Microsoft Free, One Year Later

madgreek writes "Last year I wrote of my switch from XP to Ubuntu at work. Now a year later, I am back to reflect on one year of being extremely productive at work using (almost) nothing but open source software in a Microsoft world."

Comments

Linux Visio Clone.

[Zombie Ryushu]

Linux has a Visio Clone: Kvivio. Import the Cisco Symbols from DIA and you are all set.

Re:Linux Visio Clone.

[pwizard2]

Linux has a Visio Clone: Kvivio.

Don't you mean Kivio??

I use Koffice quite often, and Kivio is one of my favorite apps in there.

Re:Linux Visio Clone.

[herve_masson]

As much as I like dia and kivio, naming them "visio clones" is at best far fetched; If you're using visio seriously, they're not really playing on the same level yet.

Re:Linux has been business-desktop ready for years

[jfim]

I find Linux more capable on the Desktop than Microsoft. There are often times when MS's (using XP) internal burning software is inadequate - like burning images. I don't know if it's fixed yet, but for a long time XP just would not burn an image with its built in software and you had to use something like Nero. Never had a problem burning an image running any linux distro. Same with mounting .iso right from the harddrive as a cd-rom. It usually required some pay-for software (Alcohol 120%) in Windows, while a 2 minute search yield a few command lines to do it in Ubuntu. I know I'd rather save the money.

A two minute search on Google yields CDBurnerXP as a freeware CD burning tool and Daemon tools as an image mounting tool for Windows.

It might not be free as in speech, but it sure is free as in beer.

Re:Linux has been business-desktop ready for years

[BadAnalogyGuy]

Google for "read ISO Windows" gave this link as the first hit. It has a link to an ISO mounting utility from Microsoft:
http://weblogs.asp.net/pleloup/archive/2004/01/15/58918.aspx

Re:Linux has been business-desktop ready for years

[atari2600]

Knowledge is power:

- Windows Reskits have cdburn.exe and dvdburn.exe - very capable tools for recording media
- D-Tools is free and is an excellent tool

I have multiple machines running Linux and Windows (this particular laptop I am posting a reply from is a Linux only Thinkpad) and Linux is not really more desktop capable. I am playing the devil's advocate here: good for you if you managed to figure out that Linux works better for you.

It doesn't work better for everyone. I need Photoshop (Sorry, I am not too bright to use GIMP), I need a couple of my RTS games that I play casually and I need my Windows Rhapsody client. I use wine for Photoshop, Caesar3 and I use Vmware + Windows 2000 for Rhapsody. I also need Windows to watch streaming Netflix and I'll be creating an XP image in the near future just for Netflix (Netflix supports only WinXP and higher).

So now do you get an idea? Linux isn't desktop ready because a majority of the rest of the world isn't ready for Linux. This is a 100% Linux laptop and still I need to rely on wine and Vmware to use the applications I really want/need.

My first Linux distribution was Redhat 5.2 and it's been quite a journey - Ubuntu 8.04 for me is the closest I've seen to a perfect Linux desktop but as much as I love it and use workarounds to keep using it fulltime, the distribution isn't there yet. Linux *isn't* there yet. I want it to be and I'll rejoice the day I have to stop using my workarounds.

I love using my Linux laptop over my windows machines at home (one's a high end gaming machine, the other's a pretty decent Windows Media Center box) and I love using my Linux machines at work (5 boxes running Linux and one Windows notebook) but I do keep windows around for Windows does tasks that Linux cannot do for me yet.

I usually bash Microsoft and Windows freely but I also do acknowledge Linux's shortcomings. If you believe otherwise, well, there is this certain cliche about ignorance and bliss...

Re:You're not the first.

[JohnBailey]

...And that's why Linux won't yet replace desktop Windows! True Story. Wow... so much effort. So little accuracy.

Re:Linux has been business-desktop ready for years

[laffer1]

I am a Mac OS X sysadmin. You can do many of the same things with Mac clients that are possible in a windows world. Mac OS X server allows you to push down group or user policies, or policies based on computer (if the computer is bound to open directory). Open directory is based on LDAP. It is also possible to setup Mac clients to authenticate against active directory or Novell eDir in theory. In the latest version of Mac OS, it is very easy to bind to active directory.

It is also possible to authenticate against an open ldap server (actually osx uses open ldap) and setup kerberos. The LDAP schema (i suck with ldap) has two fields that are used to push down policies. Apple uses an XML format to describe all the policies which can be used even without OS X server.

The reason I feel that OS X is not ready for big environments is that it's inflexible. You can only hack around so many "features". For instance, we had a hack that's worked for 10.4 to bind to a Novell eDir server on campus without using Novell's schema changes for Mac support. We do not control the Novell servers. However, this appears to be broken in Leopard (10.5).

For the most part, we've had good luck migrating from a windows and mac environment to Mac only. I work for the computer science department at a university. I did not make the decision to migrate as I would have chosen BSD or maybe Linux based on our needs.

Visio, 'ey?

[dgun]

I think if that was the only thing keeping me on MS's suckware, I would find a way around it.

The main reason businesses run Windows is the same exact reason most home owners run Windows, because it is the default OS. They never give it much consideration to begin with, it's just what comes in the box.

The fact that this monopoly has been allowed to continue all these years is outrageous, really. If 90% of people owned Fords, it would mean that either Fords are way better or that they have unfair competitive advantage.

The Microsoft monopoly in the OS market is the single greatest problem in technology today and the negative effects of the monopoly cascades in every direction.

Visio became popular, not based so much on its merits, which I'm sure it's a fine piece of software, but more because MS leverages the Windows monopoly to push software of every sort. People then used Visio and the closed, proprietary formats of Visio and now because they have so much work stored in these formats it is a deterrent to considering an alternative OS. The problem comes full circle.

So there's my anti-Microsoft rant for the day

Already exists, this was already posted

[GameboyRMH]

http://windows-get.sourceforge.net/

http://linux.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=572739&cid=23649597

The problem is that nobody knows about it, and it doesn't come with Windows, and since it isn't iTunes or BonziBuddySpywareGetVideoPlayer2000, few will even be interested in it.