Can Windows, OS X and Fedora All Work Together? 375
greymond writes "In my ever growing job responsibilities, I've recently been tasked with documenting our organization's IT infrastructure, primarily focusing on cost analysis of our hardware leases and software purchases. This is something that has never been done in our organization before and while it's moving along slowly, I'm already seeing some places where we could make improvements. Once completed, I see this as an opportunity to bring up the topic of migrating the majority of our office from Windows 7 to Linux and from Exchange to Gmail. However, this would result in three departments each running a different system: Windows, OS X, and most likely Fedora. Has anyone worked in or tried to set up an environment like this? What roadblocks did you run into? Is this really feasible or should I just continue to focus on the cutbacks that don't require OS changes? (The requirement for having three different systems is that the vast majority of our administration, who rely solely on an install of Microsoft Windows, Word and Excel, are savvy enough that if they came in and saw Gnome running on Fedora with Open Office they'd pick it up fast. However, our marketing department is composed entirely of Apple systems, and the latest Adobe Creative Suite doesn't seem to all work under Wine. The biggest issue is with the Sales department though, as they rely on a proprietary sales platform that is Windows only — and generally, sales personal give the biggest push back when it comes to organizational changes.)"
Why? (Score:4, Interesting)
All tied together with the an Active Directory on Server 2003 and an Exchange server.
Re:Why? (Score:4, Insightful)
Exactly. If you've already sunk the costs into Exchange, it's very difficult to think of many good reasons to go to Gmail. Frankly, for desktops, the same holds for Windows 7.
I don't know all the details but if this is just your personal love of OSS then I would recommend you put your feelings aside and make decisions as a professional and not as a fanboy.
Re:Why? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
Barracuda - 'nuff said.
Re:Why? (Score:5, Informative)
> Life is easy with Gmail.
That is, until your company is using Gmail and you are the one in charge of IT. Even when you pay Google instead of using the free service, frequent outages of a few minutes are excluded from Gmail SLA (and they happen often!) and as the IT guy you end up being overwhelmed by angry people asking you what is going on... while having no control at all, except refreshing a blog page on some Google server to see if there is more info regarding the duration of the outage.
Gmail is ok for a small business that does not rely on email, but the support model is not ready for bigger environments.
Re:Why? (Score:5, Informative)
Use Gmail - go to Jail?! (Score:5, Interesting)
What nonsense!
Personally, I think an Outlook/Exchange solution is much more productive for heavy office email users than the clunky thin-client Gmail offers, but this is one of the most egregious examples of FUD-seeding I've seen.
Re:Why? (Score:5, Interesting)
You have been voted down for pointing that out (Score:3, Funny)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Why do you want to get rid of Exchange for GMail?
Outlook's a horrid mail client. I'd actually say that Outlook 2010 is significantly worse than 2003.
Re:Why? (Score:4, Insightful)
Outlook's a horrid mail client. I'd actually say that Outlook 2010 is significantly worse than 2003.
Yet, it's pretty much the best* client for scheduling/calendaring/meetings. Most businesses care a lot about this.
*Note that best != good.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
I'm at a kind of satellite office for a big telecom company, and we all have "managed" workstations -- PCs running Windows, exchange server, lots of 3rd-party security software, internal websites with ActiveX, etc. So we're heavily entrenched in a Windows computing environment.
But ironically almost all of the equipment we're working on is running a Linux kernel. We have to do development on remote *nix servers. So ssh, Xwindows, telnet, scripting with Perl/Python/Tcl/whatever, ... these are the tools for mo
Re: (Score:2)
So every couple days someone asks "can I _please_ switch to Linux on my desktop? Please??"
Linux with a virtualbox install of a Windows OS would probably work great for all the Windows specific stuff, and would easier to maintain over the long haul.
Re:Why? (Score:5, Insightful)
The thing is that then you have TWO operating systems to maintain (patch, secure, update, etc), and more memory to run the Windows VM effectively.
If you need to run Windows apps, run Windows. If you need Unix apps run a Unix variant.
Trying to get rid of WIndows by running it in a VM *on client machines* is retarded, you're just creating work for yourself. If you want to do that run a virtual desktop off vSphere. NOT via virtualbox running on a client machine.
Windows as a client is fine if you have a half competent admin to maintain the environment.
Shifting OS simply due to zealotry or lack of knowledge of the existing platform is stupid.
For what its worth, I run a heterogenous environment here (FreeBSD, Linux, WinXP, Win7), but its because i use the relevant tool for the job. I don't do shit like replacing every screw in the building with a hex head and demand that all people give up their screwdrivers for a set of allen keys - for no reason other than not liking screwdrivers...
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I've done the same thing before. HOWEVER, when supporting a large number of end users, its not the right way to do it. In small numbers, sure.
My point was that those pushing the lower TCO of linux (supposedly) and then suggested that you can "always run windows apps in a VM" are deluded and missing the fact that whether or not an OS is a VM or not, it still consumes a license (and in a VM, the Windows license your PC came with is not necessarily valid) and still requires the same level of patching and
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What mail client is better? Gmail's web interface?
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simple test. There is something in your mail that you need to find, you remember a few key words and search for it...
In outlook this fails utterly. You can set up a custom folder with filter criteria to fake a search, but its a pain in the ass.
Every other email client is capable of handling this simple task with relative ease.
Re:Why? (Score:5, Insightful)
It's also odd that he wants to switch everything to Linux when it sounds like he's got an entire Microsoft Shop going with the exception of Macs in one department.
If you aren't a Linux Guru - I don't see the point of creating a headache for yourself by trying to switch to Linux when the Microsoft Foundation is already there.
What he saves in licensing costs will ultimately be lost in troubleshooting because he doesn't appear to have the skills necessary to work this out properly - if you don't know how, than I don't suggest trying it out.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Agreed. I followed the link back to your original post from June where you said it'd been a while since you worked this much with Linux, and it sounds like you've already got your hands full. Seriously, I applaud your desire to show some initiative (and I wish you worked here for that!), but be very careful you don't bite off more than you can chew.
There are several posts here already asking you why you want to do this, considering the sunk costs in Exchange/Windows 7, so I won't repeat that lot. But if you
Re:Why? (Score:5, Insightful)
I'll take it one step futher - why get rid of Windows 7? You already have licenses, probably already have some patch deployment method in place, and your users are probably happy and familer with it. There is going to be a ZERO cost benefit of going from Windows to Linux because the company ALREADY HAS licenses. Now, if you are talking about bringing in future people, and in future computer purchaces, going open source, that is different.
All going from Windows to Linux is going to do is frustrate users, and going from Microsoft Office to OpenOffice is yet ANOTHER new Office product they have to use. You will have to incure a cost of training users, and suffer from a temporary loss in productivity while the users learn the new system. In other words, converting from Windows 7 to Linux will probably ADD costs, not save them. On top of that, you would have to incure the costs of reimaging your entire Windows user base, and backing up user data, then porting it over to Linux.
I say, stick with Exchange - your department has already sunk money into it, and leave your Windows users alone. Your solutions are going to COSTS money, not save it.
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You are doing it wrong. (Score:5, Insightful)
[1] Glossary:
Boni: plural of Bonus.
Re:You are doing it wrong. (Score:5, Funny)
You dont actually migrate users out of Windows to Linux and out of Exchange to gmail. You make a lot of presentations and charts etc with lots of bogus numbers, with just enough credibility to convince your local Microsoft sales guys think you are serious. Once they give you some discounts, you mention that as a big savings achieved by you in your annual report and try to wangle boni [1] and/or raises. Then rinse, lather and repeat for the next year or in the next job.
[1] Glossary:
Boni: plural of Bonus.
Hi! I'm Boni of Malta [facebook.com]. I'm single, and I want to exchange bones and stuff. Please be my friend. I'm on facebook! Woof!!!
Re:You are doing it wrong. (Score:4, Funny)
Boni: plural of Bonus.
I think it would be funnier if the singular was boner. Then you could come home and proudly announce, "I met with the boss today and got a boner!"
At my age that is a bonus.
Re:You are doing it wrong. (Score:5, Funny)
Hence the nick "HangingChad" instead of "StandingChad"?
ask slashdot: HR department (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
My HR staff outsources their job responsibilities to online chat message boards. has anyone else had experience in replacing such a staff? [Warning: This post may cause recursion]
Where I am now (Score:2)
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The biggest issues are probably the file servers (NFS is only allowed for the default Ubuntu install, Samba for everything else)
Is that right? I am pretty sure that Ubuntu Desktop can view Windows file shares with the default install. Or do you mean on the server end? Yes, you might need to install Samba in order to have Ubuntu file servers support Windows clients, but it's not particularly hard.
The bigger and more annoying problem that I've had with file servers supporting different client operating systems has been that the different systems treat metadata differently. Different operating systems have different methods of dea
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printing (maintaining both Windows and Unix print queues is apparently difficult)
Shouldn't be, they should ultimately use the same que. I'm pretty sure that the printer daemon can handle that without too much trouble. Samba just presents the device the way that a Windows server would, it then hands that off to the local print daemon for actual printing. So, it should handle that largely by itself provided that things have been correctly set up.
But it's been a while since I did anything like that, most of the time I'm just connective my *NIX computer to the networked printer. And thes
Step aside, I can answer this one (Score:5, Insightful)
Why drop Windows 7? (Score:3, Insightful)
What is Windows 7 failing to do for you that Linux will improve upon without causing problems in different areas? I find it hard to believe that a business that already paid for Windows 7 is making a smart business decision by dropping it in favor of Linux (or even Mac OS X).
Changing to Linux because you can is just stupid. Good luck following through with your "savvy" users actually using Linux on a daily basis without a lot of trouble. You're going to need it...
Re:Why drop Windows 7? (Score:5, Funny)
He also needs to get some Java, C#, C++, SQL, Oracle, SQL Server, Perl, VBA, .NET, Visual Studio, and iPhone coding under his belt too or otherwise he'll be unemployable.
Kids - be ruthless in building your skills laundry list because employers want you to have it all and you're competing with people from all over the World who'll work for much less than you will. Also, make sure you're in management by 35 or you'll be working at Starbucks - if you're lucky.
People think I'm joking? (Score:3, Funny)
Java, C#, C++, SQL, Oracle, SQL Server, Perl, VBA, .NET, Visual Studio,....Linux and Windows
I got that from a job posting that my father-in-law sent me.
And at 35, you're oooooolllllldddd in corporate IT.
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Probably the best first step would be to establish that all the software that the employees need works on Linux or has a fully compatible clone. If he can't do that then the rest of this is futile and a waste of the employers resources.
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Changing to Linux because you can is just stupid.
crikey, things have changed round here, haven't they?!
What else can we help you with? (Score:5, Insightful)
We know nothing about your company, what it does, what the people are like. We have no fucking clue what you should do, because every situation is different. If there is one decent bit of advice to be had, and this comes from the Veep level with 20 years in:
1. Everything starts with the directory system and
2. Calendaring derives from it.
Short anwer: no (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
+1 to this.
OP: Can you get all those things to work together? Sure, technically it is possible. What you are naively not weighing is the office politics.
Will the people who work at the company hate and/or fire you? Bet on it. Understand that if there is any problem with (for example) GMail, and I mean any problem, up to and including any problem that would have happened the exact same way in Exchange, it will be your fault in the eyes of anyone who matters. Random VP can't play Minesweeper because you
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+1 This
95% of the industry is using Windows and Exchange/Outlook. All of the peers that your management will run into use them. All of the vendors that provide possible software or tools for your industry expect you to have them. Also, if you can't properly and easily manage Windows 7, with all of the great management tools and Group Policies that are available and information online and from Microsoft Press, it is a failing on your part as it is a great OS and I've had a great experience with it in a very
Realistic Answer: Dumbass (Score:3, Interesting)
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Seems to me the solution to his problem is to move everyone to Windows 7. All the software he wants to use work on Windows so he'd only have one OS to maintain.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Another post that needs a "-1 Uninformed" moderation.
GMail isn't a free service for corporations. Google offers a paid, supported version for corporate customers. But even the free service is way better than Outlook; I've been using Outlook at work since 2000, and I'd pick Gmail any time. Outlook is slow and cumbersome to use, and Exchange servers always seem to have problems (sure, you can blame that on the in-house IT staff, but I've seen far fewer outages with Gmail). And "collaboration options"? In
Of cousre they can (Score:2)
Just make sure the right tools are defined for the right jobs, and the scope of using them are clearly defined. By defining how things are supported, it makes it clear when people go off reservation, they are responsible for their own support and that policy dictates that changing existing systems will not include those "off the reservation" items are not considered.
Then you BOFH all "off the reservation" systems by purposely choosing upgrades and updates that break them .
Be careful, beyond here there be dragons!! (Score:4, Insightful)
This all depends on the size of your network and number of each type of system deployed. Plus don't forget there are political reasons for making or not making certain recommendations that generally outweigh any technical/economic reasons. I have seen people fired for making recommendations that had less exposure than what you have suggested.
Stupid idea (Score:2, Flamebait)
This is a stupid idea and you're stupid for considering it.
Not posting Anonymously.
OpenOffice [unfortunately] not ready (Score:2)
I would really think twice about forcing someone whose job _relies_ on Excel or Powerpoint to migrate to OpenOffice if you have such people.
I run Linux on my desktop and use OpenOffice on a regular basis. While it's good enough for demos and _most_ spreadsheeting tasks, it is NOT Excel and I find myself running Excel in a WIndows Virtual Machine whenever I have to do anything that involves juggling/formatting data which isn't intensive or routine enough to warrant its own PERL/Python script.
Before you mod
Management want simple answers (Score:2, Informative)
And whatever you du: Do NOT propose anything that require more work. You will not get more
hmm (Score:2)
For maximum simplicity just move everyone to OS X. The guys who need Office can use MS Office for the Mac. The non-technical users won't be freaked out by OS X in the way they might be by Linux. OS X gives you most of the same malware immunity you get with any other non-Windows OS. The marketing and graphics guys get to keep using Macs just like they always have. Your developers, if there are any, should be fine on the Mac unless they're doing development that specifically targets Windows.
From a cost p
Re: (Score:2)
I think he'd have to shoot the sales staff first, if I recall correctly the paragraph on what he wants to do. Personally, I think butt shots work best to get their attention, otherwise they'll spend their lives making misery for the rest of the company over the Pain they are enduring.
Consultation (Score:2)
First, you haven't made a case for the changes you propose. Not an "I like Linux - Windows is evil" case, but a business case.
Begin by looking at the current costs of running and supporting your IT operations, then develop a projection of the real costs of implementing and supporting the changes - including retraining and fighting with software that doesn't quite work the way people are use
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Why, why, why???? (Score:5, Interesting)
Why Linux? If it's simply license costs, well then keep people on Windows. The per-seat software license costs are pretty small compared to your labor + overhead costs of what your IT people will need to put in to retrain user expectations. Even if you're paying $500/user for Windows + Office, that's tiny compared to overall productivity differences.
If people need posixy goodness, give 'em OSX. For the most part they'll probably be happier to not need to mess around as much with desktop config and software installation. Leave Linux to users who can self-install and self-support.
Do not take MS Office away from your Finance and Management teams. Sure, they could learn OpenOffice if they needed, but there's a lot of stuff that Excel does really well that OpenOffice Charts can't. And if a Senior Manager spends even 1-2 hours trying to learn how to use OpenOffice, well, that wasted time just blew away the license cost savings. Re-training and loss of productivity is very expensive, very difficult to factor into your budgeting plans, and impossible not to underestimate.
Finally, why move from Exchange to GMail??? If you don't want to pay as much, consider Kerio or Zimbra, but do not force users to give up integrated messaging, group calendars, and contact databases. We're moving right now from a lousy group calendar to Kerio (Exchange wasn't right for us) because we waste so much time just trying to schedule meetings.
Re: (Score:2)
Oh, and take the total price difference in your final options, and divide it out over the lifespan of the systems (usually 3 years, but check w/ your CFO regarding how they're depreciating items and taking advantage of tax issues). Leases offer a lot more flexibility for the bean counters in how they report things.
If that total difference, divided by the timespan is less than the salary + benefits + overhead of adding a single employee to the firm (which it probably is) then it's a huge waste of resources.
W
Stick With Windows.. (Score:2)
As a business, running Windows apps under Wine sounds like a constant headache that could leave you dead in the water. Even if everything works today, who knows what tomorrows patches will bring?
From a cost and administrative standpoint, it's probably cheaper to buy the extra Windows licenses than to support and maintain a third OS anyways.
Focus (Score:2)
You need to get everyone driving toward eliminating the need for installed applications and
moving towards web based solutions. Once you are on primarily web based solutions the majority
of these issues dissappear. The first great step is to get rid of exchange that is one path
of lockin eliminated.
Go Slowly (Score:5, Informative)
The last transition I ran (had to leave due to personal reasons) was looking like it was ultimately going to fail.
Why?
OpenOffice - found several critical bugs (all fixed now) that kept people from being able to work effectively
Intel video drivers - found a fun critical bug whenever they plugged into a projector
Didn't have control over what other groups bought as software (big one, make sure management is actually willing to back you up)
* think hard about this one, is there anyone (manager) in the company that will end up buying something without consulting you and who no one wants to go against...
The 3 OSes can easily coexist. Here's how I would go forward:
Don't touch the different platforms at first, start with the applications.
* Web browsers - make sure everyone is running firefox. I found out that 1 person was using IE6 for an important project. they hadn't mentioned it, even when asked directly. Solution: Block Internet explorer access, (I forced the person to move to IE8, yay for small victories)
having people complain when you have it blocked on Windows is much better than having people complain when they are now on Linux. (They will blame Linux)
* Best in class applications - DON'T start with OpenOffice. Make open source applications a regular part of discussions for new software. Evaluate other software you use for open source applications. Make sure they are successful.
* Make sure the other people in IT actually want this change.
* Move them to Linux/OpenOffice and observe problems over at least 1 full release of Fedora, trying to get problems fixed for the next one
* Transition office to OpenOffice on all machines (have just installed first, then default, then uninstall MS Office - very important) watch for issues over at least 6 months
* Transition office to Linux
Yes, this is more like a 2 year plan. But well. Go Slowly. :)
One other point, if anyone wants to move over let them, and help them do it. If they are choosing to switch they could be very very helpful down the road.
Don't want to do it (Score:2)
there more to cost savings than migrating... (Score:2)
How much money do you save migrating to Linux when marketing and sales use OS X and Windows with software for those OS's. You have to get all new software that runs under Linux, get everything running under Wine (for the Windows dudes) and provide support people to handle the training and issues. And the OS X guys are screwed, they can't run their software at all.
Artificial cost savings.
Common software packages (Score:2)
Firstly I agree with gothzilla's statements about user comfort and productivity.
But to answer the question about making the different OSes work together, it's just a matter of administration. The tools are all existing. One thing to keep in mind is a slow migration. If you're moving users from OS X or Windows to a Linux distribution I suggest starting with providing them software packages on their current OS that they will be using in Linux. Things such as Firefox, Chrome, Open Office, etc. That way they ca
Stop. Please. (Score:2)
1. Any workstations you've already purchased already have Windows pre-installed, and future workstations will almost certainly have Windows pre-installed. So, you're going to spend time (that's "$/hour" in management-speak, even if you're salaried) wiping these machines, installing Fedora or some other Linux distribution, then hoping and praying everything works off the bat. Since you almost certainly won
Why Fedora? (Score:3, Insightful)
BTDT, got the pink slip (Score:3, Informative)
I've been there, done that, and gotten the pink slip. No, not literally - but I've looked into doing things like this in the past.
Consider for a second why you want to do this before you approach it, as well as the added overhead of maintaining multiple, divergent systems.
As for Exchange -> Gmail... why? Seems like a (significant) downgrade to me, and I'm particularly un-fond of Exchange.
If you're considering multiple apps under WINE and completely abandon the existing OS, I suspect you're a bit of a fanatic (or simply inexperienced). You want to do something like this with baby steps. One application at a time!
What's the justification? Licensing costs? Avoiding malware? Reducing management overhead? What is your end goal?
The only conceivable time I can imagine moving common workstations to LInux right now is if you're running on ancient XP machines and/or the necessary applications are either minimal and do not necessarily require Windows, or you plan to move to something like XenApp for important Windows apps. Moving already-licensed W7 machines to Linux "just because" seems stupid unless there's a good time/money management reason for it.
IF you're silly enough to approach this, I suggest you look at user requirements - and then start replacing and/or migrating one thing at a time. If you want to get rid of Exchange, I suggest you look at that first, consider options, and do a migration only once you've figured out that it makes sense after considering all use-case scenarios.
Yes, but it might be the wrong question. (Score:2)
Basically, the answer is yes, they can work together. I'm not sure, though, whether that's the important question.
I've run a couple different networks, now, with a mixture of Linux, Windows, and OSX clients. The easiest way to do this is probably still to keep a Windows domain running, since Linux/OSX support Windows authentication and file sharing better than Windows supports Linux authentication and file sharing.
It will take a little work and a bit of knowledge, and even then you probably won't get ev
Leave the sales force alone (Score:4, Informative)
Your job as the IT resource for the organization is to give the staff the tools that they need to do their job. Do the sales people want new tools, or are you trying to force new tools upon them? The sales staff pays your salary. As much as it sucks to hear it, that is the bottom line. They have a workflow and a way of doing things that is centered on the tools they have. Why are you trying to upset the apple cart?
Linux has matured to the point where if you are starting from scratch, it is a viable path to take. You can get the functionality you need at a fraction of the cost. Linux is not enough better than Windows (or OSX) to migrate onto it (for most organizations). If you like Linux, bring it in where you can. If you need to develop a new application, consider a LAMP stack instead of SQL and IIS. If your boss randomly starts whining about licensing costs for Office, suggest OpenOffice.
Do not take it upon yourself to "make things better" if you are the only person who seems to care. Let the users tell you what they need, and help guide them to the best solution. I have seen careers ruined by people who truly wanted to make things better, but were too caught up in their own heads to realize that nobody else seemed to care. They end up "solving" problems that do not need to be solved, and in the process create a lot of upset and headaches. Migrations are never simple. Often times going from one version of an application to another is a big enough headache, nevermind one OS to another.
of course it could (Score:2)
just use fingers to touch OS X and feet to run Windows, while voice-controlling Linux.
Let me be REALLY contrary here... (Score:2)
You can do this in GroupWise. Seriously.
The Apple client for GroupWise works. Yes, it did as of this summer. Lately, Apple hasn't been busy crippling it, so I suspect it's still ok. Works for 10.4 and 10.5.
The Windows clients include a native client and an Outlook plug-in. This was slick in Outlook 2007.
Would you prefer the GroupWise Web Access Client?
GroupWise server runs on NetWare, SUSE 10 or above (I think), Windows Server '03 and '08. The Mobile Server might be fun to look at.
Yes, GroupWise works
How about another crazy question? (Score:4, Funny)
Of course they can ... that's the wrong question (Score:3, Interesting)
You haven't provided anywhere near enough information to give useful advice. What are you trying to accomplish? What are the users doing? What tools are they using (releases count), etc. Who would be using Linux and why (if it's going to be low cost windows replacements, then perhaps rehink your choice of distribution...)
You need to trade off budget, vs. requirements vs. desiderata .. it's why IT is a profession not a hobby ;>
As to the question you asked, if you keep things on Exchange, and CIFS everyone can share. If you migrate to IMAP based servers everyone can share, except for calendaring (outlook's Calendar features are not the same as what you get with Google Apps, so be careful what you threaten your user community with).
How do Sales and Marketing communicate? What do they need to collaborate on? If it's just PDF documents from Marketing->Sales then the question is pretty meaningless. If they need to coauthor documents you might have very different Requirements.
Personally I work in a mixed Windows/Linux environment, and sometimes use personal Macs attached. Engineering is CentOS based, my Linux laptop is Ubuntu, my Windows laptop is XP and my Windows VM inside of the Ubuntu environment is Win7u. Macs are aged PPC based devices.
Depending on just what you are trying to share and WHY makes all the difference ... but it can be done. Trivially in many cases; less so in others.
As others aptly noted, taking Excel away from power users is seldom a successful strategy.
Use a long-term distro (Score:3, Informative)
A friend of mine tried this with her rather savvy users, but the churn in Fedora created too much work to keep up with. It worked fine, but they ended up switching to Ubuntu LTS for the longer support lifetime, since CentOS 5 was getting a little old. If you prefer the Fedora ecosystem, RHEL 6 was just released, and CentOS 6 will be out soon.
Re: (Score:2)
Exhibit C: The US manned space program (especially the part starting at the beginning of manned launches and culminating in the expeditions to the Moon, not so much the parts involving the Space Shuttle).
No slave labor used there, just a very generous amount of funding and political will.
However, that kind of stuff is mostly absent these days in America.
For a corporation considering how to manage its IT infrastructure, and thinking of migrating much of it to Linux, the picture is a little more like the over
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yes, if there is an Overlord with substantial credibility threatening all the subordinates with death and destruction.
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Re:why? (Score:5, Insightful)
Something I've learned as an old IT guy is that employee comfort is very under-rated. How comfortable an employee is with their work space is critical to productivity. I'm talking everything from the chair they sit in to what's on their monitor. If they're comfortable with windows and office and become uncomfortable with gmail and open office then you'll just kill productivity and whatever money you saved will be meaningless.
Re:why? (Score:4, Insightful)
That was the great weakness of the ribbon in the new office. Yes, once you learn it it's much more productive. But people are generally too scared of their computer to want to learn the new stuff to benefit from it. And it's a fight that IT support staff aren't ever going to win. Ever. If engineering comes down or management says, hey look at al this cool new/easier stuff we can do with it people might comply. In my experience it's best from management. When someone who everyone knows is a mindless suite with an MBA shows how they can do something that actually looks good, well, everyone else figures it can't be that bad.
People's expectations from home matter too, and how much they can fix on their own. If I don't know where something is, but the guy in the cubicle next to me does I can usually save IT some time teaching me. If on the other hand you use linux, which virtually no one knows, and figuring out even basic things REQUIRES an IT guy, because no one who does any of the actual work has linux at home, well, you're adding considerably to your support costs. Then you get into problems where things don't work, either on your end or for the customer. If you didn't pay for it, they have no obligation or desire to support you. If you paid 5000 bucks a seat for a piece of software you should have in your contract who you contact about things not working and they can go all the way up and down the chain to find people who can fix it, including devs. If you have a problem with something open source, pay someone to be an in house developer or pay for.. wait wasn't the point to not have to pay someone?
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I've been into computers for 20 years now, and an "IT professional" for well on a decade. I've been there for every major interface change microsoft has made since they became king of the desktop... ...and I despise the ribbon more than any other single one.
Re:why? (Score:5, Interesting)
That's just, like, your opinion, man.
I despise the ribbon. Why? Because I'd rather spend my time doing work or commenting on slashdot instead of learning a new UI when the old one is in my fucking muscle memory.
I despise using a mouse when keyboard shortcuts work well... and the ribbon killed many, many keyboard shortcuts.
Here's the thing about the ribbon: for beginners, it's easier from the get-go. For intermediate users, it's worth the switch. For expert users of the menu-driven old UI? Not worth it... those users will never be faster and more productive with the ribbon then they were under the old UI. Any time spent learning the ribbon UI is time that is 100% wasted.
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No. The corporate mail system is usually the single biggest hinderance to productivity. This is especially true of large integrated shovelware packages created by large corporations.
Stuff like Exchange is something you largely tolerate because you have no choice.
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Something I've learned as an old IT guy is that employee comfort is very under-rated.
That's very true. Moreover, as IT, it's not your decision to make those kinds of determinations wrt productivity. The best and most worthwhile things you can do: evaluate the alternatives. Reject the ones that are not feasible for good reason, eg cost too much, have security issues, data loss issues etc.
After you've sorted the crap out, you can determine the winner, and support that with training and support, etc.
I agree completely (Score:3, Informative)
Difference for the sake of difference is not progress. Unless you're improving something, don't force your users to waste time learning a new system. If you've already paid for software that people are getting use out of, just leave it alone. This is one thing that frustrates me with a lot of technology companies, they just innovate in circles, recreating existing features and rebranding the same old services, merely making things different and forcing their users to adapt to a new system that offers no
+1 million, insightful (Score:2)
My first question when a client asks for an upgrade is, "Why?"
If the answer is to have the latest version, I always tell them no. If the answer is to have another feature, I ask them to estimate how much time it will save their employees once it's integrated and in regular use. If you can rework a process to provide more quantitative information with real gains in productivity, then you're spending good money. If you get slightly shinier buttons with menus in different places, you may as well have flushed t
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Sounds good, until you have that old application running on an old OS that doesn't work with any of your new management frameworks, procedures, new clients apps, etc. Then you're really screwed and a migration is much more painful and costly than it needs to be.
Actually, I believe the FOSS world is much WORSE than Microsoft in this area. Microsoft is a slave to backwards compatibility. With many FOSS applicaitons/frameworks/whatever, if you're not running a very current release, you're basically hosed when
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When was the last time Gmail was taken down by a virus? Or a power outage? Or a hardware failure?
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When was the last time Gmail was taken down by a virus? Or a power outage? Or a hardware failure?
http://www.pcworld.com/article/160153/gmail_outage_marks_sixth_downtime_in_eight_months.html
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Now the fun part starts: how much would it cost your company to make your mail service as reliable as Gmail? And from the fine article posted by the AC above:
It may sound bad, but Gmail does appear to have a reasonable amount of uptime, all considered. Following last fall's series of outages, a Google rep told the IDG News Service that Gmail suffers only about 10 to 15 minutes of downtime per month, giving it an average uptime rate of 99.9 percent. He noted that, according to some independent reports, on-p
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Oh, I'd agree it's worth looking at for some companies. No arguments there. It sounded like you were implying they "never" went down or something odd like that... which, apparently, you weren't. :)
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Well actually... since google has almost perfect uptime
False. Gmail Outage Marks Sixth Downtime in Eight Months [pcworld.com]
Unless of course you are committing crimes as a corporation and need to be able to delete large chunks of emails in a hurry before the federal investigators get ahold of it... then I would have to agree that google is a bad choice.
Company trade secrets, financial information, etc should *never* be hosted on a 3rd party site. Emails, right or wrong, will have that information...or at least internal emails will. Of course, once you go to gmail there's no such thing as internal email.
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"All Considered...
It may sound bad, but Gmail does appear to have a reasonable amount of uptime, all considered. Following last fall's series of outages, a Google rep told the IDG News Service that Gmail suffers only about 10 to 15 minutes of downtime per month, giving it an average uptime rate of 99.9 percent. He noted that, according to some independent reports, on-premise e-mail systems tend to see twice the amount of offline time--anywhere from 30 to 60 minutes, on average, every 30 days."
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Company trade secrets, financial information, etc should *never* be hosted on a 3rd party site. Emails, right or wrong, will have that information...or at least internal emails will. Of course, once you go to gmail there's no such thing as internal email.
I see this general idea posted a lot, but in actual fact real corporations and governments frequently trust such information to third parties. Contractors and subcontractors are privy not only to the government secrets that they are working with to perform their duties, but each other's internal documents. Companies like Iron Mountain based their entire business model on archiving, protecting, and, under the proper conditions, destroying other company's internal documents.
The Fortune 50 company I used to
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Re:My input (Score:4, Insightful)
Sorry mate, but some of the advice you give is rubbish:
- "more professional to have a @companyname e-mail over @gmail."
You do know you can use google apps for your own domain, right?
- "I don't know if you are currently using or plan to use active directory"
You do know that Active Directory is a requirement for Exchange, right?
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This post shows why Slashdot needs a "-1 Uninformed" moderation. Doesn't everyone know by now that Google offers Gmail for corporate users with their own domain name? Obviously, it's not free like the @gmail.com service.
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I would highly decline that idea, since it's much more professional to have a @companyname e-mail over @gmail.
I assume he's talking about Google Apps, and will be keeping the domain name. The bigger problem is the potential security risk of having someone else host your email.
I don't know if you are currently using or plan to use active directory, but over multiple OSs, it won't always work. For exchange though, it will. Your exchange server can be easily configured in pretty much any OS to some degree, which would allow all of your users in either Linux, Mac, or Windows to have access to their e-mails, contacts, and calendars.
Not sure what you're getting at here. Gmail definitely works across different platforms. If nothing else, you can use the web UI. There's even an Outlook plugin for Google Apps.
... Linux has not progressed that much in the desktop environment...
I can understand if you think Windows is still better, but Linux has been progressing.
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And they won't demand training for the latest MS Office with the ribbon? My most recent companies still haven't switched to that version, and are stuck with XP and Office 2003, because they don't want to deal with the problems with the new Office version.
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Want your users to use Windows 7 instead of Windows XP? They'll demand training. And get it, if the company wants to keep them.