How One Small Business Switched to Ubuntu 467
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?"
Ubuntu is pretty good stuff. (Score:4, Interesting)
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!
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.
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:I smell several errors. (Score:3, Interesting)
As for Promise, i dunno, i generally use 3ware/AMCC stuff myself. It's a bit pricier but all the controllers I've gotten from them have at least some dead-tree documentation, a CD (which DOES have a driver) and the windows install floppy.
I keep a USB floppy drive around for this purpose- when installing Windoze on odd hardware, often you NEED a floppy to give it the driver. And most BIOSes or win setup will figure out that a usb floppy drive is drive A: when there is no other floppy.
You're right about the OEM key but that doesn't stop it from being a royal PITA. I carry a windows OEM install cd around with me for exactly this purpose. Remember, piracy is when you steal something that isn't yours. One shouldn't have to do pirate-like cracking to get ones own software to work the way one wants it to.
So to sum it up, yes there are solutions to all this guy's problems and maybe if he was more experienced he coulda found them all. I could probably have made it work given a few hours.
**BUT**
the fact remains that many of these problems (crappy restore CDs, driver disks without drivers, OEM keys) exist because of poor choices by HP, MS and Promise. They all made the (incorrect) assumption that the system would be used only as shipped, in only that configuration, nothing more; and because of that assumption made it difficult or impossible for the user/customer to do so without extra expense.
(the important bit)
AS A RESULT, the customer decided that his life was being made unnecessarily difficult and went with a competing product (Ubuntu Linux) that solved his problems more easily.
To say that again- the customer decided that his problems, however fixable, were a waste of his time and he decided to use a competing product that had fewer problems. That is the essence of a free market, you know the whole build a better mouse trap bit?
If I had hired this guy I would pat him on the back and pay him- he decided that banging his head on the problem was counter-productive and he installed something else that he knew would work and I save money and time, because my solution is deployed faster and I don't have to pay for his time trying to make something work. As long as it doesn't miss some capability I will need later, I would be thrilled.
Re:The situation sucks, but is Linux the answer? (Score:2, Interesting)
I've worked in two companies that both switched to Linux. And after some initial setup problems, that was in both cases a succes. It is a steep learning curve, that is true. But the big advantuge of Linux is that it requires much less maintenance then Windows.
Re:He was asking for it (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?
Re:He was asking for it (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 (especially in the windoze case) a FDD and some floppies. Yes, floppies, that work, in 2007. No, you won't always need them, but if you do and you don't have them, you are f***ed.
So what's with Grandma ? Simple:
Grandma's first experience with windows is setup (maybe) and admin - "enter your timezone" "setup your internet connection" "activeate windows". Not that hard, typically no hardware stuff to go wrong. Grandma's first experience with Linux, in contrast, is installation. Much harder (unless you are lucky with the hardware - just as with Windoze).
Linux is going up against an incumbent market leader. That is always hard, you have to be better, not just "as good". In this case, the incumbent is also typically preinstalled by default - which means Linux has to be a _lot_ _better_ at install.
Re:He was asking for it (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 desktop crashing hasn't interrupted file serving in any version of Windows NT, ever. Going all the way back to version 3.51. Maybe it would have crashed the whole machine in Win 3.1 or 9x, but those weren't exactly designerd as server-class operating systems.
Re:YMMV (Score:3, Interesting)