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How Can Linux Gain (Even) More Enterprise Acceptance? (Video)
This is what we asked Jason Perlow. He wrote a Linux Magazine column for many years and now writes for ZDNet. The ZDNet blurb describes him as "a technologist with over two decades of experience integrating large heterogeneous multi-vendor computing environments in Fortune 500 companies." Most recently, he worked for IBM, and for Unisys before that. So Jason knows plenty about Linux and its role in big-time enterprise computing. In this video, he talks about how Linux needs to take another step forward to gain even more enterprise traction in coming years.
All he has to do is say "Look at Windows 8. Now look at Unity."
Oh, wait. Bad example.
John
Lose the beard. Find a shirt. Just sayin...
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
Same as the 'big boys' ... hookers and blow.
Let's have people who are not collecting SS with severe COPD conduct video interviews about Linux.
sudo make me a sandwich
Seriously people. Linux is frikken everywhere.
Though we are a "Windows Shop" here at my company, we have more Linux servers than Windows servers. How can that be? Turns out, our storage appliances, our Cisco phone system, our VMWare servers and lots more if you include the multi-function copiers and stuff are all Linux machines. We also have a small collection of Linux machines I put together which just run and run and run...
At one time, we were in a meeting talking about various topics and someone made the statement about Linux being a hobbyist system and blah blah blah... I was silent for a moment and then pointed out the largest professional server deployments on the planet are running under Linux. ... and oh yeah, so are most of our servers... voicemail, virtual hosts, storage and all that. How, exactly, is Linux just a hobbyist system?
Linux, itself, is very widely accepted, used and relied upon. It is very proven.
What is needed now is serious added push for the SaMBa project to embrace and extend on Microsoft's AD. Take it over and make it better. After all, it's a bunch of services. There's a lot of really smart people out there who are quite capable and looking for a good project to get involved in. I'd like to point in SaMBa's direction. One thing it seriously lacks is a dumbass configuration tool.
I get that we can tweak on config files all day long and the SWAT thing is kinda nice. But we need to compete with the Windows domain server GUI tools and all that. The functionality is very much there. Now we just need something that dumbasses can use.
He's always been an apologist for Windows -- even right during his tenure writing for Linux Magazine. This isn't to say that Linux doesn't have its shortcomings, nor Windows its strengths: they both do. But, dammit: when you're writing for a Linux magazine, you eat the dogfood, you don't find reasons to prophesize that Linux will never be a contender. Which he did. Repeatedly.
In a nutshell: I can't be bothered to listen to his drivel. I called him on his antics, both in forums, and directly via e-mail, and he never dignified me with a response. I certainly needn't dignify his verbal ramblings with time wasted on my side.
This roblimo guy sounded like he was having a heart attack or doing some sort of one handed strenuous activity which results in heavy panting.
Visit my Forums?
In my experience, one thing blocking the adoption of Linux in corporate environments are MS-Access applications. Not only legacy ones, that could be moved, but the fact that there is nowhere to move them to. There is simply nothing that remotely approaches Access in the Linux world, and it's a pity.
Rome taught me patience and assiduous application to detail. Virtues which temper the boldness of great, general views.
to many distros and linux moves a little to fast for most Enterprise user.
Look at the windows site lot's of enterprises are now just moving to 7.
also there is the apps as well.
Yet another less-than-noteworthy "news" article, ideal to generate clicks & comments...
By making videos on Slashdot viewable on Linux, for one.
WTF? Just recently I've been reading estimates that Microsoft's share in the Server OS market has dropped from 70% to 30% over the past several years. Where did that all go if not to Linux?
Well, OK, sometimes shops move up from Windows to Solaris--yes it really does happen--and sometimes smallish mediumish ones might put in a Mac. But I don't see anyway it could possibly be less than 90% of Windows' loss in share that has gone to Linux. So, as a rough guess, Microsoft losing 40 points equates to Linux gaining somewhere between 36 and 39.9 points. Essentially, this question, this person, and this argument seem to be 5-10 years behind.
This message brought to you by a guy who develops for Mac and (mostly) does not use Linux, BTW ;-)
Not relevant. An enterprise user will be sticking with something for a number of years, so they'll end up with something that has an extended support duration like RHEL, SuSE, or (if Canonical is up to it) Ubuntu LTS.
No surprise there. Vista was too fat and all the hardware they had for running XP on is old, slow, and dying.
You have to beat Microsoft Office.
And that is a game that has been tried, and failed many times. Enterprises aren't hooked to Windows as much as they are the tools they use on it. Excel being probably the biggest one. The amount of power that desktop app has is ridiculous, and while I can applaud all the open source flavors, nothing comes even close. You can't unseat Windows or make Linux more tractable in the enterprise without removing the dependence on Office.
You can make Linux awesome, make Samba a worthy AD competitor, but if you don't have the productivity suite that makes it amazing, the cost of a $90 Windows license is nothing compared to the productivity you'd give up to lose Excel. Here's a hint folks -- people don't look at the price of the OS, nor do they care. They look at the value of the suite of tools that allow an employee to work. If you could make a business case that a Calicovision would make you more productive than Windows, I think you'd see a swell of pilots testing it out.
Linux isn't being ignored because it's bad -- well... partly because it is, but that's more a Samba fix -- it's being ignored because it does not contain a worthwhile replacement to the jobs people are already doing, and the businesses already engrained in workflows that surround and use Office. And you will not break that mold easily, if ever. And it's why I still say Windows Phone is going to do well over time.... but I'll gladly eat my words if I'm wrong.
The price is always right if someone else is paying.
Trouble is though: he was and is correct (at least on the desktop). So doesn't that make you look a little bit like an idiot?
I bet this guy had no idea he was being recorded. He looks like he just woke up. I kept staring at his beard thinking that a bird would come out of it, like in Family Guy. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HnyEiXFyK10
It needs an app that can integrate/replace exchange. And no, Thunderbird+Lightning doesn't come close. Just for starters, it needs to allow people to view others' calendars, easily schedule meetings in other peoples' available time, allow booking of resources like rooms, etc.
Secondly, it needs to work with the massive multifunction printing systems out of the box. I realize this is dependant on printer manufacturers more than the Linux devs, but the end-user doesn't care about who's problem it is - all they know is that printers work on Windows, and don't on Linux.
I use Linux at my workplace; these are the two primary functions it can't fulfil.
Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean there isn't an invisible demon about to eat your face
Businesses don't use Windows just to use Windows. Businesses use Windows to use Office, Active Directory, and Exchange. Linux has competitors to all three but they're not even CLOSE, no matter how much the evangelists puff them up.
What do you get when you put a whole office on Linux? You get a bunch of people sitting around using Linux. But they're not doing anything productive. Nobody's paying them to use Linux. No customers are giving your company money to have an office full of people sit around and "use Linux". Linux is not the product, Linux is the platform. Right now, the Linux platform for enterprise is severely lacking in comparison to Windows. The "Why" is dreadfully simple: there are no serious products that give the platform value.
Focus community effort on building solid competitors to Office, Active Directory, and Exchange. Maybe try creating something completely new, or maybe just try to mimic the MS products as best you can. Mimic might be better, because then you can show them how similar your products are so the switching cost is minimal, yet one costs a whole lot less, therefore the TCO is much lower.
In case you haven't noticed, Microsoft likes to throw around TCO as their metric. That's because most businesses don't care about up-front cost, they focus on what you'll pay over the life of the product. Put the most amount of effort possible into minimizing the switching costs. Linux will become a much more viable desktop platform in the enterprise when you can demonstrate meaningful cost savings that take TCO into account. Until then, Microsoft will continue to give enterprise customers concrete and logical reasons for why they should choose their product over all others.
Personally, when I found that Linux didn't do what I wanted, I learned how to *make* it do it. This held true when automounting didn't use SunOS mappings, and when there were no office-suite-like applications. Does this make me a dork for wanting to use my favorite OS? I guess that's a matter of perspective. But I certainly didn't sit there, *in the employ of a Linux magazine*, and say "Sorry, folks: Linux will never be able be able to measure up -- might as well throw in the towel." Again: each has strengths, each has weaknesses. But when you're supposed to be showing people how best to make use of their favorite operating system -- indeed, most likely the entire reason they're buying your magazine -- you don't put it down because one of *your* favorite apps doesn't have a Linux version. That's just silly and egocentrical.
As a pro-open source IT manager for a medium sized company, I can tell you with certainty that besides software compatibility, the #2 problem is letting me do close to everything in a GUI. I don't have time to sit there and type 50 text commands just to install Java or reconfigure some little system setting. Where's the right click, run as root, password prompting super simple sequence?
Also nobody at my company knows how to use Linux, I don't know anything about configure whatever the equivilant of group policy objects there is in Linux land, and I have no way of knowing if sound and video and networking drivers exist for a PC until I buy/build it. Those are other noteworthy obstacles. Honestly, I'd pull a 1980's Apple strategy (but not with schools). I'd try to get home desktops to run Linux first so that it's what people get used to. Then everyone will know how to use it and enterprise software will pop up for it and vendors will write drivers for it just based on that increased volume alone. That solves a lot of problems automatically.
I *have* had several heart attacks and am in poor health. Mostly retired, just doing a little part-time work for Slashdot and a few others.
Am I supposed to call you an insensitive clod now? Nah. Too trite.
Seriously, in 2010 I had a heart attack, got stents put in, and 5 hours after I got out of the hospital I had congestive heart failure and died. Got resuscitated, but all the tubes the EMS guys stuck down my throat left me with more rasp than voice.
> You have to beat Microsoft Office ^H^H^H Outlook. :-(
FTFY. Office per say isn't the problem -- the integrated calendar / contacts of Exchange is the problem that sadly Open Source (OS) hasn't quite solved (yet).
> is nothing compared to the productivity you'd give up to lose Excel.
Having used Excel since before verison 5 ( http://www.cpearson.com/excel/versions.htm ) I find OpenOffice, sorry, Libre Office to be better in some ways and worse in others. LibreOffice is a perfectly fine replacement for Excel.
IMHO the main problem is Power Point which all the PHB seem to love. Maybe there is an OS replacement but I haven't seen one that will natively support .pptx properly.
> Linux isn't being ignored because it's bad - it's being ignored because it does not contain a worthwhile replacement to the jobs people are already doing
That is exactly right. If someone were to focus on Enterprise Linux providing all the functionality and apps that the full Office + Exchange does then businesses would switch over to Linux.
> the cost of a $90 Windows license is nothing compared to the productivity you'd give
Apologies to whoever recently posted this link but that is not quite true. For a "small business" the costs of licenses add up that could be used towards upgrading / replacing machines.
"Newsmaker: Rockin' on without Microsoft"
http://news.cnet.com/2008-1082_3-5065859.html
But, dammit: when you're writing for a Linux magazine, you eat the dogfood, you don't find reasons to prophesize that Linux will never be a contender. Which he did. Repeatedly.
The geek would benefit from Cassandras and fewer Karl Roves.
Just for starters, it needs to allow people to view others' calendars, easily schedule meetings in other peoples' available time, allow booking of resources like rooms, etc
Zimbra does all this easily and well. Also, there's an open source version of it, though we pay for the connectors for Android/iPhone/Exchange/etc.
I have no problem with your religion until you decide it's reason to deprive others of the truth.
Ultimately, MS can't win at the server game. They charge for seats and don't offer source code. That hamstrings an outfit not wanting to worry about a seat budget or customization. Grab (free) Linux. Hack/tweak it to suit your needs. Spread it across your world. MS can't keep up with that. Of course if Linux doesn't grab the brass ring dangling in front of its nose, that's another matter....
So the desktop is "enterprise" now?
AD is just a subset of LDAP, so you'd just use another version of LDAP (instead of expecting samba to replace something already on *nix) if you really wanted something like AD.
It's actually not... it responds to LDAP requests, but it's not a subset of LDAP.
The price is always right if someone else is paying.
OK, then, not the same, by related closely enough that if they bred their child wouldn't be able to do anything but play the banjo.
is the lack of support for Active Directory, SharePoint and desktop applications like MS Project and Visio. The vast majority of big shops are running this stuff. I've got to hand it to Microsoft - they did a pretty good job of sewing up that market.
I love using Linux and I use it pretty much every day but there are some limitations to what you can do. The interface is great. You can make it look any way you want and it provides a lot more flexibility than Windows in that regard. Compared to Windows it's super fast. Network connectivity is a breeze. Printing and scanning is a pain.
If someone can figure out how to get those things above working, well, that's the last frontier. Until then, it's a bit of a hurdle.
That's all folks.
Fugue for Aaron Swartz
It must be weird being interviewed by your dad.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Yes we have MS Office substitutes but they are only about 85% replacements for MS Offiice, they need to be superior just like Linux is superior.
We need:
No, I don't buy the Photoshop crap... GIMP and Inkscape are good replacements.
s/per say/Per se/g
"Science can amuse and fascinate us all, but it is engineering that changes the world. " - Asimov.
You mean those things it already had because it got them from Sun because Sun was less into proprietary vendor lock than Microsoft is?
The Unixen were managing large networks of machines before Microsoft even had networking.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
Mod him up. This is nice.
Science & open-source build trust from peer review. Learn systems you can trust.