Updating Free Software in the Enterprise?

wallykeyster asks: "I'm an IT Director for a small private university in the U.S., and we are largely a Microsoft shop. We pay over $15,000 each year for our Campus Agreement so that we can upgrade the desktop OS to our version of choice, run Office, and have some Client Access Licenses. I would like to move to FOSS solutions, but I'm having trouble finding support for Enterprise management. For example, OpenOffice and Firefox (both of which I use personally) would be easy first steps, but IE is updated automatically via our SUS server (and settings pushed to clients via group policies) and Office updates will be included soon. How are other larger organizations (i.e. more than 200 desktops) dealing with software deployment and updates? Is anyone using Zen with Novell Desktop Linux?"

Give up already!

[Anonymous Coward]

They cancelled the show people. Enterprise is not getting an update. Let's stop kicking the dead horse already!

Updating Free Software in the Enterprise?

[Kufat]

It's GNU/LCARS, dammit!

$15,000 a year...

[duh_lime]

would pay for a lot of students to do the work by hand.. And they'd learn something.

OK.. there are better ways, but at least the money is not going to the Evil Empire.

Re:rpm upgrade

[pegr]

Guys, he said he was an IT Director. Please don't go confusing him with crontab this or apt-get that...

At least tell him to find his favorite geek to explain it to him...

Re:rpm upgrade

[wallykeyster]

Believe it or not, some IT management rises from within, some have undergrad degrees in Comp Sci, and some run FreeBSD, OS 10.3, Windows 2000, and Windows XP on boxes at home.

Re:This has got "duh" written all over it

[Anonymous Coward]

Remember the first rule of engineering: i[f] it ain't broke don't fix it

Funny, it was told to me as: "If it ain't broke, add another feature."

out of context quote

[Anonymous Coward]

"I can do 2 students with room left over for a trained chimp" - tekiegreg

best one ive read all day

Re:How good is SUS?

[JimmytheGeek]

I'm planning to push some hardware upgrades via Group Policies. All cd-r's are now cd-rw! Cool! I'll dictate that all workstations now have more memory, too.