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IBM Pushing Microsoft-Free Desktops
walterbyrd and other readers are sending along the news that IBM is partnering worldwide with Canonical/Ubuntu, Novell, and Red Hat to offer Windows-free desktop PCs pre-loaded with Lotus software and ready for customizing by local ISVs for particular markets. The head of IBM's Lotus division is quoted: "The slow adoption of Vista among businesses and budget-conscious CIOs, coupled with the proven success of a new type of Microsoft-free PC in every region, provides an extraordinary window of opportunity for Linux." One example of the cooperation: "Canonical, which sells subscription support for Ubuntu, a Linux operating system that scores high marks on usability and 'the cool factor,' will re-distribute Lotus Symphony via their repositories. Symphony 1.1 will be available through the Ubuntu repositories by the end of August."
... but can I get one without Lotus Notes too?
The 2008 will be known as the year of Lotus Notes on the desktop!
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This is a perfect example on why IBM stays ahead. They adapt. They went from proprietary to open, from DOS to Linux. From punch cards to computers. Despite how "old" IBM seems, they always seem to adapt, something that some tech companies refuse to do.
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
...how do you get rid of IBM?
So iamhigh's argument is: Canonical's support contracts are too costly and doesn't give Windows desktops/server admins any reason to switch.
His argument rests on this straw man: reduced cost is allegedly the only reason to switch to Linux. This ignores Linux's advantages such as lower hardware/software cost, access to source code and thus customizability. It also ignores the possibility of adding a Linux desktop or server for testing purposes.
Notice: He doesn't tell you how much a Windows Vista Open License costs in addition to a full support contract (!) from Microsoft or partner vendors, let alone a Windows Server 2003/2008 CAL + contract. Notice that it would be costly to him in terms of both time and resources to transition to Linux, and so he wouldn't be motivated to switch over anyway. Nowhere should a Linux evangelist ever demand that all Windows shops convert to Linux, for this reason. No one's forcing him to use Linux if Windows is working just fine, so he's mostly ranting about nothing. Worst case, he's a Microsoft evangelist.
I'm sorry, but he doesn't deserve those Insightful mods. Ironic that he predicted Flamebait mods, but as of right now no one's tagged him as such.
"We are Microsoft. You shall be assimilated. Competition is futile."
That's the point I think most people don't understand. Why you buy Vista Ultimate, it doesn't entitle you to any support. You get one or two phone calls, and you have to use them within the first 90 days of registering your software. After that you're on your own. $59 for each support request. If your computer came with Vista installed, you don't get any free support from MS, they want you to call the company who manufactured your computer. How is a company with access to the source code for windows supposed to give you proper support? At least when you pay Canonical for support, they are actually prepared to answer your questions without any additional fees, and are actually able to issue software patches against the product, as most (all??) of it is open source.
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
$881 for a year of server support, versus $500 per seat for Windows 2003 Server licenses and a year of rolled-in support, plus several thousand more to renew support, plus more if you add more servers.
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Because it breeds the thought that there are alternatives to MS software. It's easier to 'convert' someone that has an open mind.
The problem with Windows experience is that Microsoft is bound and
determined to make that 10 years of Windows experience obsolete with
each new release. I can learn something on SunOS in college and apply
it again on Ubuntu Linux 20 years later.
Not only will the Linuxen share the same underlying tools but those
tools will be similar if not identical to all the other Unixen. If
nothing else they will all share the same conceptual framework.
What 10 year old or 20 year old nugget of information still serves
you in WinDOS?
Does this years version of office even look like last years?
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
IBM at the end of business today had a 174.60B market capitalization - more than HP and Dell put together and within reachable range of Microsoft's 239B. IBM's trend is up (just off the 52wk high) while Microsoft's is, well, to be kind, not. Microsoft nearly killed them -- by 1994 their value had dropped to 1/10th of what it is today. For the past twelve years however IBM's stock has been as good or better as an investment than Microsoft's. IBM's value today is more than five times what it was when Microsoft was knifing their OS/2 love child in 1990. And IBM didn't just spend 7B engineering a product so abhorrent it needs this kind of "no matter what you've heard, our product doesn't suck" kind of marketing.
I hope the tide is turning. Maybe this will help.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
"Once upon a time, I worked at a company that used Linux as their primary desktop OS. The interface was horrible, ugly, cluttered, and didn't follow any of the conventions of the prior OS (Windows), or of any other possible prior OS." Good for you. How about evaluating a product on its current merits instead of issues you had "once upon a time." http://download.boulder.ibm.com/ibmdl/pub/software/lotus/lotusweb/product/nd8/demo/shell_popup.html There might be a lot to dislike about Lotus Notes, but your experience with it in a bad implementation 8 years ago is not sufficient justification to karma whore by attacking it now.
That it's actually attractive enough an idea to make it the theme of an advertising campaign is even better. Perhaps "Vista free" is this year's "Fat Free" of the computing world. Imagine the Vista logo with a red circle and strike on the box of PCs, phones, printers, scanners, external media, routers and switches along with the text: "Don't worry. This product does not contain or require Windows Vista." Or maybe this nice logo.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
I used Linux as my primary OS for the majority of the 7 years I worked at IBM. The internal distribution is of course, based on Red Hat, though I used SUSE, Debian (and Ubuntu) as well. It sucked in the early days of the project because Notes ran under wine, rather than a native client. Now with the Eclipse platform, Notes is a "native" client and works much better. Disparaging remarks about Notes aside, the latest release was quite nice to use. I'm sure development has improved even more in the last year since I left, and it was a complete Windows replacement then.
"Why does open source imitate more than innovate?"
Good question. We suspect the problem is that most open source software is written by programmers.
Although programmers are similar to human beings in many respects, and may even be mistaken for humans when observed briefly from a great distance or under adverse viewing conditions, controlled observations clearly prove they are distinct. Since programmers are a different species (as the term is broadly defined, since unlike other species open source programmers have never been observed to procreate -- or at least the very least we feel sorry for any researcher who might witness such an event) they tend to construct interfaces that are either incomprehensible to the human mind, or in recognition of their own limitations, construct systems that are simply a mimicry of human designed interfaces (aka "human interfaces"). Here the term "construct" is used intentionally because we cannot in good conscience use the term "design," with all that it implies in this context, as most evidence indicates programmer-constructed interfaces are unusable by human beings.
We performed several tests.
Emacs, an advanced operating system constructed by a programmer, was tested first. We requested our test subjects start emacs, write a short sentence, save a file containing the sentence, and cleanly exit the system -- all without the intervention of an open source programmer. No human test subject was able to do so. In fact, mere open source programmers were typically insufficient to complete the task: an open source programmer with a gray neck beard was often required.
We contrast emacs with Microsoft Word. The latter is not regarded as having an ideal interface, but nearly two thirds of human beings under the age of 40 who grew up in a developed Western country were able to complete the open-edit-save-exit task without the intervention of a programmer. Even marketing staff had little trouble opening the application, saving the file, and exiting; most confusion revolved around the requirement to type a short sentence, but in all honesty this wasn't the fault of the software and furthermore this was the portion of the task least likely to elicit effective guidance from the programmer.
An equivalent test with Open Office, written by open source programmers but sporting a derivative interface, returned similar results.
Next we tested the GIMP. Several graphic designers simply began to cry when placed in front of the testing terminal. Further testing was aborted on ethical grounds after one designer became physically ill. Although the results were officially recorded as "inconclusive," we remain skeptical as to the usability of the GIMP's interface by anyone other than a GIMP programmer. Similarly, we remain skeptical as to the graphic design proficiency of those programmers, but this is strictly conjecture and remains untested.
With commercial software from well established vendors we presume there is a high likelihood that one or more human beings will be responsible for the human interface design. Although further research is needed, it is possible that the absence of humans on many open source projects results in unusable or derivative interfaces. Furthermore, there may be aspects of the typical open source development process that discourage participation by humans. Again, further research is needed.