And yet, and yet ...
could I run a business on purely Linux kit?
(openSUSE user)
If there was a theme for Day One of the Linux Foundation's seventh annual Linux Collaboration Summit, taking place this week in San Francisco, it was that the Linux community has moved way, way past wondering whether the open source OS will be successful and competitive. "Today I wanted to talk about the state of Linux," Jim …
Of course _new_ companies, particularly in some Internet related business now start with Linux. There's little point in starting a new company on Windows any more. Granted if you have lots of old crappy VBA code it's hard to go to Linux, but if you start properly there's no problem. After all employees usually don't care what they use as long as it works and is fast enough. (that's why many companies run on AS400 systems these days)
>Of course _new_ companies, particularly in some Internet related business now start with Linux. There's little point in starting a new company on Windows any more.
Ignoring the desktop ie. many of those startups will be using standard Windows desktops and laptops for normal office funcitons, even though the website etc. may be hosted on some other platform.
There are many startups using "Microsoft" as their product platform; and Microsoft through it's BizSpark program encourages them to do so. Fundamentally, as a business you choose the platform appropriate to your intended market and the skill sets available to you.
> One that needs to run ERP and payroll, often integrated with Excel.
There's nothing about that that requires Windows or Excel.
...and if anything, ERP would favor large Unix boxes.
That's what the E in ERP stands for. It means "something more than a secretary's terminal".
>Because the desktop is where business gets done !!!!
A whole lot of factories would disagree with you on that. Any business that isn't using a significant amount of automation to get its business done is probably some mom and pop consultant outfit in somebody's basement.
Yes, of course you can. I've been doing so since 2008 or thereabouts. My business is photography with many associated design activities - not exactly the kinds of thing Linux is best known for - and for sure there were times when it was a little more effort in some areas, but that was then and this is now. Today, I have more power, better features and much better stability at my disposal than my proprietary-OS-using competitors. I tend to view them with a degree of pity, having painted themselves into a single vendor dependent corner with rather limited options.
The question was "[Could] I run a business on purely Linux kit?". And you swan in claiming to do this with your photography business. Yet you don't. Unless, of course, you are claiming that ever server, every PC, every laptop, every mobile, every switch, every camera, every...you get the idea... you use in the course of your business is running Linux. And they probably aren't.
So the answer remains a simple "No".
Can you run your business solely on ntoskrnl? No.
Can you run your business solely on Darwin? No.
Can you run your business solely on <insert random thing here>? No.
"No" is, and always has been, the correct answer.
They whole question is fatuous and rather pathetic.
The fact that so many freetards on here can't seem to grasp this speaks volumes. Ideology first, eh?
"They whole question is fatuous and rather pathetic."
No, that would be your unfunny and rather sad pedantry.
The rest of us who live in the real world and have communication skills comparable with actual human beings were able to parse the implied meaning from the context in which it was given; that is, is it possible to run a business based around the ecosystem provided by desktops and servers running Linux based distributions?
Just saying 'can I run a business on Linux' is a tad snappier, and those asking the question and providing a meaningful answer know what it means.
You are the reason people think anyone who is interested in IT is some kind of antisocial malcontent.
*slow handclap*
Steven R
"The rest of us who live in the real world and have communication skills comparable with actual human beings were able to parse the implied meaning from the context in which it was given; that is, is it possible to run a business based around the ecosystem provided by desktops and servers running Linux based distributions?"
Sadly, many Linux fans play that both ways, inferring the meaning to suit whichever defence they choose to use. Problem with a Windows app? "Use Linux!" Riiight. Ignore the whole kernel/app thing. Unwilling to use Linux because the app you want isn't on Linux and you can't find a suitable replacement? "That's not a Linux problem - Linux is just a kernel!" Ahh - we remember when it suits us. Not everyone does it, but sadly it does tend to be the more prolific posters. Snappier is all well and good for marketing types, but relying on inference just seems a lawyery thing to do.
"You are the reason people think anyone who is interested in IT is some kind of antisocial malcontent."
Hmm. As long as I've been reading these forums, that would apply more to the FOSS community. Hypocrisy.
"Sadly, many Linux fans play that both ways, inferring the meaning to suit whichever defence they choose to use. Problem with a Windows app? "Use Linux!" Riiight. Ignore the whole kernel/app thing. Unwilling to use Linux because the app you want isn't on Linux and you can't find a suitable replacement? "That's not a Linux problem - Linux is just a kernel!" Ahh - we remember when it suits us. Not everyone does it, but sadly it does tend to be the more prolific posters. Snappier is all well and good for marketing types, but relying on inference just seems a lawyery thing to do."
I'm too idle and drunk to respond to all your points - maybe one day, eh? - but I agree that the sort of people who use that argument are sad bastards who really need to get a fucking grip.
Sometimes Liux fits. Sometimes OS X fits. Sometimes Windows fits. Sometimes a fecking notepad fits.
Pick your tool to suit the job or GTFO is my motto, frankly. Anything else is pathetic, and tragic on multiple levels, professionalism being No1.
I'd never employ a fanboy of any description - too blinkered.
> Unless, of course, you are claiming that ever server, every PC, every laptop, every mobile, every switch, every camera, every...you get the idea... you use in the course of your business is running Linux.
For me, they are.
My firewall: Cisco RV220 - embedded linux
NAS(es) - Various Seagates - embedded linux
Switches - Various Netgear - embedded linux
Mobile phones - Android - linux
8 Camera CCTV box - Embedded linux
Even the coffee vending machine runs embedded linux.
"Unless, of course, you are claiming that ever server, every PC, every laptop, every mobile, every switch, every camera, every...you get the idea..."
The funny thing is that probably everyone of those might be running Linux. My laptop, desktop, mobile and camera certainly do. Some switches do too.
It's probably easier to tick all those items on Linux than anything else.
"I've been doing so since 2008 or thereabouts. My business is photography with many associated design activities..."
Bullshit. You are either one of those leach "photographers" who take crappy headshots of my kids at school than (attempt to) charge and arm and a leg, in which case you are not in the business of photography, just a scam artist. Or you are lying.
No way you are running a photography/design business without Adobe products. Yeah, I know there is gimp, but it's not even close to being in the same league.
"No way you are running a photography/design business without Adobe products."
Umm... in what way is running an Adobe product incompatible with exclusively running Linux? I happily run Photoshop on Linux (via Wine of course) and incidentally have tested MS Office on there which also appears to work perfectly well. Nobody asked if you can run a business entirely using FOSS software, and irrespective of whether or not the OP is exclusively using FOSS, he didn't claim to.
Also, Photoshop may be a "nice to have" for photographers, but it's not essential as a hundred years of photography shows. Take a good picture with the camera in the first place and post-production can be almost eliminated for a large proportion of the average photographer's output.
Layout is actually much more Adobe's stonghold than photography.
Lots of people do design stuff without adobes virus-laden and rather crippled shitware. Didn't you know that's what "CS" means?
Bring an adobe fanatic to tears. Show them that Gimp can do as much, faster, with less resources, and you don't have to waste a ton of cash to get it.
""I've been doing so since 2008 or thereabouts. My business is photography with many associated design activities..."
Bullshit. You are either one of those leach "photographers" who take crappy headshots of my kids at school than (attempt to) charge and arm and a leg, in which case you are not in the business of photography, just a scam artist. Or you are lying.
No way you are running a photography/design business without Adobe products. Yeah, I know there is gimp, but it's not even close to being in the same league."
You have a point, there really isn't any OSS that matches Adobe's Creative Suite. The likes of GIMP and Inkscape are improving constantly but they're still a fair way from matching the amount of features in Adobe's software.
That's why I'm currently running my design business atop Xubuntu with Wine handling Adobe CS software. Installation wasn't as smooth as it could be (I actually had to copy some of the files from an installation on Windows,) but the software itself runs very smoothly. They only major niggle I had was that Wine for reasons known only to the developers does not currently support pressure sensitivity from any graphic tablet (even though Linux itself does). There is a patch some generous soul has made available that enables this feature but it meant I had to compile my own patched version of Wine.
I doubt we'll ever see a native version of Adobe CS on Linux but once the Wine team sorts out the installation problems I'll have no qualms about recommending it.
"The likes of GIMP and Inkscape are improving constantly but they're still a fair way from matching the amount of features in Adobe's software."
This is true but there's a bell-curve here and a hell of a lot of those features are aimed at the very thinest ends of that curve. GIMP and Inkscape cover the important stuff that gets most people what they need. If you're out on that end of the needs curve then Adobe are the go-to supplier. But you're probably not (even if you think you are).
Yep. You could. But you would have a problem with all the people in the winders world that would not have an idea of how to deal with the plain text documents you'd send them.
1) when I click on it, Word doesn't start.
2) when I get this file open in a word processor, it looks funny.
That kind of stuff.
I currently work at a fortune 100 company that has a strong investment in Linux. Been here for six years. Previous six years at a different company that ran the majority of its business on Linux. The myth that Linux is not ready for the enterprise is very weak. Please, find a different one.
Since various models of Microsoft Word are incompatible with one another I send documents in RTF.
RTF can be handled by Word, StarOffice, OpenOffice, LibraOffice, even WordPerfect (someone here still uses that) and WordStar (somewhere around here we have the 5.25 disks for that.)
Text files I reserve for readmes and other fluff.
Linux is nice and grown up now, much more stable than say Win8 (dealing with a customer problem on that today) but I recently migrated my laptop from Debian to FreeBSD just because it was harder to use and I am getting older and need the aggravation to keep my mind alive.
@john f***ing stepp
"Since various models of Microsoft Word are incompatible with one another"
Well, MS do supply a free plugin for Office 2000 onwards that allows them to open and save newer Office documents. Been using it for ages, works very well. They can't be accused of screwing their customers on that particular score. Ok so newer features don't get replicated in older versions but that's almost always not a problem; it's rare for a user to stretch even 10% of office 2k...
It's a much better than sending RTFs around the place. Have you seen how big RTFs can get when you start including pictures?
My view is that the anarchist nature of Linux's desktops makes it hard to roll it out across a corporation. Got a bunch of people using Gnome2 and want to upgrade to he latest distro version? Then there's a lot of work or training to be done. Even MS have forgotten that corporate customers don't like change of that sort; no one is buying into Win8 for that reason. Only Apple so far seems to have retained the view that desktop is desktop and mobile is different. If that situation persists then their corporate penetration may start increasing.
@Chemist,
"What's different about rtf+pics and Word documents+pics ?
Rtf writers tend to store pictures as hexadecimal text representations (the default, though binary is theoretically supported) of some underlying supported picture type, and quite often they default to uncompressed windows bitmaps. And they often throw in a metafile copy of the original. So you can find that a 500k jpeg can turn into tens of megabytes of text. It depends on the program one is using, but for maximum compatibility with other programs the file size gets pretty bloaty. Office doesn't have to do that, so it can minimise picture storage space.
Ok so it's not a big deal with storage so cheap, but it can be a right pain in the arse if you're doing something old fashioned like emailing the file to someone.
@bazza
I should have been clearer on one thing, our business depends on Windows servers.
This is because of a very obscure glitch in post that is not handled by Apache*.
So, Windows.
But client side we don't really care what operating system or browser they use.
As a lot of our back and forth communications are done with pdf, and huge bloated exel spread sheets we are not really concerned with file size.
Except the final product.
*or windows without a dll hack.
Having seen a lot of what Linux can do, from the desktop, all the way up to farms of clusters, I'd say yes. Desktop is hardest though, especially if you're dependent on MS Office and have been for a long time. A startup could easily consider Linux though, either with one of the regular Office alternatives or even using <cough>Google Docs</cough>. A big, established outfit is likely to have a great deal of intellectual capital stored in MS format (probably with many useful macros developed over the years), so the effort of moving may not be worth it.
Mint KDE, with the Search & Launch desktop is far nicer and easier to use than Win7.
Probably not Win 8, but then thats never going in an office.
Who are we kidding, MS will never get displaced out the office because they have influence, money and PR-style brashness to hound any barely-capable IT purse-string holder into thinking that they will always SAVE companies more money than anything else.
Try not to laugh.
« could I run a business on purely Linux kit? »
Don't know about you. As for me, the answer is yes, I have for well over ten years.
OpenSUSE user too, btw. :)
[ Note that this is not what the article is about anyway. The article refers to the Linux *kernel* rather than any particular OS using it. ]
All told, the kernel averages around 7.38 changes per hour – a phenomenal rate for any code base.
Yeah I've been on projects where no-one could leave well enough alone as well :D
I'm making a joke..but also a serious point. Why is a high rate of change considered to be a particularly good thing?
>BSD development is light years behind Linux (while MS is mega parsecs behind them both) . Linux has a lot to choose from, both development and stable.
Yeah usually if want a good laugh go compare LAMP performance between the two. It used to be even worse. Still BSD has its place. OpenBSD is still the best OS out there for a internet facing router/firewall imho.
Quite. That amount of code churn implies one or both of two things:
Firstly, it ain't finished and certainly isn't well tested. Secondly, the people working on it are too keen on playing with it.
The upshot of one or both of these things is instability and uncertainty over whether something that works today will work tomorrow when you apply those updates.
I speak as a Linux user of 6 years. I quickly learned my lesson not to use it for anything important unless updates were banned.
"Not to use it for anything important unless updates were banned"
Never heard anything so ridiculous.
Read the changelog. do your testing. Any updates can cause problems. Case and point, the recent windows update. Good luck with your unpatched mess. And good luck to whoever employs you.
"...That amount of code churn implies one or both of two things:
Firstly, it ain't finished and certainly isn't well tested.
The upshot of one or both of these things is instability and uncertainty over whether something that works today will work tomorrow when you apply those updates...."
Yes, lot of sysadmins complain on this. They say that new code is not mature and ironed out. There are sysadmins that would never touch Linux with a 9-yard stick. It would be interesting to see how fast the entire Linux kernel replaces everything. On average, will it take 9 months before all code is rewritten? And no testing done?
It is said that you need to wait for Windows Service Pack 1 before you can deploy Windows, because only then the source code has started to mature. But until SP1 comes out, Windows code does not change, it is fix and not a moving target so SP1 can iron out bugs. But Linux is a moving target, there are 7 changes per hour for chris sake! As soon as you correct a bug, that piece of code is likely to be replaced. New. Code. Is. Never. Stable. This is a fact.
BTW, it is said that Linux power the majority of all super computers. That is doubtful. For instance, Blue Gene uses Linux to distribute the load to every compute node, and each node PC use a special OS tailored to only do number crunching and nothing else. Super computers never use stock Linux, they have stripped out everything and use a minimalistic Linux kernel that is strongly tailored to number crunching, and nothing else. Linux is very easy to tailor, but not scalable. It is not the same Linux that runs small embedded systems up to huge super computer clusters. (OTOH it is the very same Solaris kernel that runs the biggest SMP servers down to the smallest PCs - that is true scalability).
BTW, Linux scales bad. Linux scales very fine on clusters, large networks with many PCs, doing HPC work, embarassingly parallell workloads. These computers typically have 2048 cores and 64TB RAM or more. For instance, the SGI Altix server with 4096 cores is a cluster.
But Linux does not scale on SMP servers: one huge fat server with as many 32 or 64 cpus (like IBM P795, Oracle M9000/M32, HP Superdome/integrity) and up to 2TB RAM or 4TB RAM. There are no Linux SMP servers with 32 or 64 cpus for sale. The biggest SMP Linux server has 8 cpus today (just an ordinary 8-socket x86 servers such as Oracle M4800). There are two different Linux servers for sale today: 1) large HPC clusters with 1000s of cpus and 10s of TB RAM and 2) SMP servers with 8-sockets. Nothing in between, no 64 Linux SMP servers. Here is another huge Linux server that use one single Linux image running on 2048 cores and 64TB RAM. It turns out to be a cluster that is tricked into being a SMP by running a software hypervisor, but it is not a true SMP, it is just a HPC cluster:
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/09/20/scalemp_supports_amd_opterons/
"...Instead of using special ASICs and interconnection protocols to lash together multiple server modes together into a shared memory system, ScaleMP cooked up a special hypervisor layer, called vSMP, that rides atop the x64 processors, memory controllers, and I/O controllers in multiple server nodes. Rather than carve up a single system image into multiple virtual machines, vSMP takes multiple physical servers and – using InfiniBand as a backplane interconnect – makes them look like a giant virtual SMP server with a shared memory space..."
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Incidentally, Linux kernel hackers agree that new code is unstable. And unstable code makes Linux unstable - that sounds logical, yes? Read what Linux kernel hackers say about the fast code turnover and the instability new untested code brings:
http://kerneltrap.org/Linux/Active_Merge_Windows
"The [linux source code] tree breaks every day, and it's becoming an extremely non-fun environment to work in....We need to slow down the merging, we need to review things more, we need people to test their f--king changes!"
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Linus Torvalds says Linux is bloated and huge:
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/09/22/linus_torvalds_linux_bloated_huge/
"Citing an internal INTEL corp study that tracked kernel releases, Bottomley said Linux performance had dropped about two per centage points at every release, for a cumulative drop of about 12 per cent over the last ten releases. "Is this a problem?" he asked.
"We're getting bloated and huge. Yes, it's a problem," said Torvalds."
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As Linux kernel Developer Andrew Morton says:
http://lwn.net/Articles/285088/
"I used to think [code quality] was in decline, and I think that I might think that it still is. I see so many regressions which we never fix....it would help if people's patches were less buggy."
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Linux hacker, ext4 creator Ted Tso, says that Linux developers often cheat and cut corners just to win a benchmark. Never mind if the solution is unstable, that is not important as long as Linux wins the benchmark.
http://phoronix.com/forums/showthread.php?36507-Large-HDD-SSD-Linux-2.6.38-File-System-Comparison&p=181904#post181904
"In the case of reiserfs, Chris Mason submitted a patch 4 years ago to turn on barriers by default, but Hans Reiser vetoed it. Apparently, to Hans, winning the benchmark demolition derby was more important than his user's data. (It's a sad fact that sometimes the desire to win benchmark competition will cause developers to cheat, sometimes at the expense of their users.)...We tried to get the default changed in ext3, but it was overruled by Andrew Morton, on the grounds that it would represent a big performance loss, and he didn't think the corruption happened all that often (!!!!!) --- despite the fact that Chris Mason had developed a python program that would reliably corrupt an ext3 file system if you ran it and then pulled the power plug "
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Non Linux people:
http://milek.blogspot.se/2010/12/linux-osync-and-write-barriers.html
"This is really scary. I wonder how many developers knew about it especially when coding for Linux when data safety was paramount. Sometimes it feels that some Linux developers are coding to win benchmarks and do not necessarily care about data safety, correctness and standards like POSIX. What is even worse is that some of them don't even bother to tell you about it in official documentation"
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OpenBSD developer Theo de Radt says the Linux code is bad
http://www.forbes.com/2005/06/16/linux-bsd-unix-cz_dl_0616theo.html
"It's terrible," De Raadt says. "Everyone is using it, and they don't realize how bad it is. And the Linux people will just stick with it and add to it rather than stepping back and saying, 'This is garbage and we should fix it.'"
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Linux as a file server lacks some abilities.
http://www.enterprisestorageforum.com/sans/features/article.php/3749926
"Go mkfs a 500 TB ext-3/4 or other Linux file system, fill it up with multiple streams of data, add/remove files for a few months with, say, 20 GB/sec of bandwidth from a single large SMP server and crash the system and fsck it and tell me how long it takes. Does the I/O performance stay consistent during that few months of adding and removing files? Does the file system perform well with 1 million files in a single directory and 100 million files in the file system?...My guess is the exercise would prove my point: Linux file systems have scaling issues that need to be addressed before 100 TB environments become commonplace. Addressing them now without rancor just might make Linux everything its proponents have hoped for."
Kebabbert, your comment is so lengthy. How do you manage to be so prolific? As far as "Linux is a moving target, many sysadmins would not touch it.." Are you talking about those sysadmins that just heard of Linux yesterday? Since most people that know about Linux more than a day are aware that there are developmental, there are stable branches. Major distros have similar divides. Say, Debian. Squeeze is still using 2.6 kernel, many Red Hats, Cent OS' and others. Some distros are still even with 2.4 kernel. You wanna try something cuttin-edge? GO Debian unstable, sid, LMDE, Fedora etc (IMHO, My LMDE is paradoxically very stable though.)
...each node PC use a special OS tailored to only do number crunching and nothing else. Super computers never use stock Linux, they have stripped out everything and use a minimalistic Linux kernel that is strongly tailored to number crunching, and nothing else. Linux is very easy to tailor, but not scalable.
Congratulations, you got that point. Exactly, one of the main reasons Linux is so popular because you can tailor it pretty easily to your little or super needs. This is luxury both MS or Apple can't afford. Even BSD although can, would struggle because of slower the development compared to Linux. BTW, IBM's supercomp Watson is running SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 11, however a little customized. There are Red Hats, Cent OS's and Debians. And also, Windows HPC is not the same you get preinstalled on most PCs.
But Linux does not scale on SMP servers: one huge fat server with as many 32 or 64 cpus
Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 supports up to 255 processors (theoretical) and 64 processors (certified). Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 supports up to 4,096 processors (theoretical).
eulampios,
Yes, I am very prolific with all my credible links to Linux kernel developers, such as Linus Torvalds himself. I would not like to claim untrue things, who does? Your claims should be verified by credible links.
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My point in Linux is modified and tailored on the super computers, is that "Linux does not scale, but it is easy to tailor". They never run stock Linux. No one does. You need to heavily change Linux. Linux is just a skeleton, that you can rip out and add things as you like. Linux does not scale, but it is easy to tailor to large clusters, or down to small devices. OTOH Solaris does scale, because it is the same Solaris kernel that powers huge SMP servers with as many as 64-128 cpus, down to small devices. Solaris does not need to be modified - this is true scalability. Linux needs to be modified - if Linux is scalable, then you dont need to modify it. Ergo, Linux is not scalable, Linux does not scale. You can make it scale by modifiying it. So, instead of saying "Linux scales", say instead: "linux is easy to tailor to your needs" - which is why it is so popular in startups. Solaris is a mature and complex kernel, not easy to modify. And besides, you dont need to modify Solaris, it does everything you need out of the box.
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"Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 supports up to 255 processors (theoretical) and 64 processors (certified). Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 supports up to 4,096 processors (theoretical)."
Yes I know that claim by RedHat, they probably have a
#define NR_OF_CPUS 4096
somewhere in the source code. Why not change it to 100000000000? Does that change make Linux scale well? No. You need to rewrite everything, not change a number.
Let me ask you again: show me a huge SMP Linux server for sale, which has as many as 16 cpus, or 32 or 64 cpus. What is the price? And which vendor delivers it? Cant find any such SMP Linux servers for sale? Why? Maybe Linux can not handle 32 or 64 cpus? Maybe Linux has bad scaling on SMP servers?
I know that until recently, there were no Linux SMP servers with 32 or 64 or 128 cpus for scale. Until now, Linux did not exist on such servers. So, how could the developers fix good scaling on such SMP servers? They did not exist. It takes decades to scale well (on SMP servers). So scale well on clusters (SGI Altix) is easy.
When / if Linux SMP servers with 64 cpus arrives, or 128 cpus, it will take another 10-15 years before Linux can scale on such SMP servers. It is like BTRFS, when BTRFS v1.0 arrives, it will take another 10-15 years before it has been stable enough to be trusted in production. ZFS is 10 years old, and we stll find bugs in it! It takes decades after v1.0 when we talk about production.
>The upshot of one or both of these things is instability and uncertainty over whether something that works today will work tomorrow when you apply those updates.
>I speak as a Linux user of 6 years. I quickly learned my lesson not to use it for anything important unless updates were banned.
Well quit being cheap dude and move from Fedora to RHEL. The stability increase will be worth it.
Drivers!
Most of the code in Linux is driver code to support every possible thing you can connect to a computing devices. This rate of change is why the issue of hardware support has to a great degree gone away. Nearly everything works with Linux now although in many cases there is significant room for it to work better so there is still work to do.
My guess is that only a small number of the changes in each release affect most users.
If you need some computing system and you start "from scratch" (e.g. making a computer you make all the application software yourself) Linux has been the de facto default solution for more than a decade now.
Of course there may be systems better suited for particular tasks, but those are rare these days.
Other operating systems kinda have been degraded to specialist use cases and/or legacy systems. Ask someone why they use a Windows box and the most legitimate reply will be that there is some sort of old software which requires it.
If Photoshop and Office are really the best you can come up with than you have just proved the other guys' point.
Both are certainly generic for anything you use them for.
That's even assuming that you are willing to spring for a copy of Photoshop.
>Ask someone why they use a Windows box and the most legitimate reply will be that there is some sort of old software which requires it.
Like a state-of-the-art ERP system for example?
Platform fans are forgetting, the business is only interested in applications that help them solve business problems, it is IT's job to advise and resolve platform integration issues. Yes for example there are lots of ERP systems out there, but when you start to tailor them to specific sectors and businesses you rapidly arrive at a shortlist.
Interestingly, whilst Unix/Linux may be the preferred platform for many, you will find that this is constrained to specific variants eg. AIX.
Maybe linux'll be ready for the enterprise when businesses find companies willing to provide support for it.
I'm sure The Reg had an article on this very topic recently.
Oh wait, here it is:
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/04/16/foss_survey_story/
The absence of enterprise-grade support for free and open-source software (FOSS) is the single biggest pain point for business customers who are using it...
...According to the survey, the biggest single problem businesses are encountering with FOSS is a lack of stability – applications crashing or not working properly. Twenty-five per cent gave "stability" as the biggest reason to “pay for better quality". Also on the list was ease of use, extra functionality and bug reports and fixes.
One of the comments in this very thread made made me laugh:
Ask someone why they use a Windows box and the most legitimate reply will be that there is some sort of old software which requires it.
Ha ha - a FUD quote Eadon would be proud of...
You mean some "old" software like MS Office or AutoCAD which isn't fully compatible with the "new" open source knock-off?
> You mean some "old" software like MS Office or AutoCAD which isn't fully compatible with the "new" open source knock-off?
Quite possibly in some cases. Then again, (most versions of) MS Office runs perfectly well under Wine. It was one of the software packages initially aggressively targeted by the Wine developers as being the biggest use case for Wine on Linux. You don't even have to do anything complicated either, since Wine is sufficiently integrated with distributions such that you just run Windows apps in exactly the same way as you would in Windows.
On another note though, the "old software" in business is often legacy bespoke applications (including those awful Excel macros that everyone keeps talking about). Interestingly, a lot of those will work under Wine as well.
As someone said above, the biggest barrier to business adoption of Linux is having someone in the organisation having the balls to give it a try.
As someone said above, the biggest barrier to business adoption of Linux is having someone in the organisation having the balls to give it a try.
Sorry, I have to disagree with you. Having the balls to give linux a try is something you do with your PC at home - back up your photos and stick in the Ubuntu CD.
Changing to linux in the workplace, especially on the desktop, is a major mind-shift.
It's all very well talking about running Office in Wine, but you still have to have a licence for it do you not? <- Not trolling on this but you do, don't you?
What head of IT is going to say "Well Office/AutoCAD/Premiere/Ethel in accounts weird Excel setup/whatever is running spiffy on WIndows, but I like making life difficult for myself. I think I'll flatten all the desktops and stick linux on. The users can still run their relevant Windows programs in an emulator and I'll still have to pay licence fees to MS. But what the hey, it's worth giving it a try!"
> It's all very well talking about running Office in Wine, but you still have to have a licence for it do you not? <- Not trolling on this but you do, don't you?
Erm, well yes. But if you already have a license to run Office in Windows, then that's not really an issue is it?
The article is about the use of Linux as an OS and the barriers. If you can continue to use your favourite apps then all the better. You need a compelling reason for changing though to compensate for the inevitable disruption. The reduced risk from viruses is one that comes off the top of my head. Another might be that Microsoft are heading in a direction that you don't like (read WIndows 8) and dropping support for what you're currently using. To be quite honest, the support thing is a much smaller issue for most businesses than is put about. In the 25 years in the industry as a developer in mostly MS shops, I don't know of anyone who has ever actually put in a support call to Microsoft. I know it happens, but it's not such a big deal as most people imagine.
> Changing to linux in the workplace, especially on the desktop, is a major mind-shift.
So you would need bigger balls, no? :D
Thing is, trying Linux at home is fairly straightforward. Just run up a live distro. If you like it, install as a dual boot. Not a task for the absolute novice, but a knowledgeable friend would suffice.
Where I work here, we are a mostly Mac shop, but I run Linux on my Macbook Pro. It doesn't cause any problems and having a bigger diversity of platforms in a developer shop is an advantage for us. Not so for an office, obviously, but then in those environments, all the PCs tend to be running exactly the same configuration.
Erm, well yes. But if you already have a license to run Office in Windows, then that's not really an issue is it?
Ok, so there doesn't appear to be a cost benefit if my staff are still using Office through Wine...
If you can continue to use your favourite apps then all the better.
You're still not selling it to me here. Can't I continue to use my favourite apps on my Windows boxes and save my staff the upheaval?
You need a compelling reason for changing though to compensate for the inevitable disruption.
I can't think of one, sorry.
Finally, I must bring up the one thing every linux fan doesn't want to talk about: SUPPORT. Who's gonna support linux on the desktop? if I'm a small business, my Windows techies aren't going to learn a new OS, get certified or anything else - the money isn't in the pot for training. They'll get a job somewhere else. If I'm a large company, the HP Enterprise Services or Getronics or SAIC or whoever's looking after my machines is going to rip my arse out when I ask them to tell me what the support costs are going to be...
> Ok, so there doesn't appear to be a cost benefit if my staff are still using Office through Wine...
> I can't think of one, sorry.
Then don't change. It's that simple. If what you have is fine, then stick with it.
> Finally, I must bring up the one thing every linux fan doesn't want to talk about: SUPPORT. Who's gonna support linux on the desktop?
There are a lot of companies out there offering support for Linux. Red Hat for one, if you are a large organisation, but there are others.
But again, if it's not for you, then fair enough. It's not for everyone.
Choice is the key here: the options are far wider than they used to be.
There are a lot of companies out there offering support for Linux. Red Hat for one, if you are a large organisation, but there are others.
I don't know if you don't understand what I'm saying, or if you're deliberately misinterpreting what I'm saying.
I'm talking about desktop support here - as someone said earlier: the desktop is where the work is done. The helpdesk or the FS guys (or girls) who come desk-side to educate Ethel in accounts because she can't do something in OpenGraph (or whatever you want to call it) like she used to in Excel....know what I mean? it's all very well saying RedHat offer support but they're not going to deal with stuff like that, are they? And what about Bill and Bob the competent Windows techs in the basement? Do they get a P45?
I commend you trying to address the kind of issues I was try to have explained to me. The fact that you were the only one that tried tell me a lot about linux fans.
I know there are so-called sysadmins out there think they're the BOFH and tview users with contempt. The users are the ones who have to eat your dog food at the end of the day, and I've seen IT departments beat a hasty retreat on more than a few occasions due to huge user resistance.
Just cos you, as a community, think something is awesome doesn't necessarily make it so in the eyes of the rest of the world.
Linux:
* possibly "awesome" if you're starting a business from scratch, if you're a one man band, or if you don't give a toss about how your users might struggle with a new OS and new software.
* definitely not "awesome" for any existing business unless you can afford to retrain your support staff to deal with it. And that's assuming your support staff WANT to be retrained - they might just fuck off and get a better job somewhere else.
How do you plan to retrain your staff for the upcoming Windows 8 system so they could handle the lack of the Start Button?
Retrain for what?
Tell you what - go look at Classic Shell for five minutes and come back to me. I believe you freetards are familiar with the concept of bodging a user interface to get it to work right...
> I believe you freetards are familiar with the concept of bodging a user interface
Wow, take a chill pill. You really are an angry guy.
The message you should take away is that there are some options other than Windows. They work for some people, they don't work for others.
The arguments you make about Linux desktop experiences could be levelled just as much at OSX, Android or the various Microsoft phone/tablet pfferings, interfaces which in many ways are so much more removed from many Linux DEs. Where do they get their support? Probably the same answer if you would think about it a bit.
I'm running MATE on Linux Mint here. Apart from some aspects of administration, the experience is very, very similar to Windows XP in style and function.
Ironically, the linked Classic Shell software is an MIT-licensed free software, a product of some "freetard".
I guess your own complaints and of those you imaginatively resort to are overly exaggerated. AMOF, they are more in the area of psychology than IT. Libre and Open Office have a support website you can subscribe to. There are other much faster and easier options, like google or forums. People have been using it more effectively for MS products as well, than MS or whatever support. Maybe your firm needs at least one person with some wits and enough courage to help others, while firing some others? It does take some competence, however no rocket science is involved, trust me.
As far as the bodging is concerned, I do not whine about lack or presence of certain things. The number of choices and options on the proper *nix desktops (that is when Mac OS X being taken away) overly exceeds my demands. I found myself switching from one to another a few times. "More choices is better than less" tautology is still true.
I don't whine about apparent differences in various interfaces, the actual stupidity of the Microsoft interface does get on my nerves though. Don't use office much but have seen Libre/Open/Gnome-Office to be very useful for others. Personally, I prefer logic over idiocy. So my choice is GNU Emacs, La(TeX), org-mode etc and sometimes vim, but do use gnumeric, libreoffice at times.
Finally, I must bring up the one thing every linux fan doesn't want to talk about: SUPPORT. Who's gonna support linux on the desktop? if I'm a small business, my Windows techies aren't going to learn a new OS
Lots of support available out there.
Besides, if your "techies" can't convert their Windows skills over to Linux, perhaps you're paying them far more than they're worth? It's not like it's rocket science. If a dumbfuck like me can convert from Windows to Linux without difficulty, and support it for others, anyone can. If your "techies" can't, then you'd better not ask them to turn the lights on because that's way beyond their abilities.
>Lots of support available out there.
There maybe, in my experience there are lots of individuals/hobbists who are keen on Linux and make such statements about how easy it is for a business to transfer etc. etc. , but ask them to commit to a support contract ....
In fact a friend has a public offer outstanding for a little under a year now, for any Linux expert to look at his business and propose a credible strategy for migration to open source, the only caveat is that the expert must have an established IT service business with reference-able customers - since naturally he doesn't want to be a guinea pig...
"Erm, well yes. But if you already have a license to run Office in Windows, then that's not really an issue is it?"
It will be the second you have a problem and you need support only to find out
(a) the issue is caused by not running on the supported OS (good luck getting a patch)
(b) you need pss support, and the first thing they do shows it's not on windows and you get no help
That might suddenly become a very expensive decision made (and I'm still not sure what you saved) that cripples a business if it breaks one of the THOUSANDS of applications and systems that deeply integrate and use the rich functionality within Office. Office is way way way way way more capable and complex than the average user gets I fully accept, but there are some instances where it is absolutely integral and incredibly well used.
For the sake of a few quid, it's cheaper to leave it in windows where it belongs.
>But if you already have a license to run Office in Windows, then that's not really an issue is it?
Depends upon your volume license agreement, it can be cheaper to purchase a desktop bundle (Windows, Office & associated CALs) than cherry pick just those components you use. Hence switching away from Microsoft can carry a high initial cost, so not a decision to be taken lightly, particularly if you are unable to completely move away from having Microsoft products on the vast majority of desktops.
In my time at my last company I remember at least three deputy CIO's arriving full of beans bragging that they were the one that would move the corporation over to open source.
They all lasted less than a year. Brave guys just too big a mountain to climb.
> They all lasted less than a year. Brave guys just too big a mountain to climb.
A lot of people trying to introduce Open Source to companies make the mistake of thinking that it is an all-or-nothing thing.
You can stick with Windows, but use LibreOffice/OpenOffice. We do here, and it is perfectly fine.
Try some alternatives to some of the expensive packages that you use, like Scribus or Blender etc. Some will work, some won't.
You might be having some serious issue with viruses. Perhaps, Linux is the answer, perhaps it isn't. If most of your desktops are just running web browsers and doing mail and the like, really it matters not whether you are running Windows or Linux behind it.
One of the other options for making a saving and avoiding the virus thing is the back office. But even there, a lot are turning to the cloud.
The real revolution that is happening is the opening up of choice. Just because there is choice, doesn't mean you have to choose something different thought. What you have right now, might be just what you need.
"Then again, (most versions of) MS Office runs perfectly well under Wine."
So you are suggesting to install linux, then wine, use a windows license, and run ms office in it? You already purchased the windows and office license, why would you add two extra layers on top of it? Paris can't see the point.
@csumpi
I am still trying to get my head around people using MS office. Removing the entire OS debate here and looking purely at office solutions it would seem that unless you need very specific features that are only present in MS office, then most other office packages would be better suited.
Looking purely at the office and nothing else-
- MS office is designed to run on windows only (After which wine was created)
- MS office is generally incompatible, even with different versions of itself
- MS office is freaking expensive
I understand that there are a few things it can do that others cant (I am told) but the vast majority of users use a fraction of the functionality in MS office. They use non-standard formats which others have tried to support but ultimately it is MS who have gone their own way and broken standards. And the cost of MS office staggers me. For free I can do everything I need using other office products and I can still open MS documents. As far as I am aware MS office will stop being supported on the mac? It only runs on linux because some devs put the hard work into wine. And I accept that different people run different desktops and different office products.
I do accept that MS office offers some things the others dont. But most people dont needs those things.
*note* I am not advocating the move to linux or windows I am only talking about office products.
Looking purely at the office and nothing else-
- MS office is designed to run on windows only (After which wine was created)
Yep, it's been around since 1989 or 1990 and it's the de facto standard just like Windows.
They don't need to make a linux version as some people seem to be happy to run it in Wine and still pay the "Microsoft tax". Even if they did make a linux version, surely it would be anathema to the average open-sourcer?
- MS office is generally incompatible, even with different versions of itself
"Generally incompatible", with what? Please elaborate... In Office 2007 and newer you tick a box in the options menu to save in the older .doc or .xls format as opposed to .docx or .xlsx, so it's not true to say it's not even compatible with itself.
- MS office is freaking expensive
Yes it is. That's business. It's in demand so they're hardly going to give it away for free. The price does vary - if your company's on a volume licensing agreement, you're obviously not going to be paying the same price you would if you walked into PC World.
@Ross K
"Yep, it's been around since 1989 or 1990 and it's the de facto standard just like Windows.
They don't need to make a linux version as some people seem to be happy to run it in Wine and still pay the "Microsoft tax". Even if they did make a linux version, surely it would be anathema to the average open-sourcer?"
I think its just as mad to run it on wine unless you need the specific features, MS windows isnt the de facto, there are plenty macs out there (I am not an apple fan myself). I dont see why people would choose to use a compatibility layer like wine if MS actually supported linux OS. Wine was created because MS doesnt support linux.
""Generally incompatible", with what?"
Using open standards is fairly important. The last place I worked had all macs except for an old slow laptop they needed to open awkward doc files! An extra burden because of MS office incompatibility. And not everything on linux is open source. I agree there are some nuttier than snickers out there who insist on it but not all (or most) of us. Universities still warn that if you do your work at home to print in uni they may not be compatible even if you use MS office. MS also switched off 97 support until the weight of public opinion made them turn the setting back on (was a reg article some time ago). Some non-MS office products support .doc to a point but it was so broken it didnt work perfectly (sometimes quite badly).
"Yes it is. That's business. It's in demand so they're hardly going to give it away for free."
Very true. But as most people dont use the MS specific features then surely moving to free and standard office products would benefit students, business and home much better.
As an office product there seems little in favour of MS office beyond people not knowing any better. For most cases people pay for something they dont need. And its a product which generally moves away from open standards. It just seems a very raw deal for users.
About the only piece of software that I can see a lot of folks failing to move to windows over would be the development solutions, visual studio etc.
Looking round where I work, we have hundereds of windows machines running, however the vast majority are running MS Office, IE, and an email client. So what's holding us back?
Firstly the email client, lotus notes. Years invested into it, customizations databases etc, moving email over to linux would involve a lot of work.
Secondly Programming, the softies are stuck with a mix of C, C++, C# and other languages, easy to migrate the c# over thanks to mono, but the C++ and C make use of microsoft only code. Yes over time we could change it all over to an approach that would work on linux, but that would be over a very long period,
Adding to that the number of 3rd party libraries we use for the hardware on our product which is windows only and it becomes impossible for the code monkies to shift.
I think starting up a business around linux could work, a small startup it'd be a prime solution considering the much lower overheads it'd lead to, and the fact there's no costly changeover. But for an existing business there are 101 hurdles to overcome.
Personally at home, I don't need any windows centric software. I use libreoffice, Pinta, Chrome, basically the ONLY windows application I use is the Visual Studio IDE (and games) if Monodevelop ever caught up to VS though? I'd lose windows in a flash.
"Linux summit announces that Linux is Awesome"
Wait - Didn't Ballmer say the same thing about Windows 8 ? Touch screen functionality ? I give that a Ben Stein "Wow".
IMHO - Linux is a hobbist's OS - nice if you know how to fix it, but hardly something you want to rely on for mission critical apps.
@Mr Templedene: "Unlike Windows, Linux almost never needs a reboot for updates"
Yes it does. Or at the very least you need to stop and restart anything using code that has been updated, which from a continuity of service perspective. Is no different.
The number of Linux boxes I've seen still running vulnerable code after having been "patched" because they didn't do this is quite staggering.
@Ian Johnston
"So that's 4.2 years' worth of security updates you've ignored? Good luck with that."
You kinda show you dont know much about linux with that statement (no offence). Linux updates without rebooting. You can even continue using the apps being updated if your using it as your desktop. No requests to reboot. No requests to shutdown. No irritating prompts pestering.
Not saying linux is the best nor windows is the best (personal choice) but it is a freaking awesome feature to update your linux box without a restart. Some people take a lot of pride in the uptime of their linux systems.
"IMHO - Linux is a hobbist's OS - nice if you know how to fix it, but hardly something you want to rely on for mission critical apps."
Google, Facebook, CERN, most of the Web hosting companies I've seen, US Air Force, FermiLab, Princeton University, your router, Sky+... yup hobbists the lot of them.
Seriously, as we move to more powerful client computers, will we not just use the OS that supports the application we need? Thin boot loader/host OS and VMs for the applications?
100% Linux here and have been since about 2003. We do automated trading and there's no viable alternative to hacking the kernel. Long gone are the days when you could trade with a spreadsheet and a bit of VB script (and good riddance).
An older Linux is absolutely a good choice for critical situations. I'll bet there is not another piece of code in existence with more cpu hours under its belt.
I don't perse agree. Sure, Linux has seen quite an increase feature wise, the overall acceptance is also pretty good which makes it much easier to setup or rent a Linux server and finally; because of all the setup standards and such there are some pretty awesome tools out there which can really help a company get to its feet (here's looking at you Webmin (link to.. you know ;-)).
Thing is... More and more do I get the feeling its also getting dumbed down. Which is cool, more people using it and you can't say there isn't a free choice here. Well....
So I'm with a hosting provider which has some awesomely features such as console access for every VPS you hire. Premium, Standard, Ultraluxe, Tiny ? It has console access, admins will understand the importance here (done through KVM & kernel virtualization). The best part here; I can use a browser and either opt for HTML5 or Java based access.SO far still cool.
And so I work with CentOS 6, need to resort to the CentOS 5 manual, (5.2 while 5.9 is the latest) but who needs manuals... It seems I do because you see; by default the installer resorts to X. And X has an issue with resolutions thus easily exceeding my used 1024x786 on this machine. With my HTML5 session this results in an unsizable window where most controls fall outside my screen. Not cool.
Resorting to the Java client fixes that, I now get scrollbars which help. But now I can't fill out some partial info (say the first digits of my IP address), flip to another window to check up on something and check back again because it will be extremely hard to re-activate the window; X goes a bit crazy.
The answer is obviously a text based install. Yeah. I had that part figured out myself. So you start in text mode anyway; cool, it seems its zmart. Yet then all of a sudden you end up with a graphical display, and its sure no Grub bootscreen. Long story cut short; you need to break the actual boot process yourself, then manually start the text installer. And of course the manual is pretty vague here.
Sure; its not all bad news. Absolutely not; this is a very particular example from a very particular distribution. There are also others which (IMO) are much up to the challenge. Take for example Debian for that matter.
Even so... Learning about integrated and fully usable ZFS, an out of the box process virtualization feature which strongly reminds me of "Zones" (running a virtual instance of the same OS, but this time locked to a certain point) as well as a text installer by default has so far got me to check out a completely different server environment. I also like the fact that due to their more "lose" licensing demands I even get to see commercial software pop up in their software tree. Sure; now I need to use my brains since you can't assume everything in there is free as in beer. Who cares? I don't since I know what I want ;-)
The icon says it all :-)
You are half right: Desktop Linux does suck, hard, on many levels. Server Linux is another thing altogether. It is stable, cheap, easy to scale and flexible. Even as an MS fan I recognize that the future is 'the cloud' (hate that term) and that cloud is going to be run by Linux, there's really no other option that makes sense. Desktop software will eventually all go away so desktop OS won't be a factor either. Ridding the world of desktops & their software is still some years off but it is coming & the penguin will be leading the pack.
irony, cloud is good for tablets and mounting ftp drives and editing remote files so you can access them anywhere,
having whole desktop and installing remote software is a waste of time and no body will care, its the same as all the nerds getting their pants wet about online shopping and over doing the websites with junk, and now they are all simpified because everybody stopped caring
everyone will always want a local hard drive for all of your own computer system
...the comments of the dead men* walking---those who remain determined to believe (like old time Bible literalists) that Linux is irrelevant/useless/childish/a hobby/too hard/... Or, maybe they're just trolling at the end of a hard day at their Windows (obviously) coal face.
* I don't deny the dead women walking their chance in the spotlight.
...it wouldn't surprise me if Windows (unless MS really doesn't manage to pull something out of the bag) becomes increasingly a dedicated business OS given that sectors reluctance to depart from legacy systems (for perfectly legitimate reasons). Linux seems to be evolving far more rapidly and flexibly than a closed system like Windows or OSX can ever hope to achieve, and there are far too many players who will be very happy to avoid ever having to pay the 'Windows tax' in the future if they have any say in the matter.
@Adair: "Linux seems to be evolving far more rapidly and flexibly than a closed system like Windows or OSX can ever hope to achieve"
Presumably that is why the big discussion is over whether to dedicate resources to NUMA or Power Management support, both of which have been extensively supported by NT for a decade or so now.
>it wouldn't surprise me if Windows ... becomes increasingly a dedicated business OS
This is what makes the whole XP/Win8 thing so strange. MS clearly are the major player in the enterprise client and support services space, but for some reason they want to be seen as a hip consumer company who's products are comparable to Apple.
A few years ago (2009) I went to a nice beach resort in Hawaii. They had a couple of machines available for customers to connect to the internet (plane reservations and checkin were one "application"). One of the machines was running Ubuntu and had a nice icon ready to click for Firefox. Nobody really cared. They clicked on the icon and there was the browser. I was one of the few people who actually noticed that there was Linux on the machine. It worked perfectly well, and it had little problems.
It was in the category of "nothing to see here, please move along". And that what everyone did!
So, yes, Linux is cool!
I still think people are not going to bother with Linux until they have a universal installer like Wise or Vise on Windows and Mac. Although repository style downloading and installing of apps are getting more popular(Thank you Apple App Store, Google Marketplace etc....), People in the desktop world still want to go to a website and download and install apps from there.
That IMO, is the biggest barrier to Linux going mainstream.
If I click on an RPM download for my version of Linux, surprisingly (to you at least) that's exactly what happens, it downloads, an installer window opens (after entering the root password of course) and it installs.
Same for most popular versions of Linux in fact. YMMV if you are using one of the more uncommon distros but then, I used to have the same problems with windows.
And unlike windows there are generally no install screens. Usually a enter your password for security, yes or no do you let it install the required dependencies.
A lot simpler than do you want to run this program, are you sure, do you want our spamware/crapware, where do you want to install, do you want standard/medium/full/custom, the install is now done please click finish, the system needs to reboot shut down all your programs and click 'Reboot'.
My gf was surprised that she could install nearly everything she wanted from the software installer (click install and its done) and the rest she could download and run the install getting the install process I mentioned at the top.
We migrated from Unix to Linux in the 90s (save a couple of DRDOS boxes used to program ROMs and FPGAs). Most of our business revolved around network and systems integration, with no no interest in playing games, so there wasn't anything to entice us to MS.
Then HMRC and Companies House "on-line" systems demanded a particular version of Adobe Reader running on MS Windows. One year of being fined (for "late filing") after apparently successfully uploading ISO compatible PDFs, we succumbed an purchased a WinXP laptop purely to satisfy HMG.
For most businesses there is no technical reason not to be totally FOSS. The major exceptions are those whose business is dependent on exploiting the restrictions imposed by closed-source. The decision to impose proprietary lock-in is made for the political and commercial advancement of the few at the expense of the many.
that's a cost imposed on you by incompetent departments, so should be tax deductible - the deduction should include lifetime support of XP (at MS's $250k) until relevant department guarantees complete cross-platform freedom. It's a stupid as govt saying you can use stuff from a "smartphone" but only releasing it for i-shiny, the way BBC do on a regular basis.
Not my experience.
I've no love for the parasites at HMRC, but credit where it's due: I was pleasantly surprised to find out the first time I did an online tax return quite a few years back, that the system ran flawlessly on my mac and whatever browser I was using at the time [most likely Camino or Omniweb back then]. Neither does the current system [for personal tax returns anyway] rely on any Adobe crap, as I have no Adobe plugins installed and it all works fine.
Have you considered the possibility of 'user error'?
@m a d r a
This was about the Companies House "submission of accounts", which is then used by the HMRC for Corporation Tax. Nothing to do with personal tax returns.
When it was done on paper, we used a simple script and ODF (originally StarOffice) template to extract the figures from our accounts and produce the submissions. When CH moved to on-line submission of the Annual Return (details of share-holdings, directors and coof accounts to ?CH. mpany secretary) this just required a browser and saved a lot of repetitive paper-shuffling. The problem came with the introduction of so-called "on-line" submission of accounts to CH. This involved downloading a PDF active form, filling it in off-line, then uploading. The CH help-line would only provide help for MS Windows users and Adobe Reader. We did manage to convert the downloaded form to an ISO compliant PDF and fill in the figures using FOSS software. When uploaded all seemed well, and we were prepared to forget about it until the next year's inevitable changes. Some months later we received notice of an escalating fine for non/late submission. Total lack of help or support from CH or its outsourced IT supplier. The only feasible option was to pay the fine and buy a single-use laptop.
Now there is an integrated Companies House Accounts and HMRC Corporation Tax system, which is unable to retrieve the previous year's figures and requires them to be entered manually. It also tries to collect statistics for BIS, which involves "falsifying" the accounts to satisfy internal checks. Stories of how the government uses computers to create jobs and screw the economy abound on the accountants and bookkeepers' forums. (Warning you will need a strong psyche to withstand the tales of woe and anguish.)
icon -- government anti-tech will drive you to drink.
.... Not ironic, rhetorical or sarcastic.
Is the fizzing rate of code changes very different to those of other kernels?
If so, does it mean that it is evolving faster?
If so, what are the main characteristics that are evolving (not thinking a feature list here, but a sort of trajectory that is different from the competition)?
I run a group of people looking after customer systems which comprise of (at a minimum) SQL Server, a .NET based n-tier ERP system, with SharePoint, MS Project manager, Exchange, integrated transactional web servers (for B2B and M2M communication and stuff) all of it joined up so bits of one program appearing in another if the customer wants and our consultants can do it.We support many languages and scripts on one system with uinified authentication.
Can we rebuild that on LINUX? I accept the software is focused on MSFT and so could not be lifted wholesale - but could it be reproduced, easily, with difficulty or not at all.?
Probably not but then you have a list of Microsoft lock in products. Sharepoint in particular is one of the products that make it extremely difficult to remove Microsoft Dependencies.
Best if organisations avoided Microsoft only technologies
@Barnie: "Sharepoint in particular is one of the products that make it extremely difficult to remove Microsoft Dependencies."
Translation: There isn't anything in the FOSS world that comes close to competing with SharePoint. See also Exchange.
OK. So how would you support a geographically separated document management system, with full revisioning, links to order transactions and trend analysis presented in say English, German and Chinese? Not written from the ground up.
After decades of Windows systems I am forgetting how we did it in HP-UX and AIX.
That's how I see it, but was hoping a LINUX fan could tell me I am wrong.
Also the first comment 'MSFT should be avoided' reinforces my usual hiring policy of being careful of LINUX fanatics - they have no commercial sense as far as I can tell.
I think you are getting to the gist of the problem.
Yes you could rebuild on Linux, however, the big problem will be your business model and customers.
With MS being so prevalent there is a high probability that potential customers will be using several products from the 'joined up' product set your company supports. Hence I suggest your current business model has been to provide support for applications that potentially a large number of customers are already using.
With Linux/open source (as it currently stands) once you get beyond the basic's you rapidly reach a point where you are making application selections on behalf of your clients and hence would be selling your selections to potential customers.
My suggestion would be to start offering basic Linux/open source platform support to test the market and to develop your skills.
@Roland66 Thanks for the comment, but as my group runs about 3,000+ servesr with about 100,000 clients we are not looking to migrate them. I was asking for an opinion on if we could - at a reasonable cost. I have a couple of tame LINUX people in the team and they are enthusiastic but as soon as a detail path is requested they clam up.
@Getriebe
I took a slightly different (more business-oriented) take on the "Can we rebuild that on LINUX?", since you were (to me) slightly ambiguous on what "that" was.
From your internal IT systems perspective, I wouldn't bother trying to migrate Windows server-based applications to Linux servers. However, I would be investigating various server/datacenter virtualisation offerings from Microsoft and others. In this context Linux may play a role and give your team greater 'Linux' skills which may be relevant to your customers, but given the size of your operation, I would expect you to be doing this in any case.
"which means it's getting big and bloated like other OSs I could mention."
OS-X?
One advantage of Windows is it has a hybrid microkernel architecture and doesn't suffer from the Linux issues of kernel bloat and high level of on-going kernel changes impacting stability and security....
"One advantage of Windows is it has a hybrid microkernel architecture and doesn't suffer from the Linux issues of kernel bloat and high level of on-going kernel changes impacting stability and security...."
That theoretical advantage means that an OEM install requires a disk with network drivers, a disk with graphics drivers and often many other disks of other drivers. An OEM install comes without network (not tried win8 yet?) which means you cant get the drivers for your system without installing drivers for your system. It also means poor support for any plugged in technology even as fundamental as graphics. Because of this windows cannot even identify the card to tell you what you need to install. So on a poor resolution you run the install software assuming you have the disk.
Also the bloat doesnt seem to have any negative impact from what I see. Running the latest mint with cinnamon and win7 (dual boot) from a fresh install (but after installing drivers on windows) mint uses less memory, works quicker (with effects on) however it boots slightly slower.
I looked into that when I bought a win7 laptop that was practically unusable. It took 15(ish) seconds to open a web browser! That machine runs at a usable speed (e.g. couple of seconds for web browser) with mint. It has been perfectly stable and requires fewer updates than windows. They are often smaller size and install quicker without requiring a reboot as soon as they complete.
I can sing the praises of windows too. The best OS is the one thats right for the job and personal choice.
"That theoretical advantage means that an OEM install requires a disk with network drivers, a disk with graphics drivers and often many other disks of other drivers. An OEM install comes without network (not tried win8 yet?) which means you cant get the drivers for your system without installing drivers for your system. It also means poor support for any plugged in technology even as fundamental as graphics. Because of this windows cannot even identify the card to tell you what you need to install. So on a poor resolution you run the install software assuming you have the disk."
That's just crap - OEMs can install whatever drivers they wish without ever impacting kernel stability or requiring regression testing. If your OEM chooses not to then that's not an OS issue - I have an Acer Aspire S7, a Dell XPS 12, and older Dell XPS 13 all running Windows 8 and everything I have ever connected just works - automatically downloading the drivers if it doesn't already have them.
"Also the bloat doesnt seem to have any negative impact from what I see. Running the latest mint with cinnamon and win7 (dual boot) from a fresh install (but after installing drivers on windows) mint uses less memory, works quicker (with effects on) however it boots slightly slower."
Try comparing Android to Windows Phone performance, memory requirements and stability then....
As to Mint, previous benchmarks have proven that it is much slower than Windows: http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=intel_windows8_ubuntu&num=2
and Mint has required many times more updates than Windows (over 9 times more security vulnerabilities!): http://secunia.com/advisories/product/40762/
Your Windows laptop was probably configured with OEM bloatware. Windows 7 machines I have owned launch IE instantly and load the start page in well under 1 second.
@AC
"That's just crap - OEMs can install whatever drivers they wish without ever impacting kernel stability or requiring regression testing."
I was talking about the official windows OEM disk. That is an OS issue if it cant download the drivers it needs because it doesnt have network drivers. I did however say I have yet to try windows 8, I bought 7 when I upgraded to an 8Gb ram system but only had 32bit windows XP. It cost me £80 for windows and zilch for linux. I am glad to hear windows 8 starts with network drivers and can find needed drivers, that is an improvement over previous versions. Even on 7 I find I need to install network drivers and then manually find a load of others because windows cant detect what I have.
"As to Mint, previous benchmarks have proven that it is much slower than Windows:" and "Your Windows laptop was probably configured with OEM bloatware. Windows 7 machines I have owned launch IE instantly and load the start page in well under 1 second."
Again you compare windows 8 (I dont have) to mint. The point was I bought a win7 laptop which couldnt be used because it was too slow on a clean install. Yet mint runs normal on it. However it obviously had bloatware which I had to uninstall before I would even use the machine. To fairly test the memory requirements I used OEM cds (official MS win 7 and mint 14) on my much beefier system when I upgraded to SSD drives.
"and Mint has required many times more updates than Windows (over 9 times more security vulnerabilities!)"
I am not attacking windows (you seem to think I am). However I dont see how producing security updates is a bad thing? Not producing them is very bad. Also when you mention mint updates are they just mint updates? The mint update patches software too where windows usually has loads of independent update software. For example firefox is updated by mint update but on windows mozilla had to write a custom thing which now runs in the background.
"Try comparing Android to Windows Phone performance, memory requirements and stability then"
From what I heard android requires less memory and has better performance. Didnt Nokia have problems with windows phones because it required more processing power to run? I might be wrong I dont bother with smart phones.
"However I dont see how producing security updates is a bad thing?"
The point was that you stated that Mint required fewer updates. Clearly not the case.
"From what I heard android requires less memory and has better performance. Didnt Nokia have problems with windows phones because it required more processing power to run"
Nope - the other way round - many Android Phones require 2GB RAM and are widely known for slow downs and having to be rebooted to restore performance - Windows Phone runs fine with 512MB. No Nokia have never had any such problems. Single core Windows Phones also outperform quad core Android handsets in UI speed tests....
"The decline in unaffiliated submitters, he said, was probably due to the nature of the job market today"
Hmm I wonder if it has anything to do with the increasingly draconian Intellectual Property policies operated by what I think would be an increasing number of employers? If the one I work for is anything to go by, anything I write either in or out of the office automatically becomes their property.
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all the work on all the desktops for the past 2 years is to make them user friendly to the average joe by adding all the childish icons and lame widgets etc.. no average joe will use linux as a desktop OS if they cannot install a game because it is`nt on a repository, buy on a download site like cnet etc as a RPM, which you have to install in termal, which you forget the command every time you need to install something, you have to hit google again and again
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http://files.cyberciti.biz/uploads/tips/2008/12/linux-desktop-customization.jpg
only nerds will type
sudo wget http://www.medibuntu.org/sources.list.d/intrepid.list --output-document=/etc/apt/sources.list.d/medibuntu.list && sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install medibuntu-keyring && sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install w64codecs
sudo apt-get install acroread
in the terminal to install something. or go linux needs to make .rpm2 so other sites can distribute files easier, and acts like .msi installers in windows