Moving Small Organizations from Windows to Linux? 200
chris1646 asks: "Currently we are a small organization that is entirely a Windows shop. Next year much of the server and desktop hardware we run will need replacing. I am looking for creative ways to introduce Linux as my desktop and server OS of choice, however a couple of our core applications run exclusively on Windows. Has anyone had any success hosting Windows applications via terminal server while using Linux as the client OS? Has anyone handled a AD to open source LDAP migration?"
Look at costs, Servers first (Score:5, Informative)
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Personally, I would begin by switching to cross platform applications, and then switch OS last, once you no longer need it for anything. As another poster said, investigate running the apps under WINE.
slight amendment... (Score:2)
see http://sig9.com/articles/concurrent-remote-desktop [sig9.com]
before my network at home became a domain enviroment, I used this to run xp sessions off a crappy win me laptop....
except for processing video, it was just like a full fledged xp on my laptop..
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... after making sure with your software/support provided that this is a supported configuration. Otherwise, they might use it as an excuse when something breaks (even if it's not a wine issue) to wiggle out of fixing a particularly difficult problem (if they are anything like the provider of a company I used to work with, they probably sold you the Windows licenses and might not be tickled p
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I used to bitch and complain about X and other parts of Linux that were obstacles... I then worked at a company where I could move everything to Linux, in theory.
The question came up... why should we anyway? Every new computer comes with Windows and all the drivers preinstalled. We just have to spend 30 minutes uninstalling all the crap that comes with it.
And then how much of your infrastructure will you move to Linux? If you're not using an app that requires Windows y
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You shouldn't be using the default Windows install anyway. You should be using an image. Default Windows installs sometimes have viruses and spyware (no, really, they do).
> And then how much of your infrastructure will you move to Linux? If you're not using an app that requires Windows you might in the fu
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Why? (Score:5, Insightful)
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I disagree somewhat with this. For some people, it goes beyond technology to beliefs of free and open systems. It was me deciding to switch "just to switch" that led me to the great programs I use today (Firefox, Thunderbird, Eclipse, etc), and a desktop I enjoy (Gnome on Gentoo).
/ne
As long as he takes into account all of the things (like are they going to pay for support if one of the systems does down - or do they even
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Well, if you're personal system, it doesn't matter what you use. But this guy is talking about a business. If it's anything like my business, computer downtime costs a lot of money, and a lot of families depend on those computers being up and functional. I think that basing what should be a business decision on a (questionable) philosophy can be a pretty irresponsible move. If it goes badly, what do you say to the employees w
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All thosed licences *should* cost money. I know several small businesses with pirated apps and OS's. I myself used a pirated suite of OSs and such for quite some time. Margins are thin enough without paying M$ nearly a grand and a half for Office, OS, and sundry other apps, add another $2K to Adobe and that's a chunk of change when you are trying to start-up.
More than one of my clients has switched (or tried to till some
Re:Why? (Score:5, Insightful)
If I owned a white-collar business that used computers for basic word processing and email, then sure, it doesn't really matter what you use. But how often is that the case, in this day and age? My friend, an attorney (basic office job, right?), needed some good way to handle scheduling, contacts, email, etc. Of course, he went with Exchange. Why? After spending about 6 months looking for OSS solutions (and don't forget, he could have been using those hours to bill clients at $150/hour), he had lost a ton of money, he pissed off the other lawyers in the office with all of the software mess, and he looked very unprofessional when whatever he was using wasn't working, and he couldn't respond to his clients. Finally I told him to spend a hundred bucks a month on hosted Exchange service, and get on with his law business. Everything is running pretty smoothly in that office now.
Maybe, MAYBE if I ran, hmm... maybe a... hmmm... catering company, then OSS would work. All you need is some basic financial tracking (ooops... still no payroll), and something to print pretty estimates and invoices. But really, I can't think of a lot of businesses in this day and age that would be willing to do something so dramatic to save such a small amount of money (I spend about 30 times more on rent than I do on software).
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Or you could just run CaterEase (a Windows app) and forget about having to hack together some OSS solution. =)
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Ever notice that the POS app is usually a POS? Anyway, the clients I've successfully moved to OSS/Wine were a DJ, a coffee shop back office, and an office supply company. All had minimal transition issues, the coffee shop being the worst. The coffee shop front office stayed windows, for your same reason, the POS POS was windows only, and wouldn't run on WINE. Still they saved quite a bit on licence costs for the back office, and while I was at it I set up a Wi-Fi with me
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$4000/yr buys you the services of a local college graduate and
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Chapter 14. Payroll [gnucash.org]
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For small companies there are easy solutions to do scheduling and handling contacts. I worked in a small company that had a couple of applications integrated with LDAP and a webinterface for contacts and scheduling. Unfortunatly, these things don't deploy well on the large infrastructure of most companies. I'm not a big fan of exchange, but most of the times i
You guys just don't get it (Score:2)
If the F/OSS community follows your philosophy, proprietary software will remain dominant in the small business sector for many, many years to come.
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Sure, when you're creating a kind of boilerplate application that is similar to millions of others, there's a lot to leverage to get the job done, but when your application doesn't quite fall along the well-beaten path, things aren't so easy. Even for the common application patterns there are often well defined frameworks that eliminate much of the "glue" code from your project whi
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What is the dollar value of "avoiding vendor lock-in"? That's right, you did say it's a philosphy, so perhaps it's unconnected to the bottom line.
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It depends on the timescale. Philosophies rarely pay off during this quarter-year, but they can make a big difference in the long-term survival of the company and the society.
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i don't know it depends on what %Nextversion of the app will cost you ie
Oh The new version has some many %shiny features that we have to charge 12X to upgrade but we will charge you only 10X if you upgrade NOW (and in ?months oh Old version is no longer supported and your upgrade window has closed so you will now have to pay 20X and purchase a legacy migration tool at $$$$ per seat)
Re:Why? (Score:4, Insightful)
Anyone who sneers as philosophy as being disconnected from real life (including "the bottom line") deserves to be modded into the ground. Exactly what do such people think philosophy is?
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It's OK to have a failing business and it's OK to have a philosophy that rejects basic principles of business, but philosophies get disconnected from real life when an individual's profession is in
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Philosophy != Good (Score:2)
I agree, which is why I never made such a statement. All philosophies are not equal, however, in an ethical or in a business sense. It's hard to imagine how avoiding vendor lock-in could be a key philosophy that would make the difference between being successful or being a failure.
"Many businesses exist today because they had or have some philosophy behind them and many have fallen or are falling due to lack of them."
I a
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I don't see that happening. I see just the opposite.
There's nothing unethical about getting locked in to a single vendor if it makes sense for your business.
If you can think of a situation where choosing to reduce your options and increase your overhead makes sense for your business, then you get an A+ for Creative Writing.
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Limiting options is a very effective way of managing the complexity of any endeavor, including running a business. In any case, F/OSS advocates don't really believe in increasing options, just eliminating companies like MS as an option.
As far as cost is concerned, you have to take a detailed look at each business situation. Sometimes the "l
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What is the dollar value of "avoiding vendor lock-in"? That's right, you did say it's a philosphy, so perhaps it's unconnected to the bottom line.
Avoiding vendor lock-in is a matter of risk management. There's an industry full of insurance underwriters that could probably put a dollar value on it, but since I'm not one, I don't really know.
However, It's not hard to understand the position vendor lock-in puts a business in. When a business has it's critical data locked up in a proprietary format and on
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One should also keep in mind that for some busin
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It seems to me that many who are anti-proprietary tend to exaggerate the economic importance of things like vendor lock-in relative to overall business economics.
Likewise, those who advocate the proprietary solution tend to understate the non-license costs of vendor lock-in and closed apps. Those include minor mods (perhaps bug fixes) which would save several (collective) man hours a week but will never happen. Meanwhile the proprietary app requires a proprietary OS which requires proprietary backup sol
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Dude, this is Slashdot. The benefits of switching to an Free/Open solution should be obvious.
At the very least, we can assume the goal here is to prise the organization from the jaws of Vendor Lock-In. A vendor like Microsoft has no reason to be nice to a small- to medium-sized co
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What are you talking about? Microsoft makes a lot of their money off of smaller operations that use their products. MS utterly relies on third party consultants and expertise to deploy/support solutions for those users, and if that whole channel (including the end users) aren't kept happy and functioning, they'll lose a lot of mindshare.
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OK, let's think about this realistically. MS is the largest software company on the planet, with a financial statement that rivals the largest companies on the planet. They're not going away any time soon, and their OS is used everywhere. There are tons and tons of applications of all kinds that will work with Windows.
Case in point: basic small-business
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To say that any product is required to run a business is just silly. Companies existed long before the computer, the phone, or even the desktop calculator. Part of running a small business is being able to just make it work, because it has to.
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I'm about to spend a lot more money with MS, as we migrate our point-of-sale systems to MS RMS. They have very helpful salespeople that are willing to hold my hand even though the total bill won't be in the 5 digits, and they even are financing it for me. MS is actually very easy for my small company to deal with.
and this leaves anyone locked in to a Mi
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Faust? Is that you?
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to being forced to upgrade when they want you to upgrade rather than when you want to upgrade... to having your business critical data locked into a proprietary binary blob that can only be read/written by their software and leaves you beholden to them for the ability to access your data.
say your system currently runs XP and all your software is XP compatible. One da
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It's not all that contrived. Look at the data in one of the proprietary apps you use today. If you HAD to migrate, would it be nice and automated or would you have to dedicate your time (or staff) to manyally transcribing the data?
With open source (and particularly with well written Free software), if you HAVE to migrate, you can have a translator program written for less than the manual transcription will cost.
I've seen a number of cases where a business took the 'easy and less expensive' proprietary r
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No one wants to waste time and money switching for the sake of switching. Most open-minded IT folks understand:
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Nonsense. We routinely see (here on Slashdot) folks advocating switching for what, in the end, amounts to political, philosophical, or religious reasons. They don't care about costs - all they care is that 'Linus is the l33t and Micro$oft is shit and everyone should thereforr run Linux'.
All of your issues are no problem. (Score:4, Informative)
The only issue we have run in to is that Windows will only let you log in with RDP so many times before it will blacklist your machine's hostname for not having a genuine MS license. It's a pain but we just more or less randomize the hostname regularly. Good old Micro$oft... they won't even let you administratively remove the blacklisting without delving into the Registry (haven't tried that, but I figure it must be possible). This happens infrequently, by the way, W2k3 will probably accept a good 100 connections before it whines.
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Re:All of your issues are no problem. (Score:4, Informative)
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Nope. I'm not using any Microsoft software on the client. Just need to buy the CAL (which in itself is totally bollocks, IMHO) and you're in. The problem is that M$ also wants to be paid for the client, which is really double dipping.
They could use ICA client as well, but in my experience the ICA client for Linux is pretty partic
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I'm not using any Microsoft software on the client. Just need to buy the CAL (which in itself is totally bollocks, IMHO) and you're in. The problem is that M$ also wants to be paid for the client, which is really double dipping.
They are actually trying to triple-dip:
"In addition to a server license, a Windows Server Client Access License (CAL) is required. If you wish to conduct a Windows session, an incremental Terminal Server Client Access License (TS CAL) is required as well."
http://www.microsoft.com/windowsserver2003/howtobu y/licensing/ts2003.mspx#EWC [microsoft.com]
Start with your applications. (Score:2, Interesting)
Then that is where you have to start.
Yes, you could insert a couple of Linux systems in side roles that don't require them to run the core apps, e.g., a DNS server here and a CGI server there and so on and so forth -- and that's likely worth doing for its own sake -- but if you want to migrate entirely off of Windows, you've first got to migrate to all cross-platform applications.
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Freedom doesn't mean your decisions are going to be effortless. Before you can decide whether to take the left or right fork in the road, you first have to get your freaking butt off the road dirt. People who whine that they have no choice but to use Windows should at least have the decency to get off the road so other people stop tripping over them.
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My largest problem is with MS Office. There is no equivalent replacement that would be acceptable for business purposes. Truth be told, it's not easy to make an office suite that has so few bugs that it is considered to be useful. First releases of MS Word were awful, and it took MS a lot of time (10 years?) to get to the point where it is actually stable. Don't know how good Office 2007 is though, and not in any hurry to check it out.
In any case, Op
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Don't limit yourself this way. (Score:2)
No, all that you should worry about is data continuity. Your criteria, which sounds reasonable, removes KDE and other best of class choices from consideration. Why do that if the substitute application can use the data without problem and then do many more things with it? KDE's groupware is excellent and as good a reason as any to migrate away from Windows. Not considering it because it
VMware Server, Converter Beta (Score:3, Informative)
Slow slow slow (Score:2)
My Office (Score:4, Informative)
Eventually Windows XP will lose support and we will have to consider sticking with unsupported XP, or moving to Vista/Fiji/Vienna, or a complete migration to Mac, or a final alternative that I am starting to push slowly up the list of possibilities... Linux. My boss is a Mac user, he dislikes many of the problems with Windows. He had the popular misconception that Linux is hard to install, hard to maintain, and hard to use in general. My first day, when provided free reign over my own desktop, I let him watch me go through a Kubuntu installation. Cleared up all that nonsense right quick. From a blank hard drive to a better-than-Explorer GUI, with both of our network printers completely configured, desktop shortcuts to our network shares, Firefox and Thunderbird installed as well as a GUI terminal (we have legacy apps requiring telnet to our SCO UNIX machine), all in under 30 minutes, and without touching a text console.
Running actual GUI Windows applications in Linux CAN be difficult, but often is not. There is a VERY good chance that they will 'Just Work' under WINE or Crossover Office. If you need terminal services functionality, rdesktop has worked great for me. There is also the VMWare/etc option, if the programs are old enough for the perfomance hit to not matter (and if you're developing "core" applications that only run on Windows TODAY, then youve got other problems).
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There is also the VMWare/etc option, if the programs are old enough for the perfomance hit to not matter
One comment about this: The VMWare "performance hit" is overblown, IMO. As long as the machine has enough RAM to give both the host and guest operating systems what they need, VMWare virtual machines run at very close to native speed. In most cases, no one will be able to tell the difference between VMWare in fullscreen mode and Windows running natively on the machine.
The one real exception that I've noticed is that disk I/O can be greatly degraded if you make use of snapshots. That makes sense, bec
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Provide the complete analysis first (Score:3, Insightful)
The problem with businesses is that they are not very open to OS theology; businesses just want to do what they are doing, and if the job requires computers and OS and apps and stuff, well - that's just the cost of doing business. It will cost money to run a Linux shop, and it will be probably *more expensive* to run a Linux shop, considering that every Windows app -- that normally would be "install and run" on any Windows box -- becomes a WINE nightmare, to see where it crashes and how to work around those crashes. Do you really want to buy a $20,000 app (there are plenty of specialty apps in this price range, all mission-critical) just to find out that no, it won't run under WINE, and no, vendor support in such environment is not provided. Do you want to lose the support on such an expensive app? You are risking not just your job, you are risking jobs of your coworkers too - if the company loses a contract because of OS troubles then some employees may need to be laid off, starting with you, of course.
If you have dreams about using RDP for those few apps that you must have on Windows, it depends on what those apps are. Some apps do not permit running under RDP because that would be inviting to buy one copy of an app and then have the whole company to access the server and run the thing. I personally know of some examples, so check before you buy into it. And other posters already said that the cost of a terminal license is as high as WinXP, and you have all the eggs in one basket (server.) Server dies - the whole company stops; are you OK with that?
Again, businesses don't want anything that deviates from tried, tested and true path. Cost is not a concern here; labor and apps cost uncountably more than the OS. If you want to migrate, you still can do that; I tried myself, starting with a 3-man company, and guess what eventually happened? Once we started growing, the total cost of maintenance of a mixed network shot through the roof (and disappeared among the stars.) Now we stick to Linux on firewalls, and Windows XP everywhere else. We do use Linux on our embedded systems, and it's perfect there. Desktops are a different matter.
Have your numbers straight (Score:2)
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Please don't misunderstand - F/OSS provides LOTS of great software, but I don't see any way you can pencil the cost of Linux as a desktop replacement for Windows. Linux makes just about everything possible. (FWIW, I have been a daily Linux user since 1994.) Just because it's possible doesn't make it a good idea. Just because it's cool doesn't make it make any business sense, either.
All of the soft
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But won't XP Pro cause its own wasted hours of employee time? Malware, crashes, sluggishness,
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That's the thing. A properly administered network? There's no such thing without a lot of constant work.
New patches, new patches gone bad. Installing thunderbird. Fixing corrupt registries. Removing the new virus that just came out. Rebooting your exchange server. Installing new service packs. And on, and on, and on, and on....
The COST for windows XP is far, far, far greater than $150.
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The bottom line is
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In any case, my point was that you shouldn't trivialize XP to $150.
The problem with Cyrus, in your case, is that you chose CMU software. Like most other CMU software, it mostly follows standards and logic but likes to
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Warped Analysis (Score:2)
One computer costs $1,000 in hardware. One employee costs $120,000 per year, with burdening. One "mission-critical" application costs anywhere from $800 (AutoCAD 2007) to $5,000 (Inventor 11, non-pro.) One WinXP Pro license costs mere $150 ...
Software costs are a burden. Employees are productive assets.
The rest of your analysis is based on the presumption that Windows works. If that was true, no one would be considering a migration.
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Software and hardware costs, rent, business licenses, salaries and taxes are your business expenses. It does not matter what names you use; it only matters what you pay for. If you rent a tool, it's out of your pocket. If you hire an employee, it's out of your pocket. Money-wise they are the same.
The rest of your analysis is based on the presumption that Windows works. If that was true, no one would be considering a migration.
Modern Wind
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Some of us would argue that this is not a problem, but a feature.
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One computer costs $1,000 in hardware. One employee costs $120,000 per year, with burdening. One "mission-critical" application costs anywhere from $800 (AutoCAD 2007) to $5,000 (Inventor 11, non-pro.) One WinXP Pro license costs mere $150 even if you buy it at maximum cost, as a retail box. Now, aren't you putting the cart way ahead of the horse? A single wasted hour of any of your employees' time (or your own) will cost as much as an XP Pro license. Have your numbers straight before switching, and have v
Look at the "why" first. (Score:5, Insightful)
Ok, I'll be the first to admit that there is a tremedous lure to FOSS software and have rolled it out myself in a number of situations, but not to desktops. I've replaced web servers, database servers and Windows file servers with servers running Apache, PostgreSQL and Samba. However, before I considered something like this in my current environment, I'd need to do a serious cost analysis that went way beyond licensing costs. For example, what will this mean to the user that has been using Windows and MS Office for 10 years? And, you mentioned that some of your core applications are Windows-only affairs. Sure, you can use RDP/Citrix to run these apps, but then you're throwing the Windows licensing costs into the mix. Not to mention the possibility that your apps won't like running in this way.
So, how much is your infrastructure *really* costing you?
How much would retraining cost?
How much would it cost to possibly have to give up your core vendor support due to running in an potentially unsupported configuration?
This may sound like I'm anti-FOSS. Actually, I'm not - I love FOSS in the right situation. WHat I AM against is FOSS for the sake of FOSS. While I "grew up" on the IT side of the house, I'm a big believer in the business needs dictating IT's role and responsiblity rather than the other way around.
My advice: Think this through before you put a lot of time into it. You may end up saving a whole lot more (not just money) by sticking with what works.
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We ran into a couple of issues. The easily solved one was multiple copies of Office and Matlab are resource hogs. Get a large application server for those, and look into some sort of c
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When I went over to the dark side (doing server to switch to user support), I was shocked. Everything sucked so bad. I had 300 users with different installs, different soft
AD (Score:2)
Stage 1: Open Office, Firefox on the desktop.
Stage 2: Start migrating storage to a Samba server.
Stage 3: Set up your terminal server and provide clients on the Windows desktops. Only add new apps to the terminal server from this point on (so people start using it).
Stage 4: Get a couple of Linux machines out into
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Make the test machines pretty spiffy. Get some flat panel displays for example, if you haven't already got them deployed. Draw lots for who gets the 'first upgrades' rather than allocating it out like it's work.
Properly set up (if your office is anything like mine just set the default screensaver to the 3D matrix one and make them dual screen machines) you will get huge enthusiasm for 'the upgrade' rather
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Active Directory is an abortion that needs to be eratdicated on the first step so you dont get it ingraned in the company. Kerbos and LDAP first, switch the BACKEND way before the frontend and clients.
It's far easier to swap out the servers without impacting the users... after you get rid of the MS only services then the desktop rollout is far easier.
Eliminate exchange i
As Others Have Pointed Out (Score:2)
If you have core apps which are PACKAGED third party apps that you need to run and cannot alter yourself, then you'll have to find a way to run them if you want to switch.
OTOH, if your core apps are DEVELOPED third party apps - start planning on how to either get those third parties to port them to Linux, or, better,
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Nice to know, but this client needs a lot more than PhotoShop running. He needs Adobe Premiere, Adobe Encore, and just about everything else Adobe runs, as well as quite a few other AV apps that only run on Windows.
According to CodeWeavers, PhotoShop 7 runs as follows:
Silver
This application installs, and runs well enough to be usable. However we find it has enough bugs to prevent it from running flawlessly.
If you can get it working better than that, let the people at CodeWeavers know how you did it.
Why does it need replaced? (Score:2)
Not sure about your set up but ... (Score:2)
I switched a company of about 400 users with 2T of data from Windows, Netware, and Lotus Mail to Linux. I started b
Moving small organizations from Windows (Score:4, Insightful)
Hold up, there, cowboy. That is the wrong question to ask.
The systems and servers aren't your personal plaything. They are there to meet the needs of your employer. The small organization. The all-Windows shop.
There are often reasons for choosing the proprietary app. The predominant OS for a business of your size or type or location. Reasons that are not always narrowly technical, not always narrowly economic.
Use Windows clients with VNC (Score:2)
This simplifies/centralizes Linux maintenance, reduces the maintenance complexity of the desktops, and minimizes the need for desktop hardware and software upgrades.
Server Virtualization (Score:2)
It's quite easy to build a case for the benefits of virtualizing your server hardware so you're managing several disk images on a redundant cluster of physical servers. Once you get your shit working under VMware or maybe even qemu, it's easy to build the server farm on VMware ESX server (which only runs on Linux) or etc. After that, you can start deploying other new services more natively on
If your core apps run on Windows... (Score:4, Interesting)
I have a day job as the head system administrator for a medium sized but very high-tech non-profit. We run Macintosh (OSX) clients and Linux servers because they do what we need to do, and do it well. I have also been working with Linux and various other forms of Unix since 1994 (this includes using Linux and/or FreeBSD as a primary desktop OS since 1994. LaTeX works fine as a word processor if you know what you're doing.)
I also do consulting work for several smallish companies, and they all run Windows. It's really simple - if you need good 2D CAD software, you need Windows. If you need a modern multi-user accounting package that can do strange things like payroll and integrate with direct deposit, you need Windows. If you need a *good* spreadsheet (no, OOo calc doesn't count), you need Windows or OSX. If you want to run all of this on one desktop operating system, you need Windows. Crossover Office, WINE, VMWare, etc. aren't going to convert many small businesses; they want less complexity, not more. (some of these clients have Linux servers - network edge, multiprotocol file and print services, web apps, etc. - but they are close to 100% Windows on the desktop)
I think that you could convert a LOT of small businesses over if you could get a Peachtree or Quickbooks port for Linux. However, for small business, you don't stand a chance until you get *good* accounting software. OOo calc not sucking would really help too; lots of businesses make very heavy use of spreadsheets. (OOo Writer sucks, but so does Word. OOo Impress is adequate, as it's all pretty much PowerPointless anyway.)
If you're looking for long-term savings, I'd suggest considering Windows TS clients (use your old XP machines/licenses/etc), and a Windows 2k3 server terminal server. It won't be all that cheap to setup initially, but you will be able to significantly reduce your maintenance headaches.
Look at the business needs, and pick technologies that meet the business needs. Make technology work FOR your business; I've see what happens when you flip that around, and it isn't pretty.
Almost total Linux shop with 1000+ employees (Score:3, Insightful)
We have over 7000 linux machines and 4 people to maintain them, plus 1000+ technical and non technical employees. Using Linux saves us millions of dollars, which pays for a couple of those netapps. The thing is, Linux just works, not to mention the vast amount of free software that is available for it.
Truthfully, and its a sad truth for some people, anyone who says Linux isn't ready for the corporate world has no idea what they are talking about. Its been there for while.
Only suggestion I can offer (Score:2)
http://www.infrastructures.org/ [infrastructures.org]
since it seems to describe setting up a very reliable open source-based network infrastructure in a lot of detail.
I also wish you luck with this. Although I have some knowledge which I had thought could help with such things, normally when I make suggestions here I get reprimanded for being impractical if I advocate doing anything other than going to a vendor and simply lettin
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The plural of anecdote is not data -- Frank Kotsonis
<anecdote>
Now, here are the facts as they're found in ONE PREVIOUS PLACE OF WORK:
We had roughly 150 people working in a branch office, 110 of which were a mix of hardware and software engineers. The rest were either support or upper management.
We had roughly twice as many computers as people, with the computers in the lab area shared among many people depending on who was using a bench on any particular day.
About 80% of the computers were
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Bad bet. The machines which were shared were almost exclusively Unix machines, often with applications running for 3 or 4 different people (some remotely from their desks and some actually present in the lab). The few shared Windows machines in the lab were treated as appliances, with each dedicated to running a single specific Windows application, such as a PROM burner or a database app to track the equipment running around the lab. Most of the Windows machines were single user, sharing a desk with a Unix
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Good point, however your assumption is incorrect. Most of the Windows machines were co-located with a Unix machine on the same desk, with a few more running dedicated Windows-only applications in the lab. Roughly 95-98% of the staff were regular Unix users. I can only think of three people who had only Windows machines at their desks. One admin assistant had started in the department using only a Unix machine for a few years (typing reports using *roff).
As I stated in the original comment, we didn't have
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However, if I were to add to that first bit as a reply to the submitter, I'd seriously consider the question of whether or not this small shop can continue on servicing a Linux deployment with a complex mix of Windows/Linux after you leave. After all, you don't plan to work there forever and given that you have to ask others for advice, how likely is it that:
A) you can seamlessly make the transition yourself; and
B) someone else can easily pick up where you left off?
Unix-based servers are absolutely great and typically rock solid at doing server kind of stuff... much more so than Windows presently is. However, I'd actually advise you to stay with Windows. It's what a lot of people know, you know it currently works, and unless there is a serious compelling reason why you can't just continue with the status quo, it's the cheaper to use what you have than try and make changes with potentially unknown complications.
If anything, I'd setup a parallel network running Linux and host some services off of that, gradually migrating services one at a time over to it while you transition off. And if things go south and you run into issues you can't resolve, you could always pull the plug and you still have your original Windows network.
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It may be, for example, that 75% of the office could move to Linux and Open Office today, while the other 25% might have to
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instead there are 500 million independent half-assed attempts at it.
Um... can you list them here? Which of those 500 million are any good (more closer to half-assed than quarter assed , etc.)