IBM Desktop Linux Pledge, One Year Later 589
Blue writes "It's been more than a year since the bold announcement from IBM that they planned on dumping Windows for Linux throughout the company. InfoWorld is reporting that not all is well with IBM's desktop Linux push. What went wrong?"
IBM wrote a redbook on the topic (Score:5, Insightful)
Linux (nay, any OS) migration is tough work for the administrators *and* the users whom it affects.
It's not a surprise that they weren't able to do it.
Here's the book, read it for yourself (Score:5, Informative)
Re:IBM wrote a redbook on the topic (Score:4, Insightful)
There are two main sticking points: Lotus Notes and Web base tools that work only with IE.
They have not dedicated any resources towards getting the first work natively and the goatse.cx called Wine is not a solution. It is a workaround until the solution is there. At least for an IBM application such as Lotus Notes. And with the investment into LN for an organization of their size switching away from LN (if there was anything to switch to) is not an option.
They have not dedicated any resources towards making their tools work with multiple browsers.
Why should they expect that it will just work then?
To add to that especially as far as the LN is concerned they are being outright idiotic. The abcense of an LN client is what prevents the rollout in many large corps which are not entirely locked into MSFT. If they want to sell Linux they should actually bite the bullet and remove one of the main sticking points to selling it into a large enterprise instead of talking marketing bullshit.
Basically, they should put their money where their mouth is.
I know I know!! (Score:3, Funny)
=D
How Disappointing (Score:5, Insightful)
Hopefully this is just a case of a huge company's left hand not knowing what the right hand is doing. But still, this is very disappointing.
Re:How Disappointing (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:How Disappointing (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:How Disappointing (Score:3, Informative)
In a company the size of IBM, with many, many years of technology legacy, a conversion to any set of standards, open, closed or half ajar is bound to be fabulously expensive. I mean, there are still app front-ends running on the mainframes, although I haven't had to use many since I started two years ago. Not Firefox, not IE, tn3270 . 8)
Re:How Disappointing (Score:5, Informative)
Lotus Notes seems to be by far the biggest thorn in everyone's side. While it does run(ish) on Wine, most people who would be adopting Linux early prefer to handle their E-Mail themselves, and no one could ever convince IT to enable the imap servers on the Notes servers.
The thing no one seems to understand about IBM is that they tend to work in 5 year cycles. All the platform planning that's going on now won't be deployed for 4 or 5 more years. That means that the Linux push, which is only a year or two old, still has some time to go before it reaches maturity. Getting a company of 200,000+ people to change course is not a quick process. I would not be surprised to see a huge deployment of Linux company-wide in about 3 years. They'll probably still be running Notes using Wine then, though.
Re:How Disappointing (Score:3, Informative)
The problem is that as far as I can tell, none (or very few) of the stand-alone apps I use* have been ported to Linux. I run Notes on Wine (which is fine -- it's slower but not enough to be a problem on my work machine, a 1.8 Ghz PC), but occasionally have t
Re:How Disappointing (Score:3, Informative)
Is developing? Nope.
How about legacy apps and small internal projects that grew beyond their original scope? Some of it might be IE-only, but most of the intranet works fine with Firefox -- I use it every day. The only problems I have are with applets and that's because I don't want to install Sun's JVM. When I hit an appl
Re:How Disappointing (Score:5, Interesting)
The really sad thing is that ActiveX has only been around about 10 years. It's not like this used to be a good idea that fell out of fashion, but then it was too late because they were trapped in a legacy -- it was always dumb, from day 1. This story isn't about Linux, it's about how IBM fucked themselves by not thinking. It's about how they didn't fire some idiot in time to prevent long-lasting damage.
Re:How Disappointing (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:How Disappointing (Score:4, Insightful)
Our site didn't have flashy menus that rolled down or snazzy Macromedia flash presentations, but they did what they were supposed to do cleanly, efficiently, and with far less user support and maintenance headaches than the fancy ones. All the glitz and glammer was limited to animated gifs and well selected colors schemes. I have seen web pages that were over 100K of text because of all the javascript and css included in them, pages that are more code than content.
Javascript can be a great tool to help a user (calendar pop-ups, form field validation, etc.), but does one really need all the overhead for roll-over buttons and menus when a well designed navigation scheme would eliminate it? It's one thing to add a few lines of code to a drop-down box to auto-load the next page, it's another to do it at the expense of taking off the submit button (my personal pet peeve).
My opinion is that using the fancy features is driven by lack of creativity or by marketing types that are focused on sales rather than usage. It's easy to use fancy menus to make navigation easy, it's a lot tougher to design a web site so that the fewest clicks get you to the most used pages. Flash on a movie trailer site?? Go ahead, you want gimmicks there. Flash on a data entry site, I don't think so.
All the fancy gimmicks and such are cool the first time, but for the users that actually use a web site and come back often, they fade into the background about the third time and they just want to get work done.
Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:having worked for IBM (Score:2)
That's assuming that IBM intends to keep up development of Domino; rumors have circulated for a while that there isn't going to be a Domino 7 (6.5.x is the latest). I've also gotten the impression from other IBM workers that Domino and Notes are as hated at IBM as they are everywhere else in the world; and Domino is definetely a monolithic, ugly beast. Sametime is perhaps its one redeem
Sametime (Score:4, Informative)
I can honestly say that a lot would have to be done with their own internal applications to bring them to Linux. Domino client won't run. Neither is a Sametime client available. Both were in heavy use in IBM Global Services, at least.
There are several linux Sametime clients available, ranging from Java to the Gaim meanwhile plugin. So that is not a problem (I run a different internal client which I find is superior to the Windows client).
The Windows Lotus Notes client runs fine on standard WINE (as in available from www.winehq.com) and internally packaged versions are available for employees. That is not a problem either - indeed I believe that the almost flawless execution of the windows client running on WINE has removed any immediate need to port the client to Linux natively.
As I still work for IBM, I see active communities of employees moving to Linux. I don't believe that the original pledge said that everyone would instantaneously move to Linux - for the most part, its a quiet revolution for us developers. I can't speak for other parts of the company. I do know that DB2 UDB continues to spread to more and more Linux platforms (x86, x86_64, IA64, PPC, z/OS) and that is clearly an area where IBM is pushing hard for complete coverage. Both my key productivity machines are 100% linux and I do not have to use Windows unless I am debugging Windows problems.
Cheers,
Toby Haynes
Re:having worked for IBM (Score:5, Interesting)
I don't understand the unwillingness to port these two desktop pieces (both being on Linux would be handy where I am now), but between that and the web apps, they have a lot of work ahead if they want to fulfill a Linux desktop.
When the original story was posted about a year ago I got into a long discussion with another IBMer about why this just wasn't gonna fly. Not only are there not suitable versions of all of IBM's internal applications available, if you work in Global Services at a customer site, chances are pretty good that the customer is going to be using application that you can't easily replace, either.
Anyway, things have changed a little since the original initiative. For one, IBM no longer owns a desktop PC company, and has little incentive for pushing Intel-based Linux boxes on the desktop anymore.
And considering that these days, a Macintosh has more IBM parts in it than most so-called "IBM compatibles", you can't help but wonder if that might be The Next Big Thing they choose to push. It's certainly a friendlier desktop, it's got MS Office (and IBM has a licensing arrangement for the Mac version as well as Windows) and a Notes client available for it, and if worse comes to worse, you can run your Windows software on Virtual PC (which they also have a licensing arrangement for). Considering IBM has nothing to gain by pushing Intel desktops anymore, you can only wonder what might be in the works behind the scenes.
what went wrong? (Score:4, Insightful)
Yum and apt-get are largely superior software installation solutions to anything MS has, why isn't the last step in releasing a new software package to put it on the yum / apt-get / urpmi repositories?
Why hasn't a method for using Windows installation information directly been found for scanners and printers?
IMHO, this is in part because the community is still in denial that this problem exists.
While Linux is a superior server solution, IBM's best desktop move would probably be remarketing the Mac-mini, which is a *nix environment on which even end users can install hardware and software NOW, not hopefully next year.
Re:what went wrong? (Score:5, Insightful)
What they should have done first is switch everyone over to firefox/mozilla and find an alternative to lotus that runs on windows and linux. Then after people are comfortable with that, try to switch to linux.
I think a switch of this magnitude must be done slowly, or else tech support isn't going to know what to do or be able to handle the "where's my icon" problems for tens of thousands of people.
Re:what went wrong? (Score:3, Insightful)
What are you, nuts? Do you know who makes Lotus?
Re:what went wrong? (Score:2)
Re:what went wrong? (Score:3, Interesting)
A bonus, if successful, would be to sell that to other companies as part of a way for them to help in their linux migration. It would set a good example that their customers can trust the software works well because IBM themselves use it. Again, I don't want to assume anything and I don't want to say IBM
Re:what went wrong? (Score:4, Interesting)
Do you REALLY believe that a *corporate desktop* computer
needs to "easily install software" or "configure printers"?
I, for one, would cut off your fingers if i caught you installing
crap on one of my company's workstations.
Having seen more than one medium-sized company deploy desktops,
I'm positive that all computers are already configured to run
anything they need to run and print anywhere they need to print
*before* they are presented to the user.
No. The problem is (as you might have learned if you R the FA)
is at the application level. They are running into problem with
web-based applications that were geared towards Internet Explorer.
They are running applications on Wine (which they list as a
temporary workaround themselves).
So, you are right in that there are problems yet to be fixed,
but completely failed to put your finger on what it is that needs
fixing.
Re:what went wrong? (Score:2)
This is not a problem in large companies, because they have full-time professional IT staff who can install and configure Linux.
Yum and apt-get are largely superior software installation solutions to anything MS has, why isn't the last step in releasing a new software package to put it on the yum / apt-get / urpmi repositories?
Because building and testing packages for every Linux
Re:what went wrong? (Score:2)
Simple solution (Score:2)
IBM has lots of friends and goodwill here. All they have to do is "ask slashdot" :-)
IE!!!??? (Score:5, Interesting)
I love a lot of the things that IBM does and comes up with, but if your organization isn't flexible enough to work with more than one browser, you've got some serious problems.
Sounds like the Microsoft Lifetime Employment Program has deep roots at IBM.
Re:IE!!!??? (Score:3, Informative)
People don't fear change (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:People don't fear change (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:People don't fear change (Score:2, Informative)
Posting this from IBM now... (Score:2)
Now for the OS... Windows XP Professional. Damnit.
Novell's Migration May Go Better (Score:2)
Complex Problems...... (Score:4, Insightful)
Deployment of open source software is one thing, success at doing so is another. Even for IBM, the challenge is daunting. The number of individuals that just don't get the "why" of open source is simply overwhelming.
There is too much hype surrounding Linux- we want the answer too fast. Windows dominates, and knocking it off its tower its no small task.
Only when there is a more facile solution than Windows will the tower be toppled. But topple it will.
All is not lost! (Score:3, Insightful)
If such is the case, they might want to take a look at the Mozilla ActiveX project, which might help them fix their IE modules to work in Mozilla, while they rewrite it with something better than ActiveX (like, Java possibly).
Replacing Windows with Linux was a very ambitious idea to begin with; hats off to IBM for having set themselves such a high goal, instead of just trailing with the crowd and keeping windows boxes forever.
After all, isn't a big part of the reason why corporations keep windows is because it's just less painful than to actually *work* on a migration to anything else? Sure the windows problems are huge, but companies like to see short term. And in the short term, fixing windows is easier. IBM is seeing long-term.
Let them the time to migrate what they didn't really think of when they called the project, and then we'll see.
IE and Office docs: the biggest challenge (Score:2, Insightful)
I run into this all the time at work: OO does a pretty good job of opening simple documents, but has problems with those containing embedded tables, hyperlinks, custom header/footer, etc. How many legacy documents in the IBM repositories contain complex format MS Off
Kaplan (Score:3, Interesting)
She almost sounds a little dismayed, perhaps even slightly frightened, by that fact.
The final solution (Score:2)
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Linux is popular but Windows rules (Score:2, Informative)
Linux gets tons of lip service, no doubt, and is praised as a server OS. Some of the internal tools run on Linux but much of the intranet (i.e. the expense report tool, the travel t
Emulator (Score:3, Interesting)
In other new, WINE is now an emulator dispite its name.
Maybe 'cause they can't read Slashdot (Score:5, Insightful)
I would think that Slashdot, being such an open-source advocate, would at least make their page render properly with the most popular open source browser.
But if Slashdot can't be bothered to do it to their page, which is their entire business, how can people expect IBM to do their web-based internal help support which isn't really a source of income for them?
Open source community to the rescue (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Maybe 'cause they can't read Slashdot (Score:3, Informative)
Not really (Score:3, Insightful)
The code of this website reads like it was exported from Frontpage circa 1995.
BODY BGCOLOR="000000"
TEXT="000000"
LINK="666666" VLINK="000000"
TOPMARGIN="0" LEFTMARGIN="0"
MARGINWIDTH="0" MARGINHEIGHT="0"
and continues
TD BACKGROUND="//i
Re:Maybe 'cause they can't read Slashdot (Score:3, Interesting)
I *always* read Slashdot with Firefox and it always looks fine to me....
Re:Maybe 'cause they can't read Slashdot (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Maybe 'cause they can't read Slashdot (Score:3, Informative)
http://www.hardgrok.org/blog/item/slashfix-fire f ox -extension.html
There is plenty of mud to sling on this. The Firefox devs have to had plenty of reports o
Re:Maybe 'cause they can't read Slashdot (Score:3, Informative)
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=2175
Time for the CEO to... (Score:2)
Converting everything would take forever, but they ahve to start with the new stuff and work backwards. They shouldn't be using Internet Explorer anyway... companies don't have time or money to dick around with spyware-bloated computers.
It's just a matter of time for them, but it has to come from the top, and
Internal standards (Score:5, Insightful)
Actually thats precisely what the internal standards do say. I find that waving them under the nose of the respective developer is quite instructive. And occassionally successful - several web apps which used to be IE only work seamlessly under Firefox/Mozilla these days. The number of web apps which are IE-only is shrinking fast.
Cheers,
Toby Haynes
Three main inhibitors... (Score:3, Insightful)
I think the most important resisting factor is actually the customers. As much as IBM likes to lead, they can't leave the customers behind, and the customers are mostly locked into Microsoft's "tender" embrace. A lot of that could be addressed alternatives that use compatible file formats, but even there Microsoft has a high measure of control.
The drag of support problems has already been mentioned. That actually involves several parts. The easier part creating is installable versions of various programs and the OS itself. The real problem there is that Linux is not so monolithic, whereas defining a set of "official" software is essentially a monolithic task. The other side is help desk support, and IMO no one has that down pat for Linux.
Drag #3 is the migration path. I think there has to be an overlap period, but how to do that is tricky. Give people two machines? Use something like VMware?
In other words, it's the same old IBM! (Score:3, Interesting)
Now IBM is hyping Linux, but IBM's support and web development groups are sticking with Windows.
IBM refused to make a choice with OS/2 and lost big times. It's going to have to make a choice with Linux. Let's hope the powers that be at IBM chose wisely.
Same old song. (Score:3, Interesting)
In particular, there was a DOS-based package that we needed the workstations to access. OS/2 supposedly ran DOS apps as well as Windows, but this one froze up randomly. It was written in dBase or FoxPro, one of those database/language platforms.
The vendor (basically, the guy who wrote the code with a few people as a support staff) practically bent over backward trying to get it to work. He offered to give IBM the source code, if they would only sign a non-disclosure agreement. Remember, at this time nobody showed source for a commercial product; it was like giving away the crown jewels.
And IBM wouldn't do it.
That was the straw that broke the camel's back. OS/2 hung on for a while there, but the day the IBM rep called me and said they would make no further effort to get the package to work, its fate was sealed.
The problem was, while IBM promoted OS/2 publicly, there were all sorts of people there who knew Windows, liked Windows, and undercut OS/2 at every opportunity (in typical passive-aggressive fashion). Maybe they were Windows experts and didn't want to learn new things. Maybe they thought Windows looked better on their resume. Maybe they used OS/2 1.0 and never got over their initial negative reaction. But whatever the reason, corporate fiat couldn't win the hearts and minds of a lot of their employees. The same thing may be happening here. (They only support IE? WTF?!!)
I wish IBM well in their Linux effort. Maybe they'll eventually pull it off. But it's gonna take more than a decree from on high.
Garg
Tried to drink the blue koolaid… (Score:3, Interesting)
Learned more about the innards of Linux than I ever cared to trying to get the OS to work on one of the higher end IBM thinkpads. SuSE SLES 8, more or less the standard for the WebSphere stack I work with, had a kernel that did not see the Ethernet port and the video was a mess. Due to a how-to and forum support on the Gentoo side, it was the first distro I got the xwindows and the wifi card working on! With a bruised forehead and a better understanding I went back to SuSE and got it to work as well on another HDD. Life was good. Problem was I suck as an installer, and getting the base to work (because I don't know the underlying details) was far worse (for me) than the development I was trying to do on it.
Eventually I tried the new SuSE Enterprise 9 (and desktop version) with the new 2.6 kernel. OS worked like a charm - many of the things I googled and dug through forums to figure out 'just worked'. Even Gentoo packaged up the hard bits to update. Unfortunately, it would seem that DB2 needed tweaking to get up and running, WebSphere was far from stable, and WSAD was a wreck. Same when I updated the Gentoo drive as well. With an extra six months, more config tricks, and a few helpful service packs it sort of works. This is my daily driver, however, so I reverted back to the older kernel.
So to sum up - it took about three months to get the hardware working, about the same to get the apps working, and a lot of work to do in between where I really should not have messed around with the system. My boss would die if he knew how much time I spent coding versus trying to just get the app server to install. I know the *nix gurus out there would laugh at my bonehead moves trying to get 1400x1050 to work (and then 3d acceleration), but I'm the type who had to hit the man pages to add users! So much easier today now that the hardware is a bit more mainstream. I'd say it was a year too early if they were gunning for the unwashed masses (like me).
Re:Tried to drink the blue koolaid… (Score:4, Insightful)
Instead of fixing things for him I showed him what the problems were to the best of my ability - I'm a 6-year Linux "power user" if you will but far from an expert, so the rest of the stuff we just Googled. Eventually he got to the point where he was coding, doing his daily check-in and builds and demoing the app, which is working pretty well now. His changes are then backported to the main Windows trunk to ensure everything works. We're thinking of also supporting BSD at this point.
It just takes time. Even the most savvy PC users will have problems. I can't believe IBM would be that different, especially when trying to move their less technical folks to a brand new environment. Just give them time.
Some truths... (Score:4, Insightful)
First of all, I'm a Linux user and have been for some time. I run a Gentoo box, and am fairly comfortable with all system administration tasks. I have tried out many Linux distros, as well as the BSDs. I also have a full time Windows box (I use "second-generation" hardware for my linux box) for running games. I like Linux, and I use it as my main system. But even I, a vocal supporter of Linux, cannot overlook that there are some flaws. I know that when I attach a new piece of hardware, there will likely be some googling for a howto or drivers, or a kernel recompile. I know that a lot of programs that Windows users can take for granted (like Skype) can be a day's work to have working correctly on Linux. Now, I put up with it because it is free, stable, and has an excellent variety of software. I am sure that the more user-friendly distros, like suse and mandrake, or fedora, have many problems solved. In my mind, these distros are giving up some of what I like about Linux. I guess it all boils down to what level of control do you want, and what kind of user-friendliness do you need. Maybe I'm missing something, but no OS or distro has both on the desktop.
Its not the corporate apps (Score:4, Interesting)
Desktop *nix? Ask Steve Jobs (Score:3, Interesting)
But just take a look at OSX. Unix, that Mac users can use!? Surely you're joking Mr Jobs. But he's not.
What's the difference here? Why is apple able to make a usable gui interface for unix, and yet, after years of development Gnome and KDE have not? Which is not to say that advances haven't been made. Far from it. Linux is more usable now than ever. But it still isn't as usable as it could be. Linus is not yet at the stage where developers can sit back and say "Ahhh! Now there's a usable system". Dispite all efforts Aunt Tillie still cannot use Linux! Why is this? What is the reason for Linux's failure and OSx's success. This question needs to be addressed.
If I had to guess, I'd say it's that Microsoft and Apple take a wholistic view of the OS and Gui, changing fundamental configurations in the OS layer to better facilitate GUI use and administration. Whereas linux window managers are just that. They must change themselves to fit the linux OS paradigms, which may not fit so well to the GUI paradigm. Gnome and KDE cannot change fundamental aspects of the OS and so must work around them, where as Microsoft and Apple can change one to fit the other. Well, that's my best guess anyway.
Have been recently at IBM (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Have been recently at IBM (Score:3, Insightful)
It was not a pledge... (Score:4, Interesting)
M$ Owns The Business Desktop (Score:3, Interesting)
However, the past 10 years has seen M$ firmly implant itself in the corporate desktop suite and it would take the next ten years to dislodge it. Not just the M$ Office applications (REAL programmers don't use spreadsheets or even a word processor...), which for many users, there is no suitable substitute -- I'm looking at the parade upon parade of dorky, kludgy, awkward third party Windows applications that now have pervade the business environment, both in IT and general business users. Another strong irony is that a good bit of this stuff is now Java based, which was touted as "write-once, run anywhere" but totally dependent on Windows to run. Either via custom Windows desktop client software, or piggybacked on MSIE or through proprietary database requirements that alternative OS usage was never ever factored in by the vendor selling. Go stroll through the software suite of any large corporation (most all of which are IBM clients) and it's heavily laden with gooberish offerings totally reliant on the Windows platform. Even the server software will have frontends unusable without IE and/or Windows.
Even if the software and hardware fulfilled the bill of need for business usage, users would still resent and resist change from familiar work patterns. This will always occur, even if the change is an obvious beneficial move of immense proportions. To a business user, even those computer savvy, it's a learning challenge hoisted on top of an already filled worklog platter. A mandate has to come down from above, that a change has been blessed and sanctioned, and that there is no choice in the deal.
In my view, most firms would profit hugely from a switch, at least those entities not dependent upon special software not available in alternative OS (including Mac OS X along with Linux) -- more stable, less virus/malware/spyware concerns, less employee "goofing off" factor (most games are Windows only), etc.... ...but then, expecting a large company to behave in a cost sensible fashion is folly, as they'd rather pay someone else to guarantee the deal or take the blame when things go south... ...at the shop I presently work, I've heard the network and system support engineers (and their managers) bemoan the existence of Linux and FOSS at our company, that they'd much prefer it all was HP/IBM/MS stuff, so they could simply "open a ticket" to the vendor to fix a problem......and it fits in with the "let's move it to India" instead of hiring a few good people and letting them manage the systems... ...but then I've drifted into another rant here...
Business inertia and expertise (Score:3, Insightful)
I deal with a number of areas within IBM as a customer of theirs. I see two things working against their moving platforms internally.
First, I work in a Microsoft shop. IBM suplies a good deal of software to us (3270 emulator, Rational Robot, PC migration tools, etc.) and I expect IBM to support them and be experts in those areas. It would be difficult for them to provide the level of service we require while their people are trying to do their primary functions on a linux box. As an administrator, I have tried switching to a linux desktop to administer a Windows environment. With the help of Citrix, I was able to perform a great deal of my job function, but no where near all of it. I have no doubt that they are in the same boat.
In a slightly related situation, I know a few of their subject experts who have taken years to get where they are. I am sure they would not like to see all of their hard work washed away and being returned to a novice status by having their support area replaced.
Second, I see this as simple matter of time and money. Sure a mainframe support person could switch his desktop from Windows to Linux if all of his tools were available, but who has time for that? He has critical tickets to remediate. Something as trivial as switching desktops is probably not very high on his priority list. It does not matter that a high ranking offical stated that they would like to see him switch platforms. What manager wants to pay for the down-time it is going to take to make the cut-over and re-educate the user? As long as his job performance is based on other metrics, he is going to ignore the directive until it is convenient for him to follow it.
Painful to use (Score:3, Interesting)
- The goddamn backspace key. It seems to be impossible to tweak it satisfactorily so that my
.cshrc works across different distros and in every application.
- Copy and paste. I've no idea what's going on here. Different applications use completely independent cut/paste buffers. Simply copy-and-pasting from my web browser into a text window can be a headache requiring me to paste temporarily into an intermediate application.
- Shared libraries. I can run plenty of old Win 95 apps on a modern Windows XP box. Plenty of old Linux binaries will fail to run on a modern distribution. Downloading third party apps like RealPlayer is a real nightmare.
- Focus. Many applications pop up windows but they fail to get focus. Nothing is more annoying than doing a search in acrobat reader, say, and having to actually click on the search window to bring it into focus.
The fact is - all of these problems are soluble. But I'm no longer that single young kid who thought it was cool to spend all night hacking away to fix the most trivial problems. I now just want these things to work. They do under Windows, they do under MacOSX. No doubt some smart young Linux zealot wil tell be how to solve the above problems. But that's completely missing the point.Just so it's not all negative: it's a pleasure to have a working command line again. CMD.EXE is so, so, broken.
Re:It just won't work. (Score:5, Insightful)
If you read the article, the main problem is that some frequently used internal IBM applications only run (so far) on IE. So the users end up using Wine or VMWare (heh, sounds like my apartment mate here).
So, the problem it's not that it won't work at all, it's just that *somebody* lacked the foresight to migrate all day-to-day applications to that "customised Red Hat Linux distribution" IBM uses. And now, the problems finally hit the fan.
Re:It just won't work. (Score:5, Insightful)
So, the problem it's not that it won't work at all, it's just that *somebody* lacked the foresight to migrate all day-to-day applications to that "customised Red Hat Linux distribution" IBM uses.
The problem started before then. It's that *somebody* lacked the foresight to procure software that didn't lock them into a particular vendor.
Re:It just won't work. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:It just won't work. (Score:5, Insightful)
Designing with web standards is the cost effective option. Obviously they hired the wrong people to write their internal apps (or had nobody to give them proper guidance) and now they're paying the price. It is almost always more cost effective long-term to maximize your future options. Flexibility yields efficiency. In the case of web standards, it's cheaper even in the short term to develop with strict conformance because this methodology gives you a way to test the results. "It looks right in IE" works until something breaks or IE gets updated.
And cut the crap about "zealots." If you don't know what you're talking about, don't even bother posting.
Re:It just won't work. (Score:3, Insightful)
I don't think it is too much of an issue. Or at least it isn't near as bad as you make it out to be. BTW, the only things thta change on the different software platforms is were the config directories are store and maybe one or two other things. I can easily jump from a redhat/fedroa box to a mandrake, or a SuSE b
Re:It just won't work. (Score:4, Insightful)
How many different desktop distributions would you use across an enterprise? Oh just the ONE, oh look that means all the apps that you need will just work!
Retraining for the desktop is not that big an issue, a quick class with every body in that building section and hey presto one week later they'll have forgotten about that, sorry whats that other office suite called?
Retraining costs = done once.
License costs = forEVER
Re:It just won't work. (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:It just won't work. (Score:3, Funny)
IBM is a large enought company to start throwing money at the problems onc ethey get it worked out. The article did nothign to mention if there is active develpment on the aplications that only run in IE or VMware. It almost seems to be a "you cannot do it article. As the ending stated, acording to IBM, using wine it just a patch and not a solution.
I guess in about a year we will know for sure.
Re:It just won't work. (Score:4, Insightful)
Therefore, it's just the GUI, and you can make it to as close to Explorer as you want.
more than insightful (Score:2, Insightful)
Matter of fact, playing's all that it's good for, for me. Takes too much effort to make stuff do anything useful. If I was a college student, with lots of spare time on my hands, and no wife and kids
When I want to get WORK done, I boot XP.
Work, that place where I do stuff and get paid for it
As long as the boss expects
Re:more than insightful (Score:5, Informative)
Well, if you are trying to do something with a BRAND-NEW computer, about which you know nothing (most likely, you don't know by heart what video card it has, what ethernet card (if not integrated into motherboard, and in that case, the drivers for motherboard) or what sound card it has---and these are basic things), you are going to struggle. For me, the first-time formatting my computers was always a pain (and yes, I was installing "user-friendly" Windows), because I never knew what hardware I had until then...
Actually, do you know what I do when I can't figure out what video card, etc. I have and I don't really want to open up the computer to look up the serial number? I boot up my computer with Knoppix---except for that one time when I was booting my roommate's computer with a gigabit ethernet card ("cutting edge" so to speak), it found all the hardwares correctly, and I just look at the system message (which, as it happens, is more informative than Windows system messages are) so that I can figure out what to do.
Re:more than insightful (Score:3, Informative)
Re:more than insightful (Score:5, Interesting)
Depends what work you do, I guess.
I work for a living and use Linux all day, every day. I'm much more productive now than 3 years ago when I was forced to use Windows. (Unix sysadmin for 15 years)
I work in a very Windows oriented office, IIS based Intranet (ntlm auth reqd), Exchange, Windows shared directories etc, but there's NOTHING I cant do on my Linux box.
A GUI should be a personal choice. Personally I use a very minimal FluxBox, because it suits the way I work. (To me a GUI is a way to have lots of command line windows open at once
Oh, and when I want to get WORK done, I don't boot linux. It's alwaysi running. (Barring unfortunate UPS issues
Re:more than insightful (Score:4, Insightful)
Side note - GNU/Linux is far from a time waster. A couple of months back me and another guy had to fix up a few hundred images for a site we're working on. He's the hardcore Windows user who says that "Linux is faster because you don't run as much stuff as you do in Windows"... well duh. And he doesn't see why this is a good thing.
Meanwhile, I'm a hardcore GNU nut who lives and dies at his commandline. We divided the images up in half and started getting to work, him figuring it would take several days to get it all done. Within two hours I had all the images cropped, and twenty minutes (and a short shell script invoking ImageMagick later) I had everything done. Mr. hardcore Windows point-n-click man had a little less than 75 done.
Never mess with a geek who sits behind a halfway decent shell.
Re:more than insightful (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:more than insightful (Score:5, Insightful)
This past weekend, I ditched Windows for SuSE 9.2. The installation itself, including time for running the SuSE Online Update to get their latest patches, was somewhere between 90 minutes and two hours. Number of reboots: *1*. (Yes, that's a "one".) At the end of this time I had a completely functional system, and all hardware had been autodetected and configured correctly. Number of drivers I had to load manually: *zero*. Number of trips to vendor websites to obtain drivers: *zero*. Number of apps I had to install separately before I could get any useful work done: *one* (BitKeeper). Number of apps that came with the distribution whose Windows equivalents either cost bucketloads or simply don't exist: *dozens*.
In fact, it wasn't until a day or two later that I printed out something, then realised that I'd not ever installed the printer. It was just there and ready to use. On Windows, installing that same printer took about an hour of loading drivers and fussing with the configuration to get it working properly.
I had/have exactly three issues:
1. KsCD didn't produce audible output until I told it to use direct access mode.
2. I had to change permissions on a bunch of email and other working files that I copied over from the Windows partition before Mozilla Mail and other apps could access them properly.
3. BitKeeper's not sending commit emails to our developer list. I'll probably have to get a bit of help configuring it and/or sendmail.
Executive summary:
1. "Everything just worked" rating >= 99%.
2. Anybody who says that Linux isn't ready for the desktop is misinformed, or a liar.
BTW, I still have two Windows boxes on my LAN (at least one of them will be getting converted to Linux as soon as I have time for it). When something goes wrong with one of them, I drop in a Knoppix CD to find out what's wrong and fix it. And when I use one of them remotely, the interface already seems clunky and counterintuitive, in spite of the fact that my reflexes aren't yet properly trained for the Linux desktop.
How much do I miss Windows? Well... I'll probably finish copying some miscellaneous files over from the the Windows partition and reformat it this weekend.
Re:more than insightful (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:more than insightful (Score:5, Informative)
We want Linux (Score:5, Interesting)
I work for IBM. Most of the people in my department who have a preference want Linux on our ThinkPads. Some of us dual boot anyway. I use cygwin on XP for now. Once there's a certified Linux C4EB, I'm switching.
Re:We want Linux (Score:5, Interesting)
The last time I checked, they'd taken the last version of Linux C4EB off of the web site, and left a message that it would be available again after being tweaked based on the feedback they'd received.
That was a few months ago, and it still hadn't made a re-appearance as of about a week ago.
I think this is turning out to be more of a challenge than they anticipated. But assuming they're dedicated to working through all the issues, it could be beneficial to desktop Linux in general.
Re:We want Linux (Score:3, Insightful)
Completely agree. Linux on the desktop has *great* potential because there is so much more you can do with it than Windows. With the combination of Athena-style network administration and the Coda filesystem (for laptops) you can do amazong things with a small support staff.
Unfortunately, the successful deployme
Re:We want Linux (Score:3, Interesting)
Yes. I am a consultant that helps people run whatever they want. I guess that qualifies.
For the users however, it's all about what they used to run, but now they can't. They'll have less applications and not the ones they are used to.
For home users and for certain small b
Re:It just won't work. (Score:2)
Oops! My 3-year old is already reasonably proficient in Windows98! Unfortunately, thats what all of her game and educational software is written for... has anybody succeeded in getting "Barbie's Horse Adventure" running in Wine? ;-)
Re:It just won't work. (Score:2)
Re:It just won't work. (Score:2)
Average? (Score:2)
So here's the plan... (Score:2, Funny)
Re:It just won't work. (Score:3, Interesting)
Go figure.......
I also did this in an office I worked in. I copied the "splash screen" from windows ME to a number of Win98 and NT boxes. I then spent the following week listening to people complain about
Re:It just won't work. (Score:5, Informative)
You've either never used linux, used it a *long* time ago, or expected it to be exactly like your favorite windows machine so you wouldn't have to relearn anything.
1.) Remove all file extensions- Most linux programs use file extensions, and with a graphical file manager, you can double-click files to get them to open with the "right" application.
2.) Export registry into 40374 files and scatter them around hard drive for no reason.- They're not scattered around the file system, they're in
3.) Remember to name those files random things, like trontabs- No one said you had to use the commands, if you don't like a cli, you can use gui programs to do the same time.
4.) Use a program to then scrable those letters,
4.1) Remember to make all folders in the root only 3 characters long with no thought to human organization what-so-ever
- Root directories are well-organized, and what goes into them each is well-definied.
5.) Downgrade to Windows 3.1 to get that box window feel (and jaggy-font feel)- Or use KDE or Gnome, which is probably the default on your distro.
6.) Get rid of your printer driver and use the standard linux one. All your ~ are now @'s- Use the basic CUPS install interface, difficult to screw up.
7.) Remember to type in lowercase- If you don't like the cli, don't use it.
8.) Create batch commands JUST to copy a file!- Or use one of the many graphical file managers that exist.
9.) Run only text games because your graphics card doesn't have a driver for Linux
- Very few graphics cards don't work in linux. Not all games run in linux, but that's a completely different issue
10.) Oops! You can't use the backspace key without editing a file in VI, which you dont know how to use anyway- If you don't know how to use VI, don't use it. There are plenty of graphical text editors that work like you think it will
11.) Realize Windows is easier and get your XP cd from trash.- Or realize that linux is different form windows, and things are usually set up to help you get started on the right foot.
It seems like you installed Linux because you wanted it to work exactly like Windows. Just becuase you were a Windows power user, doesn't mean you automatically know everything about linux. If you had used the graphical configuration tools, you wouldn't have had any of those problems, and you could eventually learn to use a command-line interface if you wanted to.
Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Linux is too hard (Score:3, Interesting)
The idea of 'su' or the more modern 'sudo' is that you can let users run as 'users' and still have the ability to escalate to 'admin' rights to do priviliged operations, some users can escalate and others cannot, but all run as 'users' for normal operations. This is demonstrably the best way to implement user rights on the modern desktop, it prevents stuf flike viruses and spyware from being able to proliferate to non-user areas of the disk where they can affect other u
Re:Dogfood, man. Dogfood. (Score:4, Interesting)
Actually, children are so good at seeing through their parents' bullshit to the underlying behavior that at the same time they are most decidedly NOT learning to floss just because they are told that they should, they ARE internalizing this parenting "technique" to be passed on to their own progeny.
I know, I know, -1 Offtopic.
Re:Dogfood, man. Dogfood. (Score:4, Informative)
It's called iNotes [lotus.com]. It is officially supported under Linux too. Check out the spec page. Retargeting large pieces of software is not something that happens over night. This is the direction that Lotus is supposedly heading though.
There are internal deployments of iNotes too. However, notes under wine works so well for me that I doubt I'd switch anytime soon...
troll? (Score:3, Insightful)
the timeframe the article is using to suggest that they are late is misleading. sam p's challenge was exactly that, a challenge. not an order or threat. it was not the deadline.
further, the issues plaguing ibm in escaping ie highlight the dangers in using non-open/non-standards compliant software quite nicely. ibm sho