Server success in Windows environment
Unlike most posts here, and just about all of mine, this isn't a request for help (except peripherally); it's a report on something I got to work that folks might find interesting. I'm working as the volunteer IT person in my town's municipal office. I first got involved in that by getting everyone onto a Comcast broadband Internet connection. Of course, the working environment was 100% Windows. However, one of the town's wishlist items was a "server", whatever that meant. My obvious question: if it's a server, what is it serving? Anyway, it turned out that the main function people were looking for was backup. So I set up a box for them (total cost well under $500) running (of course) SuSE Linux 9.1, with the promise that it would look to all of them like just another Windows machine (thanks to Samba, of course). And indeed it does! Furthermore, using a crontab, a shell script, and setting the Windows permissions properly (that was the hardest part), I've arranged things so that the backup is fully automatic; the Linux box simply runs around the office several times a day collecting the folders to be backed up, and no one has to do anything or even notices that the backup is happening. More precisely, it does a backup of everything it can find at 9 am and then every two hours after that it collects the files it hasn't gotten earlier during the day because machines were turned off or otherwise inaccessible. Of course I'd dearly love to boot Windows from the office altogether, but I have to be honest about it: if the users perceive a loss of functionality or performance, or find the interface hard to use, they won't accept it. And everyone is running some version of MS Office, of course. I see two alternatives for introducing Linux but no way to make either of them acceptable. I could install OpenOffice, but I can't honestly make the case that it does everything that Office does and does it as well, without any extra complications. Or I could install Wine (or whatever its semicommercial version is these days) and stick with MS Office, but the performance hit would probably be unacceptable and I have my doubts about the stability also. I'd be interested in ideas on how to sell Linux in this environment, but I have to be honest about it, and the office staff, unlike me, has little inherent reason to make the change and a big reason (the learning curve) not to. Paul Abrahams
On Wed, 2004-10-13 at 21:42, Paul W. Abrahams wrote:
Unlike most posts here, and just about all of mine, this isn't a request for help (except peripherally); it's a report on something I got to work that folks might find interesting.
I'm working as the volunteer IT person in my town's municipal office. I first got involved in that by getting everyone onto a Comcast broadband Internet connection. Of course, the working environment was 100% Windows. However, one of the town's wishlist items was a "server", whatever that meant. My obvious question: if it's a server, what is it serving?
Anyway, it turned out that the main function people were looking for was backup. So I set up a box for them (total cost well under $500) running (of course) SuSE Linux 9.1, with the promise that it would look to all of them like just another Windows machine (thanks to Samba, of course). And indeed it does! Furthermore, using a crontab, a shell script, and setting the Windows permissions properly (that was the hardest part), I've arranged things so that the backup is fully automatic; the Linux box simply runs around the office several times a day collecting the folders to be backed up, and no one has to do anything or even notices that the backup is happening. More precisely, it does a backup of everything it can find at 9 am and then every two hours after that it collects the files it hasn't gotten earlier during the day because machines were turned off or otherwise inaccessible.
Of course I'd dearly love to boot Windows from the office altogether, but I have to be honest about it: if the users perceive a loss of functionality or performance, or find the interface hard to use, they won't accept it. And everyone is running some version of MS Office, of course.
I see two alternatives for introducing Linux but no way to make either of them acceptable. I could install OpenOffice, but I can't honestly make the case that it does everything that Office does and does it as well, without any extra complications. Or I could install Wine (or whatever its semicommercial version is these days) and stick with MS Office, but the performance hit would probably be unacceptable and I have my doubts about the stability also.
I'd be interested in ideas on how to sell Linux in this environment, but I have to be honest about it, and the office staff, unlike me, has little inherent reason to make the change and a big reason (the learning curve) not to.
Except of course that windows is so hard to support... with the viruses, crashes, and other gunk... First Convince them they need to use openstandards, like all published documents in PDF format (You don't know what version of word the readers will have)... And make them choose a standard for editable files, (If someone buys as new pc, with word 2004, he either has to store everything in word 2000, or buy word 2004 for everydbody in the office!) Just offer them support on linux, and on thier own with windows... Then setup a pxes cdrom's for them, with it they can run linux on the server from thier pc's, simply by booting from cdrom.... The next time everything falls flat on a pc, tell them to boot from that CDROM and they can keep working... In this way let them do the choosing... changing to linux front end may be a little more dificult than changing from 2000 to XP (a german study put them at 73% to 78% productive from word go for the jobs that thier workers had to do), but thier gains are in no viruses, no crashes and no hassles... And put thier files on shares in the server, so that when they throw the pc's away they still have everything.... In short, make it as easy for them to change to linux as you can... let windows run it's course... By trying to convince them to change you put them on a skeptical frame of mind, just waiting for any problem to point at... BTW, have you seen StoreBackup? That would be quite an addition for server... Jerry
Paul Abrahams
Op woensdag 13 oktober 2004 22:16, schreef Jerome R. Westrick:
First Convince them they need to use openstandards, like all published documents in PDF format
Is PDF a real open standard, or is it more a format that is more or less stable and available for most OS flavours? The real open standard for documents seems to become the one form OASIS. That might even become an iso standard. -- Richard Bos Without a home the journey is endless
Richard, On Wednesday 13 October 2004 13:15, Richard Bos wrote:
Op woensdag 13 oktober 2004 22:16, schreef Jerome R. Westrick:
First Convince them they need to use openstandards, like all published documents in PDF format
Is PDF a real open standard, or is it more a format that is more or less stable and available for most OS flavours? The real open standard for documents seems to become the one form OASIS. That might even become an iso standard.
I suppose it depends on what you mean by "a real open standard." Adobe controls it, but publishes it freely. It's a stable target for development and Adobe is unlikely to make non-backward-compatible changes. On the other hand, while I worked there the the PostScript Level 2 standard came out. I heard one of the engineers exlaim "Clone this!" (the level 2 spec is much larger than the original spec--up from 320 to 760 pages). And as you know, the Ghostscript people did clone the Level 2 features.
-- Richard Bos Without a home the journey is endless
Randall Schulz
On Wednesday 13 October 2004 21.42, Paul W. Abrahams wrote:
Unlike most posts here, and just about all of mine, this isn't a request for help (except peripherally); it's a report on something I got to work that folks might find interesting.
I'm working as the volunteer IT person in my town's municipal office. I first got involved in that by getting everyone onto a Comcast broadband Internet connection. Of course, the working environment was 100% Windows. However, one of the town's wishlist items was a "server", whatever that meant. My obvious question: if it's a server, what is it serving?
Anyway, it turned out that the main function people were looking for was backup. So I set up a box for them (total cost well under $500) running (of course) SuSE Linux 9.1, with the promise that it would look to all of them like just another Windows machine (thanks to Samba, of course). And indeed it does! Furthermore, using a crontab, a shell script, and setting the Windows permissions properly (that was the hardest part), I've arranged things so that the backup is fully automatic; the Linux box simply runs around the office several times a day collecting the folders to be backed up, and no one has to do anything or even notices that the backup is happening. More precisely, it does a backup of everything it can find at 9 am and then every two hours after that it collects the files it hasn't gotten earlier during the day because machines were turned off or otherwise inaccessible.
Of course I'd dearly love to boot Windows from the office altogether, but I have to be honest about it: if the users perceive a loss of functionality or performance, or find the interface hard to use, they won't accept it. And everyone is running some version of MS Office, of course.
I see two alternatives for introducing Linux but no way to make either of them acceptable. I could install OpenOffice, but I can't honestly make the case that it does everything that Office does and does it as well, without any extra complications. Or I could install Wine (or whatever its semicommercial version is these days) and stick with MS Office, but the performance hit would probably be unacceptable and I have my doubts about the stability also.
I'd be interested in ideas on how to sell Linux in this environment, but I have to be honest about it, and the office staff, unlike me, has little inherent reason to make the change and a big reason (the learning curve) not to.
Paul Abrahams
Congratulations to a work well done! ¨ The way is paved for your "dream" to get rid of MS. Why don't you help the community (ie. us) and write a nice HowTo on how you did, and what you encountered as problems. As for the exchange of desktops, try and see if you cant get a few "testpersons" (handpicked of course) to evaluate Linux for a few weeks, and have them tell the others how they have found the new OS. Just make sure you have the specifications for what the system i needed to do. So that all of their needs are met. I have seen several places changing into Linux when they have found it to be equal or better in functionality, and a lot better in speed and stability. Especially in the area of programming and sysadministration. Good luck in the future! -- /Rikard ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Rikard Johnels email : rikjoh@norweb.se Web : http://www.rikjoh.com Mob : +46 735 05 51 01 ------------------------ Public PGP fingerprint ---------------------------- < 15 28 DF 78 67 98 B2 16 1F D3 FD C5 59 D4 B6 78 46 1C EE 56 >
Rikard Johnels wrote:
On Wednesday 13 October 2004 21.42, Paul W. Abrahams wrote:
<STUFF DELETED>
I'd be interested in ideas on how to sell Linux in this environment, but I have to be honest about it, and the office staff, unlike me, has little inherent reason to make the change and a big reason (the learning curve) not to.
Paul Abrahams
Congratulations to a work well done! ¨ The way is paved for your "dream" to get rid of MS.
Why don't you help the community (ie. us) and write a nice HowTo on how you did, and what you encountered as problems.
As for the exchange of desktops, try and see if you cant get a few "testpersons" (handpicked of course) to evaluate Linux for a few weeks, and have them tell the others how they have found the new OS.
Just make sure you have the specifications for what the system i needed to do. So that all of their needs are met. I have seen several places changing into Linux when they have found it to be equal or better in functionality, and a lot better in speed and stability.
Especially in the area of programming and sysadministration.
Good luck in the future!
Sometimes it can be difficult to get even knowledgeable colleagues to use Linux. I've had some with mainframe and Sun/Solaris as their daily chores not eager to move from Windows to Linux on their laptops, some have installed Linux on a partition, then used Windows exclusively, still wondering what they could use Linux for in their daily grind, even though they knew I exclusively use Linux, having blasted 95 off my laptop years ago. There was one guy who installed Linux and found it more suitable for projects internally and developing stuff for part time consultancy, that was after he'd installed SuSE 8.1 all by himself as I'd been called down the office to look at something else, I only had to setup /etc/hosts and /etc/resolv.conf for him. He's no wizard at Solaris, but he has a way with anything computing. I think possibly the best approach would be to introduce Linux for anyone new to the office, perhaps have a couple of spare PC's with Linux on that could act as temporary replacements when their PC's have problems. Also mozilla/firefox (many use them on Windows) together with OpenOffice.org would ease the transition. Six years ago I was tasked to produce a set of tools on top of RedHat 6.2 that would allow our guys to switch worldwide, my boss sent the CD's off to HQ in Sunnyvale, California via our Vice President of Product Support, when later I quizzed him after the guys asked when they would get them, he said he thought he distributed them - perhaps in litter bins at Heathrow airport. With lack of support from top management, the Linux development manager who had been rehired from Cisco to do the job of bringing Linux to all products, got fed up and went back to Cisco, the company fired all 30-odd Linux guys and a year ago I heard they (Fujitsu) were busily trying to hire Linux guys. There was an article some months ago where a new IT director was bent on deploying Linux, he fired the most dyed-in-the-wool Windows guys and hired fewer Linux guys, TCO benefits resulted. Regards Sid. -- Sid Boyce .... Hamradio G3VBV and keen Flyer =====LINUX ONLY USED HERE=====
participants (6)
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Jerome R. Westrick
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Paul W. Abrahams
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Randall R Schulz
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Richard Bos
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Rikard Johnels
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Sid Boyce