You're SO right on about this point. . . example - I called Neoware to get a quote on some more thin clients, and the best price they could give me was $380. Here's what I'd get for my $380:
* 64mb of ram * AMD Geode processor (runs around 300mhz) * Basic ports
Alternatively - I can get a refurb IBM desktop from Tiger Direct:
Here's my wish list - anyone know of a device that can do all this:
* Built-in Cell Phone
* Internet access anywhere in the roaming area (too hard to find wifi spots where I live)
* SSH for remote logins to our servers
* Standard PDA stuff - calendar, tasks, etc.
* Sync with MS Outlook (go ahead, flame me)
Linux has plenty of support. For example, if I run into a problem I can't solve, any one of the following options may be helpful:
* If I bought a support package from a company like RedHat, I can call and get phone support, the same way you do with M$ products. * There are dozens if not hundreds of IRC channels where linux sysadmins hang out and are more than happy to answer questions. * Another easy trick is to use google to search for your error message. Chances are you'll find the mailing list archives of a LUG, where someone's already solved the exact problem you're experiencing. * Join your local Linux User Group. Or if your city doesn't have one you can join the one in the nearest major city. * Email the developers who wrote the software you're having trouble with. (try that with M$) * Check the 'bugzilla' section for the package or distro you're using. There may be a solution already available. * Troubleshoot the source code and fix it yourself. * Pay your local linux h4x0r to come over and fix the problem.
Microsoft is still big, but they're definitely scared. Open Office is an excellent replacement for MS office, and works well for what 95% of the users need it for.
Ok, I submitted a bug report:
http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=140293
However I doubt much will get done with this. The banks are not going to want to allocate a support department to deal with linux users. Also, I'm not even sure by what mechanism quicken directly accesses the transactions from the bank.
Its a nice feature, but still requires the user to export and download from the bank's website, then import into gnucash.
With Quicken I hit one button and instantly all my new transactions are downloaded right into the register. In fact, you can even set this up as a background process to do it automatically for you every night.
Not to knock linux - we use linux extensively in my workplace, but for apps like gnucash to become a viable replacement to quicken or MS Money they need to have these features.
I'm sorry but Gnucash cannot hold a candle to Quicken or MS Money. You cannot use Gnucash to download transactions from the bank or do bill-pay right from the register.
The main reason I use quicken is because I hate writing checks and licking stamps to pay my bills.
Granted, the last time I tried gnucash was about two years ago so it might have improved somewhat since then.
Yes, I got the sound working. IT took about two hours, but that was mostly because the ltsp-sound package was for version 3.0 and I have 4.0. There was one file that needed to be replaced with an updated version to get it working. But I"m listening to NPR streaming radio right now as I type this. If you need more info I can go back and retrace what I did to get it up and running.
The display manager is gdm. Works great. My users are rank newbies so I don't let them choose much of anything. They get to use the default bluecurve desktop (which is sort of a hacked Gnome desktop) and it works great. Looks enough like windows that they haven't got too many problems with it. I closed the desktop switcher applet because it would just be way too confusing for most of them. I put the 'amor' cat on the ladies desktop and they love it.
The NeoWare clients come with only the unit, keyboard, and mouse. You gotta provide your own monitor and speakers. Most of my employees have no need for sound so we didn't get speakers for the thin clients. We went with the Capio model, which I believe is the only one that runs linux.
What I like about them:
* Small footprint
* No moving parts so they are completely silent
* Instant, easy connection to the server. They take me about 2 minutes to set up a new one.
What I don't like:
* Out of the box, they had a problem in that the X session would just die after 5 or 10 minutes. This was fixed with a software update they sent me.
I haven't explored all the features of these units, but they have a base linux install with netscape installed, so might even be good for a internet cafe or something like that. All you need is a dhcp server and they can get online. There are several options for connecting to a server including X-window, citrix, etc.
I looked into rdesktop, but the problem was that we needed to have simultaneous access for several users to the quickbooks datafile, and Quickbooks is not set up very well for that. Each and every client has to have it's own separate install of quickbooks in order to work. So our choices were either to install a vmware virtual machine for EVERY USER, or to find an alternative. We chose to let the sales reps type their price quotes on a spreadsheet rather than go through all that hassle.
Yea, no kidding! I called them because I wanted to buy a SERVER with linux pre-installed and the sales rep told me outright that he couldn't do it. Maybe he didn't know, or I was in the wrong department but it really turned me off.
Here at Medical Resource USA, myself and our webmaster were tired of troubleshooting 12-14 windows machines everyday. Nearly every single day there was a virus, or software problem, or some sort of problem with someone's computer. So I consulted with my boss, and we decided to switch to Linux. (Maybe linux should have some switch commercials like apple did? beepbeepbeepbeepbeep)
We are just finishing off switching over our computer network to Linux - but we didn't need to wipe windows off anyone's hard drive. Here's how we did it:
Built a small server and installed Fedora Core 1.
Installed LTSP (Linux Terminal Server Project) and configured it for our system.
Created boot disks for each computer that did not have a 'boot from network' option. I used Rom-O-Matic for this part.
We also purchased some thin clients from NeoWare for new employees. These have a stripped down Linux distro on them and connect by opening a remote X connection. As our company grows, and the old pentium II and III boxes gradually die off, we will replace all of them with thin clients.
Here are the specs on the server. I have a better one being delivered soon, but this is the 'proof of concept' version:
Emachine with 1ghz Intel celery processor
512MB RAM
80GB hard drive
Nightly backup of home directories to external USB hard drive
The network currently supports 10 users, with usually 6-7 people signed on at any given time. We use Evolution as an outlook replacement, Open Office instead of MS office, and Mozilla for web browsing.
We have a pretty login screen with our company logo, and the face browser so you can click your picture to log in. Redhat's bluecurve desktop is great, and is a snap for any windows user to learn. The terminals start up WAY faster than windows ever did, and all the apps pop right up even on a pokey Pentium II machine. IN fact, my thin clients only have 64mb of memory and they work great too.
There were a few minor glitches or complaints about the UI, but in almost every case I was able to show the sales reps and employees how to get what they needed to do done.
So switching to linux CAN be done. The only drawback is when you've got windows apps that you have to use when there's no linux alternative. In our case, the accounting department makes extensive use of Quickbooks to handle our finances. We tried to emulate, use wine, crossover office, etc. but none of these solutions were either stable or robust enough to meet our needs. So I had to leave three boxes running windows so accounting can continue to use Quickbooks.
We also use our linux box as a Quake 2 server for lan parties after our weekly sales meetings! My boss is an older guy but he loves FPS shooters. The employees enjoy getting a chance to frag the pointy-haired guy every week:P
Yes, Servermatrix has been excellent. They respond quickly to trouble tickets and their pricing is very reasonable. I've got more bandwidth and disk space than I had at EV1 for about $40 less per month.
I got cpanel and fantastico for free by taking advantage of a special they were running that week. Fantastico is really cool - it allows one-touch installation of about 25 different open-source packages on your websites.
I may be a small timer, but I was a loyal customer for over two years. I came on board when they still had Cobalt Raq2 servers. But I switched to Server Matrix and let EV1 know that the reason was because they bought SCO licenses.
I wonder how many other little webmasters did the same?
Forgot to mention, I need a dedicated server. Don't care what flavor of linux or what kind of control panel it has on it. As long as I have PHP and MySQL, and also an automated backup option would be REAL nice.
Ok, I'm an EV1 customer and would like to bring my business elsewhere. What are my options? Here are a few competitors I checked out, can anyone suggest some more:
ServerBeach.com 1and1.com
Features that are important to me are:
* Reasonable pricing * 24/7 customer support - at least via email/chat if not by phone * Reliable company, good uptime record
No doubt this will create a whole new industry for a device that blows out 1-2 liters of body-temperature air that is balanced to appear exactly like it was exhaled from human lungs.
Either that or some kind of 'mod chip' that you can turn on to get instant ignition, and turn off when you need to go get your car inspected, or if a cop pulls you over.
This thing will never fly, there's just too many complications.
Lately the quality of Google's search has declined significantly, especially for less common phrases. Seems a lot of what comes up is spam/redirect pages that are just packed with keywords to get you to visit a porn site.
Thanks for the reply, but this is really an oversimplified view of the problem. Quickbooks has advanced accounting features that cannot be found on ANY out-of-the-box linux package. I tried GNUcash and it just didn't cut it.
We use it to generate price quotes, invoices, sales orders and purchase orders, as well as process credit cards and download transactions directly from our bank.
It would take many thousands of dollars to have a custom app written that would do all these things on the linux platform. And besides that I don't have time or the manpower to re-train our accounting department to use an entirely new system.
Databases are great, but we need the advanced front-end features that Quickbooks (and no other software) can offer.
I work for a much smaller company where most if not all of the IT decisions are left up to me. I would like to eventually move most of our desktop systems over to Linux, and am wondering about one thing.
We use Quickbooks for entering sales transactions and nearly every workstation needs to have QB installed so we can get our job done. Is there a way to run Quickbooks on a linux PC without ANY problems? I thought about WINE but am hesitant to jump into something that might be really buggy.
My users are rank newbies and it needs to be as easy as "double click" the icon on the desktop. So I guess the question would be - can I set up a Linux installation with KDE or GNOME, and use VMware or some other system so that my users can just double-click the quickbooks icon and have it work the same way it does on windows??
I have a Seiko Kinetic Auto Relay watch that winds itself with a small pendulum whenever I move my wrist. And before you perverted karma whores try and score some cheap points, I don't wind it THAT way because I'm right-handed.
It looks great and never needs winding. Best of all I don't have to worry about the electromagnetic field from the battery zapping my nervous system. And if there's a nukyuuular war my watch will still work! Ha suckers! No one of you will know what time it is except for me!
I have an Xbox with a modchip and it works great for the following:
* Watch regular DVDs * Play Xbox games * Play NES, SNES, and MAME arcade games (that you already own of course . . . wink wink) * Make my friends and family watch boring vacation slideshows (pics are on the computer in the other room) * Internet radio * Listen to my own MP3 collection
The list goes on. And you can set something like this up for under 200 bucks nowadays.
Slashdot Mirror
You're SO right on about this point. . . example - I called Neoware to get a quote on some more thin clients, and the best price they could give me was $380. Here's what I'd get for my $380:
* 64mb of ram
* AMD Geode processor (runs around 300mhz)
* Basic ports
Alternatively - I can get a refurb IBM desktop from Tiger Direct:
733 mhz pentium 3
15 gb hard drive
256mb ram
this only costs $169.00!!
Where are you getting thin clients for $60 apiece? The cheapest ones I've found from WYSE and Neoware were around $380 apiece. thanks Sean
are there *any* SSH clients for PalmOS?
Here's my wish list - anyone know of a device that can do all this: * Built-in Cell Phone * Internet access anywhere in the roaming area (too hard to find wifi spots where I live) * SSH for remote logins to our servers * Standard PDA stuff - calendar, tasks, etc. * Sync with MS Outlook (go ahead, flame me)
Linux has plenty of support. For example, if I run into a problem I can't solve, any one of the following options may be helpful:
* If I bought a support package from a company like RedHat, I can call and get phone support, the same way you do with M$ products.
* There are dozens if not hundreds of IRC channels where linux sysadmins hang out and are more than happy to answer questions.
* Another easy trick is to use google to search for your error message. Chances are you'll find the mailing list archives of a LUG, where someone's already solved the exact problem you're experiencing.
* Join your local Linux User Group. Or if your city doesn't have one you can join the one in the nearest major city.
* Email the developers who wrote the software you're having trouble with. (try that with M$)
* Check the 'bugzilla' section for the package or distro you're using. There may be a solution already available.
* Troubleshoot the source code and fix it yourself.
* Pay your local linux h4x0r to come over and fix the problem.
Microsoft is still big, but they're definitely scared. Open Office is an excellent replacement for MS office, and works well for what 95% of the users need it for.
Ok, I submitted a bug report: http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=140293 However I doubt much will get done with this. The banks are not going to want to allocate a support department to deal with linux users. Also, I'm not even sure by what mechanism quicken directly accesses the transactions from the bank.
Its a nice feature, but still requires the user to export and download from the bank's website, then import into gnucash. With Quicken I hit one button and instantly all my new transactions are downloaded right into the register. In fact, you can even set this up as a background process to do it automatically for you every night. Not to knock linux - we use linux extensively in my workplace, but for apps like gnucash to become a viable replacement to quicken or MS Money they need to have these features.
I'm sorry but Gnucash cannot hold a candle to Quicken or MS Money. You cannot use Gnucash to download transactions from the bank or do bill-pay right from the register. The main reason I use quicken is because I hate writing checks and licking stamps to pay my bills. Granted, the last time I tried gnucash was about two years ago so it might have improved somewhat since then.
Yes, I got the sound working. IT took about two hours, but that was mostly because the ltsp-sound package was for version 3.0 and I have 4.0. There was one file that needed to be replaced with an updated version to get it working. But I"m listening to NPR streaming radio right now as I type this. If you need more info I can go back and retrace what I did to get it up and running. The display manager is gdm. Works great. My users are rank newbies so I don't let them choose much of anything. They get to use the default bluecurve desktop (which is sort of a hacked Gnome desktop) and it works great. Looks enough like windows that they haven't got too many problems with it. I closed the desktop switcher applet because it would just be way too confusing for most of them. I put the 'amor' cat on the ladies desktop and they love it. The NeoWare clients come with only the unit, keyboard, and mouse. You gotta provide your own monitor and speakers. Most of my employees have no need for sound so we didn't get speakers for the thin clients. We went with the Capio model, which I believe is the only one that runs linux. What I like about them: * Small footprint * No moving parts so they are completely silent * Instant, easy connection to the server. They take me about 2 minutes to set up a new one. What I don't like: * Out of the box, they had a problem in that the X session would just die after 5 or 10 minutes. This was fixed with a software update they sent me. I haven't explored all the features of these units, but they have a base linux install with netscape installed, so might even be good for a internet cafe or something like that. All you need is a dhcp server and they can get online. There are several options for connecting to a server including X-window, citrix, etc. I looked into rdesktop, but the problem was that we needed to have simultaneous access for several users to the quickbooks datafile, and Quickbooks is not set up very well for that. Each and every client has to have it's own separate install of quickbooks in order to work. So our choices were either to install a vmware virtual machine for EVERY USER, or to find an alternative. We chose to let the sales reps type their price quotes on a spreadsheet rather than go through all that hassle.
Yea, no kidding! I called them because I wanted to buy a SERVER with linux pre-installed and the sales rep told me outright that he couldn't do it. Maybe he didn't know, or I was in the wrong department but it really turned me off.
We are just finishing off switching over our computer network to Linux - but we didn't need to wipe windows off anyone's hard drive. Here's how we did it:
Here are the specs on the server. I have a better one being delivered soon, but this is the 'proof of concept' version:
The network currently supports 10 users, with usually 6-7 people signed on at any given time. We use Evolution as an outlook replacement, Open Office instead of MS office, and Mozilla for web browsing.
We have a pretty login screen with our company logo, and the face browser so you can click your picture to log in. Redhat's bluecurve desktop is great, and is a snap for any windows user to learn. The terminals start up WAY faster than windows ever did, and all the apps pop right up even on a pokey Pentium II machine. IN fact, my thin clients only have 64mb of memory and they work great too.
There were a few minor glitches or complaints about the UI, but in almost every case I was able to show the sales reps and employees how to get what they needed to do done.
So switching to linux CAN be done. The only drawback is when you've got windows apps that you have to use when there's no linux alternative. In our case, the accounting department makes extensive use of Quickbooks to handle our finances. We tried to emulate, use wine, crossover office, etc. but none of these solutions were either stable or robust enough to meet our needs. So I had to leave three boxes running windows so accounting can continue to use Quickbooks.
We also use our linux box as a Quake 2 server for lan parties after our weekly sales meetings! My boss is an older guy but he loves FPS shooters. The employees enjoy getting a chance to frag the pointy-haired guy every week :P
Yes, Servermatrix has been excellent. They respond quickly to trouble tickets and their pricing is very reasonable. I've got more bandwidth and disk space than I had at EV1 for about $40 less per month.
I got cpanel and fantastico for free by taking advantage of a special they were running that week. Fantastico is really cool - it allows one-touch installation of about 25 different open-source packages on your websites.
I may be a small timer, but I was a loyal customer for over two years. I came on board when they still had Cobalt Raq2 servers. But I switched to Server Matrix and let EV1 know that the reason was because they bought SCO licenses.
I wonder how many other little webmasters did the same?
Forgot to mention, I need a dedicated server. Don't care what flavor of linux or what kind of control panel it has on it. As long as I have PHP and MySQL, and also an automated backup option would be REAL nice.
Ok, I'm an EV1 customer and would like to bring my business elsewhere. What are my options? Here are a few competitors I checked out, can anyone suggest some more:
ServerBeach.com
1and1.com
Features that are important to me are:
* Reasonable pricing
* 24/7 customer support - at least via email/chat if not by phone
* Reliable company, good uptime record
It was once said "I don't care what you say about me, just make sure you spell my name right..."
:)
You're right - there are some clever marketing people over at EV1!
The United States has the most internet users! Film at 11. Why is this newsworthy?
No doubt this will create a whole new industry for a device that blows out 1-2 liters of body-temperature air that is balanced to appear exactly like it was exhaled from human lungs.
Either that or some kind of 'mod chip' that you can turn on to get instant ignition, and turn off when you need to go get your car inspected, or if a cop pulls you over.
This thing will never fly, there's just too many complications.
Lately the quality of Google's search has declined significantly, especially for less common phrases. Seems a lot of what comes up is spam/redirect pages that are just packed with keywords to get you to visit a porn site.
Thanks for the reply, but this is really an oversimplified view of the problem. Quickbooks has advanced accounting features that cannot be found on ANY out-of-the-box linux package. I tried GNUcash and it just didn't cut it. We use it to generate price quotes, invoices, sales orders and purchase orders, as well as process credit cards and download transactions directly from our bank. It would take many thousands of dollars to have a custom app written that would do all these things on the linux platform. And besides that I don't have time or the manpower to re-train our accounting department to use an entirely new system. Databases are great, but we need the advanced front-end features that Quickbooks (and no other software) can offer.
I work for a much smaller company where most if not all of the IT decisions are left up to me. I would like to eventually move most of our desktop systems over to Linux, and am wondering about one thing.
We use Quickbooks for entering sales transactions and nearly every workstation needs to have QB installed so we can get our job done. Is there a way to run Quickbooks on a linux PC without ANY problems? I thought about WINE but am hesitant to jump into something that might be really buggy.
My users are rank newbies and it needs to be as easy as "double click" the icon on the desktop. So I guess the question would be - can I set up a Linux installation with KDE or GNOME, and use VMware or some other system so that my users can just double-click the quickbooks icon and have it work the same way it does on windows??
It looks great and never needs winding. Best of all I don't have to worry about the electromagnetic field from the battery zapping my nervous system. And if there's a nukyuuular war my watch will still work! Ha suckers! No one of you will know what time it is except for me!
/takes off tinfoil hat
You're right, that is the main thing that's missing. If it had a video capture/tv tuner it would be the killer device.
You may laugh, but my company received a bid request from Halliburton, for project RIO. Project RIO stands for:
"Recover Iraqi Oil"
Just in case anyone had doubts about the real purpose behind dubya's war.
I have an Xbox with a modchip and it works great for the following:
* Watch regular DVDs
* Play Xbox games
* Play NES, SNES, and MAME arcade games (that you already own of course . . . wink wink)
* Make my friends and family watch boring vacation slideshows (pics are on the computer in the other room)
* Internet radio
* Listen to my own MP3 collection
The list goes on. And you can set something like this up for under 200 bucks nowadays.