Slashdot Mirror
GM ponders Linux for 7,500 Dealers
Hedonick writes "Seems like a combination of maturity on Linux behalf and bloat on Microsofts part has prompted
GM to investigate the possibility of replacing their NT based solution with a Linux based for it's dealerships according to ComputerWorld
The whole plan seems to be a bit tentative at the moment but the guy they interviewed, David E. Hutka, is the operations manager for GM:s dealership network and makes some good points on why Linux would be a good (and bad) choice." Unfortunately, it looks like they have a lot of legacy code that may require porting, but it's still good news.
I've looked hard at porting applications to Linux from Microsoft platforms, mostly VB apps. It's a bitch. There's no VB equivalent for Linux (I know there's some activity on this front), and I'm not aware of an easy porting path (if anyone knows one, comment, please).
There is no question that Linux is a more stable platform than any Microsoft platform. We've been installing Linux machines for our clients whenever we can -- Linux is much easier to work with. However, for GM to convert all those machines over to Linux doesn't make much sense to me. Not only do all of the VB apps have to be rewritten, but also most of the third-party software packages that this guy *thinks* he'd like to add are probably written for Windows (WINE advocates: I can't see my local GM dealer putting up with an "80% working" application under WINE, can you?).
Finally, are this guy's motivations (running out of disk space) silly, or is it just me? He could solve his problem by spending $200 at each store to upgrade to a larger hard drive and maybe to install more memory (DriveCopy does a very nice job of cloning hard drives, small --> large). It would probably cost him another $200 per store to hire a nationwide third-party service organization to visit all his dealerships and perform the upgrade. But at the end of it, he'd have what he needs: working systems with plenty of elbow room to grow.
(Yes, he could take the $400 and probably buy a better PC than he has right now. But I'm assuming he'd rather not IPL them all, install software on them all, burn them in, and so on, which will cost at least another $400 per machine to stage, not including shipping and installation at the dealer.)
If he converts to Linux, he has a huge problem on his hand: not only does he need to rewrite all his applications and do all that expensive staging above, but then at the end of the whole process (assuming it all works) he'll have to explain on a daily basis to his bonehead management how come the XYZ Inventory Control System doesn't run on his machines (his boss spots the XYZ ad in Useless American Cars Weekly, for example).
Ouch.