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How One Small Business Switched to Ubuntu
Posted by
kdawson
on Mon Jan 01, 2007 03:08 PM
from the losing-business-the-old-fashioned-way dept.
from the losing-business-the-old-fashioned-way dept.
firenurse writes to point out a story in The Inquirer about how one small business switched to Ubuntu. It describes a maddening comedy of errors, a series of circular screw-ups among Microsoft, HP, and a RAID vendor. From the article: "You never quite wrap your head around how anti-consumer Microsoft's policies are until they bite you in the bum. Add in the customer antagonistic policies of its patsies, HP in this case, and vendors like Promise, and you have quite a recipe for pain. Guess what I did today?"
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Self-serve versus pay-to-play (Score:3, Insightful)
Ubuntu is pretty good stuff. (Score:4, Interesting)
Windows XP as a server? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Windows XP as a server? (Score:4, Insightful)
'Cause he didn't need a server?
This was an office with 4 workstations. They needed a place to dump files for access - not a server. He's gonna automate their backup to DVD (although I don't know why he needed the size disks he was using for 4 PCs - maybe he intends to keep a LOT of backups? Maybe it's video stuff?)
What branch office with 4 PCs is gonna pay God knows what for a Microsoft server license?
They'd be idiots. Even SBS is overkill.
Parent
There's a way to make it all work (Score:3, Insightful)
He was asking for it (Score:3, Insightful)
Actually the guy in the article didn't know what he was doing and tries to blame Microsoft and HP for the mess that his lack of knowledge created.
If he had done this for even once in the past, he would have known what would happen. Very nice of him to practice with his clients' systems.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Re:He was asking for it (Score:5, Interesting)
But that's not exactly the point of the article, I think. This was a rather small-scale installation, and he (with whatever knowledge, skills and money he had available) found it *impossibly frustrating* to get a Windows server running, while it was quite straight-forward to get a Linux server running.
This 'small-time market' is huge in aggregate. There are thousands of small businesses, home businesses, stores, etc. that have need of some kind of server. They don't have the money/time/expertise to set up a professional Windows server... but amazingly they do have the ability to set up a Linux server! Why? Because FLOSS empowers the user, is community-based, and doesn't impose artificial restrictions.
I've had similar experiences. Some years ago I was setting up a small server for a lab (file sharing, web-hosting, etc.). We had no need of a 'professional' system so I just set it up myself. First with Windows (didn't work out very well) and then I scrapped the system and used Linux instead. Even with my limited (at the time) knowledge of Linux, I was able to get a powerful, functional, and stable server system (still running, has never crashed). It was certainly as professional as it needed to be for our purposes.
The point is that FLOSS empowers the 'little guy' to get something working without hassles, whereas proprietary solutions are usually focused on the 'big guys' and create artificial barriers to actually doing what you want to do!
Parent
Re:He was asking for it (Score:5, Insightful)
This is one of the things I always find so funny.
Which is it everyone? Is windows easy enough for anyone to set up and administer, or does it take a windows expert to do these things properly?
If it takes an expert to do it right, why does everyone seem to insist that it has to be done by Grandma when it comes to Linux?
all the best,
drew
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Windows is not (always) easy to install, and never has been, unless you happen to be lucky with the hardware - in which case everything just works.
s/Windows/Linux
They are about the same in terms of install. Some hardware Linux will be a breeze, and Windoze will be a bitch, other hardware visa-versa. In either case you really need a second net connected machine to get help and download stuff and with a CD burner and (especiall
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Is windows easy enough for anyone to set up and administer, [...]
Yes.
[...] or does it take a windows expert to do these things properly?
Yes.
Re:He was asking for it (Score:5, Insightful)
I understand that this phantom 'grandma' is a stereotypical inexperienced user, but its a new year, so lets pick someone else to be the idiot. Like blondes or Republicans. Thanks.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Actually, this works just fine. Explorer.exe crashes quite a bit on one of our development servers thanks to a crappy explorer shell extension some coder installed. Explorer.exe just crashes, all windows disappear, and you have to Ctl-Atl-Del to start a new explorer process. However, no "server" operations are affected by these crashes. The web services, file service, DB, etc. all just keep on running.
As far as I can recall, an Explorer deskt
Proprietors don't share user's philosophy. (Score:4, Insightful)
Anyone who confuses "support" with proprietary software is not working in their client's best interests. Proprietors drop software maintenance to get users on the upgrade treadmill. Proprietors ostensibly act motivated by profit, but users can find computers that do their job well after the hardware is no longer profitable. Consultants ought to promote the use of free software drivers and firmware (or, preferably, no firmware needed at all) so that their clients can leverage the talents of a free market of developers to improve and maintain the software needed to make all hardware work with any system. Separating users from their freedom is not fiscally sound for users.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Yes, well, another reason to avoid 'brand name' boxes like the plague and buy standard components.
Where do I buy a standard motherboard (where I can be certain of getting the exact same model on less than 4 hours notice in 2 years time) and standard dual-redundant power supply?
So close... (Score:3, Informative)
So look at the 'pre-installed' media, find the c:\i386\setupp.ini file that should be on the HDD. Build yourself a Windows install CD using NLite (because you should also trim th fat as long as you are going to be in there, along with adding drivers, security patches, etc) from some other source. Replace the setupp.ini file and it will use the OEM key. This won't turn an OEM version into an activation free volume version, but you can go the other way.
Did I mention nlite lets you add drivers to the install media? (grin) A must for those who have SATA drives.
You have to be kidding.. (Score:4, Insightful)
Secondly, don't use Windows XP to be a server. It really isn't much more and sometimes cheaper to get a system pre-installed with SBS 2003 R2 and you get Exchange and other features built in not to mention a true comparison against Linux resource/functionality wise.
Terribly inaccurate and to say the least a very inept technician and company at work here.
My biggest selling "managed service" for small/medium sized businesses isn't my linux solution but my sbs 2003 r2 solution because for most people it not only saves money but provides tons of features from easy to configure remote access to sharing in sharepoint to cenralized ad administration/logins/access restrictions to built in exchange and with the advanced version sql server access.
I would never sell someone a desktop as a server solution simply because your selling yourself short. If cost savings was an issue buy a refurb server system and put whatever linux you want on it.
Re:You have to be kidding.. (Score:4, Insightful)
Parent
Re:You have to be kidding.. (Score:5, Insightful)
Typical lame duck Microsoft 'Gold Partner' response I've heard a thousand times over. I really don't know how the fuck them guys stay in business.
It really depends on what he's using it for, doesn't it? If it's just to use as a simple file and print server, or as a machine on the network to host a third party application that many small businesses tend to use, then why in hell's name is he going to fork out more money for SBS with a ton of things he'll never use and some things he'll never be able to use properly (Terminal Services springs to mind) and where he can't get more than one on the same network? Yes, you guessed it, that's an artificial Microsoft restriction in SBS *slaps forhead*.
Parent
The situation sucks, but is Linux the answer? (Score:5, Insightful)
However, I have to question the judgement of the author. First of all, what kind of consultant deploys branch offices "weekly" and didn't know about these problems in advance? Anyone with much experience would know about (a) how difficult it is to move windows from one storage subsystem to another, (b) that HP uses bad recovery disks, and (c) that RAID installs require a floppy.
In addition, I question the use of Linux in this situation... perhaps it was his only way out of a bad recommendation to a client, but the problem is that there are *very* few Linux-savv consultants servicing businesses this size. For this reason alone I don't deploy Linux solutions... I can't find subcontractors who can back me up when I'm on vacation or sick, and should I stop working with a client, I don't want to leave them high and dry. Most consultants I know replace Linux servers with windows because they simply can't support it.
Finally, there's a much better way to do what he's trying to do: a NAS appliance. If all you need is some shared storage, printer sharing and the occasional backup, one of the many small business NAS devices out there (Infrant [infrant.com], Snap / Adaptec [snapappliance.com], Buffalo [buffalotech.com], etc...) will do so with greater reliability and less complexity than a PC-based server.
-R
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
This space is *completely* owned by Windows. In the past three years in my business, I've seen two total customers that had any Linux at all, and in one case it was a software engineering firm that was using Linux for a CVS server (not a typical small business).
Despite being individually small, there are a HUGE number of the
One thing bothers me... (Score:3, Informative)
This is the situation in Finland. Does HP have different policies in other countries? I'm just curious to know if there just are different policies in different countries or is this some completely new policy that HP started using just recently?
Well Duh! (Score:3, Insightful)
I have been a consultant (my own business) working exclsuively with small bussiness for quite some time & before I ever started doign that I'd have told him he was a frickin' moron. HP doesn't support other hardware on their _restore_ CD's, well friggin' DUH! Hey moron how can you not know this if you 'a client needed to set up a small branch office, something I do almost every week'. If you had you'd know this already and wouldn't have screwed with the HP disks at all & would know you need a real OS disk.
After that you blame Promise's CD... Yet lots of vendors do that... Hell lots of motherboard vendors do that! It's why I have a LS120 drive I use that is never installed in systems, but lets me get stuff loaded at that fun part of the install where I have to have a 'floppy type device' to load anything...
Really two things come to mind that sum up the solution to his whole problem: Either convince HP to customize a machine to your needs (and keep their support which you btw killed when modifying their box anyways and is the only real reason to buy from a OEM vendor anyways) or Build the darn box yourself so you can customize it as you want with a real OS CD! Problem solved.
It may be nice Linux 'solved' your problem, but your problem was caused by you for not already knowing what you were walking into.
Similar Thing Happened to Me (Score:5, Interesting)
The licensing bollocks in the article of being squeezed into buying a full copy of XP, or Windows Server, not to mention the excruciating amount of time you spend wading through the treacle, is just the tip of the iceberg, and is not something I see in very many TCO studies
The final straw was Terminal Services, which to this day, is the one thing that pisses me off just about the most with Windows and Windows Servers. You actually need to run a separate service, or even a separate Windows Server, just to track Client Access Licenses (which you pay for) so that users can get access to all their applications. Anything that goes wrong with TS is nearly always licensing related, and has nothing to do whatever with the software itself. The sole reason why this is as difficult as it is is because remote applications like this seriously threatens Microsoft's reliance and monopoly over fat clients, so they got in quick and closed what they saw as a loophole. Their approach is to then make the thin client approach just as expensive and more difficult. Well, f*** off. We wanted to spend our money on things that were going to make things better and actually get us ahead of the loser competition.
I know SBS is held up as this great white hope for IT in small businesses, but I find the whole thing so limiting that we can very rarely give a 'Yes' answer to a client without asking for several thousands of whatever currency you wish before we even start and disappearing for several weeks. I mention these problems we have had calmly to many Microsoft resellers and 'Gold Partner' IT companies and they get very visibly upset, because they just don't know what to say.
As a business, we then went off into a fantastic world of an Ubuntu server running separate VMware or Xen Virtual Machines, remote desktop applications using Nomachine's fantastic NX Server, and with no ridiculous CAL overhead where we could ditch Windows applications, SQL Ledger, Zimbra, Fedora Directory Server and many others. The whole set up we have internally does so much more than a Windows and Microsoft set up does, it just isn't believable.
No doubt I'll get some extremely witty and informative reply to this comment about how someone managed to bork their Grub and Ubuntu installation into not booting. Oh, I see we've already had one
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Another example of excellent reporting... (Score:3, Insightful)
All the blame here lies on one company, HP. They didn't ship them a Windows CD which would have fixed it right up. But any good computer tech would have had a Windows XP Pro OEM CD that they could have used to install the OS (Microsoft sends an entire album of current OEM CDs to partners). Sure you would have to call up to activate the OS, but it would have gotten him up and running.
As much as I would like to blame MS... (Score:3, Informative)
One thing:
The key sentence where everything went to crap:
If they are a particularly small business, not going with one vendor is a valid choice, but you best put it together via all-third-party parts and get a generic OEM windows disk. If you can get a no-windows discount on the HP system, and use that discount for a different license, you can go with a non-restricted install media set. You do, however, in this way accept a higher degree of risk (problem determination falls squarely on your shoulders, and your vendors may disagree with your conclusion and blame other parts..). If you run on thin margins and time is not uber-critical for systems, this may be the appropriate path
If you drink the vendor kool-aid and get their hardware and software, you've drunk the kool-aid and as a consequence, you ought buy from HP your upgrades. You can't expect something put together by them to work for hardware configurations they would explicitly not support. This is more expensive if you buy any significant number of upgrades, but that's the course you signed up for by implicitly restricting yourself to their install media. By mixing and matching, you get the negatives of above with respect to support (HP can blame the generic Promise chipped card, and vice-versa), but you pay more for the privilege of support that is compromised by the choice.
I'm a professional linux guy working for a hardware vendor. We invest a lot of time and money in making sure all our hardware works well for given linux distributions. I occasionally have to work with a customer who ultimately admits to third party options in the systems that usually end up the cause of their problem for reasons more purely technical than artificial CD key barriers. I'm a little defensive of this circumstance because even without artificial key measures introduced, this strategy can screw you over regardless of your software platform.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
AGAIN.
How do we know HE bought the hardware. If the client bought it, he's stuck with it.
Small business clients do this all the time.
In fact, since he referred to the "anemic 40GB drive", we can ASSUME he did NOT buy the hardware. He would have ordered the hardware with what he WANTED if he bought it.
That throws out almost all of the criticism of this guy (other than not being ready with Promise drivers of his own when he reported to the site.)
This guy does work without a Bart's PE CD? (Score:4, Informative)
I don't go anywhere to do any work without the Ultimate Boot CD for Windows! As long as the system can support XP (older machines can't, so I have to use the older Boot CD which is DOS-based), I can boot XP anywhere and have numerous utilities available. In fact, my UBCDW has so many antivirus and antispyware utilities on it that I'm thinking of making a couple more CDs with different sets of utilities on it to do other things. I'd do a DVD version, but a lot of people still don't have DVD drives in their machines.
I'm going to add some utilities to several 2GB flash drives and eventually convert one of my older 60GB hard drives into an external USB inclosure and load it up with EVERYTHING - along with a boot CD to access it.
Then - bring it on! I've got over 1600 utilities that can pretty much handle any issue I'm likely to encounter (knock wood, tomorrow I'll run into one I can't...)
Gotta admit, though, the guy was screwed when there were no drivers on the Promise disk. And it is a pain that you can't use a vanilla XP install CD to replace system files in a Systems File Check (although I understand the security reasons for it) or do much of anything else except run a Restore Console.
Restore disks: evil upon evil (Score:3, Informative)
I wanted to install Ubuntu on it, but I haven't done so yet. Here's why.
It turns out that the system doesn't come with an XP install CD. No surprise, Microsoft requires OEMs to provide "recovery disks". But it turns out that the system doesn't come with recovery disks either! It comes with a utility for burning a custom set of recovery disks. The manual says you are permitted to burn exactly one set of recovery disks.
It turns out that you need 18 blank CD-R disks, or 3 blank DVD+/-R disks, to burn your custom set of recovery disks! So I went home without installing Ubuntu.
The next day he bought a stack of DVD+R disks, and I went back. The recovery disk utility took a long time to burn the first disk, and then it said "verifying" and sat there, indicating 1% progress. So I left again without installing Ubuntu. He left it running and it never did finish.
So now he has a Windows system that he doesn't dare use, because if it gets messed up, there is no way to restore it. He told me he would call HP tech support but I haven't heard back from him.
By the way: it would have been easy to install Ubuntu before the first boot-up. I booted an Ubuntu CD and used it as a live CD, and looked over the hard disk without modifying it. Initially there was a 20GB partition and a whole bunch of empty space. On the first boot, the Windows system expanded the NTFS file system to fill the whole bunch of empty space. If I had just created a couple of partitions at the end of the empty space, I'm pretty sure that Windows would have left them alone, and then it would have been trivial to install Ubuntu. (Of course, if I had done that, I would have had a nagging worry that the recovery disk fiasco was somehow my fault. Because I didn't touch the machine before first boot, it's clear that the recovery meltdown has nothing to do with me.)
I was tempted to just grab a copy of XP and do a full re-install. But this particular system came with XP Media Center Edition, and I have no idea where I can get an install CD of XP MCE (or how much it would cost).
I'm half-tempted to buy one of these systems, though, because it was a good value for the money, and Ubuntu recognized all the hardware, right down to the flash card reader.
steveha
*kisses karma goodbye* (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Re:Comedy of Ubuntu errors (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Now if Ubunt
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
bad harddrive (Score:4, Interesting)
1) I see your point. Coming from your perspective you've been betrayed by GRUB and Ubuntu. I've had problems with GRUB in the past myself, and until recently have been a staunch supporter of LILO. Have you by chance tried picking that instead to see if it gives you better luck? Occasionally machines have firmware configurations or drive topology that GRUB still just doesn't seem to like. Its far more rare these days but still completely possible. Keep in mind you ARE using an operating system that was not pre-tested and pre-installed for the machine you're using. Unforseen complications can arise.
2) I'm only making a guess but it really *does* sound like you might have a bad harddrive. If the boot sector failed it really could have been working fine with windows for years until you tried to write something new to it, exposing the hardware failure by corrupting otherwise accessible data in the master boot record with a failed write. One way to check this would be to try re-installing windows of course, or any other distro/operating system.
3) I don't like Ubuntu either because its failed me the only two times I've tried it as well. Perhaps your machine is a "fringe case" like mine was. Issues and workarounds (or at least confirmation of non-working status) based on your motherboard's IDE/SCSI/SATA harddrive controller could exist online.
Anyway... Thats all the advice I have for you. I wish you luck.
Parent
Re:Comedy of Ubuntu errors (Score:5, Insightful)
However what's interesting is the *differences* between your problems with Ubuntu and what TFA describes as problems with proprietary vendors. With the proprietary vendors, they basically said 'either you use our configuration or screw off'... The hardware, software, and so forth were all designed to work one single way, and if you want to deviate from that, you're on your own.
Your experience with Ubuntu was just the opposite: dozens of people (apparently) gave you lots of different suggestions for what might be wrong and how to fix it. It looks like in your case it didn't work out in the end, but it is certainly interesting how much free support you received for a product you didn't pay for.
Parent
Re:Comedy of Ubuntu errors (Score:5, Informative)
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Your claims are demonstratively false [ubuntuforums.org].
You were rude to everyone in the thread, and most likely had a pirated version of windows to begin with (no install CDs)
In your above steps you say that you downloaded a CD image and burnt it then a few steps later it turns out you don't have a burner. How the hell did you burn it in the first place
Here's a tip, it is very useful to know what version of windows you were running. The steps to fix the install are different
Re:Comedy of Ubuntu errors (Score:5, Insightful)
Does your incredibly snide and degrading tone get you far in life? Because it doesn't work on the internet. Maybe you think you're being witty or something but you just come across as an angry jerk.
in a decade of using linux I've never come across a more helpful and patient community than Ubuntu. If you ask questions politely and provide the information that's requested, instead of acting like you are smarter than everyone else and you don't think their question is relevant, you might find you get a little bit more useful information. Just a tip.
Parent
Re:Comedy of Ubuntu errors (Score:5, Informative)
Parent
MOD parent down. (Score:5, Informative)
Chances are the guy didn't really have a problem and he is just trolling either for fun or profit.
Parent
Re:Comedy of Ubuntu errors (Score:4, Informative)
Parent
Comedy of OS installers (Score:5, Insightful)
More recently I had to install Windows XP Pro from an SP1 disk. It took me two days to set up Windows XP Pro with administrator and user accounts and get all my apps updated and working properly (or close enough with some apps running escalated privileges) in user mode.
My conclusion: Both Slackware and Windows are very difficult systems to build from scratch. If people had to install Windows themselves they would be as smart as Linux geeks.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
How is it piracy to use a copy of the same version of the same OS on the same machine from a different CD? I understand that this is an antipiracy measure on Microsoft's part, but it got in the way of legitimate use here, as it not infrequently does.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Up to a point ... (Score:3, Insightful)
Yep. Right up to the point where the "small businessman" has to face the realities of dealing with Microsoft's current licensing policy.
The problems described in the original article are, mostly, caused by Microsoft's attempts to artificially segment a market so that Microsoft can extract the most revenue from those segments.
Which is why the Ubuntu installation went so easily. It wasn't desi
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Microsoft tax (Score:3, Informative)
Unless he somehow wrangled a refund out of HP for the copy of XP he didn't use, then Microsoft still got paid, thus their "braindead policy" isn't costing them a nickel. They're just making money on a copy of Windows they don't need to support.
Two problems with this, the first is that even if they were to get a refund it is HP that would pay for it not MS I'd imagine as I wouldn't be supprised if OEMs that have volume discounts for Windows has to pay for each PC sold. The second issue is once a client
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Sound is always an issue, not so much because of Linux, but because if you're not expert in Linux, you can't tell WHICH of the three or four sound servers Linux provides is running as the default, and WHICH of them is being used by the media program you're running. Look at the system setup or the dmesg boot report and the config screens for Xine or whatever media program you're running. Usually, adjusting the programs to use the right sound server solves the problem.
It's dumb, I know - why they don't marry
Re:Typical noobie error (Score:4, Informative)
Parent