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First Alpha of Public Sector Linux Deployment System
New submitter mathiasfriman writes: SverigeLinux (SwedenLinux in Swedish) is a project financed by the Swedish Internet Fund that is developing a Linux deployment system for the public sector. It is based on DebianLAN and has just released its first public early alpha version. This 7 minute video shows how you can deploy up to 100 workstations with minimal Linux knowledge in under an hour, complete with DHCP, DNS and user data in LDAP, logins using Kerberos and centralized storage. The project has a home on GitHub and is looking for testers and developers. Don't worry, no Björgen Kjörgen; it's all in English.
I'll stick with Microsoft Active Directory.
All projects created with pubic service Linux are automatically over budget and late.
Duh!
Since the swedish public sector software licensing costs are about $1bn annually, this project will always be underfunded...
I like imaging systems like this, but... It needs to be Distro Agnostic, as in just "An application." to deploy whatever Distro you have installed. As for LDAP, and Kerberos, Samba 4 plays a role here. Samba 4 is as much the next evolution of Heimdal Kerberos and OpenLDAP, as it is what Samba 3's "False Active Directories were, and everything OpenLDAP, and Heimdal provided, OpenLDAP and Heimdal clients should expect from Samba 4.
The Fog Project seems to be a good model for this idea.
All projects are automatically over budget and late.
FTFY
PlusFive Slashdot reader for Android. Can post comments.
Apart from that, this seems the sort of project you didn't know you needed until you've seen it done.
How much time do admins, consultants, and contractors waste by re-inventing the wheel when planning, building, and rolling out the umpteeth networked computing infrastructure ?
What's there in the public domain is a jumble of howto's, forums, bits of disjunct knowledge and learning opportunities that one may (over the course of a few years) learn one's way in to become an admin who's able to design an roll out a decent piece of infrastructure.
This is one of the reasons why companies may decide to go with e.g. Microsoft. Less uncertainty in terms of price and ability to meet delivery deadlines. Simply because the people who design and implement the stuff have had time to learn from their wost mistakes, as opposed to the average Linux enthusiast (a definite no-go) or even contractors that set up Linux-based infrastructures (you can bet they use non-standard setups, non-standard tooling, and leave you with a system you probably need them for to maintain efficiently).
This project on the other hand seems to give admins a head-start in implementation and it can serve as a repository of practical know-how.
This kind of stuff makes it easy to set up a whole company infrastructure quickly
I'm sorry, but you got me laughing at this point. Have you looked at MS server licencing at all? There's a good reason that there's a third party "for dummies" book.
Is it usually a good idea to have a person with minimal knowledge of what they are doing rolling out a couple of 100 machines?
..This is one of the reasons why companies may decide to go with e.g. Microsoft. Less uncertainty in terms of price and ability to meet delivery deadlines..
For your consideration, I was going to present you with a breakdown of the IT structure in place at my current place of employ, alas, I can't be bothered, I've heard all this crap before and am tired trying to explain why it's so wrong.
Our main IT system is all Microsoft based, all set up by highly paid external certified consultants, and isn't worth shit, trying to detail all the fuckups they've had with it would take pages, suffice to say, the bit that I really, really have to laugh at was your '..Less uncertainty in terms of price and ability to meet delivery deadlines.' bit. None of their planned upgrades of the servers and desktops have run smoothly, to budget, or to schedule. My particular sections planned upgrade is now 6 months behind 'deadline'..
..Simply because the people who design and implement the stuff have had time to learn from their wost mistakes, as opposed to the average Linux enthusiast (a definite no-go) or even contractors that set up Linux-based infrastructures (you can bet they use non-standard setups, non-standard tooling, and leave you with a system you probably need them for to maintain efficiently).
Wait, what? seriously?, It's really sad that you seem to believe all that is true..in my 20+ years experience the biggest bunch of shyster-hucksters I've come across in the IT world are MCxx qualified consultants, I really shouldn't complain though, I managed to make quite a bit by fixing their mistakes...not bad, then again, I'm probably not your 'average Linux enthusiast'.
Contractors, whatever flavour of system they're setting up, Linux or otherwise, are usually bad news. If a company has gone down the 'let's employ externals to implement our IT' it means either the management are technophobes, or they don't trust their own IT people, in which case, the contractors know this and have a license to print money by installing the most borked setups imaginable (I should know, I've had to untangle quite a few 'job creation schemes' from setups over a couple of decades..I'm currently watching an experienced Windows guy trying to unravel such a setup now, he's been at it for a couple of months..a complete reinstall is not an option)
Do you know what's most annoying about the above?, most of the people I've known in the past who've run Linux/Unix servers have all supported their corporate windows servers as well (myself included). We may be, as you put it, 'Linux enthusiasts', this doesn't mean we've never seen (or had to fix/work around) the 'worst mistakes' of borked windows systems.
You know you're in for a fun day when you pop open a cmd window on a Win2k3 server in front of its admin and run something with command line switches he never knew existed..and I'm not even doing IT support as a job these days..
I disagree with the MS AD bashing here. Its a very well grounded bit of kit, and the reason its widely used is not an accident.
In terms of this project - very nice. Look forward to seeing it get through alpha, beta and then solidify. One of the interesting issues that I see real world is that Linux may have the tooling, but hasn't really had a well defined system that provides the answers, easy to run and manage, client and application support in a way this project seems to outline.
There has always seemed to me, and I may be wrong here, a lot of efforts exist, but few get as clearly defined as this one is lined up to be. Despite likeing AD, I'd really like there to be a full stack, well thought out, easy to run and manage OSS full stack to compete and use in similar space to AD.
and what was the problem with LTSP, local apps, and 4-5 servers mush much cleaner
This project has been badly named. Please rename it to correct the situation
Interestingly, your point about consultants and developers having had the time to learn from their mistake was a point made against MS not that long ago. MS switched their technologies and APIs so fast that developers had at best a few years of experience, since that's how long each iteration lasted. In contrast, a lot of stuff I picked up about X11 in the 90s is still valid.
Open source can be a bit of a jumble. We have had some experience with solutions based on a number of FOSS products working together (in many cases, one has to rely on additional modules or bits of software written by different communities). Which is fine until one of those products is no longer being developed further. Your NTLM-based SSO module doesn't work with the Kerberos based system the company is switching to, and the devs have long gone. But that doesn't really have to be a problem. If you know you'll have to replace a FOSS component, you start looking for a replacement. Worst case scenario: you pay someone to develop a new version for you, which rarely is a major effort. It's a problem when it is a surprise and it breaks things. Because then the responsible manager does not have a vendor to shout at.
That ties in to the cost element as well. Estimating price and timelines for MS-based projects is reasonably well understood and not more inaccurate than in other projects, in my experience. But to what degree do you favour predictability over a (much) lower cost? As an example: Sharepoint.
My client (a large multinational) rolled out Sharepoint and is gradually replacing other systems with it: document management, team collaboration spaces, web content management, discussion forums, and the company Wiki. Some of the software SP is replacing was over 15 years old, but it had some good qualities: it was designed to scale up as well as down, to run in a multi-tiered organisation with delegated administrative responsibilities, and though (or because) it was not all-singing-all-dancing web 3.0 ultra-integrated software, it performed well with a minimum of maintenance and ran on pretty light hardware. TCO was low, and most change requests could be executed on the cheap as well.
Now there is Sharepoint. The cost of implementation (including migration from the older platforms) would feed a small nation for a year. It requires much beefier hardware and an army of consultants: lift a floor tile in any of the datacenters and you'll see a few Sharepoint guys scuttle off. Maintenance is at least an order of magnitude more expensive. And functionally, it only offers the very barest of any of the solutions it replaced. What it does do well is integration between functions and with Office, and workflow... but compared to all the other stuff, I consider those to be nice-to-haves.
There's the problem: Sharepoint was too easy a choice for management. A one stop shop, well understood cost structure, a traditional big iron approach to run the project, and someone to blame when things go south. And the sexy integration with Office of course. However, if they would have looked into FOSS solutions for CMS, Forums, Wikis and team sites, and selected a tried and true document management system from a vendor who knows what document management is, they would have saved time, saved a ton of money, had less disappointment and frustration from the rank-and-file, and enjoyed a much lower TCO. What they would miss is integration between all of these functions, but you know what? They are not that important.
If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
Can we keep it news for nerds, not news for bigots? Thank you.
"Don't worry, no Björgen Kjörgen; it's all in English."
Nobody outside your psicotic circles worries about the richness of humanity having more languages than just English. Why should anyone think a Swedish project for the public institutions of Swedish people should use Swedish as language ? (and/or Finnish, I'm not very aware of issues there). Because the few Englishfolk and the most English as second language or other English variations natives think the whole world should summit to their oligolinguism so thoroughly than the mere thought of people doing projects in their own languages would "worry" them ?
Frankly, I can see merit in people caring that technology, free software or STEM somehow excludes half of the population for such a silly reason as being female.
But someone could start worrying about the same field and others excluding 92 % of people who don't speak English (or 95% don't do it as well as natives). And I know you can learn many languages but can't/shouln't have to change gender so easily, right.
If more free software projects would use Swedish, Croatian or Amazic, it would just be more reasons for me to learn more languages, not something to worry about!
Slashdot is an English speaking forum. Allright. But pretending the use of other languages may be worrisome is offensive even to most English monolinguals, I belive.
you can't post a linux story w/o Microsoft posts. You can't post other stories without a Microsoft Story filled with happy people clapping hands and blowing bubbles up your ass.
I'm not sure who you take a swing at here, but the decision to make this an english "product" at this stage is because we thought it would appeal to a larger crowd. If you want some swedish to sift through I can throw in the project description for good measure:
https://www.internetfonden.se/...
Also, it is quite trivial to add multilingual support to the parts that matter. Most of the documentation that I'm writing for the system is however in swedish for this first phase of the project.
If I'd happen to work in the Swedish puvblic sector, what I'd want to know first is:
does it run systemd?
This sounds like a severe case of "Not Invented Here" syndrome. We already have a fantastic image archival and replication system in http://clonezilla.org/ , any budding developers would better serve by contributing to the various projects that make it up.
""Don't worry, no BjÃrgen KjÃrgen; it's all in English."
Nobody outside your psicotic circles worries about the richness of humanity having more languages than just English."
I do.
It could probably been said in a more "politically correct" way and, me myself being Spanish, have my own concerns about English being the "common trade" language of the world (as it has been French, German, Spanish, Latin... in the past), but I applaud the project being set in English instead of Finn, since it'll reach a greater audience (me, for one). Using English is not so Americans can benefit of it, but in order for everybody to do so.
Technically speaking, if you're 100% sure in advance that they're going to fuck up then that is less uncertain.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
German? When was that?
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Github pages aren't ready.
No README, No LICENSE.
"German? When was that?
Reply to This"
Are you trolling or asking in good faith?
In case it's the lattest, go please check what was the language science, both pure and applied, and engineering was written on along the second half of XIX century up to World War II.
We took sharepoint into use few years ago. Now we are replacing it with oss solution.
I'm perfectly aware of German's position in science, thank you very much. Your assertion was that German was the common language of trade. Outside a small time frame in the Baltic, that's simply untrue.
Oh, and bullshit on Latin too. Unless by "world" you mean Western Europe and half the Med.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Oh, so you ARE tolling. Good to know,
Correcting fat idiots when they spout shit is not trolling.
WTF is "etnocentrism", by the way? Something to do with volcanoes?
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."