[Gllug] Windows -> Linux

Thu Dec 6 20:52:20 UTC 2001

Well so far the decisions we've made so far here (all be it on slightly
higher specced machines (certainly invest in more memory, and watch out
what graphics card is inside...):-

Mandrake 8.1 (cookered up a bit though, which is a pain to do initially
since the cool tool rpmdrake has a cooker source bug, so you have to
start by going to rpmfind, getting the latest rpmdrake and rpm
installing that first!), use the ftp.lip6.fr mirror btw, fast and
reliable in my experience, more so than the only UK mirror.

I like SuSe and use it on servers etc. but Mandrake has a kind of more
desktoppy / plug and play feel to it, which I haven't yet decided if is
more psychological than real, but I certainly prefer rpmdrake and
madrake control panel to YAST. I've not used older versions of Mandrake,
I went straight in with 8.1, but have read a lot of people were upset by
8.1 as being a buggy bloated and not fully beta tested product. My
experience with it is not so bad though, and as I say, define a cooker
source and upgrade some key components and it seems fine.

Browser, I agree it seems that it's not easy to settle on just one
browser, but I tend to use konqueror for the quick and simple site
checking and Galeon (basically Mozilla but with a lighter front end).

E-mail client, well Evolution release (on cooker) is hard to argue with,
although my only real complaint with it is it's ability to get in a
tangle sometimes with the amount of different processes, threads and
layers all depending on each other and slower IMAP performance than
Mullberry (a commercial but very stable and feature filled client, not
as pretty).

For an office app, I'd steer quite clear of Star Office, it's slow,
buggy, takes over your entire desktop and not that compatible with the
newer MS file formats. Much much better (although admittedly still only
beta, but not for long (oh and a little slow to load)) is Open Office
(based on Star Office code, but LGPL license which is better). This
seems highly MS format compatible (MS2000 and MS XP Office documents
seem to open perfectly formatted) and with true type import tools and
printing that works. (I use CUPS). It also looks better and more
familiar to anyone already used to MS Office.

Samba / LinNeighbourhood / konqueror etc. is still a bit fiddly in my
opinion, I can get it to work, but never that reliably. Then again, when
was windows networking and file sharing ever reliable. NFS is probably
the better way to go I would think but I'm still working on this side of
things (as I expect are many) to come up with the smoothest and easiest
way. Ultimately, I figure that once we have all but very few staff using
Linux the issue will become how to share the linux servers files with
the Windows users rather than how to share the Windows servers files
with Linux users.

Licq is great btw if people are used to using ICQ on windows, it can be
made to look identical to the official windows version, and we find it
very useful for internal and externel communication, being pretty
productive most of the time. Good for quick file transfers between
machines too (and even uses SSL for file transfers) assuming you tweak
any local firewall settings on each desktop machine.

Our biggest problems at the moment relate to printing from web browsers.
We created all our invoicing and database systems as perl CGI systems,
and the invoices never seem to print out quite right from the Linux
machines. This is something we're working on from the HTML end too at
the moment and I think relates to css style sheets, fonts and so on.
Konqueror for instance seems to do a perfect job, but print at about 33%
of the proper size. Other browsers/printers seem to just miss letters
out of words sometimes or merge table columns or just lay things out
slightly oddly. HTML was never a good way of doing this I agree, but it
did work as we wanted in IE.

If you were using Visio for anything, then Kivio and Dia both have their
uses.

In general I like the Gnome / Ximian apps like Evolution (and Galeon
sort of counts in there too) but find that the KDE desktop is more
intuitive (adding desktop items and button bar items etc.). There's even
a Luna theme emulating Windows XP out there which is amusing.

We are a company of surfers and net users, and don't discourage it too
much, so installing the free Real Audio Player 8 for linux still allows
our staff to get their live radio working which makes them happy.

Well this is still very much work in progress for us, primarily with our
Admin side of the business (techies are of course already using Linux).
We're finding this to be a good kind of time to be doing this, 6 months
ago it would have been harder. In 6 months time it'll be even easier,
and you can be sure that speedups, bug improvements and software
availability will do nothing but improve steadily and surely.

Get new recruits straight onto Linux and they'll never miss Windows.
Getting those working with windows for years to change is harder (in
terms of morale and understanding) but I'm sure once they've got used to
it happiness and productivity will ensue.

On the productivity side, Linux can reduce productivity for those that
have root access and an urge to experiment though. It seems there's far
more things to try out and fiddle with, and far more ways of people
drastically mucking up their systems. People can spend hours if not days
re-installing the latest KDE, tweaking it to work etc. Great for techies
and learning, a nightmare if you actually want a productive work
environment. 

This seems more so than Windows, despite the fact that people would have
to re-install it every now and then completely, there was less desire to
upgrade everything instantly or try the latest new bit of "free"
software.

The plus side is of course that without root password and with careful
choice and planning, stopping people doing that is fairly easy. As
suggested by someone else, making an ideal system and then taking an
image (partition image for instance) is probably a good idea.

an IMAP e-mail server btw is fantastic in a work environment, especially
where you have shared folders and e-mail addresses. Not only can you
wipe/lose/destroy your desktop system without fear of losing your mail,
you can change mail client without losing mail, and you can keep in sync
between machines and locations, but also it means that one message can
be stored on the server but seen as a seperate message to every user
(each storing their own session data, read/unread etc.).

For busy addresses (sales@ info@ etc.) where you want lots of people
receiving the mail, this cuts down on duplication of mail enourmously.
Be careful though of course, you'll need to have a good backup of your
entire mail spool, because only one copy exists on the server...We use
SuSe Mail server system actually for this, but it wouldn't be hard to
install the seperate elements and get it working pretty much in the same
way. (Choose SuSE though with a support contract, it's good to have this
in a corporate environment I'm sure, and makes the transition easier for
the Management to handle.)

Oh, the other issue we have at the moment is with someone in our Design
team who just won't let go of Adobe Photoshop. They just won't be
convinced that the GIMP is as good or as easy/whatever. It's all what
you are used to I suppose, and somehow designer/artists seem very het up
with sticking to what they are used to. I haven't gone into the
specifics yet with this person although they were mumbling something
about different Layer types not being available or something. Anyone got
any practical experience of switching from Photoshop to the GIMP and the
issues?

BTW, if you use a service like JFAX which is a fax to e-mail system
using multi paged TIF format attachments, you'll be happy with Kfax as
being the best viewer option for that. (Easy to integrate with Evolution
too using gnomecc to config the TIF file type)

The quest goes on to convert the whole office over. We are already
primarily Linux users, but for me it is elliminating every trace of
Windows which is the target, I want no excuse for needing it. Of course
VMware and win4lin could be used, but they still need the Windows OS and
license to use, and I've never got on at all with wine, although that
always exists I guess as a last resort attempt.

Good luck!

Jake

--
Jake Jellinek.
Director
The Positive Internet Company Ltd.
http://www.positive-internet.com/

On Thu, 2001-12-06 at 09:23, Daniel Fairs wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> I was wondering if anyone had any experience on migrating Windows desktops
> to Linux. Our company is looking at reducing software licensing costs, and
> moving to Linux is the obvious answer.
> 
> Naturally, however, The Management want to do a small-scale trial first,
> with just one or two users. The main fileserver will remain NT4 for the time
> being.
> 
> The Linux machines will be used for basic word processing, email, web
> browsing, printing and so on.
> 
> Fortunately we don't run an Exchange mail server (phew).
> 
> Does anyone have any experience of overseeing this sort of thing? Any
> hints/tips/gotchas? Distro recommendations? (I'd probably use RedHat, simply
> because it's the one I'm most familiar with, though I was very happy with
> SuSE in the 6.2 days.)
> 
> The workstations are all pretty old - P2 266 machines, with 64MB RAM, though
> I can probably swing an upgrade on the memory front for each of them.
> 
> Any thoughts?
> 
> Cheers,
> Dan
> 
> _______________________________________________________
> Daniel Fairs | d.fairs at cogtest.com | +44 (0)20 77029000
> 
> 
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