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IBM's Answer To Windows 7 Is Ubuntu Linux
An anonymous reader writes "It looks like IBM isn't much of a friend of Microsoft's anymore. Today IBM announced an extension of its Microsoft-Free PC effort together with Canonical Ubuntu Linux. This is the same thing that was announced a few weeks back for Africa (a program that began a year ago), and now it's available in the US. The big push is that IBM claims it will cost up to $2,000 for a business to move to Windows 7. They argue that moving to Linux is cheaper."
If you reduce the cost of software to zero and compete only on the hardware, you shut out some people from the market and trample others with your behemoth size.
Microsoft responded by stating they are happy IBM has found someone new, that's just great, and hey by the way MS is engaged to Dell who is hotter than IBM anyway so there.
I think one of the hindrances for businesses to move to Linux on the desktop is the lack of programs for Linux that allow the complete lock-down of the desktop. In Windows, there are many applications that let you control which users can access different areas in the GUI, well beyond Windows Access Control.
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I don't know of anything similar in the Linux Desktop Environment to Windows Access Control or the other programs that are out there. Does anyone else?
Ubuntu would be great solution for the enterprise. Basic email and office apps, what more do you need? The only problem with Ubuntu is that it needs more testing and validation before each release cycle. I've had basic functionality break between releases and this will not be acceptable for business use.
...for downloading Ubuntu Linux.
There's no -1 for "I don't get it."
.... which IBM wouldn't even sell in its own computers. I wish 'em luck in their new endeavor. They'll need it.
If someone says he and his monkey have nothing to hide, they almost certainly do.
Ubuntu works for me. Large community, fixed release schedule.
But whatever your choice, small to medium sized companies need to plan well ahead *before* they get locked in,
otherwise one day you'll be in your office and your MS exchange server will say "I'm sorry, Dave. I'm afraid I can't do that", then you're stuck with the thing forever.
If Microsoft introduces an incompatible change in Windows 8 (so that, for example a given version of IE can no longer be installed, or a driver for a widely deployed device stops working), it can force a company into unbounded costs of updating their software and hardware. On the other hand, once initial migration to Ubuntu is done, only an effort of a dozen developers would be needed to compile Firefox 1.0 with new libraries, update a driver to work with 2.6 kernel and so on. While for an individual it may be acceptable - and cheaper - to buy new peripherals and applications - IBM can trivially afford custom development costs to keep an operating system running exactly the same way they want it.
It doesn't make sense for any large business with non-trivial needs to run an operating system for which they can not control future direction.
$2,000 US to upgrade per machine? I don't know what in the heck IBM is talking about. I've been running Windows 7 on a two year old $500 laptop without any issues since Beta. They are easily over exagerating that cost, in my opinion, and frankly it turns me off of Ubuntu to see them buddying up with IBM in this way.
*On an interesting side note, I wonder if they calculated all the man hours and reworking of customized code that most shops would have to put in to go from a Microsoft shop to all Linux - I seriously doubt it.
**Do we even want to get into the compatability issues with COTS that still plagues Linux?
Ubuntu is an impressive distro for reasons many have argued here before. Karmic is actually a great improvement over Jaunty, and I think it's heading in a positive direction.
I might not have seen it, but I think Ubuntu's server area needs professional, detailed, Ubuntu-specific (if needed) DOCUMENTATION on everything an Ubuntu admin would need to use. http://doc.ubuntu.com/ has the most up-to-date version of the Ubuntu Server Guide, which is a decent start. It pales in comparison, however, to the FreeBSD handbook.
Where's the documentation on
GRUB 2?
Upstart?
UEC?
Building your own repository?
Setting up mass deployment via Kickstart/preseeding?
These are all things integral to the operating system and its deployment. I'm not saying Ubuntu has to have the definitive guide to Nagios or other 3rd party software.
Some things are well covered in the Ubuntu Server Guide, "Pro Ubuntu Server Administration" and Prentice Hall's "The Official Ubuntu Server Book". I would like to see more enterprise tooling and documentation for Ubuntu Server before I expect them to make a significant trench in the enterprise space.
And for those who might say Ubuntu is a desktop-oriented distro,
1) You haven't seen the work or the marketing Ubuntu has done on their server side, and
2) I think Ubuntu could succeed if they can market themselves as THE operating system for an organization.
Has anyone here been able to find a good guide for joining a Linux client to an AD domain?
ViewTouch
now sod off you stupid troll
And don't give me crap about open office solutions. It took most of these people 10 or 20 years to just get by with Office, you really think they are going to want to essentially re-learn everything? $2000 is only relevant if the people are actually fairly computer savy, which pretty much everyone everywhere is not nor do they care to bother.
I have converted several MS Office users to Open Office, they have never complained. It usually came down to one simple issue, $339.99 or free, pick one, they are the same. This is my experience with office workers, executives, and my 60 year old mom. There is almost no relearning, no one complains especially when the boss says thats how it is. If you disagree perhaps you should give open office a try, its not the same piece of crap you installed 10 years ago....
Ahhhh, the sweet sweet smell of Microsoft FUD.
"I've got more toys than Teruhisa Kitahara."
> ...there's no low to mid range POS software that runs on *nix.
True. "Piece Of Shit" software is a Microsoft specialty.
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
Uhh . . .
Ubuntu needs 256 MB RAM and ~8 GB (they say four, but from personal experience, you need at least 8) of Hard drive space.
Windows 7 needs 1 GB RAM and 16GB Disk.
Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_7
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ubuntu_(operating_system)
I read TFA and all I got was this lousy cookie
If someone utilizes Excel to its full potential, they would be pissed off if they switched to Open Office, because, frankly, Calc doesn't have the high-end functions that Excel does.
I don't like Linux. This doesn't make me a troll.
MS-DOS beat PC-DOS NT3.5 beat OS/2 Heck, you can argue that MS SQL Server is beating DB2 If I were choosing a side in this fight, I'd stick with Microsoft...
The past 6 months for several clients I have been running Proof of Concepts of moving from Desktop infrastructure to VDI(Virtual Desktop Infrastructure)
Microsoft have made licensing for running Windows desktops in a virtual environment so insane and added ridiculous costs just for the privilege of running Windows XP, Vista or 7 in a data centre that when you look at the ROI you don't see a massive benefit of shedding hardware.
A couple of those clients are actually now investigating migrations from Windows desktop to Ubuntu/SUSE Linux and running legacy Windows applications from Sun SGD/Windows Termial Server.
VDI offers huge opportunities for companies to shed the upkeep and maintenance of desktops and Microsoft are putting in as many hurdles as humanly possible to keep companies purchasing desktops every 3-4 years so they can still get their Microsoft tax from OEM's. I'm advising anyone these days to assess their dependence on windows if they are looking at VDI solutions and investigate deployments in Linux.
I think everyone here is missing the point. This is less about how accurate IBM's claims are, and more about the fact a company as large as IBM with a name that established was actually willing to publicly say it. That by itself is a major benifit for Linux.
This is all about momentum, marketing, and market share. I mean seriously, we act as if Microsoft has never made erroneous or speculative claims in the spirit of customer coercion. This is how business works.
I find it interesting that these stories never seem to talk about the cost of retraining in that switch from Windows to Linux in the work place. The authors must be those same people that keep writing about how software companies should replace boxed product with downloading because bandwidth is free.
I'm not saying that many companies wouldn't benefit financially from the switch. Many would. But there are a lot that wouldn't. Anyone who thinks the Microsoft license and the cost of the hardware are the only expenses has no business being a decision-maker in their company's IT.
I want a new quote. One that won't spill. One that don't cost too much. Or come in a pill.
the question was "Do you believe insider trading is rampant within IBM?"
Too bad your users don't have the same freedoms you enjoy. You're right—software freedom is the way to go. Sharing and improving, truly controlling one's own computer and the social solidarity that gives rise to is the single most important reason why nobody should use proprietary software. Including yours.
Digital Citizen
Windows expertise fairly cheaply
Like the sidekick cheap?
or London stock exchange cheap?
The deal you get on the back of a napkin during a nice lunch is soon gone with recovery and the PR mess of epic fail.
The only thing cheap about MS is the first try as a student to get you hooked.
Just like a smart drug dealer at the gates.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
And don't give me crap about open office solutions. It took most of these people 10 or 20 years to just get by with Office, you really think they are going to want to essentially re-learn everything?
Unless you're like my employer, which uses Access as a platform on which to run an off-the-shelf VBA app (from which we're slowly migrating), is the retraining from Microsoft Office 2003 to OOo 3.x with its traditional menus really that much harder than the retraining from Microsoft Office 2003 to Microsoft Office 2007 with its ribbon?
Successful exploitation requires that a threaded Multi-Processing Module is used and that the mod_proxy_ftp module is enabled. (...) An error in the included APR-util library can be exploited to trigger hangs in the prefork and event MPMs on Solaris.
And the second (first in order on the site) unpatched vulnerability deals strictly with a mod_ftp input validation issue. Again, I rarely even see mod_ftp even used as opposed to an entirely seperate FTP server daemon but disabling the faulty module is simple enough in environments requiring absolute security.
And input validation issues are usually patched fairly quickly anyways, I mean come on, this is 2009 and there are too many developers for the project that wouldn't let this sort of thing continue for this amount of time. Not to mention the fact that these unpatched vulnerabilities are nothing compared to the olde IIS Webdav exploit of a few years ago - too bad there wasn't a community aware of it sooner other than the underground black hats already using it to their advantage by the time it was brought to the attention of MS.
Why isn't IBM jumping first, and take the lead to move the whole IBM to Linux desktop? You know, the do-what-you-are-preaching concept? Last week, 5 IBM people came to our office to pitch for a 3 million contract, and I saw every single person (technical and sales) is running Windows Vista, with the latest MS Office. The only thing I recognized as IBM-made is Lotus Notes, which we also use here.
About 8 years ago, it was the same thing with Sun. We had a bunch of Sun people came to our office (another company), and they kept bitching about MS Windows and MS Office, while at the same time preaching Linux and Star Office. And guess what they were running? Yeah, you got it. At one point, I had enough of their bitching, I told them with a straight face: "Why don't you guys install Linux and Star Office, and send me that fucking slide in open format?" They looked at me as if I was from Mars, then I turned on my laptop, and it was running Linux.
One suggestion to the big guys: don't preach, do it. Then everyone will follow, you have enough clout to take the lead.
And to quote from the secunia website:
"PLEASE NOTE: The statistics provided should NOT be used to compare the overall security of products against one another. It is IMPORTANT to understand what the below comments mean when using the statistics, especially when using the statistics to compare the vulnerability aspects of different products."
But just for fun - don't forget that IIS needs to run on Windows: 212 Secunia advisories, 282 Vulnerabilities, 12 Unpatched...
That's the secunia report for Windows 2003 "Web Edition" - which is reasonably representative. Compare that to OpenBSD.
Goodluck with that! :)
I can see that one going down:
CFO: "Why can't I open this spreadsheet that accounting sent me?"
IT: "You're using Open Office...that spreadsheet was made in Excel and Open Office doesn't support X feature."
CFO: "Well how the hell can I open it then?"
IT: "We need to wait for enough other people to have the problem and for the developers to add the features."
CFO: "My god...how long will that take?"
IT: "Could be a few weeks, maybe months...or never."
CFO: "Fuck that. I don't have time to waste. You said Excel will open in? Get that installed on here NOW!"
Don't take life so seriously. No one makes it out alive.
Why is accounting running rogue software without permission from the CFO? How about "CFO: Why the hell is this accounting peon running Excel when the company switched to Open Office months ago? Fire him for piracy."
If you don't implement a standard company-wide, then you will run into trouble. Simple.
Go and spend 24 hours or so on Ubuntu's forums before you try and tell me it is stable.
That's your argument against Ubuntu? Do you know just how many forums are dedicated to solving various Windows fuckups?
I appreciate your efforts. However I post my opinions as they are. Some days I get modded up and others I get modded down. It happens.
Certain opinions (I'll take XP over Gnome and Ubuntu, or I think Apple is as evil as MS) almost always get me modded down. I still post them because I honestly believe those things.
I really enjoy the concept of democratic moderation and karma rankings. But I don't believe in catering my posts to manipulate them.
http://blindscribblings.com - Tasty pop-culture in conceptual fashion.
You clearly have never worked inside a large company, or if you did, you didn't pay attention. They have better things to do with their precious developer talent than recompile Firefox and Linux kernels all the time. Stuff like writing Visual Basic applications to assure that they will forever be tied to Windows, leaps immediately to mind. Oh, wait...
If you mod me down, I shall become more powerful than you could possibly imagine.
Uh, I used Vista right after it first came out and never came across a program that didn't work. Same with Windows 7. So no, not like Vista.
Don't take life so seriously. No one makes it out alive.
This is not off-topic.
I happened to notice today that Apple surpassed IBM in market capitalization (the total value of their stock) about a month ago. Apple has been on a tear for the last five years, growing about 24x. Even though IBM has a valued brand, a deep patent portfolio, committed customers and a broad portfolio they haven't kept up with that pace. I think that the last technology company Apple has to surpass in company value is Microsoft - and they're closing in. Apple's executing well not just in PC Hardware (where they've cornered the market on premium PCs at over 80%), but in media where they've pretty much taken all of the market for online distribution of music (and they're working on video), and in cellular phones where they're a serious threat to Blackberry. So Apple is not just in a wider base of markets than IBM and Microsoft - they're winning in all the markets they're in. They're executing well.
Microsoft wants to be Apple but Zune, Plays For Now and the Microsoft Danger FaceKick isn't going to gain them new customers in the new markets they need to win. The have a considerable negative partnering history to overcome. If Steve Jobs got a good stock incentive to come back and rescue Apple in 1996 he should die the world's richest man. Since I'm talking about how smart he is, here's a quote:
"There's an old Wayne Gretzky quote that I love. 'I skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it has been.' And we've always tried to do that at Apple. Since the very very beginning. And we always will."
IBM could do these things and the fine article is an indication that they're slowly interested in doing so. I wish them well - I prefer committed open source to Apple's exploitation of BSD's liberal terms, though I have to admit it's more of a personal bias than a difference in utility. I don't think IBM can pull this off without outside help. The Boys From Boca thing was, as far as I can tell from subsequent history, a one-off incident of accidental genius.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
...and even then they are as buggy as hell.
How would this be different to running them on Windows then?
Please don't ever use the Wine as an example of Linux being compatible with Windows software. Because a huge majority of programs simply don't work with it, and those that do have had special coding done in Wine to make them work, and even then they are as buggy as hell.
No, Wine has a strict policy of not letting app-specific hacks into the mainline tree, if that wasn't the case things would be a mess and nothing would run. Certainly not everything works 100%, but there are many apps that run very well. For example, I played Diablo 2 on and off for several years through Wine, and having originally played it on 'doze, I can tell you it plays identically through Wine.
Also, Wine has made an enormous amount of progress in the last 4 years. It helped a lot that the Win32 API pretty much stopped dead between XP and Vista, as it gave the Wine team a huge amount of time to catch up instead of having to chase a moving target. The huge Vista backlash also helps quite a bit, Wine has only really started on D3D10 support this year or late last year, but the fact that really nothing uses D3D10 (because it doesn't work on XP) makes the lack of support largely irrelevant. There's really no point in comparing Wine 4 years ago to Wine today, so much so that it's probably not unreasonable to say that more has changed in Wine's last 4 years than the previous 12 years before that.
Game! - Where the stick is mightier than the sword!
I have to agree with this. I tried to switch to some Linux and Open Office distribution a few years ago, and the kind of things I had to learn to do to get that machine running, and then to fix several driver problems, were a bit too much for anybody without a lot of technical expertise. I have several friends that are in love with Linux and Open Office, but they all happen to be software engineers, and when I complain about something not being user-friendly, they tell me that it's really very easy, you just have to "mount this drive and then ...." do you really think users are going to consider introducing linux commands, ever?
If you believe users should know this stuff, then you just don't live in the real world.
Please google and research "peak oil" a bit. You will discover this crisis is a lot worse than they have told you
Depends. There are a bunch of man pages on the grub commands, and there's /etc/grub.d/README and /etc/default/grub for the menu configuration. There's also Google.
http://upstart.ubuntu.com/
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/UEC
Apt supports file:/, so you can use that if it's just for personal use. Otherwise, you apparently just replicate the directory structure of an existing repository on your server and generate the necessary files. (Google produced many quick guides on how to do this.)
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/
https://help.ubuntu.com/7.04/installation-guide/i386/preseed-using.html
All except GRUB and "building your own repository" were found in less than a minute on Google.
Remember that Ubuntu is mostly an amalgam of discrete software packages, all bundled up nice and neat. The best place to look for documentation is usually the origin.
No, Wine has a strict policy of not letting app-specific hacks into the mainline tree, if that wasn't the case things would be a mess and nothing would run.
Actually, Windows has app-specific hacks. There was a /. story when Vista was coming out that linked to an MS blog in which the developer described how Quicken would not run on Vista, so MS hacked the API to identify Quicken and do as that app expected. They test all major software and most have app-specific hacks.
It is dangerous to be right when the government is wrong.
I can see that one going down
No, you cant. The mistake is never the CFO or his equipment. This is how it would go:
CFO: "Why can't I open this spreadsheet that accounting sent me?"
IT: "Because accounting used Excel and its formats, which is against company policies."
CFO gets out the cluestick and applies it to accounting.
No, but it invalidates your argument. Both operating systems have issues. Your point is null and void.
-- Linux user #369862
Market capitalisation is a result of several factors - the perceived cool factor of a share being one of them, and the need to include them in certain types of fund being another. The point is that a perceived decline in value can collapse the bubble very fast, as shares start to be sold which triggers off removal from portfolios and small investors getting out.
All this is very basic finance 101 but is widely misunderstood. If you are in for the long term (which is the least risky way of making a profit) you need to look at the customer base and the value added. Apple has many customers for its newer products which are on phone company contracts, and it does not have the majority of the smartphone market. It has forced Nokia to look at its product range again, it has stimulated the development of Maemo, Moblin, Chrome and Ubuntu Netbook. The competition is coalescing around Linux with value added in the front ends. Apple has a strong installed base but its market cap is based on a belief that it is the wave of the future. A change in perception, a major provider coming out with a competitive iPhone replacement (Verizon/Pre?) could depress Apple shares overnight.
IBM, like Rolls-Royce, is rather invisible to the public. It has no real brand image. But, like Rolls-Royce, it has stackloads of bought in installed base who can't just replace their phone when the contract ends, or buy a new notebook computer.
I'm reminded of someone at Rolls-Royce commenting on their share price that "people don't take into account that if we never sold another product, starting tomorrow, we would still be around in 60 years servicing our installations. And many of our customers are Governments".
Apple may overtake IBM in the long term. But currently this is far from evident, and market cap is not a useful measurement.
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
If you look more closely, you'll find that those bugs were fixed by fixing the underlying issue in Wine that causes them. Read the part of the changelog that says what actual changes were made. The reason the list of bugs looks like that is because issues in Wine generally show up as issues in running some application (or, more often, several applications).
Why must you take what I said in the worst possible light? Let me make this plain: The fact that there are many, many forums dedicated to solving the many, many problems with Windows does not let Ubuntu off the hook. But it does reduce your argument of "the Ubuntu support forum is full of Ubuntu problems, therefore Ubuntu isn't ready for primetime" to a pile of smoldering ash.
Unless, of course, you think that none of the operating systems available today are ready for primetime.