play the latest and greatest PC games, you'd be an idiot to say "I'd use Linux here at work if it didn't suck so much". You can't fault companies who don't develop for Linux because they are concerned about their bottom line. But you also can't fault Linux because those companies chose their financial destiny vs. a potential darkhorse.
From TFA: I purchased third-party provided connectors into Exchange, and ran Office-type applications as well.
I would say that's his first mistake. I suspect he's talking about Ximian Gnome's Evolution and OpenOffice.org. Evolution is a nice application, but it's not the best way to go if you live in an Exchange shop. You'd be better off using RDP or Citrix to publish the app from a server and having a thin client app on your Linux desktop. Or, you could at the very least access Outlook Web Agent using IE in Wine, a virtual machine or again via RDP or Citrix. OpenOffice.org? Hard for me to say as I have little use for Office software. When I use OpenOffice.org 2.0, it "just works" for me in terms of opening documents. I don't really have much need to edit them, so I don't know of the woes of conversion. But... again, I'd suggest, CrossOver Office, virtualization of a Windows machine or RDP/Citrix. These work for me as the need arises.
One thing I question in all of this is why people seem so averse to virtualization? It's the perfect solution especially with the new hardware assistance in new CPUs (AMD's Pacifica and Intel's Vanderpool). I used virtualization since VMWare came out in 97/98, moved to QEMU circa 2004 and then Xen in 2005. Outside of gaming, virtualization is perfect. It allows you access to all applications you would need for most businesses. If you are truly in an enterprise situation then it's likely that you have VLK for Windows XP anyway... so installing Windows in a VM shouldn't be a licensing issue either. And in terms of performance, with hardware assistance and Xen, you can get close to 99% of the bare metal speed. Not to mention that unlike older virtualization technologies, your virtualized OS IS running on the metal for the most part. It's NOT running within another OS at all. Reread that last line so it sinks in. I repeat, with virtualization software like Xen and hardware assisted virtualization, your "guest" OS is running NEXT TO and NOT on top of the managing OS instance.
Since the performance is there, and true enterprises use VLK for Windows desktop, why not use virtualization for that small handful of apps you really need? Or remote desktop/Citrix? Unless you're trying to run some really niche market visualization software that requires 3D acceleration, or you're in multimedia content production, Linux has been ready for the desktop for close to a decade.
-"...bad old ideas look confusingly fresh when they are packaged as technology" - Jaron Lanier (Digital Maoism on Edge.o
http://zimbra.com/
This looks promising
The Anti-Blog
That's a good summary of the problem.
Often times, the reason Linux is the wrong tool for the job because the job has the unstated requirement of being doable by people who only have experience with Windows.
agreed. I'm literally in the middle of implementing zimbra for our office. Our desktops are all Windows (even mine, sigh) and we did not want exchange but something w/ it's abilities. From what I've read and seen so far, it works pretty good for most of the absolute requirements of exchange (and has a web gui to boot!) My only complaint is the web gui does not have all of teh functionality provided to outlook (I assume/hope this will get better) But my biggest gripe is this:
I like the product, but if this is supposed to be a method of replacing exchange w/ open source, why do we not have the ability to work w/ mozilla products outside of a simple mail server? it's one thing to migrate exchange, but I would like to see some effort put in to allow the migration away from outlook. And if it takes the mozilla folks working w/ the zimbra folks, I say great!
I beg to differ. There is no solution that doesn't involve replacing both Outlook and Exchange, but the functionality has been available for some time. Exchange gets replaced with IMAP and SMTP (and gains the benefit of SSL/TLS encryption and SASL authentication in the process), a WebDAV folder for posting iCals (and gains the benefit of interoperating with MacOS in the process) and OpenLDAP for storing organization-wide contacts. Outlook gets replaced with Thunderbird (if you only need contacts and e-mail) or Evolution (for GNOME people) or Kontact (for the KDE folks).
I believe that's a complete replacement for both Outlook and Exchange, and I even added some nifty security features while I did so. Total cost is $0 for software, and about 2 hours of my time (at most) to set it up. That comes in comfortably under the cost of Exchange + Outlook, even if my time is worth $500/hr.
"Please describe the scientific nature of the 'whammy'" - Agent Scully
For at least 4 years I've been using various flavours of Fedora and Red Hat Entprise in several large mission-critical commercial applications and also as desktop environments.
I've never had any significant issues, which from experience isn't true at all of any Microsoft products we'vetried as alternatives. They have repeatedly proved themselves to be of inferior quality and/or performance.
Our company is the same. Our previous IT "guy" was 100% *nix. He used to bring in different flavors of *nix on a CD and say, "Hey, Try these!". I use Windows normally, but he knew I was a system and network admin of Solaris systems running on Sun machines. As hard as he tried, we (like the article's author) just couldn't make it work for the company. I manage about 18 people and I tried making OpenOffice work, but as soon as we tried working with someone's M$ file (from PowerPoint or Word), the document was really screwy. It got to the point that I'd sometimes just export information as an HTML file so that I knew the style, format and look would stay intact (but they couldn't modify it well with Oo). I eventually asked for 18 M$ licenses, and was limited due to fiscal decisions to only 8. The 8 who got full M$ office had no problems, and the rest limped along.
Now, 3 years later, the remaining Linux systems and OpenSource software is on it's way out the door. Exectutives are now balking at limited Calender and some other limitations. You might say, "What has changed?" We're getting executives from other, more technologically advanced companies. So they want the full functionality (which, regretfully, means tons of more meetings....something I didn't miss from my previous, IT-savy company).
Although, it's ironic I got the CEO and other VPs hooked on WebCalendar for scheduling outside of work.