[Gllug] Windows 7

Tue Nov 24 12:39:35 UTC 2009

I think that is a real danger.

The developers in my company wanted to move away from Cold Fusion and use Ruby and with this opportunity of building new systems we moved from IIS to Apache. Now when I needed to upgrade our .NET infrastructure I got questions about why it has to be Windows and not Linux. I am not saying that Mono is a bad idea - just that changing something as core as the framework and potentially causing problems is not worth the effort when bearing in mind the extra time involved. 

Ben

________________________________

From: gllug-bounces at gllug.org.uk [mailto:gllug-bounces at gllug.org.uk] On Behalf Of Shannon Carver
Sent: 23 November 2009 21:53
To: cehunter at gb-x.org; Greater London Linux User Group
Subject: Re: [Gllug] Windows 7

Interesting story about your company and the SuSE install which everyone loved... I often wonder one thing though.  When a company adopts the cheaper (i.e free) alternative does that alter the perceived value of software and the amount they're willing to spend in future??  For example would the realisation that the saving of (x hundred machines with + £500 worth of MS licenses on each) mean they'd be less likely to allow for expenditure on products that are worth their cost (debatedly) like the Adobe Suite or commercial (supported) RDBMS software, MS Visual Studio etc.

It'd annoy me greatly if a company went open source and saved a stack in cash, only to reduce IT/Tech budgets and bitch when things actually do cost money.  After all, I'd rather work for a company who wastes good money on licensing and useless software than one who's stingy and doesn't allow for any expenditure at all (no matter how much its needed).

2009/11/23 Christopher Hunter <cehunter at gb-x.org>

On Mon, 2009-11-23 at 09:50 +0000, Benjamin Goodacre wrote:
> I think that one of the problems is that decision makers don't 'care'
> about the subject like we do. Even if they could be persuaded that Linux
> is better etc etc they do not want to bother learning anything which does
> not behave exactly like Outlook/Windows. Even if TCO of Windows can be
> proved to be > Linux they simply don't care as they dont want to have to
> spend time out of their day learning a new OS. There is a 'not in my back
> yard' reasoning where change of IT is fine so long as it does not affect
> their desktop. It was easy for me to persuade DMs that moving to Apache was
> a good idea but a move away from Windows for desktops? No chance.
>
> Benjamin

Just for the sake of it, I built a KDE 3.5 desktop, on Suse, to look
pretty much like Windoze Vista.  I configured Evolution to look like
Outlook, and even made a big blue "e" icon for Firefox!  The clueless
executives who were "upgraded to Vista" thought it was fabulous, and
told all their friends how wonderful it was.  There was exactly ZERO
"learning curve" (OOO "Writer" looks exactly like "Word") - they could
all use it right away.

They continued with it for two weeks, and then we showed them exactly
what they were using. They were all astonished. We gave them all the
option of a Windoze Vista install (for real) and they all declined, and
continued to use the Suse system! They all still do to this day (almost
two years on).  They've also discovered the delights of the BSOD
screensaver (which always causes great amusement) and most have asked
for installs for their home machines.

It's simply a question of will and presentation.  The company were
amazed at the size of the licence fees they had to pay for all their
proprietary software, and with the adoption of FOSS (without any pain),
they found that they could make a very substantial saving.  This
particular company only have use for email, letter-writing, web-browsing
and basic spreadsheets.  They were ideal candidates for migration, but
trying to reason with them would have been a waste of time.  We left the
vast majority of machines with XP (at the time) and did the "upgrade"
for a select few.

The times I'm asked "what's that?" when I'm running Mandriva on my
laptop with all the whizzy bits turned on never ceases to surprise me.
Most people still have the impression that Linux is "hard" or for
"techies", but this notion can quickly be dispelled if you give them a
"live" CD of Mint or Ubuntu and have them try it for themselves.

I actually can't be bothered trying to proselytise about Linux - people
will discover it soon enough when their Windoze machine is struck down
by yet another virus or trojan that their "anti-malware" snake-oil
failed to deal with!

C.

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