IBM Launches Microsoft-Free Linux Virtual Desktop 344
VorlonFog writes "According to Information Week, IBM has introduced a line of business computers that avoid Microsoft's desktop environment in favor of open source software. IBM worked with Canonical and Virtual Bridges to create the platform, which IBM claims saves businesses $500 to $800 per user on software licenses and an additional $258 per user 'since there is no need to upgrade hardware to support Vista and Office.'"
one small step for a company (Score:-1, Interesting)
Spend less money, upgrade less stuff. (Score:2, Interesting)
IBM claims the system can save businesses $500 to $800 per user on Microsoft software licenses and an additional $258 per user "since there is no need to upgrade hardware to support Windows Vista and Office."
This seems like a good idea. The relationship of 'cheap' is directly proportional to 'easy maintenance' in this case. (Expressing this relationship very loosely anyhow.) The necessities are covered with a list of typical applications, but is there anything missing here?
Re:Fantastic but... (Score:1, Interesting)
But Open Office is a workable alternative to Powerpoint and Excel (unless you're looking at running VBS to connect to access).
I haven't found Visio to be highly useful, personally.
Re:Fantastic but... (Score:5, Interesting)
What do we do about Powerpoint, Xcel, Visio, and the other MS utilities? Please don't act like OO is a feasible alternative for these programs. Other than that I would be a huge fan of this.
Install the alternative application of your choice. I work with and collaborate with a Microsoft world 100% from linux and/or BSD. The only thing that's ever hung me up was creating Visio diagrams. Reading them is no problem. I read/create Powerpoint presentations, read/create/share Excel spreadsheets, Word, you name it. Oops, I forgot Access... I just never have to deal with it (I make it clear that I won't have anything to do with Access).
Re:Congrats (Score:5, Interesting)
Addition (Score:2, Interesting)
It takes a thief to catch a thief (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Most interesting line (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Linux desktops with proprietary apps! Sign me u (Score:5, Interesting)
Wow, this sounds fantastic! Instead of using Ubuntu with OpenOffice from the repos, and paying Canonical for support, or, say, being able to pay *ANYONE* for support, since I have the full source...
I can be locked into paying IBM for support for all the proprietary binaries! What a great idea!
...except not.
Free clue: People are moving away from Microsoft for a whole bunch of reasons.
"It's expensive" is a common one.
"We're being pressured into upgrades we don't want to make" is another.
"It's proprietary and only Micosoft can support it" is very rare indeed. Go look in the Yellow Pages and you'll find hundreds of companies prepared to support Windows. Obviously they're a bit stuck if you hit a problem that's caused by a bug which cannot easily be worked around, but these are seldom enough that it's not really a big problem.
Re:TCO (Score:5, Interesting)
I would say you're spot-on. Not that any of this is really technically accurate. But rather, the perception is accurate. Many managers really do believe this.
Such is the nature of IT. I've seen pre-packaged, supported software completely screwed up and ineffective in practice. I've seen Uber-admins roll together some scripts that just did amazing things for years and nobody ever really had to worry about it. I've seen amazing stuff completely fall apart when the guy who knew how it all worked moved on to other things. I've seen people say something is "impossible" while ignoring the fact that not only can it be done in-house, but there's also several supported solutions being offered by big IT houses.
But at the end of the day, IT decisions are made on comfort alone. Sometimes that comfort comes from due diligence (experience and research). Often it comes from simple familiarity and a skewed perspective.
Re:Fantastic but... (Score:3, Interesting)
If you are a Fortune 1000 company, you send documents OpenOffice can't deal with back to the suppliers who submitted them and tell them to get it right next time or lose the contract, same as you did back when you were using Microsoft Office.
Whoa. (Score:2, Interesting)
Guys. That was twitter. And it *wasn't* a troll post. Please mod accordingly.
Re:Better? (Score:5, Interesting)
Effective? Hah.
I just left a company which was a big IBM shop. I had never worked in an IBM shop before. That was eye opening. We spent more time fighting the software that we did working. It was the most frustrating experience I have ever had to deal with in the workplace. I think on all future job interviews, I'll ask straighaway if the place is an IBM shop and if they say yes I'll thank them for their time.
IBM doesn't provide support, unless by support you mean allowing their you to hire their overpriced consultants. IBM takes what should be open source products and strips them of useful features, loads them with cruft, and then sells them for exorbitant prices (looking at you, Rational Application Developer).
There's a reason the definition for fear and loathing [foldoc.org] references IBM. As a former co-worker once put it: "Nobody was ever fired for choosing IBM."
I'd argue that an IBM issued linux desktop is just as bad as Windows. Leave it to IBM to find *some* way to lock you in. You'd expect that from proprietary software. But using F/OSS to accomplish vendor lock-in? That's a complete abomination.
Re:Better? (Score:5, Interesting)
$$$$, and less risk --- that is how.
Most shops don't have the desire to do this themselves...they would rather farm it out to a vendor who they can hold to the fire (via contractual obligation) when things go wrong.
This saves money -- because the Microsoft tax is avoided, and centralized management doesn't require as much resources.
This is less risky because IBM will be around a lot longer than Biff the system admin (who would have built your system by hand in your example).
Re:If they did it right.... (Score:3, Interesting)
So why exactly "can't I do it on Windows"? You -do- know that HKEY_CURRENT_USER can be roaming, yes?
OK, here's what you need to do to be real.
You need one, that's right, one, system image that is either replicated and maintained on all the systems or is used to netboot the clients. The image contains all the companies approved and installed applications. This is a HUGE benefit to the IT department as they only have to test and deploy one image at a time.
Any approved machine can netboot (or copy) the system image, mount a home directory and work. Try to do that with Windows. *All* applications must work.
I have set up a number of systems like this, including beowulf clusters. Windows is a complete joke. A pseudo-thin client (netboot with local disk) network made up of UNIX boxes is the simplest of things to manage. All you need are machines that can netboot, a file server with dhcp.
Re:TCO (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Fantastic but... (Score:4, Interesting)
Chances are good that IBM isn't really targeting your desktop with this plan. IBM knows that every large business (and most smaller businesses) have tons of desktops where Windows and MS Office are overkill. In these situations thin-client or virtualized Linux desktops make perfectly good sense, and there really is a great deal of money that can be saved by going this route.
Some employees, on the other hand, really do need their Windows machines, and that's fine, as IBM's Lotus Software also runs on Windows.
You see, this may appear to be an attack on Windows, but that's not really the case at all. The real attack is on MS Office as the default business document format for the business. IBM is happy to let some power users still use Excel, Visio, and PowerPoint, as long as Lotus software is installed as well (to work with the non-power users). Heck, it wasn't that long ago that Microsoft used the same tactic to supplant Lotus 1-2-3.
If you drink Microsoft's Kool-Aid then you have little choice but to deploy PCs running Windows and MS Office everywhere. Licensing fees quickly add up, as does the cost of maintaining that many PCs. IBM is simply offering a lower-cost alternative for the least demanding of your users. The catch is that if you want your power users to be able to communicate with your non-power users you are going to have to adopt Lotus software across the board.
For some of IBM's customers this arrangement is likely to be compelling. For others, not so much.
Re:Better? (Score:2, Interesting)
To a certain extent (and jokey sig aside), I'd say this is 50% true.
On the client side, I think I'd probably give an edge to Outlook 2003 over Notes 7; the latter was so filled with cruft and unstable, one of the first things you had to add to any computer using it was a little utility that killed all the zombie processes the thing created when it crashed (without it, you'd have to reboot the whole machine before being able to restart Notes!). It has the usual range of obnoxiously Microsoftian, we-know-best behaviors that ignore decades of Internet practice (strange stripping or inserting of LFs from plaintext, stupid quoting behavior, proprietary 'rich text' message format, to name just a few), but all in all it's not a terrible MUA provided you set it up right. I've used worse, anyway.
However, I think the Notes server edges out Exchange, which is a truly dreadful product. It works most of the time, admittedly, but even when I've had it hosted and run by dedicated outsourcers who do nothing but Exchange, I've found it to be a PITA. Its IMAP implementation is terrible and sometimes fills the logs with nonsense when some clients connect to it, under mysterious conditions neither I nor the administrators have ever been able to figure out. Sometimes it chokes on particular messages in users' mailboxes for no apparent reason, spewing errors until the message is hunted down and removed. While Domino can be validly accused of being far overbuilt and over-engineered for what's typically used for (not much more than email), Exchange has always struck me as something of a kludge.
To be honest I'd really rather use neither. They're both attempts at lock-in by particular vendors, and both are difficult to migrate away from once you've started down the path each vendor provides. The major difference is that while IBM seems to be moving in the direction of more openness, standards-compliance, and interoperability, Microsoft seems to be going in the opposite direction (they "de-emphasized" the RFC-compliant WebDAV protocol in Exchange 2007, in favor of the more-proprietary Exchange Web Services). In the very long run I think that open standards (like iCalendar/RFC2445, WebDAV, and iMIP/RFC2447) will displace proprietary messaging and scheduling systems, but it's going to be a long battle. Barring some major change at Microsoft, I suspect they're going to be the ones fighting against that change though, while IBM will be pushing for it. For that reason alone I think Notes is probably a better product when viewed in the long term, and all else being equal.
Clarification...bad editing... (Score:3, Interesting)
I accidentally chopped out some fairly important information there while editing ... let me clarify:
I'd also like to point out that I haven't used the latest version of Notes, so my comments are limited to versions 7 and previous. I've heard that the latest versions are much improved from a UI standpoint, particularly for users who don't do anything with the "Notes platform" besides use it for email and calendaring, and is actually based of all things on Eclipse (yes, the IDE), but I've not gotten an opportunity to play with it.
Re:Fantastic but... (Score:4, Interesting)
The only program for most businesses that's missing is a full featured and multi-user accounting package like Quickbooks.
Really?
Have you seen MyBooks/MyBooksPro from Appgen?
Server runs on Linux, and they have Linux, Windows and OSX clients.
Been using it here for years.
It will even IMPORT your Quickbooks data!
PLUS, unlike the ubiquitous Quickbooks, MyBooks is a double-entry, fully audited accounting system that conforms to the standards of GAAP.
Re:Desktop Environment? (Score:1, Interesting)
Have you tried running any of these Line of Business applications using wine?
http://www.winehq.org/
Just a thought.
Re:If they did it right.... (Score:3, Interesting)
Finally someone who has seen the difference between roaming profiles and what a Unix box can do.
Roaming profiles is one of the most screwed up things I have ever seen, when compared to the login method used in Linux. Have you ever heard a CEO yelling because his computer wouldn't boot in less than 10 minutes. Why, because someone set his computer to use roaming profiles, and put his email files there. Why, because this is what is taught or was taught in MS classes.
So now someone is going to say well you can fix this in MS by using Exchange. My answer is that you can fix a lot of stuff in MS Products by spending more money. So when does it end? When you run out of money.
One of the first things I learned is how to set up this feature in *nix. Still haven't learned how to correctly set this up in Windows.
The only place I can think of for using roaming profiles is in a call center where 100 people have exactly the same configuration. And they really don't need roaming profiles, unless the want the same wallpaper. Whoopeee
Why Samba chose to use this for default PDC installations is beyond me.
Note to moderators (Score:0, Interesting)
Both "Erris" and "freenix" (who replied to ChesireFerk) are sockpuppet accounts of the same notorious troll [slashdot.org]. Please do not reward people who try to game the moderation system pretending to be multiple people manufacturing consent.
Re:Better? (Score:3, Interesting)
because the majority of people making purchasing decisions in large companies make their decisions based on who provides the most lavish Christmas parties, the most golf trips yearly, and the best steak lunches.
That's why with all our amazing purchasing power, it's always more expensive to buy from the "preferred vendor" than it is to buy from, say, Coles.
Re:Everyone is reporting it. (Score:3, Interesting)
I've seen where one option is to have Ubuntu installed on the desktop and IBM apps fed from a server but wondered where the backward compatibility was. In one article, it was said that the Win4Lin people were involved but still nothing about legacy Windows. I figure it is in there somewhere. The world can't live on Ubuntu, Notes, and Lotus Symphony/OOo alone. Yet. 8-}
LoB