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Linux Business

IBM's Linux Upgrade Roadmap 281

Posted by michael from the cheat-sheet dept.
petrus4 writes "IBM have put together a nine-part series on upgrading from various incarnations of Windows (NT in particular) to Linux. Although it's mainly aimed at corporate customers, it's a good read, and could help the Linux advocacy effort in general."
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IBM's Linux Upgrade Roadmap More

IBM's Linux Upgrade Roadmap

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  • Good to See (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 28, 2004 @12:43PM (#8696313)
    It's good to see that large companies who understand Linux are willing to publicly fly in the face of SCO.

    • Re:Good to See (Score:5, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 28, 2004 @01:02PM (#8696424)
      First point on roadmap.

      Change businessmodel from:
      1: Do stuff.
      2: sell it.
      3: Profit!

      To:
      1: Do stuff.
      2: Give it away for free.
      3: Hmmm.....

      • Re:Good to See (Score:4, Informative)

        by dmaxwell ( 43234 ) on Sunday March 28, 2004 @01:38PM (#8696600)
        IBM isn't giving z-series machines or the service contracts that go with them away......

      • wrong business model (Score:5, Interesting)

        by hak1du ( 761835 ) on Sunday March 28, 2004 @01:52PM (#8696656) Journal
        The current business model using Windows is:

        1. Do stuff
        2. Report plenty of bugs, RFEs to MS for free
        3. Pay annual licensing fees to MS
        3a. Hope that Microsoft won't screw you by making changes to their s/w that help their bottom line but hurt you
        4. Hope enough money is left over from your core business

        With OSS s/w, this becomes

        1. Do stuff
        2. Report plenty of bugs, RFEs to OSS project (occasionally fix/implement one) for free
        3. Make profit from your core business

        In both cases, you do free work for other people, but with OSS, all the free work is aggregated and you don't pay for it over and over again. With MS, you end up paying for the same piece of software and for the volunteer work of others and yourself not just once, but over and over again. Furthermore, with MS and other commercial s/w vendors, you constantly run the risk that they will screw you by discontinuing or changing products you depend on, and you have no recourse.

        The business case for OSS is easy to make: OSS greatly reduces risks and cost of ownership. OSS isn't without any costs, but it is cheaper on balance.

        Note that OSS is a business model and money saver for the actual end users, comapnies whose business is not the creation of the OSS itself, but something else. Founding a s/w company that creates OSS and makes money from it is, as you yourself observe, a long shot and only works rarely. And that's OK.

        • Re:wrong business model (Score:4, Insightful)

          by Endive4Ever ( 742304 ) on Sunday March 28, 2004 @02:35PM (#8696906)
          With OSS the model is.

          1. Do stuff.
          2. Find problems and bugs.
          3. Hope somebody out there at random fixes it.
          4. Wait some more.
          5. Hopefully still make profit.

          The notion of treating your business computers like 'information appliances,' meanwhile, has vaporized. And that's what a lot of businesses are after. Companies don't hire mechanical engineers to build them special-purpose cogs for the copying machine that will make it produce copies 20% faster. They won't hire programmers, either.

          Commercial vendors are in a drive toward standaridzation, and working to turn computer software, and the support needed to administer it, into a commodity. The notion of returning to the 1980's method of hiring 'consultants' to engage in special code tweaks on their equipment is antiquated and it's exactly what businesses do NOT want any longer.

          Now, if IBM can hide all that activity beneath a 'shroud' called IBM, and certify their team of people to engage in said support activities, they'll get somewhere.

          Gonna work as a drone for IBM sometime in the near future? You're not gonna get the contract to work on IBM deployments as an independent contractor.

          • Re:wrong business model (Score:4, Insightful)

            by Master of Transhuman ( 597628 ) on Sunday March 28, 2004 @04:56PM (#8697852) Homepage
            > Commercial vendors are in a drive toward
            > standaridzation, and working to turn computer
            > software, and the support needed to administer
            > it, into a commodity. The notion of returning to > the 1980's method of hiring 'consultants' to
            > engage in special code tweaks on their equipment
            > is antiquated

            BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAH!!!!

            I'm sure the massive amount of money being made by Oracle's services division and IBM's and HP's and... Well, you get the picture.

            Consultants are NOT going anywhere anytime soon - especially not to India.

            Have a nice day.

          • Re:wrong business model (Score:4, Insightful)

            by hak1du ( 761835 ) on Sunday March 28, 2004 @06:02PM (#8698392) Journal
            With OSS the model is.

            1. Do stuff.
            2. Find problems and bugs.
            3. Hope somebody out there at random fixes it.
            4. Wait some more.
            5. Hopefully still make profit.

            You got points 3. and 4. wrong: if you need it, you don't wait, you fix it yourself and return the fixes.

            Commercial vendors are in a drive toward standaridzation, and working to turn computer software, and the support needed to administer it, into a commodity.

            Yes, and nothing about what I said contradicts that. If you outsource your support and administration, then the company you outsource it to becomes the participant in the OSS projects. That's actually the most common form of OSS usage, where companies like RedHat, SuSE, etc. get paid for easy-to-install (but still OSS) solutions, but they sponsor projects to fix specific bugs and add specific enhancements that many of their customers want. If anything, OSS works better in that kind of world than something like Microsoft.

            The notion of treating your business computers like 'information appliances,' meanwhile, has vaporized.

            No matter how you handle the low-level maintenance of your software, and no matter whether you go with commercial or OSS, for many businesses, that is suicide anyway. Business software encodes how businesses run; it basically is the business.
            You can treat it like an "information appliance" about as much as you can treat the CEO like an "information appliance".

      • Re:Good to See (Score:4, Informative)

        by spellraiser ( 764337 ) on Sunday March 28, 2004 @01:52PM (#8696660) Journal

        Allow me to fill in the blanks:

        Change businessmodel from:
        1. Do stuff
        2. Sell it
        3. Profit!

        To:
        1. Do stuff
        2. Give it away for free
        3. Sell services.
        4. Profit!

        Right?

        • Re:Good to See (Score:2, Insightful)

          by Anonymous Coward
          1. Write software
          2. Give software away
          3. Charge up the wazoo for hardware, complete solutions and good support
          4. Profit!

          Apparently noone here does business with IBM. Nothing IBM does is free, they just know that fighting OSS isn't worth it in the long run when they can keep making money in other ways and let the rest of the world help make their software work.

    • Re:Good to See (Score:2, Insightful)

      by smootc-m ( 730115 )
      > Linux is built for the network more than printing

      I found this point of view a rather interesting, if inaccurate, way to spin Linux versus Windows.

      The author goes on to explain the advantage of a command line interface for creating automated tasks. However, the Unix CLI was not originally built with networking in mind. There was no networking in ancient Unix (unless you count UUCP).

      As for Windows being designed around printers. I do not think that is correct either. I think the argument here is a bit
    • Big blue's move to give MSFT the blues?

  • IBM (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 28, 2004 @12:44PM (#8696319)
    Am I the only one who gets a tingly feeling deep inside when I read about IBM and linux? It just feels so nice to be backed by a mountain of hard cold cash ^_^

    • Nice to be backed by IBM ... (Score:5, Insightful)

      by squashed ( 664265 ) on Sunday March 28, 2004 @12:59PM (#8696404)
      Am I the only one who gets a tingly feeling deep inside when I read about IBM and linux? It just feels so nice to be backed by a mountain of hard cold cash.

      I get that same warm, tingly feeling inside as did the members of Team OS/2 in the old days.

      • I was a die-hard 0S/2'er....

        The optimist in me is hoping that IBM will stick to its guns this time.

        There is more support now, and if you remember, it was difficult to get systems with OS/2 preloaded on them.

        Linux has more marketshare, i think, and definetly more mindshare.

        I think Linux will clear the hurdle....

        • Re:Nice to be backed by IBM ... (Score:5, Interesting)

          by Spoing ( 152917 ) on Sunday March 28, 2004 @01:13PM (#8696482) Homepage
          1. I was a die-hard 0S/2'er....

          As was I -- scoffing, I tried it for a competitive analysis that marketing wanted and was hooked within 2 months. It was damn nice for the time, and some features in the WPS would be nice in KDE and/or Gnome if not at the window manager and -- better -- file system level.

          1. The optimist in me is hoping that IBM will stick to its guns this time.

          That's the beauty of it. It won't matter in the long run if they do or don't!

          1. There is more support now, and if you remember, it was difficult to get systems with OS/2 preloaded on them.

          Nearly impossible. Dell, Gateway, Compaq, and even IBM never preloaded OS/2. Now, we're getting preloads...and even companies like HP and IBM yelling that they are the biggest Linux supporter. Dell brags too...though I'd like them all to shut up and get the goods out there.

          1. Linux has more marketshare, i think, and definetly more mindshare.

          Linux isn't being laughed at. OS/2 was only taken seriously at the begining, and quickly became the ugly step child (though technically it was quite nice though prone to crash/lock the UI).

          1. I think Linux will clear the hurdle....

          I'm starting to see job listings specifically asking for Linux experience crop up in various places. My OS/2 experience never seemed to be important to anyone.

        • IBM continued to support OS/2 well after most other vendors would have completely canned it. The reality is that "it's about the application software" and there's only so much any OS vendor can do to incent people, especially commercial vendors, to support an OS for which they see a limited market. Linux already has more real world support in the software market, including from some true heavyweights like SAP, Oracle and of course IBM that OS/2 ever did.

        • Re:Nice to be backed by IBM ... (Score:5, Interesting)

          by pair-a-noyd ( 594371 ) on Sunday March 28, 2004 @01:51PM (#8696650)
          What other choice do they have?
          They stepped on Bill's weener years ago so M$ is NOT an option.

          IBM has put ALL of it's eggs in the Linux basket. It's sink or swim and the ONLY life preserver available to IBM is Linux.

          • Re:Nice to be backed by IBM ... (Score:5, Informative)

            by AstroDrabb ( 534369 ) * on Sunday March 28, 2004 @02:55PM (#8697027)
            What? That is sooo far from the truth. IBM's core business is based on services. In fact they are a bigger company (by revenue) then MS. In the end, IBM's global services will help you with whatever tasks you want. They will help you with MS solutions, Linux solutions and Unix solutions. IBM is in a great position, because no matter what, they can deliver their services on any platform. I think IBM is pushing Linux because they don't want to have to bend over for MS. I think most of the big companies are starting to get tired of bending over for MS with maybe the exception of Dell. To be able to truly leverage the MS Windows platform, you need to make some "partnership" with MS to be able to get undocumented features, API's, document formats and protocols. And MS drops those "partnerships" at the drop of a hat. And not only that, if MS thinks your core business is a big money maker, that "partnership" is over and they will "embrace and extend" your business out of the market with their own competing product. Look at all the Anti-virus and personal firewall companies now. With MS putting their own AV and personal firewall out, over the next 2-5 years, those companies will need to look for some other way to make cash since the home market will no longer need their software. So much for all those "partnerships". With Linux, all these large companies start on a level playing field and can add on top of that their "special sauce" and services to differentiate their business and we would have some great competition which means great products and technology advancing at a much faster pace.

        • Re:Nice to be backed by IBM ... (Score:5, Interesting)

          by WindBourne ( 631190 ) on Sunday March 28, 2004 @02:20PM (#8696821) Journal
          Actually, IBM did stick to their guns back then. The real problem was that they backed it with the a similar attitude that is seen by another company; You will not be fired by picking us. They charged top dollars and delivered an inferior product. As time went on, they tried to keep their prices up, but had to keep propping it up via their other products. In particular, IBM counted on all their hardware sale to push it. They used their hardware monopoly to try and prop it up. All the while, they were being picked apart at hardware by a bunch of small start-ups in the mid-size (unix) and low-end (PCs). Yet, so many in the press backed IBM on OS2 and ignored Dos and the start-up Windows 3.0. In fact, back then, many in the press were supported by IBM and were writting a lot of trash. Many mags and writers from the 80's disappeared as they were ruled wrong all the time.

        • Which guns? (Score:4, Insightful)

          by fm6 ( 162816 ) on Sunday March 28, 2004 @02:39PM (#8696932) Homepage Journal
          The optimist in me is hoping that IBM will stick to its guns this time.
          Really, they never manned the guns in the first place. The IBM sales organization found it easier to sell Windows-based systems than ones based on Windows, and was never made to toe the line.

          Another reason OS/2 was doomed from the start: people don't like to buy technology from their competitors. That's why AT&T finally had to spin off its manufacturing arm, so it could sell stuff to competing phone companies. I don't know how hard IBM tried to get Compaq or Dell to bundle OS/2, but it would have been a hard sell.

          As for Linux, IBM hasn't yet manned all the guns there either. They're selling it strictly as a server OS. You hear noises about them moving to Linux as a standard desktop, but so far these are just noises -- every IBM laptop, desktop, and workstation still comes with Windows pre-loaded!

      • The difference is, of course, that while IBM does a lot for Linux, they don't own it, and thus can't shut it down the way they did OS/2.

        That's why I tend to stick with open-source, community-developed OSs now. I've learned my lesson after OS/2.

    • Forget the cold cash (Score:5, Interesting)

      by fm6 ( 162816 ) on Sunday March 28, 2004 @02:21PM (#8696827) Homepage Journal
      It's the huge marketing, sales, and support organizations that make me feel tingly!

      But before you get too enthusiastic, remember that they're treating Linux strictly as a server OS. Go to their web site and try to find a single desktop, workstation, or laptop that does not come bundled with Windows. You don't even have the option of buying the system witout an OS!

      • But before you get too enthusiastic, remember that they're treating Linux strictly as a server OS.

        Does that really matter for _now_? Look at how MS got into the server business? They had a desktop product and used that to get into the server market. Linux can do the same thing, only in reverse. Get a strong hold on the server market and then leverage its way into the desktop market. A large server market for Linux means more money going into Linux development which will inderectly help Linux on the d

  • Anti Microsoft bias (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Of course, of course. Whenever you change from Microsoft to anything else it is an "upgrade". Not that I don't agree :)

  • How to buy a IBM Thinkpad with Linux? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by jopet ( 538074 ) on Sunday March 28, 2004 @12:46PM (#8696336) Journal
    Do they answer how to buy IBM computers without being forced to also buy a preinstalled Windows? Do they answer why they still "recommend Windows XP Professional" for their laptops? Do they answer where to get Linux support for their hardware - including wlan, power management etc.?

    • Re:How to buy a IBM Thinkpad with Linux? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by TwinkieStix ( 571736 ) on Sunday March 28, 2004 @01:34PM (#8696585) Homepage
      I don't think that the majority of the intended audience of this paper is asking those questions. I believe that IBM's support for desktop Linux is minimal while their server support is extremely heavy. They will give support to customers who purchase an IBM Linux server and need to get a RAID card working in it.

      But their opinion, and the opinion of most non-slashdoters, is that Linux isn't ready for the desktop now for home and many coporate users.

      This isn't a flamebait. It's just that the article isn't supposed to answer these questions. XP professional IS what they recommend and for a good reason. Support for wlan isn't IBMs problem. Servers don't need to have a wireless network connection. If you want support for Linux Hardware from IBM, go here [ibm.com].

      • Re:How to buy a IBM Thinkpad with Linux? (Score:4, Informative)

        by jopet ( 538074 ) on Sunday March 28, 2004 @05:31PM (#8698139) Journal
        The thing is that their laptops are not only extremely good hardware but most of them very usable with Linux. I have been running SuSE on several Thinkpad models without many problems (apart from Wlan and advanced power management). So they ARE ready, usable and practical. And it just sucks when you want to buy their hardware and then get forced to also buy MS Windows. Maybe if companies (not only IBM) would finally start to let people use Linux on the desktop it would get ready pretty fast?
    • Do they answer how to buy IBM computers without being forced to also buy a preinstalled Windows? Do they answer why they still "recommend Windows XP Professional" for their laptops? Do they answer where to get Linux support for their hardware - including wlan, power management etc.?

      Because it will cost them more money providing support than it would make them supporting it?

  • Slightly disingenuous (Score:5, Insightful)

    by CdBee ( 742846 ) on Sunday March 28, 2004 @12:48PM (#8696349)
    What they are discussing is migration from NTx to *nix

    While I look forward to the day a Linux distro can upgrade an NT system, carrying forward system settings, user passwords, domain logons and applications carried across into WINE, this isn't happening anytime soon.

    I'd be surprised if it doesn't happen eventually, though.

    • Re:Slightly disingenuous (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Coneasfast ( 690509 ) on Sunday March 28, 2004 @12:53PM (#8696376)
      While I look forward to the day a Linux distro can upgrade an NT system, carrying forward system settings, user passwords, domain logons and applications carried across into WINE, this isn't happening anytime soon.

      well all this requires is a program that saves settings from NT and restores them into linux, without neccessarily upgrading your NT partition to linux. although this would be more useful to the corporate world as home users probably wouldn't need this i would imagine.

      • Re:Slightly disingenuous (Score:5, Insightful)

        by mattdm ( 1931 ) on Sunday March 28, 2004 @01:40PM (#8696605) Homepage
        Don't most big corporations generate desktop systems from images (via Ghost or whatever)? Individual settings are _assumed_ to get wiped back to Corporate Policy periodically anyway. While the suggested feature is a decent idea, it seems most useful to small businesses and for home users....

    • Re:Slightly disingenuous (Score:5, Interesting)

      by mrroach ( 164090 ) on Sunday March 28, 2004 @02:00PM (#8696705)
      At Novell's Brainshare conference this week they demoed a new migration tool which saved all the user's documents and application settings, wiped the drive, installed SuSE, configured all the apps for the user (Outlook settings map to Evolution, IE bookmarks saved in Epiphany etc) all in the space of 5 minutes or so.

      At the moment it looks like a pretty custom job, but I can definitely see a generic tool being in the works.

      -Mark

  • That's a training guide, not an upgrade roadmap (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Animats ( 122034 ) on Sunday March 28, 2004 @12:49PM (#8696356) Homepage
    That article is about how to learn Linux, not how to convert your shop to Linux. A conversion guide would have more info about how to convert data, which is the real problem.
    • Which data in particular?

      • Looks like the moderators are on crack again, because when I first read that post my thought was: nonsense exporting data is usually trivial. Even when data is held in undocumented proprietary binary files there is usually an option to export to something that can be manipulated. The hard part is reimplementing databases, spreadsheets and so on, but that's mostly straight implementation as you already have a proven design.

        Of course things may be harder if you use an esoteric 3D design package with its o

        • Yup. He made a blanket statement with nothing to back it up, so I'm calling him on it. Show me the data on a desktop machine that is Windows specific, and needs converting to Linux.

          As far as apps go, office formats are fairly well handled by OpenOffice.org already. Email and web settings are portable, or can be managed by Mozilla import filters. Databases and the like can usually be exported painlessly. But really, anything application specific has nought to do with Linux, and changing platforms when you d

    • My view (Score:3, Interesting)

      by lazypenguingirl ( 743158 )
      I have been using linux and BSD at home for many of my own projects for years. I always kept a windows partition for school-related things. Finally, one day, I realized how completely sick of windows I was and wanted to drop it altogether. Mind you, I had all my school work and research under windows because that's what my advisors, professors and collaborators used too. I didn't really have a problem dropping Windows. Later versions of Open Office treated my old Word files rather kindly, even Impress

  • Suse vs. Blue Linux (Score:5, Interesting)

    by $calar ( 590356 ) on Sunday March 28, 2004 @12:51PM (#8696360) Journal
    So if IBM is now going to be using Suse, does this mean that the Blue Linux rumor is bogus?

    • Re:Suse vs. Blue Linux (Score:5, Interesting)

      by tjwhaynes ( 114792 ) on Sunday March 28, 2004 @01:06PM (#8696444)

      So if IBM is now going to be using Suse, does this mean that the Blue Linux rumor is bogus?

      Speaking as a Linux user inside IBM, I always took the view that the Blue Linux rumour was bogus, or at least misleading. There is linux software flowing around the internals of IBM - plenty of it. And we do have various packages nicely wrapped up in RPMs that aren't available outside IBM (Lotus Notes 6.51 running on a standard WINE base springs immediately to mind). However, an internal distribution is a far cry from launching an external distro. That's not to say it will never happen. Just it doesn't look likely imminently.

      ... and yes, my sig DOES apply here. I'm not an IBM spokesman reading some approved script.

      Cheers,
      Toby Haynes

      • Re:Suse vs. Blue Linux (Score:2, Informative)

        by Anonymous Coward

        ... and yes, my sig DOES apply here.

        I'm assuming you have some kind of disclaimer in your sig. Please be aware that lots of people disable the viewing of sigs in Slashdot, so they won't ever see anything. Sigs aren't the place to put important information.

  • Upgrade? (Score:5, Informative)

    by flewp ( 458359 ) on Sunday March 28, 2004 @12:51PM (#8696361)
    While some may consider it an upgrade (and pretty much everyone here at least would call it an upgrade), most average joe PC users might not. Afterall, he loses MS Office (and yes, I'm aware of the alternatives, but again, Joe Average might not), a lot of his games (WINE/etc might not be the best option), and everything he is familiar with.

    We're assuming you already have Linux installed.

    While the article does point you to linux.org for choosing a distro and whatnot, any good guide to switching to linux should at least cover the basic installation methods and what you'll need to think about before installing. Since distros have different installers, you don't want to get too indepth or focus on any one installer, but it should at least cover ideas that would be universal or at least common to getting ready to install linux.
    • It's mainly aimed at corporate customers
      Unless the Average Joe is running an entire corporation without any IT staff, either full time, on contract or otherwise, I don't see how his lack of knowledge would be a problem. These points would be covered as a contract is negotiated, presumably with IBM in this case.

  • Superb (Score:5, Insightful)

    by AbstracTus ( 576474 ) <`si.yranib' `ta' `ranie'> on Sunday March 28, 2004 @12:53PM (#8696375) Homepage
    Information like this has been needed for a long time, there are plenty of HowTo's and Man pages around, but not much information to help with the actual transfer from Windows to Linux. Good job IBM.

  • /grin (Score:5, Interesting)

    by 222 ( 551054 ) <stormseeker@gm[ ].com ['ail' in gap]> on Sunday March 28, 2004 @12:53PM (#8696378) Homepage
    Very elegantly put ;)
    ["If you have been using Windows for a long time, you are accustomed to rebooting the system for many reasons, from software installation to correcting problems with a service. This is a habit you will need to change to start thinking in Linux. Linux tends to be rather Newtonian in nature. Once set in motion, it will tend to stay in motion until it is acted upon by an outside force, such as a hardware failure."]

    • Re:/grin (Score:5, Insightful)

      by barzok ( 26681 ) on Sunday March 28, 2004 @01:21PM (#8696527)
      I'm not one to defend Microsoft but this "argument" is becoming less and less relevant every year. Sure, there are plenty of Windows boxen that need a regular reboot (my 2K box in my office at work gets rebooted daily because of shit video drivers). But there are just as many that run for weeks or more without a forced reboot. I'm trying to find the last reboot on my XP Pro desktop here at home and it looks like it was at least 22 days ago, at which point I installed a hotfix. Very few software installs I've done lately have required a reboot, and normally restarting a service will clear up most problems for me.

      The Linux community needs to stop hiding behind "we don't have to reboot" - it's just not as compelling an argument as it was 2 years ago. And with clustered servers becoming the norm, (MS AppCenter, etc.), reboots are hardly even noticed by the end-users.

      • Re:/grin (Score:3, Interesting)

        by mroch ( 715318 )
        My Linux box was restarted over 220 days ago (241 days, 13 hours, 18 minutes to be exact), when I upgraded the kernel. All other fixes have not needed a reboot.

        A forced restart because of a hotfix due to all of Microsoft's critical bugs is the same as if it had crashed, as far as I am concerned.
      • I have two hard drives on my computer. One is XP on which I play games and another is Slackware. I decided to install the Windows updates one day and since then it takes three minutes after reboot to do anything once I am in Windows. After 8 hours or so of being on my computer starts crawling to a halt and I need to reboot. I've tried defragmenting, having only essential services running but nothing would stop it from slowing down after a day's work. In linux I never have a problem with slow downs. Thi

      • Re:/grin (Score:3, Interesting)

        by 222 ( 551054 )
        Its not that i disagree with the fact that windows hasnt gotten better about uptimes, its simply the fact that certain tasks, even with windows xp, require a reboot. Driver updates, browser updates(WTF), patching services, its all much more than i care for. Given the rate that these patches are released, the fabled long uptimes that MS coders have worked so hard for is completely negated.

  • IBM Solution to Linux in 3 Easy Steps (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 28, 2004 @12:57PM (#8696395)
    1. Buy any machine equipped with an IBM Travelstar or Deskstar Hard drive.
    2. Install Windows OS and any related applications
    3. After the IBM drive crashes and destroys your data (6 to 8 mos), you can install Linux without worrying about prior data.

  • console (Score:4, Insightful)

    by ElGnomo ( 612336 ) on Sunday March 28, 2004 @01:00PM (#8696409)
    Step 2. Console crash course I think this is is the fundamental obstacle to the success of linux in the desktop. It is completely unrealistic to expect your avg user ( the type who never even consider changing their homepage because they dont know how ) to work with a console. And lets face it, linux today still requires you to work with a console for alot of things, esp software/hardware installation and system configuration.
    In fact, I just finished installing a wireless card in my linux box. Comprared, to windows, where I pop in a cd and hit install, under linux I had to:
    1: make & make install the software
    2: install some necessary wireless libraries
    3: manually configure the wireless card's config file
    4: set the kernel to intialize ath0 at startup
    now to a techie following a recipie, this is a piece of cake. However, it is quite beyond the capabilities of your avg windows user.

    • Re:console (Score:2, Insightful)

      by BiggerIsBetter ( 682164 )
      bah. another "linux is not ready for the desktop" troll. you leave out which distro you were using. for all i know, it might have been redhat 7 or lfs. maybe it was a current distro like mepis, mandrake, or suse. and maybe there were .debs or rpms already available, so you didn't really have to compile from source. mabe if the vendor gave a shit you could "pop in a cd and hit install" too. who knows...

    • Re:console (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Welsh Dwarf ( 743630 ) <<d.mills-slashdot> <at> <guesny.net>> on Sunday March 28, 2004 @01:14PM (#8696487) Homepage
      What distro are you using? or more importantly, what planet are you from?

      OK, I use Slackware at home, so I have all the fun you're talking about, but when I install systems for people, I install Mandrake, and I have never had easier hardware installation (and yes, I have delt with XP systems).

      A new printer? plug it in, turn it on, control center, click on printers, wait 30 secs, print a test page just to be sure....

      Netcards are just as easy, turn the machine off (sniff, so long uptime, I new you well :-() plug the card in, turn machine on, the card gets detected at boot up, I'm asked wether to configure it automagically or manually (for static ips etc) and most of the time that's all there is too it.

      I'm afraid your either misinformed, or trolling, because the hardware question has been well and truly delt with.

      Linux still has some technical hurdles to overcome before being a Joe Sixpack desktop machine (some cups quirks come to mind, where if you print to a turned off printer, you can only print to it again, if you reset it in the cups web interface, and I know there are other problems), but this is just 3 year old FUD.

    • Re:console (Score:3, Informative)

      by Radical Rad ( 138892 )
      now to a techie following a recipie, this is a piece of cake. However, it is quite beyond the capabilities of your avg windows user.

      Installing a printer driver or a new app is beyond the capabilities of your average windows user. This article seems to be written as an introduction for the next wave of people who will be dealing with Linux, average sysadmins who can do some things in Windows but are not experts. If things are done right, average windows users won't have to worry about any of this stuff for

    • Uh....can you say X? Any number of distros? Try giving a Windows user nothing but a DOS terminal to work with, see if he/she can install a wireless card with that (:

    • Re:console (Score:3, Insightful)

      by The Monster ( 227884 )

      Console crash course . . . It is completely unrealistic to expect your avg user . . . to work with a console.

      If you look at the top of the page, you'll see this is subtitled: (emphasis mine)

      A roadmap for

      developers making the transition to Linux

      A developer had damned well be able to do everything from the command line. Learning to write good install scripts to insulate that user from the ugly details is exactly that a developer should do. I'd even say it's his job to make things work for the averag

    • The intended audience for this set of IBM documents is System Administrators not Joe Sixpack Home User. Sysadmins should be no more afraid of a shell than they are of regedit.

      A corporate user of Linux will not be doing any of the things you've mentioned. IT will do that for them. Also distros like Lindows and Mandrake are moving further and further in the "just stick it in" direction every day.

    • Re:console (Score:3, Informative)

      by mrroach ( 164090 )
      I call shenanigans. What are you using, Linux From Scratch? Wireless libraries? what wireless libraries? Wireless support is at the kernel level, the only user-space tool you might need is iwconfig which is included in every semi-recent distro. As for the config file, I strongly suspect you are making that up as well.

      I tried SuSE a couple days ago (just to see where the "modern" distros stand compared to my usual Debian install) and after popping in my pcmcia wireless nic, a "New Hardware" window popped up

  • faulty windows/printer vs linux/net analogy? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by dankelley ( 573611 ) on Sunday March 28, 2004 @01:01PM (#8696412)
    In the first lesson we read that windows systems were designed with printing in mind, thus explaining the pretty gui interfaces, etc. Then we read that linux was designed with the network in mind, so that (quoting) "Since plain text works well across a network, text has always been the base for Linux configuration and data."

    Q: is the quoted idea historically accurate, given the development of unix, which begat linux?

  • Windows is a multi-user system.. WHAT? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by scriptguy ( 765161 ) on Sunday March 28, 2004 @01:02PM (#8696422)
    In the first link "Thinking Linux" the "Users and groups" paragraph states the following:

    Both Linux and Windows are multi-user operating systems. Both can be used by many different users, and give each user a separate environment and resources. Security is controlled based on the user's identity. Resource access can also be controlled by group membership, making it easier to work with rights for large numbers of users without having to touch each individual account.

    Other than file/printer sharing I have never seen a Windows system used by more than one person, unless they are talking about Terminal Serving. The majority of Windows installations are just a one user at a time system. That is certainly not multi-user. I was hoping for better from IBM but I guess the person writing the article does not know what a multi-user system actually is. Windows is NOT a multi-user system. I really wish IBM could have written a better article. Oh well more bad research. Next!

    • 1. Windows computers can have multiple user accounts, each of which having a seperate profile.

      2. Windows servers can have multiple users logged in simultaneously, each with their own user interface. This capability is included in all Windows Server operating systems.

      So how is Windows not a multi-user operating system? Just because you haven't seen Windows servers with concurrent logins doesn't mean that it isn't common, it just means that you are very ignorant.

    • Wrong. (Score:3, Informative)

      by NineNine ( 235196 )
      Windows is NOT a multi-user system.

      So then my machine at home, at which both myself and my girlfriend are logged in, both with completely different environments, both running programs at the same time, is NOT multi-user? Pray tell, what defines a multi-user system then, oh guru of all things computer?

      • Re:Wrong. (Score:4, Insightful)

        by Wyzard ( 110714 ) on Sunday March 28, 2004 @05:56PM (#8698344) Homepage

        A fully multi-user system would be one where both you and your girlfriend can be using the computer at the same time. Letting several users have sessions open is a step in the right direction, but it's not really multi-user if one of you has to stop what you're doing when the other wants to use the computer.

        That's not to say the technology isn't there, though. Terminal Services (and 2003's "remote desktop for administration") is properly multi-user. However, that's a separate feature which you have to buy a separate license for, and then manually turn on. With Linux systems, it's there out-of-the-box.

  • Not An Upgrade Guide (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Brian Puccio ( 736595 ) <brian@brianpuccio.net> on Sunday March 28, 2004 @01:04PM (#8696435) Homepage
    More of a linux primer than an upgrade guide. An upgrade guide would tell you how to dual boot to see if things work, move all your applications over to the Linux equivilant, and than, if you like it, show you how to remove the Windows portion.
  • When(If) they come out with a roadmap from AIX to Linux, THAT will really mean something, and will be a victorious day for both IBM and Linux I will look forward to.

    It is not easy and takes a lot of will power to shed old baggages.

  • nt domains upgrade is easy. (Score:5, Interesting)

    by lkcl ( 517947 ) <lkcl@lkcl.net> on Sunday March 28, 2004 @01:09PM (#8696462) Homepage
    almost every time someone mentions nt to linux data migration, i mention that if someone pays me money, i'll do the work.

    the migration tools for nt 4 style domains would take about 2 to 3 weeks to do: most of the work has already been done, it's a matter of documenting it, checking it and making it easier to use.

    the open source migration tools for nt 5 (aka w2k) style domains would take a bit longer: a few months, at most, though, as various efforts (e.g. heimdal) are already underway.

    the open source migration tools for exchange, now _that's_ a challenge, requiring about twelve to eighteen man-months of work to get somewhere.

    i know someone who has done most of the work already, in his spare time: it's proprietary but if an open source exchange project was to seriously take off, i know he'd consider releasing some of his code to 1) help out 2) make sure _his_ copyright notices are at the top of the files, because in open source just as in the proprietary world, the _first_ person to release is the one that tends to take off, not the best.

    ironically, just ONE company with more than one hundred employees that will be looking to pay microsoft's next set of exorbitant upgrade-because-everyone-else-has-and-oh-look-ever yone-we-send-documents-to-can't-read-them fees could instead pay me to do the development work on exchange and nt domains compatibility - and then NEVER HAVE TO PAY THEM AGAIN.

  • Great (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 28, 2004 @01:11PM (#8696474)
    It's not only a good read, but most importantly, it allways helps to point people to a resource provided by a big company to convince them, that linux is something worth considering and not just a geek toy.

    Even if they don't listen to me, they might just listen to IBM.

  • Mmmm. Nine-Part-Series (Score:4, Funny)

    by blair1q ( 305137 ) on Sunday March 28, 2004 @01:15PM (#8696494) Journal
    Upgrading from WinNT to WinXPPro:

    1. Insert disk. Answer questions.
    2. The usual ???
    3. Profit.

    Upgrading from WinNT to Linux:

    1. Delegate to line manager to hire transition team.
    2. Study IBM's 9-part series on upgrading systems.
    3. Days into weeks into months of unusual ???
    4. Hold post mortem on cost overruns and continuing bugs.
    5. Fire transition team and manager.
    6. Hire consulting firm to manage systems.
    7. Look for ways to cut costs elsewhere to cover P&L ass.
    8. Hope nobody asks ???
    9. Loss.

    • Re:Mmmm. Nine-Part-Series (Score:5, Insightful)

      by tomstdenis ( 446163 ) <tomstdenis.gmail@com> on Sunday March 28, 2004 @01:20PM (#8696524) Homepage
      Yeah unfortunately this requires something Americans and most modern business-types don't have...

      It's called long term planning. Sure right this instant it may cost more to move to Linux from WinNT. However, what about when license renewal day comes around? What happens when WinNT is no longer supported [e.g. no patches for the day-to-day exploits?] etc, etc, etc...

      In the long run the average linux distro [say Gentoo] will cost a hell of a lot less.

      And hey, if it requires the users to learn a bit about computers is that really such a bad thing? I mean for the most part people can just use KDE and be happy for it. For other things they can learn the fun way, google for it.

      Tom

    • Re:Mmmm. Nine-Part-Series (Score:5, Informative)

      by Kneht ( 218314 ) <kneht@abcdefghij ... cdefghijklmnopqr> on Sunday March 28, 2004 @01:32PM (#8696575)
      Let's see. As a former head of a department transitioning from NT to XP and as a current member of a much larger organization attempting the same transistion, I can assure you that NT to XP is no simple process.

      To start with, because the interface is so similar, plus "Hey it's just Windows!" comments from superiors means that few are taking the time to learn the intricate differences. (such as permissions and account handling)

      Then you get the broken programs.

      Then you get the boss who has [what he calls] critical data in an older version of Access that you must now move to [new] Access, which seems to be impossible in certain (read many) cases.

      Or, I can implement an IBM-driven Linux-based solution that would force superiors to treat it differently, plus I would have more control over whether or not to continue on the upgrade path to future versions. Microsoft doesn't give me that. To stay secure, even using their loose definition, means continually upgrading, breaking software, data, and perceptions all the while sending them more money.

      Oh, how I wanted to get out of that cycle at my last job. Now, I might be stuck implementing it, but at least I'm not responsible for the mess my superiors make trying to fall in line behind Microsoft.

      Kudos to IBM for making it reasonably easy to know what's in store for those trying to get away from Microsoft.

      • I call bullshit on this, Chumley. Permissions and account handling didn't change at all from NT to XP. So either you're lying or you confused the changes in the domain forest structure when you moved to AD from the NT domain auth model.

        I wish I could believe the latter was more likely, but I regret to say that I consider the former more probable. You see, you confuse an Office major vesion migration with an NT major version migration, and any sysadmin worth his or her salt would know that those are very
        • I call bullshit on this, Chumley. Permissions and account handling didn't change at all from NT to XP. So either you're lying or you confused the changes in the domain forest structure when you moved to AD from the NT domain auth model.

          Nice of you to put it so politely, but the permissions did change, subtly. Enough so that permission handling scripts are now broken for XP in my department. And my current level of permission is insufficient to fix it. And my superiors (?) can't figure out how because of

      • Your mistake:

        Relying on the intricate parts of an operating system in the first place.

  • Things that make you say Hmmm. (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Kihaji ( 612640 ) <lemkesr@@@uwec...edu> on Sunday March 28, 2004 @01:16PM (#8696502)
    1. This is an upgrade roadmap, yet they assume you have Linux installed. Hmmmm. 2. This is a developer upgrade roadmap, yet they say nothing of development tools or compilers available. Hmmm 3. They pimp Webmin like its the 2nd coming of jebus, and Caldera(SCO) is one of the largest supporters and the first company to use Webmin. Hmmm

  • Ultimate Killer App (Score:4, Interesting)

    by ksp ( 203038 ) on Sunday March 28, 2004 @01:20PM (#8696521) Homepage
    If someone feels like spending a lot of time in court, start writing an app for the following specs:

    0) Install spare HD and set BIOS to boot from CD, restart.
    1) Knoppix-based CD boots the server
    2) VMWare installation on CD boots the Windows OS from the HD on top of Linux.
    3) Various scripts portscan the VMWare-running server and scans the filesystem for info, creates a Linux installation on the empty disk and copies all services and shared files to this new installation. Creates Samba server to host login/password info if needed (PDC). Copies Exchange server, IIS, DNS etc. etc. Shutdown when finished.
    4) Swap the old intact primary HD with the brand new disk and restart, booting the new Linux clone. Test and apply any manual changes if needed.
    5) Sell these scripts as Linux Migration Kit.
    6) Get sued.

  • Webmin (Score:2, Informative)

    by LordK3nn3th ( 715352 )
    I see they mentioned Webmin. Goodies.

    I downloaded it with Mandrake's urpmi tool. It IS pretty nice.

    It lets you do everything from set up cron jobs easily, from looking at and closing running processes, to setting up apache and other servers. All through http or it seems with older versions some https thing, so you don't even need an SSH client, just a web browser. (Webmin also includes an SSH java client)
    • Right, Webmin is pretty much the end-all of administration tools, mainly because it isn't specifically taylored to one operating system. I am now using it on my newest production Slackware-based file server, and it has incredible utility, and even recognizes that it is running on Slack (with special care given to BSD-style init scripts).

      IMHO, the two greatest features (as if there were only two):
      1. It comes with a Java filemanager application. Although it's not much to look at, it is the only tool I've see

  • Misleading title (Score:4, Informative)

    by j.leidner ( 642936 ) <leidner@[ ].org ['acm' in gap]> on Sunday March 28, 2004 @01:31PM (#8696568) Homepage Journal
    The title of this post is a bit misleading--the series doesn't really tell you how to upgrade your system landscape from NT to Linux at all, it's merely a Linux tutorial for Windows users. I can see no corporate aspects discussed.

  • We need more of this! (Score:5, Interesting)

    by ErichTheWebGuy ( 745925 ) on Sunday March 28, 2004 @01:32PM (#8696569) Homepage
    I have used things like this in the past from companies like RedHat abd Mandrake to convince people that Linux is not "only for nerds" and "too hard". Now that IBM has this, it is perceived as having come from a third party, as IBM still is not thought of as a "Linux Company". This will likely help in my fight to get Linux on my corporate desktops. Go IBM!

  • Funny how times change. (Score:4, Interesting)

    by nurb432 ( 527695 ) on Sunday March 28, 2004 @02:19PM (#8696818) Homepage Journal
    I can still clearly remember the days when IBM was the enemy, up in their ivory white towers. ( 20 + years ago )

    All the 'little' people wanted them to be taken down to size, releasing the hardware to the people.. 'freedom'...

    Now we root for them as they may just save the OSS movement from the giant beast...

    • Re:Funny how times change. (Score:4, Insightful)

      by ctid ( 449118 ) on Sunday March 28, 2004 @03:26PM (#8697214) Homepage
      Another way of looking at it is to say that times haven't changed at all. Back when IBM was the "enemy", they had an effective monopoly in minicomputers and mainframe computing. They would use this monopoly in HW to drive out competition from the market - their strategy was often to "pre-announce" new HW whenever a competitor was about to introduce a new machine. Eventually IBM were investigated for this behaviour, and this investigation let (indirectly maybe) to them making the specification of their new PC open. Anyone could introduce competing machines; anyone could create expansion cards. This has led to the very competitive market for PC hardware. Since that time, Microsoft has established an effective OS monopoly on the PC platform. And they have used their monopoly to drive out competition from the market. It's not Microsoft which is the enemy it is their monopoly.


      So nothing has really changed; monopolies are the enemies of everyone who is involved in a market. Nowadays of course, we have rather better tools with which to fight monopolists. Balanced against that, unfortunately, is an unwillingness for governments to fight monopolies effectively.

  • Changing from Windows... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Badanov ( 518690 ) on Sunday March 28, 2004 @02:29PM (#8696872) Homepage Journal
    The article is about the roadmap once you've made the decision to migrate.

    It says nothing about getting customers to actually come to that conclusion.

    Not an easy thing to do, and I want to sell Linux solutions to small business.

  • don't take IBM seriously about Linux until ... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by axxackall ( 579006 ) on Sunday March 28, 2004 @04:29PM (#8697644) Homepage Journal
    ... until they sell their computers with Linux AND with any decent office suite for Linux.

    I guess Sun is a bad competitor, so I understand why StarOffice is not in IBM plans. But what's happened to Lotus? When my company can buy IBM laptops, IBM workstations and IBM servers ALL runing Lotus clientor server applications?

    P.S. I heard about OOo. In fact I am using it on a daily basis. But the other fact that my boss hates the fact tha I am using it as he doesn't and we both hate to see our document screwed up after sharing with each other. Besides, you still have to substitute Outlook+Exchange with something that works THE SAME convinient way when it comes to calendaring and tasks.

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