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IBM Pushing Microsoft-Free Desktops
Posted by
kdawson
on Tue Aug 05, 2008 06:50 PM
from the straight-for-the-jugular dept.
from the straight-for-the-jugular dept.
walterbyrd and other readers are sending along the news that IBM is partnering worldwide with Canonical/Ubuntu, Novell, and Red Hat to offer Windows-free desktop PCs pre-loaded with Lotus software and ready for customizing by local ISVs for particular markets. The head of IBM's Lotus division is quoted: "The slow adoption of Vista among businesses and budget-conscious CIOs, coupled with the proven success of a new type of Microsoft-free PC in every region, provides an extraordinary window of opportunity for Linux." One example of the cooperation: "Canonical, which sells subscription support for Ubuntu, a Linux operating system that scores high marks on usability and 'the cool factor,' will re-distribute Lotus Symphony via their repositories. Symphony 1.1 will be available through the Ubuntu repositories by the end of August."
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Great... (Score:5, Funny)
... but can I get one without Lotus Notes too?
Re:Great... (Score:5, Funny)
To paraphrase Yoda, "Notes leads to anger. Anger leads to Notes consultants. Notes consultants lead to suffering."
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Re:Great... (Score:5, Funny)
That's no moon, it's DOMINO!
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Re:Great... (Score:5, Informative)
Lotus Notes is truly bad. I've held a job as a notes developer for 18 months before quitting and went back to C++/C#.
It's often sold as an exchange replacement.. but in practice I've seen it more often used as a document-oriented distributed database (a quick way to write day to day business workflow apps). Where I worked, this technology held the company together.
As easy as it was to say "let's develop it in (name your favourite enterprise technology)", we built apps from start to finish in less than 2 weeks flat (a.k.a. the time it takes to say Oracle, Java, JSP, Struts, Tomcat, Log4J, setting up your Eclipse and getting people to give you test instances of everything you need). Maintenance was however a nightmare. We had to routinely jump through hoops to get the software to do things it wasn't designed to do.
Management was happy however! They could easily start new projects and deco old ones - just as quickly as they would start getting replication errors :-D.
Bahhhh!! Can't stand notes!!
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Re:Great... (Score:5, Funny)
A couple of what I will call Old School Developers at place I used to work, which will remain nameless, actually managed to write a relational database system in Lotus script that ran the entire operation.
It was a buggy, unmaintainable pile of spaghetti that was congealed rather than designed.
One day, both the developers quit at the same time due to the manager being the biggest unlikeable bastard that any of us had ever met. This left the "database" completely unmaintained.
The manager ended up contracting a Lotus Notes expert from IBM themselves to do some emergency bug fixing. The following Monday morning, the expert turned up at 9 AM sharp, in an equally sharp suit, and carrying a trademark Thinkpad.
He sat down at a computer, looked at the code, and cried with laughter for a good, solid ten minutes, then got up and left.
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Re:Great... (Score:5, Interesting)
One day, both the developers quit at the same time due to the manager being the biggest unlikeable bastard that any of us had ever met. This left the "database" completely unmaintained.
The manager ended up contracting a Lotus Notes expert from IBM themselves to do some emergency bug fixing. The following Monday morning, the expert turned up at 9 AM sharp, in an equally sharp suit, and carrying a trademark Thinkpad.
He sat down at a computer, looked at the code, and cried with laughter for a good, solid ten minutes, then got up and left.
See a really good contractor would have found either or both of those developers and have them work for 10x of their normal price and just be the front man. Today it's even easier. Your contractor can say, I'll need today to gather notes and talk to people "so I can give our folks in India the specs" where the folks in India are instead your former now happily highly paid employees.
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Re:Great... (Score:5, Funny)
How does that sig go:
Ladies and Gentlement, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine-gun. It is the finest available.
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Re:Great... (Score:4, Informative)
Copy that. But you don't actually have to use Notes. Make sure the back end is Domino on Linux, and then just use the box for something else...
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Re:Great... (Score:5, Funny)
... but can I get one without Lotus Notes too?
In anticipation of a thousand Slashdotters nodding approvingly, I'll point out that the head of the White House IT Dept. testified (during the recent missing emails scandal) that Notes is obsolete software, and then went on to explain the problems they were having with Exchange, and why those problems couldn't be fixed. The senators, reassured the White House was using state of the art technology, nodded approvingly.
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Re:Great... (Score:5, Insightful)
If only there were some old Lotus ideas in this. WordPro's (and 123s) InfoBox was the best user interface module I ever used. If was very easy to work proper (with format classes) and it was quick to use. I installed it in every company i worked, and soon everyone had it, and was used to it. There are still people who now have to work with that nightmare of an UI that Microsoft provides (a modal dialog to get to all formatting options... really??), the comparably bad imitation that Openoffice is (why does open source imitate more than innovate? and wort of all: imitate Microsoft? either you can say how bad MS is, or you can imitate it. you can't have both.), or another - strangely similar - office package, who tell me how bad that thing is, compared to SmartSuite. (Yes, this is all subjective. But for the vast majority i think they (would have) liked SmartSuite more.)
But instead of just implementing the InfoBox in OpenOffice (an idea that i would pay serious money to have), they just used the sidebar click-orgy paradigm + the gnome dumb-down* paradigm. ;)
Great... idea...
* No, I do not have anything against simplifying the UI, as long as it's only for people who WANT it simple [eg. don't want to spend much, or don't have much resources for it]. Make your UI *SCALABLE* and make everyone happy. :)
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Re:Great... (Score:5, Insightful)
OOo was always basically a clone of Microsoft Office, even back when it was a closed-source app called Star Office. It was the only way to get anyone to use it.
The reason, as far as I can tell, is that people tend to be confused by something that's different than what they're used to. For most people, that means that if it's not Office, it's confusing.
Back when SmartSuite was still around, Office didn't have complete dominance as it does now, so there was half a chance of something new actually working. Not anymore. Witness the general backlash against Office 2007's UI, for example. Or Vista. Or KDE 4. Or Mac OS X, back when it first came out. Or the number of clueless users who thought "hey, my browser's broken" when they first saw Internet Explorer 7. And so on.
OSS projects that try UI innovations tend to fail, because everyone invariably compares the software to some incumbent proprietary equivalent, and then complains that it doesn't work the same. Doesn't matter if it's better or not. Ultimately all the developer interest evaporates, and the project either dies, or slows to a crawl and never goes anywhere. Meanwhile, the lets-make-a-clone-of-[whatever] project is proceeding quite nicely.
Hell, the only reason Blender is still going is because it has people who actually do use it contributing to the project, so they're quite able to ignore all the "but it doesn't work like 3D Studio / Maya / Lightwave / whatever" people. Not that 3DS, Maya, Lightwave, or any other commercial 3D app has an interface that's anything like another one...
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Why does open source imitate... (Score:5, Funny)
"Why does open source imitate more than innovate?"
Good question. We suspect the problem is that most open source software is written by programmers.
Although programmers are similar to human beings in many respects, and may even be mistaken for humans when observed briefly from a great distance or under adverse viewing conditions, controlled observations clearly prove they are distinct. Since programmers are a different species (as the term is broadly defined, since unlike other species open source programmers have never been observed to procreate -- or at least the very least we feel sorry for any researcher who might witness such an event) they tend to construct interfaces that are either incomprehensible to the human mind, or in recognition of their own limitations, construct systems that are simply a mimicry of human designed interfaces (aka "human interfaces"). Here the term "construct" is used intentionally because we cannot in good conscience use the term "design," with all that it implies in this context, as most evidence indicates programmer-constructed interfaces are unusable by human beings.
We performed several tests.
Emacs, an advanced operating system constructed by a programmer, was tested first. We requested our test subjects start emacs, write a short sentence, save a file containing the sentence, and cleanly exit the system -- all without the intervention of an open source programmer. No human test subject was able to do so. In fact, mere open source programmers were typically insufficient to complete the task: an open source programmer with a gray neck beard was often required.
We contrast emacs with Microsoft Word. The latter is not regarded as having an ideal interface, but nearly two thirds of human beings under the age of 40 who grew up in a developed Western country were able to complete the open-edit-save-exit task without the intervention of a programmer. Even marketing staff had little trouble opening the application, saving the file, and exiting; most confusion revolved around the requirement to type a short sentence, but in all honesty this wasn't the fault of the software and furthermore this was the portion of the task least likely to elicit effective guidance from the programmer.
An equivalent test with Open Office, written by open source programmers but sporting a derivative interface, returned similar results.
Next we tested the GIMP. Several graphic designers simply began to cry when placed in front of the testing terminal. Further testing was aborted on ethical grounds after one designer became physically ill. Although the results were officially recorded as "inconclusive," we remain skeptical as to the usability of the GIMP's interface by anyone other than a GIMP programmer. Similarly, we remain skeptical as to the graphic design proficiency of those programmers, but this is strictly conjecture and remains untested.
With commercial software from well established vendors we presume there is a high likelihood that one or more human beings will be responsible for the human interface design. Although further research is needed, it is possible that the absence of humans on many open source projects results in unusable or derivative interfaces. Furthermore, there may be aspects of the typical open source development process that discourage participation by humans. Again, further research is needed.
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Re:Great... (Score:5, Insightful)
Because it feels like software designed by committee. "We need feature X, oh but we've run out of 'room' under the menu it should be under, so stick it under the Utility menu under the Tools menu." And so on. Good software takes usability into account, and that evidently didn't continue after IBM bought Lotus.
Back when IBM introduced the PS/2, they offered a hardware option they rather blithely dubbed the "Data Migration Facility." Otherwise known as a cable adapter for connecting two computers together. The style of thinking which produced that product name suffuses and pervades throughout IBM's corporate culture.
That's the best I can do to prepare you for the Lotus Notes experience.
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Finally! (Score:5, Funny)
The 2008 will be known as the year of Lotus Notes on the desktop!
Re:Good thing? (Score:5, Insightful)
Because it breeds the thought that there are alternatives to MS software. It's easier to 'convert' someone that has an open mind.
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Working link (Score:5, Informative)
Perfect example (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Perfect example (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:Perfect example (Score:5, Insightful)
..from 'world domination' to 'also run'...
Eh, they seem to be doing better than Standard Oil, Carnegie Steel, and I would even say Ma Bell.
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Re:Perfect example (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm surprised you mentioned Ma Bell, as AT&T seems to have almost all its pieces back together again. It seems that they aren't such a Humpty Dumpty after all.
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Re:Perfect example (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm sure that you posted the revionist history tha the current AT&T managment would like to see, but it simply isn't true. The present AT&T is not the same as the old one. Another company assembled the pieces, not the old AT&T.
Who cares which company assembled all the pieces. The pieces are back together, so the old company is back together.
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Re:Perfect example (Score:5, Interesting)
Standard Oil was renamed to "Exxon", and recently posted the largest annual profits of ANY company, EVER.
Carnegie Steel became US Steel; now USX. It remains the single largest steel producer in the country. It certainly has slipped a long way from it's historic highs of world domination, but it took almost a century, nowhere nearly as quickly as IBM.
Much like the terminator, Ma Bell's shattered pieces have slowly been coming back together for the past few decades. What's worse, she's a badder bitch now than she ever was before... Much like with any disease, as the host got weaker, the viruses took over, and prospered.
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Carrying on your examples (Score:5, Informative)
IBM at the end of business today had a 174.60B market capitalization - more than HP and Dell put together and within reachable range of Microsoft's 239B. IBM's trend is up (just off the 52wk high) while Microsoft's is, well, to be kind, not. Microsoft nearly killed them -- by 1994 their value had dropped to 1/10th of what it is today. For the past twelve years however IBM's stock has been as good or better as an investment than Microsoft's. IBM's value today is more than five times what it was when Microsoft was knifing their OS/2 love child in 1990. And IBM didn't just spend 7B engineering a product so abhorrent it needs this [mojaveexperiment.com] kind of "no matter what you've heard, our product doesn't suck" kind of marketing.
I hope the tide is turning. Maybe this will help [nwsource.com].
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Nothing wrong with that. (Score:4, Insightful)
Frankly, I'd rather see Microsoft in that position -- humbled, force-fed a fresh perspective, and one player among many -- than totally ground out of existence.
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Re:Nothing wrong with that. (Score:5, Funny)
It doesn't matter. If Balmer picks up the cat, Balmer will become Blofeld. Please note that in each Bond film that he appears in, he looks different, but the cat's always there, and it's the same cat. Clearly, the cat itself is Blofeld and its spirit possesses whoever picks it up. Now, consider: do you really want Balmer turning into Blofeld?
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Re:Perfect example (Score:5, Insightful)
IBM has been a technology company for over 100 years. The company was founded in 1896, back when information technology was a new idea. I think they learned about "change" long ago. They adapted to the invention of the vacuum tube and every other new technology of the 20th century. How many other tech companies from the late 1800's are still around?
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Woo Hoo! (Score:4, Informative)
Oh, and uh, WOOHOOOOOOOO!!!!!
I gotta say (Score:4, Insightful)
Has a nice ring to it, don't it?
Re:I gotta say (Score:4, Insightful)
They still suck of course.
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Re:I gotta say (Score:5, Informative)
I think that you owe it to Compaq that personal computing dropped in price, not Microsoft.
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Sounds good (Score:5, Insightful)
That it's actually attractive enough an idea to make it the theme of an advertising campaign is even better. Perhaps "Vista free" is this year's "Fat Free" of the computing world. Imagine the Vista logo with a red circle and strike on the box of PCs, phones, printers, scanners, external media, routers and switches along with the text: "Don't worry. This product does not contain or require Windows Vista." Or maybe this nice logo. [fsf.org]
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Time to learn Linux (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Time to learn Linux (Score:4, Informative)
After that you can take the plunge and install Ubuntu to the bare metal. In case something (eg: wifi) doesn't work, it's a good idea to have a laptop with internet access and a USB flash drive at hand when you start. Also make extra careful special sure you don't kill your mission critical Windows partition. Not yet anyways
Don't expect everything to go super smooth - there will be some hang up somewhere. Even if it's more user friendly than Windows, it's different, and there is stuff to learn.
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Maybe it's just where I am (australia)... (Score:4, Insightful)
But I've never met any "common man" family with a linux based PC. I find it strange to hear that previous article on penetration of linux in new PCs in the UK up to 2.8%. As good as linux desktops are, I still can't quite believe that Joe Bloggs with zero knowledge will comprehend the virtues and not be seduced by the fact that almost everybody around him is running windows
As I say, it might just be "where I am". I can't recall anywhere generic selling linux based desktops here so no real surprise I don't know anybody who fits this bill.
Re:Maybe it's just where I am (australia)... (Score:4, Insightful)
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Linux wins when... (Score:5, Interesting)
The advertisers of the eee pc or the new Atom netbooks don't make a big deal of the fact that there's no Windows [amazon.com] in the box. "Like a PVR - switch it on - and it works." You are right that most people don't care to know and that is perhaps more insightful than I would have expected from your post. I would say you're very perceptive. I would expect that the lack of spyware and viruses on the PCs after six months will only be considered a pleasant bonus.
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Once you get rid of Microsoft... (Score:5, Funny)
...how do you get rid of IBM?
in other words (Score:4, Interesting)
Either the url is borked or the story no longer exists, so guessing from what we can read:
"The slow adoption of Vista among businesses and budget-conscious CIOs, coupled with the proven success of a new type of Microsoft-free PC in every region, provides an extraordinary window of opportunity for Linux."
So, how I'm reading this is "The slow adoption of Vista provides an opening for Symphony to increase market share" which is a perfectly reasonable strategy for the manager of a product line. (Besides, if you don't like it, you can always download OpenOffice.)
It could also mean "The slow adoption of Vista is cutting into our hardware sales, so we are looking at alternatives to get units out the door" and shipping more copies of Symphony is a happy byproduct.
Either way, it's more new systems that are not running Winders. I don't see a downside.
This could also be read as IBM stating publicly that Vista jumped the shark. ...which is waaaay different from a bunch of geeks in Slashdot saying it.
They must still be ticked off... (Score:4, Funny)
IBM PDF and SWF Would Be Better (Score:5, Insightful)
If IBM really wants to help replace Windows PCs with Linux PCs, it can do a lot more than just partner with Canonical. IBM could help fix the two biggest gaps in Linux's ability to "do what Windows does": full PDF and SWF suites that "just work".
PDF is a standard format that Adobe dominates with Acrobat. It's the favorite way for offices to send around read only documents that will have no chance of problems. Unless you send it to someone with Linux, in which case something funny can happen. Not so much in reading it, but if they do indeed want to make changes anyway. The SW for editing and managing PDF docs isn't so reliable on Linux, and not at all widely available. It's probably easy for IBM to fix that problem, because PDF availability for Linux isn't so bad, just needs some more "formalizing". Getting a brand name, but still open source, edition from IBM with support and training will help.
The real problem that needs engineering is Flash. GNU's Gnash player for SWF is all some Linux distros, like for PowerPC, have for playing YouTube and all the other Flash web content. More and more Flash is used for commercial sites, especially as Flash starts to run on mobile phones. But Gnash barely works, and often doesn't work with YouTube. IBM could really level the playing field by making enough contributions to Gnash that it "just works", even as Flash evolves and other players have to keep up with it. It takes a place like IBM to do that to Adobe's dominance without Adobe either winning or even killing the competitor. Gnash is also pretty close, so IBM's investment in it would be the finishing touches that make all the difference in corporate IT strategy decisions.
PDF and SWF are still Windows territory. With a little investment, IBM could not only make Linux a first class business platform, but also take (and deserve) credit for it under an IBM logo.
And if Novell paid a little more attention to Evolution, which competes with Outlook, the whole Desktop could be a Windows killer in the right hands.
I used Linux at IBM (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Print Link (and commentary) (Score:5, Insightful)
How much support does Microsoft give you for those purchase prices without paying more for additional support? Almost none? I thought so.
What parts of the system does Microsoft's support cover? Just the core OS, which is largely useless by itself? Yeah...
What does Ubuntu's support cover? Well, it's for a year, and it includes the "core" OS and all of the hundreds of applications that come with it.
How much would you pay for Windows with a year of core OS support, plus a year of support for several major third-party applicationswithout which you can't really do anything? Thousands? Perhaps tens of thousands?
Where's the problem again?
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Re:Print Link (and commentary) (Score:5, Insightful)
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What does Windows support cost? (Score:5, Insightful)
Windows support ain't free and it's largely useless in my experience. It's either "try rebooting" or Nothing to do with us, you need to contact the third party" buck passing.
PS: Linux support isn't compulsory, the cost of the Windows license is...
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Re:Print Link (and commentary) (Score:5, Insightful)
So iamhigh's argument is: Canonical's support contracts are too costly and doesn't give Windows desktops/server admins any reason to switch.
His argument rests on this straw man: reduced cost is allegedly the only reason to switch to Linux. This ignores Linux's advantages such as lower hardware/software cost, access to source code and thus customizability. It also ignores the possibility of adding a Linux desktop or server for testing purposes.
Notice: He doesn't tell you how much a Windows Vista Open License costs in addition to a full support contract (!) from Microsoft or partner vendors, let alone a Windows Server 2003/2008 CAL + contract. Notice that it would be costly to him in terms of both time and resources to transition to Linux, and so he wouldn't be motivated to switch over anyway. Nowhere should a Linux evangelist ever demand that all Windows shops convert to Linux, for this reason. No one's forcing him to use Linux if Windows is working just fine, so he's mostly ranting about nothing. Worst case, he's a Microsoft evangelist.
I'm sorry, but he doesn't deserve those Insightful mods. Ironic that he predicted Flamebait mods, but as of right now no one's tagged him as such.
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Re:Print Link (and commentary) (Score:5, Informative)
$881 for a year of server support, versus $500 per seat for Windows 2003 Server licenses and a year of rolled-in support, plus several thousand more to renew support, plus more if you add more servers.
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Re:Print Link (and commentary) (Score:4, Insightful)
Okay how many support calls do you get with Windows support. I think our current package is like four calls a year but that is for developers and not the server.
Next does the price for support go up per cal?
When you want to add more users what will the cost be?
Want to use a VM and add run more servers on the box? What will that cost?
Want to add a backup server? What about development server?
Unless you are using the entire Microsoft software stack why not move to Linux? Of course there is the added cost of retraining you to use Linux but as an Admin learning Linux is worth while if for no other reason that a good Linux Admin will find it pretty easy to move into Solaris or AIX as well as Linux.
Also frankly Linux support is optional for a Windows server it is mandatory.
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Re:Print Link (and commentary) (Score:4, Interesting)
What you're buying is support -- i.e. a voice on the telephone and expertise to get your system running, repaired, upgraded, etc. You're not buying software, and you're certainly not buying licenses.
Canonical support, much like similar arrangements from Red Hat et al, is not on a per seat or per processor basis.
Yes, paying $293 per year for support of a single desktop may seem as exorbitant as the cost of Vista. But what if you roll out 20 machines? If you go the Vista route that's thousands just for the OS, and additional thousands or tens of thousands for the software you actually need.
But with 20 machines, your Canonical support costs are now less than $15 per machine-year. And the support contract comes with an SLA [canonical.com]. How much does MS support cost? How much is a seat license for MS Exchange-related products?
How do these costs compare when you move from 20 systems to 100? Or 1,000?
Do you still think you can compare support costs to license costs?
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Re:Print Link (and commentary) (Score:5, Insightful)
The problem with Windows experience is that Microsoft is bound and
determined to make that 10 years of Windows experience obsolete with
each new release. I can learn something on SunOS in college and apply
it again on Ubuntu Linux 20 years later.
Not only will the Linuxen share the same underlying tools but those
tools will be similar if not identical to all the other Unixen. If
nothing else they will all share the same conceptual framework.
What 10 year old or 20 year old nugget of information still serves
you in WinDOS?
Does this years version of office even look like last years?
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Re:Please leave Lotus out! (Score:5, Insightful)
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