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IBM Launches Microsoft-Free Linux Virtual Desktop
VorlonFog writes "According to Information Week, IBM has introduced a line of business computers that avoid Microsoft's desktop environment in favor of open source software. IBM worked with Canonical and Virtual Bridges to create the platform, which IBM claims saves businesses $500 to $800 per user on software licenses and an additional $258 per user 'since there is no need to upgrade hardware to support Vista and Office.'"
one small step for OSS...
And this is better than virtualizing $LINUXDISTRO + OpenOffice.org how?
To me, the most interesting part of this short article is this:
Revenue from Microsoft's Client division, which derives mostly from Vista... edged up just 2% year over year... despite the fact that the overall PC market grew 10% to 12% during the same period.
Developers: We can use your help.
On linking to the "Printable Article" rather than 6 pages of 3 sentences each (I'm assuming since I didn't bother to look) that is the standard format for Information Week!
My Babylon
I'm posting anonymously because I don't want to have people at my company know who I am. But it seems to me that Linux while cheap to buy is not cheap to keep patched and secure, particularly in a fleet of inhomogeneous platforms and users and network,printer, or disk sharing conditions in different buildings and subnets.
The nice thing about Linux however is that a very skillful and thoughtful person can plan out a very robust network and can mange the patches. But it takes effort, dicsipline and an above avegage IT guy. And if you lose that person, you are screwed. Even a new equally skilled guy probably can't get all the scripts and stuff the last guy used to manage to work.
With windows, you can take a balow average imbecile, get them through a certification course, and they become almost interchangable monkeys. you need a lot of them since you will constantly be fighting fires or hunting down the right driver for the given brand of computer, but they can do it and it will work.
Moreover, and this is the critical part, a manager who is not an expert can tell if his monkies are keeping up with patches. MS tells him what he need to do. With Linux you can't really tell if the IT guy is doing it all, or if your pants are around your ankles.
So it's not enough to use Linux to reduce TCO. you need to have a company like IBM telling you how to manage your configuration. Not because a skillful IT can't. But because a manager will know that IBM has his back.
saddly a mediocre virus prone Windows network is, to a manager, much easier to sleep at night, than a well run Linux system that's tight as a ducks Ass, simply because he knows it's reasonably safe from an industry standard point of view.
people will trade, extremes (linux) for mediocre, if they can limit thier risks.
I note this is one reason people think macs have low TCO. They are more secure than windows, and a manager can also know if they are getting patched right. So it's win win.
Wow, this sounds fantastic! Instead of using Ubuntu with OpenOffice from the repos, and paying Canonical for support, or, say, being able to pay *ANYONE* for support, since I have the full source...
I can be locked into paying IBM for support for all the proprietary binaries! What a great idea!
...except not.
o/~ Join us now and share the software
One of the things that truly sucks about Windows is the registry. Each windows box is its own unique little snowflake, thus impossible to replace easily.
If this is done right, all the configuration is in the user's home ditrectory, probably shared on the network, and the rest of the system is a standard image. That means any user can use any computer and have their system where they want it.
This is no surprise to us UNIX folk, but POWs "Prisoners Of Windows," will love it. Imagine being able to replace/upgrade your computer simply by dropping a new box in front of you. Your settings completely unchanged!!!
I have been doing this with Linux for so long (separate /home disk that persists), I can't believe people still put up with Windows nonsense.
I haven't found Visio to be highly useful, personally.
Umm. So what. Other people do. If it is not on there then it is a problem. Heck I would be happy for a mac port of Microsoft Project.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
No, there's so much more. There's no CD drive, no USB drive, no external drive of any sort. There's no custom software or anything requiring its own license. We have a thin client terminal within the intelligence community called the DTW (Domain Trusted Workstation) that is pretty much universally despised by its users. DIA et al think it's a great idea though. Tom Freidman in his new book: Hot, Flat, and Crowded seems to think that it is the wave of the future though, even for home users. Let's just say I'll remain skeptical.
Tic-Tac-Toe, Global Thermonuclear War, and relationships all have the same winning move.
Please don't act like OO is a feasible alternative for these programs.
Why not? And please, be very specific.
Some stuff doesn't work exactly right, but they offer pretty robust file compatibility. If you have coded yourself into a corner and are dependent on their VBA platform, now is a good time to start getting off the junk.
The only program for most businesses that's missing is a full featured and multi-user accounting package like Quickbooks. There are certain programs which have zero alternatives, like Final Cut, Photoshop (for serious CMYK), Autodesk products, etc. But the beauty of OOo is that those windows and mac users can be on the free office platform, and as soon as the vendor offers a Linux release or a viable alternative arises, you have one less thing to migrate.
Migration is painful, but if you choose the right platform to move to, it can be worth it. I recently moved a small office from SBS 2003 to an Ubuntu box. It was time consuming, and there were a lot of unforeseen problems the first few days, but now they have stopped obsessively checking the server to make sure it's still working, they receive far less spam, and when a free alternative to Quickbooks arrives, they will use all of the same programs - OOo, Firefox, Thunderbird - and only their OS will change.
Building the bridges to dumping Windows is key. In my opinion, the open source community should focus on releasing cross platform applications and frameworks. Once you make the choice of Windows or Linux trivial for application support, people will undoubtedly choose the cheaper operating system, especially during the next few years while the economy is suffering worldwide.
Off the top of my head, our 'desktop environment' consists of:
And thats without listing the several internal Line of Business applications we use.
I can't remember when the last time was that a 'desktop environment' I used consisted solely of the OS and an office suite - and thats why we can't migrate to a different platform: theres no alternatives to 90% of the applications we use on other platforms.
I think thats a point that many people gloss over.
Retraining costs and new IT infrastructure costs. Infrastructure includes human support training (i.e. IT Guys that have to support new software). In the long run it's supposed to be a win; however, in the short term and long term, there are very real costs, many more in the short run.
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A lot of development is moving away from the waterfall model that helped MS project become so entrenched in the first place.
We've moved to using scrum (a form of agile development), which has no use for MS Project. We do use ScrumWorks Pro, but that's mostly because we have developers and QA spread around the word. It's a java app that works on Windows, Linux, and Mac, so there's no platform lock-in.
It has a lot of and graphs for the manager types to look at, and does seem to help developers spend more time developing and less time deciding what they should do next. It's not perfect, but it's better than a bunch of Gantt charts.
- Vincit qui patitur.
Rather than a plethora of computers to choose, from manufacturers as varied as Apple to Zenith, there was a "safe" choice.
One of the big questions about microcomputers was "what can it do?" As far as business went, there wasn't much a microcomputer could do for them (word processing was already very well handled by specific systems built for that use). That changed with Visicalc - the first spreadsheet. And Visicalc ran on the Apple II. Apple II was a part of the package that defined business use of microcomputers. That helped drive sales of Apple computers and turn microcomputers in to a multimillion dollar industry (of which Apple was a major part). And it was what caught IBM's attention who then introduced their PC.
Yeah, sure... there was always the "you'll never be fired for buying IBM" thing going on. But it was also IBM entering the market that got people wondering what was useful about microcomputers and even noticing that a revolution was going on around them. Picking IBM over Apple would become a factor later (to Apple's detriment).
But again - the point is that nailing down a particular "year of the microcomputer" isn't so easy. It was already happening before IBM took notice. It was already happening before TIME took notice. It wasn't yet happening until Compaq shipped their first product. It hadn't happened until the Internet gave home computers killer apps; email and the World Wide Web. The "year" of the microcomputer spans over a decade.
Likewise, Linux is intermixed in history. It's fun to poke at those who so badly want Linux to be a run-away success story of disruptive technology (akin to the microcomputer). But the meme is nonsense. Our tech history has never worked that way. It just seems like it does to those who one day wake up to a whole new world that appears to spring up around them like technical mushrooms.