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Can Windows, OS X and Fedora All Work Together?
greymond writes "In my ever growing job responsibilities, I've recently been tasked with documenting our organization's IT infrastructure, primarily focusing on cost analysis of our hardware leases and software purchases. This is something that has never been done in our organization before and while it's moving along slowly, I'm already seeing some places where we could make improvements. Once completed, I see this as an opportunity to bring up the topic of migrating the majority of our office from Windows 7 to Linux and from Exchange to Gmail. However, this would result in three departments each running a different system: Windows, OS X, and most likely Fedora. Has anyone worked in or tried to set up an environment like this? What roadblocks did you run into? Is this really feasible or should I just continue to focus on the cutbacks that don't require OS changes? (The requirement for having three different systems is that the vast majority of our administration, who rely solely on an install of Microsoft Windows, Word and Excel, are savvy enough that if they came in and saw Gnome running on Fedora with Open Office they'd pick it up fast. However, our marketing department is composed entirely of Apple systems, and the latest Adobe Creative Suite doesn't seem to all work under Wine. The biggest issue is with the Sales department though, as they rely on a proprietary sales platform that is Windows only — and generally, sales personal give the biggest push back when it comes to organizational changes.)"
[1] Glossary:
Boni: plural of Bonus.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
No.
What is Windows 7 failing to do for you that Linux will improve upon without causing problems in different areas? I find it hard to believe that a business that already paid for Windows 7 is making a smart business decision by dropping it in favor of Linux (or even Mac OS X).
Changing to Linux because you can is just stupid. Good luck following through with your "savvy" users actually using Linux on a daily basis without a lot of trouble. You're going to need it...
Something I've learned as an old IT guy is that employee comfort is very under-rated. How comfortable an employee is with their work space is critical to productivity. I'm talking everything from the chair they sit in to what's on their monitor. If they're comfortable with windows and office and become uncomfortable with gmail and open office then you'll just kill productivity and whatever money you saved will be meaningless.
Post pictures of your girlfriend, and we'll tell you if you should propose. Give a snapshot of your kitchen, and we'll make redecorating suggestions. Post your eTrade login and password, I'll take a shot at helping you revise your portfolio. Thinking of buying a house?
We know nothing about your company, what it does, what the people are like. We have no fucking clue what you should do, because every situation is different. If there is one decent bit of advice to be had, and this comes from the Veep level with 20 years in:
1. Everything starts with the directory system and
2. Calendaring derives from it.
Exactly. If you've already sunk the costs into Exchange, it's very difficult to think of many good reasons to go to Gmail. Frankly, for desktops, the same holds for Windows 7.
I don't know all the details but if this is just your personal love of OSS then I would recommend you put your feelings aside and make decisions as a professional and not as a fanboy.
That was the great weakness of the ribbon in the new office. Yes, once you learn it it's much more productive. But people are generally too scared of their computer to want to learn the new stuff to benefit from it. And it's a fight that IT support staff aren't ever going to win. Ever. If engineering comes down or management says, hey look at al this cool new/easier stuff we can do with it people might comply. In my experience it's best from management. When someone who everyone knows is a mindless suite with an MBA shows how they can do something that actually looks good, well, everyone else figures it can't be that bad.
People's expectations from home matter too, and how much they can fix on their own. If I don't know where something is, but the guy in the cubicle next to me does I can usually save IT some time teaching me. If on the other hand you use linux, which virtually no one knows, and figuring out even basic things REQUIRES an IT guy, because no one who does any of the actual work has linux at home, well, you're adding considerably to your support costs. Then you get into problems where things don't work, either on your end or for the customer. If you didn't pay for it, they have no obligation or desire to support you. If you paid 5000 bucks a seat for a piece of software you should have in your contract who you contact about things not working and they can go all the way up and down the chain to find people who can fix it, including devs. If you have a problem with something open source, pay someone to be an in house developer or pay for.. wait wasn't the point to not have to pay someone?
This all depends on the size of your network and number of each type of system deployed. Plus don't forget there are political reasons for making or not making certain recommendations that generally outweigh any technical/economic reasons. I have seen people fired for making recommendations that had less exposure than what you have suggested.
Encryption: I may not agree with what you say, but I will defend your right to encrypt it...
Seems to me the solution to his problem is to move everyone to Windows 7. All the software he wants to use work on Windows so he'd only have one OS to maintain.
Outlook's a horrid mail client. I'd actually say that Outlook 2010 is significantly worse than 2003.
Yet, it's pretty much the best* client for scheduling/calendaring/meetings. Most businesses care a lot about this.
*Note that best != good.
It's also odd that he wants to switch everything to Linux when it sounds like he's got an entire Microsoft Shop going with the exception of Macs in one department.
If you aren't a Linux Guru - I don't see the point of creating a headache for yourself by trying to switch to Linux when the Microsoft Foundation is already there.
What he saves in licensing costs will ultimately be lost in troubleshooting because he doesn't appear to have the skills necessary to work this out properly - if you don't know how, than I don't suggest trying it out.
Sorry mate, but some of the advice you give is rubbish:
- "more professional to have a @companyname e-mail over @gmail."
You do know you can use google apps for your own domain, right?
- "I don't know if you are currently using or plan to use active directory"
You do know that Active Directory is a requirement for Exchange, right?
http://www.zombieapocalypse.tv/
Because exchange will continue to cost you money. Just because you sunk money into the initial purchase of exchange doesn't mean you're done spending money on it. A mail server in general will cost you a lot of man hours just dealing with spam alone. Many setups I've seen have another blade that does nothing but handle spam. So now you have to pay someone to maintain two boxes and pay a subscription fee for your spam filter. Lets not forget the price of deploying and maintaining Outlook either. Nothing but a constant PITA maintenance drain. We used to play that game. Life is easy with Gmail.
I'll take it one step futher - why get rid of Windows 7? You already have licenses, probably already have some patch deployment method in place, and your users are probably happy and familer with it. There is going to be a ZERO cost benefit of going from Windows to Linux because the company ALREADY HAS licenses. Now, if you are talking about bringing in future people, and in future computer purchaces, going open source, that is different.
All going from Windows to Linux is going to do is frustrate users, and going from Microsoft Office to OpenOffice is yet ANOTHER new Office product they have to use. You will have to incure a cost of training users, and suffer from a temporary loss in productivity while the users learn the new system. In other words, converting from Windows 7 to Linux will probably ADD costs, not save them. On top of that, you would have to incure the costs of reimaging your entire Windows user base, and backing up user data, then porting it over to Linux.
I say, stick with Exchange - your department has already sunk money into it, and leave your Windows users alone. Your solutions are going to COSTS money, not save it.
The thing is that then you have TWO operating systems to maintain (patch, secure, update, etc), and more memory to run the Windows VM effectively.
If you need to run Windows apps, run Windows. If you need Unix apps run a Unix variant.
Trying to get rid of WIndows by running it in a VM *on client machines* is retarded, you're just creating work for yourself. If you want to do that run a virtual desktop off vSphere. NOT via virtualbox running on a client machine.
Windows as a client is fine if you have a half competent admin to maintain the environment.
Shifting OS simply due to zealotry or lack of knowledge of the existing platform is stupid.
For what its worth, I run a heterogenous environment here (FreeBSD, Linux, WinXP, Win7), but its because i use the relevant tool for the job. I don't do shit like replacing every screw in the building with a hex head and demand that all people give up their screwdrivers for a set of allen keys - for no reason other than not liking screwdrivers...
I run: Windows, OS X, Linux, FreeBSD. Just because you have a hammer, doesn't mean everything is a nail.