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A CIO's View of Ubuntu
onehitwonder writes "Well-known CIO John Halamka has rigorously tested six different operating systems over the course of a year in an effort to find a viable alternative to Microsoft Windows on his laptop and his company's computers. Here is CIO.com's initial writeup on Halamka's experiences; we discussed their followup article on SUSE. Now CIO is running a writeup on Halamka's take on Ubuntu and how it stacks up against Novell SUSE 10, RHEL, Fedora, XP, and Mac OS X, in a life-and-death business environment." For the impatient, here's Halamka's conclusion: "A balanced approach of Windows for the niche business application user, Macs for the graphic artists/researchers, SUSE for enterprise kiosks/thin clients, and Ubuntu for power users seems like the sweet spot for 2008."
I've never heard of him.
This man is a genius! Obviously the main problem for CIOs switching from MS to linux is: What happens to the saved licensing costs? You don't want it cut from your budget because that will make you less important...
So this guy's answer: replace it with 4 different OS's! That's 4x the support staff! Might even require a budget increase! And headcount, oh more of that lovely headcount!
I suspect once this idea gets out it really will be the year of the linux desktop!
Now, I just have to figure out if I'm joking or not. I know I don't usually end every sentence with an exclamation mark...
ccalam - acoustic versions of new songs.
it sounds like part of it was that he likes gnome better than kde for his own use. i wonder if he knows he can run either on whatever distro he would like. -- i know there was more to it than that, but i thought that was an interesting facet of the description.
It's hard to believe that's how Micronians are made. Why don't we see it right now by having you both kiss one another?
For the impatient, here's Halamka's conclusion: "A balanced approach of Windows for the niche business application user, Macs for the graphic artists/researchers, SUSE for enterprise kiosks/thin clients, and Ubuntu for power users seems like the sweet spot for 2008."
The problem is, people have been writing Windows-specific business apps for a long time, and MS Office itself is a critical business application in corporate-land. The overwhelming majority of computer users at every company I've been at has been somewhat-to-very nontechnical folks running Office and other Windows-specific software.
So, Halamka's analysis is not encouraging.
TFA is over 10 pages of 3 paragraphs...
http://www.cio.com/article/print/41140 is much nicer to read.
Sweet. And with my Macbook and a copy of Parallels, I can have them all.
That's the beauty of virtualization on the Intel Macs. You cease worrying about which OS is the best compromise; you simply use the best OS for the task at hand.
MS Office. What are they going to do about that?
Run it via WINE?
Run it via Citrix?
Use only the functionality common to MS Office and OpenOffice.org?
Another option?
There are lots of different ways to do it, but which of them is he taking and why?
I suppose that, when you open a terminal session, every Linux distro is for "power users", but what makes Ubuntu really shine, is that you don't have to be a power user.
I also like Ubuntu because much of the maintenance can be done through the GUI.
The real question is: how much of the maintenance can be done remotely? Being a Linux distro, I have to imagine that most, if not all, of it can.
Good freaquin' googly.
CIO.com sure has a hardon for online ad revenue. Seventeen pages for one article, the article itself taking up only 1/3 of the page real estate for each page. Talk about a pain in the ass to read.
It's bad enough that nobody in Slashdot reads the actual articles. The next time I see a link to a CIO.com article, I'll just skip trying to read it, and go right to throwing down a random opinion based on the Slashdot summary.
Read the EFF's Fair Use FAQ
Companies like to standardize on one OS/vendor, not have a bunch of variables like this.
"The only other problem Halamka ran into was with MIDI music".
I can not take this man seriously anymore.
Of course you can configure and maintain the system remotely, as long as you have the necessary software (basically an ssh server and a text editor..)
It is based on Debian, of course, which really shows when you work with it from the console. I've been running ubuntu for some time now on a server of mine (I'm relatively new to linux) but have never had to install some sort of gui environment. What I do, I do by simply connecting to it by ssh.
Ubuntu still contains most of the command line maintenance utilities. So if you learn how to use them, you can do remote administration. On the other hand, as long as your network latency isn't horrible, you can use the GUI tools remotely. This can be done using either VNC or X. I use X clients remotely all of the time from my Windows laptop using Xming, an X Server for Windows. Just make sure you use port forwarding in your SSH session and you are good to go.
Since this was one of his major complaints with Linux (and it's a valid one: six minutes is much too long to wait!), it seems like it's something that should be fixed ASAP if it is a widespread issue.
What the hell is "UBUNTO"? Some sort of Ubuntu variant that makes you look like a moron?
From the article:
"Halamka's month with Ubuntu concludes his formal operating system evaluations. What follows are the details of his experience running Ubuntu and his plans for his company's enterprise desktops and laptops moving forward. Will he finally replace Windows forever with OS X or Linux? You'll see..."
Funny, I didn't see any Bell-LaPadula models or ACL2 proofs, or anything other than some user's opinion clouded by the random crap that happens to every user of every OS.
"If still these truths be held to be
Self evident."
-Edna St. Vincent Millay
User #759
Wow. You're one old-school troll.
FWIW though, 90% Market share says you're wrong.
Troll.
As a pc support guy in a biggish company, I'm REALLY glad this guy isn't making decisions here. Supporting Windows, OSX, SUSE and Ubuntu, and getting it all to play nice together would be a nightmare. He is too far removed from the support folks to make a decision based in reality. CIOs should not be spending their time testing and selecting OSes. If that's what he's interested in, he's in the wrong line of work.
How can we argue with that? It's a legitimate question, how can we? The unwavering passion was there, you just forgot to make any valid points.
I'm not sure how you got modded insightful but SUSE Enterprise, which is what was used, defaults to GNOME. So it's GNOME vs. GNOME here.
Ubuntu: If at first you don't succeed, blindly slap a sudo in front of it
Market share doesn't necessarily represent quality - just look at McDonalds!
Everytime the Mac gets to be about the same price as it's competition, I keep looking for the next OS upgrade from Jobs. OSXI is going to be the bomb and the macites will happily line up to pay for the priveledge. Besides, the new mac is going to have 50% less buttons.
Just wait, it's coming...
I upgraded my home computer from school from Edgy to Fiesty with no trouble.
Everything can be done remotely.
By "niche" application, I'm pretty sure he's talking about legacy Windows and DOS apps that would need to be recoded to run on another OS, not common commodity applications such as your typical office suite.
If the cost of recoding the apps is more than the cost of maintaining Windows, they're going to maintain running Windows. They'll cut back to however many Windows boxes they need to run those niche apps. Maybe a Citrix server, something like that.
They give Apple hardware and OS X to the graphics people because that's who'll benefit from them most, not because no one else can use them. Any secretary might work fine in Office on Mac, but if she could just as well use Linux or has to use Windows because of some niche app, there's no reason to spend the extra $$$ on Apple solutions. Apple's expensive. Maybe less so than MS given the management overhead and security headaches. But up front it looks more expensive because you have to buy premium grade hardware, not barely sufficient low-end hardware, and for your grunt-level workforce that seems wasteful.
They give Linux to everyone else, because everyone else can work with Linux apps just fine. It'll run on anything, no vendor will bully you, and it's Free.
You see? You see? Your stupid minds! Stupid! Stupid!
MS Office itself is a critical business application in corporate-land
Not everywhere and not every user even in Microsoft-centric customers. OpenOffice is quite capable for the vast majority of users. And so many productivity apps are going online, just doesn't seem to be the show-stopper it once was.
I'd mod the author's distribution. I'd use Ubuntu on the desktop for most users, Mac for the advertising and graphics people, and set up Windows as kiosks for Windows only applications.
Even a three OS mix sounds like a lot, but Windows would account for more service calls than the other two put together. I can look at the trouble tickets for this customer a mixed Mac/Windows environment and the service calls for Windows run 3 to 1 higher. Once the Macs are set up and working right, trouble is rare. Business customers notice that kind of thing. Replacing the enterprise desktops with Mac might be cost prohibitive, but replacing them with a Mac/Ubuntu mix is not.
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
Users are most productive on the platform they know. Users know Windows today. Training people for any other system doesn't usually pay off.
...wishful thinking alert. If you could kill the trinity of Internet Explorer, Office and Outlook/Exchange then maybe. Firefox and OO.o is making progress but they're not exactly dazzling the market.
Many companies run on cheap desktops because they have lots of people doing advanced stuff from the business' point of view, but trivial in terms of computer hardware. Apple doesn't HAVE cheap, non-multimedia basic office computers, so replacing those with Macs are expensive.
Windows is over. Its brief and lucrative (for some) flare of popularity was a result of other people's crimes, other people's choices, it's time to freakin' move on.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
Sure, there are plenty of African languages: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Africa#Languages
Or there's "UBENTO", which has the user interface designed after a small Japanese lunch in a lacquered box.
No.
There are a lot. It's not even one family. Really a lot! (Every red dot a language.)
What is probably meant: It's an African concept. This notion is not restricted to one language/speech community and in that sense (sub-Sahara) African.
"Hannibal's plans never work right. They just work." Amy/A-Team
Nobody is as famous as you! Results 1 - 10 of about 3,090,000,000 for you. (0.05 seconds)
Even Time Magazine confirms it!
I have a hard time imagining why you would think there could be things that could not be done remotely.
As others have pointed out, you can do a lot of things (I would say every kind of maintenance) remotely over SSH. That basically allows you to do everything that doesn't require a graphical user interface. If you do need the graphical user interface, you're in luck, though. One of the hidden strengths of Unix is that GUI is provided by X, which can be accessed over the network. A convenient and secure way to do this is by tunenling it through SSH (try ssh -X user@host xterm, for example). Even if that isn't enough (e.g. because you're on a machine without an X server), you can even access your desktop through RFB.
Of course, you can't perform any maintenance that requires physical access to the machine remotely. However, in all my years working with *nix systems remotely, I have never needed physical access.
Please correct me if I got my facts wrong.
As I'm sure you are aware, the GP meant is there a language called "African", and I believe the point was that calling Ubuntu an African word is like calling "arigato" an Asian word, or "merci" a European word - I share the GP's distaste at the general tendency (particularly in America) to consider Africa as a single entity, particularly given that this tendency seems to apply *only* to Africa.
But then, that's just how I see it.
The secret to creativity is knowing how to hide your sources. - Albert Einstein
Original poster says "Windows is over," though. I somehow don't think that's going to happen anytime soon.
We all know what to do, but we don't know how to get re-elected once we have done it
You could run the Linux apps that did the number crunching (not high end physics stuff, but still datasets around a gig or more that took an hour or so).
You could run the visulaization software and model building softare, also Linux based.
You had shells to log into the Linux cluster if you needed access to more power.
Disk mounting and sharing was easy amongst other Macs, nfs clients, and even the PCs.
The entire Microsoft office suite ran. I realize OpenOffice provides all the same utilies, but most journals, conferences, and employers in our field require papers, abstracts, and resumes be submitted in Microsoft Word, and slides in Powerpoint. Other programs were not accepted, or, when tried, we ran into compatibility issues.
Photoshop ran really well for making figures.
So it wasn't uncommon for someone to be sitting at their computer running a job, building a model, putting the results in powerpoint, writing the figures in word, sending the results out on their integrated e-mail client, letting your advisor know all was well with a quick video conference through the integrated camera, all while listening to music on iTunes streaming off a neighbor's Mac through the library sharing feature, and all without any specific new training required.
For our group the hardware was expensive of course, but we made up for it by lab-wide shared software. If you bought your own Mac essentially all the software was free and you'd be up and running in an hour at full productiivty. This is one reason Macs do well in research environments. It's not that you couldn't rig a PC or a Linux box to do all of this, but it would take some serious effort and know how that many grad students outside a computer science/physics type have (we were a biochemistry and biophysics group), and university labs generally have little to no IT support. The Macs just work and you can get you research started with little thought to the computer on your desk that rarely crashes, and that is worth the extra cost of the hardware in a grant-driven environment anyday. (I mean, the Mac is $500-$1000 more than a comparably configured PC, but how much IT support can you buy over a period of 2-4 years for $500-$1000. . .not much, it pays for itself indirectly).
And businesses are interested in gaming are they? Maybe the fact that you can't run these games on some distros should be a pro that helps companies stop worrying about their staff playing them during work hours... Somehow I still think they'll play Solitaire.
Cheers, Chris
Wouldn't that be "OBENTO"?
been years since my last Japanese class...
I have something in common with Stephen Hawking...
Depends what you mean by power users, there are a lot of Windows users who think they are power users but really aren't. They don't know much about machine and group policy, the registry, and they certainly can't script but they know how they like their computer setup and they know how to fix the majority of the problems they encounter. Ubunutu provides a user interface for pretty much every administrative function and has a wide range of software available as it can (mostly) run install software packaged for Debian without much of a problem so provides a lot for the power user migrating from Windows. Since the power user is going to be bite back if you try to lock the machine down, for instance some of my users like over ride WSUS updates by using Microsoft update instead. You might as well give them Ubuntu since it's pretty robust.
Can they bloat it out anymore with ads? Geesh.
Thanks for the summary, as i know I will never read something with that much crap attached.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
I use Webmin, it's the best free remote administration tool for unix and linux that I know of. It makes setting up things like Apache and Samba really simple for a non-expert like myself, no need to modify config files directly.
Pretty much all of it. I learned how to configure Linux in the terminal, and with only a few exceptions (like synaptic because dselect is a suckfest) I do everything in the terminal with ubuntu.
The cake is a pie
Things can change. Fast.
Do you know how much EDS will charge to support that? ;-)
What would you suggest he called it if he knew it was in an African language, but didn't know which one? Or do you think this CIO should have spent his time researching the matter so that he could be more specific (but no more correct)?
After all, everyone knows that for any mission critical MIDI work it is a MUST to be equipped with an adequate number of Atari workstations ;-)
Now that I gone over some of my pet-peeves I want to cover some of my opinion of what makes Linux great.
For hardware support, this area has improved over the past several years. In Ubuntu it takes a couple of clicks to have 3D hardware support whereas it took a long process before. Used to be that I would have to live without a certain piece of hardware because of incompatibility but most of those concerns have been taken care of for the majority of the distributions. I could go over some of the terminal apps but I am talking about a desktop environment so apples and oranges.
``Training people for any other system doesn't usually pay off.''
Funnily, this never seems to be an issue when Microsoft changes the user interface.
Please correct me if I got my facts wrong.
Why is Mac better for graphics people then Windows?
Atari didn't have 1/10th the installed base of computers today. Also, Atari didn't control 90%+ of the computers at the time. There were viable alternatives, such as Commodore.
I suspect Microsoft will fade with a whimper, rather than a bang, as web technologies and open standards slowly make one's choice of operating system transparent.
We all know what to do, but we don't know how to get re-elected once we have done it
Aside from gaming, Macs are actually better than Windows for EVERYTHING its just right now the only known area is graphics. ;-)
Mac OS X and Windows XP working side by side to fight back the night.
Somehow a distro that's bloated as ever is for power users. (I'm referring to Ubuntu, which I used for a while). The real power user distro is Gentoo IMO.
This describes the exact objective of every PHB I have ever had the displeasure of working for.
"Be grateful for what you have. You may never know when you may lose it."
Doesn't like you've actually done this if you throw out a 3:1 figure like that given that in most businesses there are far more Windows installs than OS X installs so that 3:1 figure actually makes Linux and OS X look bad. Fortunately I know the figure isn't accurate for a lot of places. In the company I work for at least the OS makes absolutely no difference on the number of support calls since the problems are related to the in-house web-based ERP system which has specific issues with specific browsers on all platforms. I have to visit my OS X users just like I have to visit my Windows users. If you're in an environment where users can screw up their own workstation then you've got some business policies you need to build out and more importantly, enforce.
That's the problem most people don't seem to understand, these days most any OS is "good enough" for the vast majority of tasks out there so it becomes a game where you pick what's familiar because it's familiar and you know how it works. The reason I don't have a compelling reason to run Linux on the desktop is that I won't gain anything by doing it. Laptops are cheap as hell especially when you're leasing them all with Windows so OS licensing costs don't matter.
Of course that's probably why I always push for Linux on the server end of things. There you actually do save money on licensing and support. A hybrid approach for this company is working beautifully. Of course I've got both Windows and Linux servers throughout the place. Linux DHCP and FreeRadius have become lovers of mine because they support more standards than the Microsoft products and thus present a compelling reason to run Linux at least for those two cases. Those are just off the top of my head given my recent experience with them.
... at Bill Gates' next executive banquet, you're eating in the kitchen.
Have gnu, will travel.
OK, guys, can you please pause the philosophical eye-poking for a second and volunteer an opinion plspls?
I'd like to know, from your infinite fountain of knowledge, and by applause, which OS or kernel/desktop environment you've used is the most accomodating for keyboard-centric navigation.
Microsoft put the "sucks" in "success".
Windows is over. Its brief and lucrative (for some) flare of popularity was a result of other people's crimes, other people's choices, it's time to freakin' move on.
This is purely wishful thinking, unfortunately. I'm a Mac user by choice but at work I have to work in a mixed environment by necessity. Windows still has all the mindshare - my boss dismisses any other kind of computing as "swimming upstream" even though Windows problems cost him time and money every single day. (And as a businessman himself trying to compete in an open market I always find the "swimming upstream" comment odd - but there you go.)
Windows will be over one day though, that much is definite. So will Mac OS, Linux, etc - when it will happen I don't know but can you seriously imagine that platform wars will persist for another 100 years? 50, 25? They will go the way of AC versus DC, Morse versus, well, whatever Morse competed with - telephones perhaps. Gradually the OS will just fade away into the background where it belongs and all the data types that people use will be standardised. Roll on!
That's also where the Mac shines; no Solitaire. They ship with Chess, which forces users to either get back to work, or improve their minds while goofing off.
the more accurate the calculations became, the more the concepts tended to vanish into thin air. R. S. Mulliken
Especially after he mentioned simply that his exotic eap network would not work and a 6 minute wait for email??
If you use win32 apps then you need Windows. Standardization is important and I used to have Ubuntu on my laptop and love it. But I have XP now as I get ready for school with MBA majors who will be sending me excel and ms access files that openoffice would have trouble with.
As many pointed out this CIO was a laughing stock 4 years ago when his whole network failed due to poor planning.
Ubuntu is great but unless your a hacker or need a webserver its not practical. Large organizations need to stick with one platform and that is Microsoft as much as I wish it were not true. Until linux takes over more government agencies and foreign companies I would not trust the platform yet as its not standard.
IF I were a CIO or an IT manager I would care only if it got the job done as thats what I am paid to do. MS exchange, active directory, and proprietary vb apps dictate my decision when lowering costs.
http://saveie6.com/
It just works. Easier to maintain.
You see? You see? Your stupid minds! Stupid! Stupid!
Desktop Linux distros that rival and even surpass Windows and OS X in enough ways to make switching more than a cost cutting maneuver are still a year or two away. The desktop experience Linux can provide has gotten some serious work put into it lately, but its not there yet.
Probably the biggest issues I ever had with Webmin were its configuration programs messing up any by-hand configuration you have done for those programs. Admittedly I have not used Webmin for a few years, so it could have improved a lot in that respect since then.
Although to be honest I often find that when interfacing with linux the mac is more like "It Just Works (well almost works, apart from a few fiddly things that you can probably learn to live without)" so I tend to avoid them myself.
What are these fiddly things? Right now I use mostly Windows, however it's old and in a week or so I'd be getting a Macbook Pro to replace it. I also have a PC with Linux which I'll setup up as a server when I get the MBP. What I want to do is be able to vpn into the Linux PC over the net while I'm away.
FalconShould there be a Law?
The article was supposed to be about Ubuntu but it spends more time talking about other operating systems. The conclusion doesn't mention Ubuntu at all, despite him having the least amount of problems with it.
I don't think it really matters what OS you use as long as you can find the applications you need, or you can create the applications you need.
Agreed! The way it is now people, er too many people, just say they'll get a Windows PC and maybe MS Office without really knowing what exactly they want to do with it except in the most general terms. What they really need to do is know what apps they need, not specific apps like MS Office, but instead what the function is, do they need a wordprocesser? A graphics editor? Or do they need or want to create movies? Once they know what they want then they can look at the different programs available to decide which one they'll use. From there they need to know what OS it runs on.
Currently I'm using a Windows PC however about 10 months ago I bought a new PC with Linux preinstalled that's a tower. For a laptop in a week or so I'll be ordering a Macbook Pro. When I get it I'll setup the Linux PC as a server but mostly use the MBP. I've already evaluated what my softwares needs, wants, are and there's nothing I want or need that won't run on the MBP. The one program I'm not sure about running on the Linux PC is Photoshop, however PH runs and was originally created for the Mac. Before I get PS though I'll take some FOOS graphics editors for a test drive then decide if they work or if I need to spring for PS. There are two reasons I am switching form Windows. The first is stability, I am sick and tired of Windows crashing. Some say XP and Vista have a lot better stability however the first tyme I used XP the PC froze while booting up. And it was a brand new Dell. The only version of Windows I did not have trouble freezing or crashing was NT 4.0. And Vista? That brings up my second reason for switching, I hate it that MS feels it has to treat me like I was a criminal. MS requires Activation and WPA/WGA which spy on you.
FalconShould there be a Law?
Windows has a lot of basic OS, a few tools in the middle, and a lot of big applications. *nix has always had a whole lot more essentially modular stuff in the middle - generally taken to be part of the OS, but also able to function as application components. At present, that stuff is still largely command line; but there's nothing preventing it morphing a visual face. When that happens, you'll see more of the power of a highly-customizable OS come up into the application interfaces - and not in a way where you get lost; a path's clarity isn't inversely proportional to the richness of the ecology it cuts through - it can be the opposite.
So the OS, if this scenario happens, won't "get out of the way." It will be the way. Yet, it will be nearly as diverse as the people using it, while at the same time allowing them group coherencies that present systems largely block precisely through the constraints of monolithic applications. It will also walk dogs.
"with their freedom lost all virtue lose" - Milton
would consider 90% of the business market to be a "niche".
Old British maps frequently marked the African interior with the abbreviation MAMBA - Miles And Miles of Bloody Africa...
This dismissive attitude is still pervasive and really, looking at African news, I can't blame people who dismiss all of Africa as a collective basket case.
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
Linux fanatics can't expect everyone to edit xorg.conf by hand and apply diff patches to rebuild their wireless drivers.
By far not the only reason but one Reason I believe Linux hasn't taken the desktop by storm is because too many Linux famatics don't understand, don't want to admit, or simply want to keep Linux as an OS for geeks. Some groups or companies are making it easier to install and use Linux like Canonical and Linspire but until anyone can install and use Linux as easily as they can OSX or Windows, and Linux is preinstalled on more PCs, Linux will not have much of a market share of the desktop.
FalconShould there be a Law?
Really? I've plugged a USB mouse into my Ubuntu laptop a few times and it worked great. No "power user" moves necessary.
Try not to take me more seriously than I take myself.
How many people programed 2 digit dates thinking nobody would possibly be using their software by 2000?
Don't Panic
I realize that support is probably a marginal percentage of network infrastructure cost in a large organization, but wouldn't this tend to increase the overall cost of an organization's network operating cost due to the increased need for different skillsets (ok, specialized professionals, not skillsets) to maintain the different architectures, compatibility issues, and the time overall integration time?
I would think the money would be better spent with a software monoculture and then finding solutions for the specialty applications. Say: OS X and/or Linux with WINE/VMWare for Windows apps - even if special development is necessary, I'd think it'd be cheaper and easier to manage overall than what he proposes (because at least then the foundational communication and productivity apps could be identical), and you'd be able to get away from Windows.
~/ssh slashdot.org ssh: connect to host slashdot.org port 22: too many beers
yes, Synaptic is better than YAST/2 but Suse's hardware management systems were better imho. I've gone for ease of installing.
What does it matter if something is easy to install but difficult to use? Or the other way around, what does it matter if something is easy to use but difficult to install? Between the two, the second is more important, because most people don't install an OS. People just want to use something.
FalconShould there be a Law?
legal, smeagol, you think every OS-X user is paying for Windows? :) If so I have oceanfront property in Arizona with one hell of a bridge ...
I'm not going to pay for Windows, Mac OSX and Suse when I am already quite happy just using Ubuntu.
In about a week I'm getting a Macbook Pro and though I won't touch Windows with a 10 foot pole if I can avoid it, I'm thinking of setting up the MBP to dualboot Ubuntu as well.
FalconShould there be a Law?
Oh come one people, this seriously cannot be the real reason he wanted to switch OS. From the TFA and the introduction in CIO Magazine about the root cause of this change I seem to gather that John was annoyed with the updates that installed themselves and antivirus updates and so on. Any of these can be turned off or set to be manually installed later, and Windows instability? Yes, when you load it up with a hole bunch of applications, some legacy, some from vendors who don't know how to properly integrate their product with the OS, you might get some instability. Resolution to this sort of problems lies in application virtualization (see SoftGrid) or Terminal Services, or Citrix, which does incur bigger support costs, but maybe not as large as supporting >=4 OSes.
I cannot seriously see from the guy's description or even the CIO Mag's a real problem with the OS. I'd rather put this on account of his bias (also mentioned in TFA).
Please note that this is not in any way a bash of Ubuntu, SuSE, OS X or any other OS mentioned. I agree that they are more fit to do some jobs better than others. Hell, I even run Hoary Hedgehog on my old PC (converted to a sort of media-center). It's just the arguments are dubious.
Quite probably the scroll bar's been accidentally disabled by previous users of that account. To fix this pull up the Terminal Inspector from the Terminal app menu (Terminal --> Window Settings). Then from the drop down menu select "Buffer". I'll bet a pound to a penny that the Buffer Size radio button is set to "disabled". You can enable it and choose your buffer history length (or set it to unlimited; I have mine set to 10000). Then click on "Use Settings as Defaults" so it applies to all future invocations of Terminal. Now go back to your Terminal window and generate some output (ls or whatever). As soon as you get to more than a page full, your scroll bar will magically appear.
Here's another tip. If you like colored text in your Terminal (the way Linux does it) then you can turn this on by selecting the "Color" menu option in the Terminal Inspector and deselecting the "Disable ANSI color" button. Next open up Terminal --> Preferences from the menu bar, and make sure $TERM is set to xterm-color. And finally, edit your ~/.profile and add:
export CLICOLOR=1
export LSCOLORS=ExFxCxDxBxegedabagacad
Open up a new Terminal window and enjoy
Another hint: Monaco 13.0 pt is a lovely mono-spaced font in Terminal. It's very clear to read. Open Terminal Inspector, select "Display" and you can choose it using the "Set Font" button.
As for the mouse button. All new Macs come with a Mighty Mouse which has 4 buttons, including the middle (scroll ball) button. Just pull up the System Preferences app; select "Keyboard & Mouse" on the second row, and then select the "Mouse" tab. You can map all 4 buttons at that point to do a whole range of things.
ubuntu = for beginners suse = for people who like pronouncing it fedora = for advanced users osx = for people who like beautiful guis while overpaying for hardware windows = for people who don't like change and don't mind new hassles RHEL = for people who like paying for an alternative to windows Dos = get the fuck outta here CIO = a corporate peon with a reality distortion field amplified by his title I'm sure there are CIO's out there worthy of their title, but not this one.
You don't need MacFUSE, all you need is this: http://mac.pqrs.org/sshfs
Note, it requires a reboot after you've installed it. Then to mount files from any Unix server you have an account on that's running SSH, just do:
% mkdir -p ~/sshfs/server1
%
I'm currently setting up 4 x HP-UX servers at the moment, and it's great to be able to browse their directory trees, edit files, and drag/drop thing in Finder; or even do stuff from Mac OS X's Terminal without logging in (HP-UX doesn't have Bash by default).
The only downside right now has that it's not immediately obvious which system I'm browsing from Finder without Command-Clicking the icon in the Finder title bar or using the "Path" button in the Toolbar. But this will be fixed in Leopard as the new Finder has an option to display a full path listing (I've seen it in a screenshot).
It's the most productive platform for anything, including your grandmother.
Can you use a Perkins keyboard to navigate within Mac OS X, yet? If not, it is just another toy that might be ready for prime time in another century.
Amber
Wind Beneath Thy Wings
equivalently, you should get your head out of the clouds and actually go see how people use their computers.
The Mac is the worst system I could have ever imagined for doing work on in my job. It is in fact so bad, that if you were the one choosing my hardware and decided on a mac, I would either quit or ante up the money and buy a proper computer to do work on.
guess what? some people do something other than stay in the prepackaged apps that come with a vanilla OS install. at that point, Mac OSX is only as good as the software that decides to support it and it is lacking severely in some areas.
quality is just in the eye of the beholder. waht you mean to imply is what 90% consider a quality solution to the tasks at hand, you do not.
Why bother with OSX when there is Linux? At least for server's anyway. The abstraction overhead incurred by OS X's microkernel architecture is a very steep price to pay on servers who's primary role is to provide network services in a multi-user (ie. highly threaded) environment. If you want to do samba, apache or sql stuff- Linux runs much faster. I have several cases where I re-OS'd the machine (from OS X to OpenSuse 10) and saw 3x, 4x and higher performance improvements (exact same enviroment: hardware, shell scripts running against samba, apache or mySQL, etc).
I haven't had any problems opening any MS Office files so far. It's based on OpenOffice.org with a native Mac UI, so it's as compatible as OO.org.
Yeah, I know NeoOffice is a native port of OO using Mac's gui. However I heard OO sometimes has problems opening MS Office documents, it doesn't like Office macros or something. If so, since many Office users use macros, I think it's inappropriate to say OO is compatible with MS Office.
FalconShould there be a Law?
Other things are that its hard to press the middle mouse button on a 1 button mouse :)
Well I never use the middle button though I do use the right button a lot. I know Macs simulate it (right click, I don't know about middle click), [option]click, but it'll still take me a while to get used to it. Two button mice can work with Macs, and I'll get one, but from my understanding not all Mac software makes use of the right button.
and theres a few other unix/max design philosophy differences to work around.
I haven't really used *unix in about 10 years, I've been using mostly Windows, so from that point I won't have work arounds to deal with between unix and OSX. Of course there will be between OSX and Windows. I should adjust pretty quickly as I used Macs for 10 years before Windows 95 and NT 4.0 came out.
FalconShould there be a Law?
luiscosio.com/how-to-adobe-photoshop-cs2-on-ubuntu -10-steps
Thanks for the link, it may come in handy. I'll try FOOS graphics programs first and only get Photoshop if none of them work. If I get PS I hope it comes with disks for both OSX and Windows, that way I can run it on both my MBP and linux PC.
FalconShould there be a Law?
I can confirm they sell the OS X and Windows versions separately.
Thinks have changed then. I know a few years ago or so they included both. In a store I'd look at a box and it's list hardware/OS requirements for both Macs and Windows without saying what OS it was for.
FalconShould there be a Law?
Maybe, but not a CTO...
Even the article admits (albeit in an aside by David Torre) that Halamka chose to install RedHat and Fedora on a laptop that was not on the hardware compatibility list.
In my experience, USB thumbdrives always work, and always have done. I've tried maybe six different drives, ranging in size from 64MBytes to 1GByte, on a variety of laptop and desktop systems. Never a problem.
Beef.
The only thing you can accurately describe as "Scotch" is a sticky tape made by 3M. And it's