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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...
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