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Linux Business Operating Systems Software Windows Linux

Germany Publishes Windows to Linux Migration Guide 221

Posted by michael from the german-efficiency dept.
Bombcar writes "This Migration Document is also available. It has details on going from WinNT to Linux/FLOSS/Samba et.al, with less detail on RedHat/Ximian/GNOME and more on SuSE/Mandrake/KDE. See Kurt's post to Samba Technical for more details."
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Germany Publishes Windows to Linux Migration Guide More

Germany Publishes Windows to Linux Migration Guide

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  • woot! (Score:1, Insightful)

    by qewl ( 671495 )
    Where would I be without this?!

  • woes along the way (Score:3, Interesting)

    by grosa ( 648390 ) on Saturday October 25, 2003 @06:09AM (#7307323)
    my university has been testing out replacing NT/2k/2003 machines with Samba boxes, and they've hit a lot of speed bumps. It's nice to see that someone is actually documenting all the necessary steps so that doing the conversion doesn't end up being a huge beast of a project.

    afaik, Samba supports even the more advanced domain controller features, but it's not all very straight-forward or intuitive. this should make the PHBs with anti-commercial-solution tin-foil hats breath a little easier. documentation goes a long ways in a managed environment.

  • This is great (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Rico_za ( 702279 )
    This is exactly the kind of document you can use to convince your boss to migrate to linux. It has migration strategies, and even looks at the economic implications. Great job!

  • my guide (Score:4, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 25, 2003 @06:10AM (#7307329)
    1) wipe the hard drive 20 times
    2) get refund from microsoft
    3) unlearn everything you thought you knew
    4) read, read, read
    5) install the penguin
    6) read, read, read
    7) tinker, tinker,tinker
    8) convert others ;)
    9) goto step 1
    10) pay the SCO guys ...

    • Re:my guide (Score:3, Insightful)

      by JamesOfTheDesert ( 188356 )
      4) read, read, read
      4a) Have spouse tell you the kids have started grade school
      5) install the penguin
      6) read, read, read
      6a) Have spouse tell you the kids have started High School
      7) tinker, tinker,tinker
      7a) Have college-bound kids tell you that your spouse has left you.
      • >>Have college-bound kids tell you that your spouse has left you

        And the worst part is that after the divorce proceedings, she'll most likely get a cut of your salary, which you've earned by doing all that reading and tinkering.

        wbs.
    • The astute reader will of course notice that you can never get to step 10...

    • Re:The IDA Open Source Migration Guidelines (Score:5, Informative)

      by danimo ( 219366 ) on Saturday October 25, 2003 @07:13AM (#7307495)
      (Tiny rant about the EU guide following:)

      I read both quite carefully, the EU as as well as the German one and I came to the following conclusion:

      The EU one does not:
      • go in-depth
      • contain retability calculations (which points out a very significant strength of OSS: the price)
      • is mostly a (quite incomplete) listing of solutions, especially in the groupware or database area (Kolab, SAB-DB?)

      Another important aspect of the German migration guide was that it always kept the comparison to the "continuing migration" which shows the trade-offs and advantages of OSS migration and thus gives a balanced picture. I can't really blame the EU guide for this, since it simply didn't have this goal.

      But I think there is a very significant point of critisism left: The German migration guide had co-authors from experts (see co-authors section in the PDF for reference), which ensures that the descriptions are more in-depth and exploit all features of new version (This is very important for Samba for example. The EU guide is more a list of applications with features listed "as advertised". The EU left out Debian completely. While I am not a Debian zealot, I know of quite some successful migrations to Debian and the German migration guide acknowledges this. It doesn't take a RHAS or SLES to migrate to Linux!

  • This Migration Document is also avilable.
    That PDF you mean? Not after just ten comments are posted about it to /., it isn't!

  • Migration = Salvation (Score:4, Informative)

    by heironymouscoward ( 683461 ) <heironymouscowar ... .com minus punct> on Saturday October 25, 2003 @06:16AM (#7307346) Journal
    Not in any religious sense, but just from the tedium of managing a PC park.

    Like many techies, I help friends and family with their PCs. I've started saying, "it's Linux or nothing", and we install a nice distro like Xandros or Knoppix on the PCs. No device problems, no viruses or spywarez, no calls to the "help desk".

    The only problem is that people are used to just switching off their machines, and don't shut down correctly. This seems to have caused a couple of machines to loose configurations. So I'm looking at using a pure CD-based install like Knoppix with a USB key for /home.
    • Surely this will also be a problem as if the USB pendrive (Im guessing thats what you mean) isnt flushed then shutting down unexpectedly might well cause corruption.
      • I believe it's related to the file systems used, and I think (will check) that USB drives use FAT, since they are portable to various OSes. And I've tested writing to a USB drive and unplugging it, it does work reliably.
        • USB drives are block devices(512bytes/block for the few I've used) and can be treated like any block device. They usually appear as SCSI disks(/dev/sda, etc) and have partitions(/dev/sda1, etc) which can be fdisk'ed, mkfs'ed and mounted with whatever filesystem you care to use.

          I usually use vfat for compatibility, ext2 for deliberate incompatibility, or a raw device/partition for a bestcrypt container.

          Even though modern [USB|IDE]/FLASH bridge chips use tricks to spread writes across cells(to stop bits wea
        • Disk corruption due to uncommitted writes is kinda orthogonal to the filesystem used. Any filesystem can be corrupted if you write some updated blocks and leave out others. A simple filesystem like FAT might be better able to recover from corruption than a complex one, but still it is possible to corrupt a FAT filesystem with uncommitted writes. When MS-DOS 6 was introduced, many users reported disk corruption. This was not due to any bug in the OS but because smartdrv disk caching was being loaded and

    • Re:Migration = Salvation (Score:1, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      How about the problem where they can't install that new Quicken version they just bought at wal*mart ?
    • No device problems, no viruses or spywarez, no calls to the "help desk".

      The only problem is that people are used to just switching off their machines, and don't shut down correctly. This seems to have caused a couple of machines to loose configurations.

      Windows machines have enough issues as it is, without the users making it worse. "Crashing" Windows on purpose on each shutdown is bound to create trouble in the long run. It's simply a matter of habit, it doesn't take more than a few seconds to shut it do
      • They should just have a desktop or taskbar icon that does a clean shutdown. I remember doing this by calling some .exe with a load of parameters. Alternatively, they could use APM (I think) so that when they hard press the power button on the front of the computer, MSWin does a clean shutdown instead of a forced hardware stop.
    • The only problem is that people are used to just switching off their machines, and don't shut down correctly.
      How about using APM and make the power button shut the system down properly? It can't be that hard to do, can it?

    • Re:Migration = Salvation (Score:2, Interesting)

      by grosa ( 648390 )
      i did this as well, and it worked out great. i got my folks to use linux/kde for about 8 months, and then when it came time for hardware upgrades, they decided running unix at home was a great idea, but they bought an iMac instead of upgrading the PC.

      can't say I blame them, while PC Unix was great because they didn't get viruses and I could do software upgrades and minor fixes remotely (they have DSL), it meant that they were entitled to pester me about it as much as they wanted. I got pestered a lot with

    • Re:Migration = Salvation (Score:4, Informative)

      by Spy Hunter ( 317220 ) on Saturday October 25, 2003 @07:27AM (#7307529) Journal
      You can set it up so that the power button does a proper shutdown instead of immediately cutting the power. Some distros do that by default.

    • Re:Migration = Salvation (Score:4, Informative)

      by Ed Avis ( 5917 ) <ed@membled.com> on Saturday October 25, 2003 @07:56AM (#7307577) Homepage
      If 'just switching off' causes problems because of disk corruption, you could try ext3 with data=journal. This makes sure that _everything_ is committed to the journal as soon as it's written. Another way of looking at it is a 'no lies' property - if the operating system says to the application that the write completed then you know it did complete and isn't just sitting as dirty buffers waiting to be flushed. So you could switch off the machine immediately the 'save' command finishes. (This assumes your hard disk isn't doing its own slightly dishonest buffering, of course.)

      If the corruption is caused by the applications leaving things in an inconsistent state if they don't get closed properly, then obviously no filesystem can do anything about that. Using a USB key for /home would stop the system being corrupted but still the user's files might be, and that's probably more serious.
      • (This assumes your hard disk isn't doing its own slightly dishonest buffering, of course.)

        Actually, that makes me think: if the HD uncludes enough of its own cache RAM to let the OS disable its own caching, and also its own little power supply backup, it could just dump its cache out to disk as soon as it detects its "official" power has gone off, and the OS -- and the user -- don't have to worry about a damn thing. It could be marketed as the "non-corruptible" hard disk...

    • How much of an effect does all the seeking a knoppix CD does have on the lifetime of the drive?
      For PCs where the off switch is an ACPI power button you can get the system to interpret this and execute a proper shutdown, I did this on my laptop a while back, unfortunatly I've forgotten how now.
    • The only problem is that people are used to just switching off their machines, and don't shut down correctly. This seems to have caused a couple of machines to loose configurations.

      If you are running Ext3, make sure you're mounted with data=journal so you get full data journalling. My wife and I have been operating several machines for more than a year that way, without problems. Standard nighttime shutdown is, just hit the power switch. Every now and then I run a forced fsck just to be sure nothing b

  • Network effect (Score:5, Insightful)

    by ultrabot ( 200914 ) on Saturday October 25, 2003 @06:17AM (#7307352)
    This all is just wonderful. Public money is invested in migrating systems to Linux, and the findings are give back to the public. Each migration team will learn the lessons of the previous one. What's more, the private sector can learn from the findings and mistakes of the public sector.

    This marks the beginning of a new Europe. Now we should just start teaching Python at elementary schools, and we could be kicking some serious US ass as far IT goes :-).

    • Re:Network effect (Score:5, Interesting)

      by ajs318 ( 655362 ) <sd_resp2@@@earthshod...co...uk> on Saturday October 25, 2003 @06:38AM (#7307413)
      Exactly. With Open Source, everybody benefits when anybody contributes. The dividends are shared, yet not diminished by the act of sharing.
      Consider a bank paying interest at 5% and run along traditional lines, but with just three investors: Anna, Bob and Charlie. Anna invests $1000. Bob invests $200. Charlie invests $3000. A year later, they get their interest payments.
      Anna receives 5% of $1000 = $50.
      Bob receives 5% of $200 = $10.
      Charlie receives 5% of $3000 = $150.

      With a bank that worked the way Open Source works, Interest Calculations would be done more like this:
      Anna has $1000. Bob has $200. Charlie has $3000.
      Anna receives 5% of $4200 = $210.
      Bob receives 5% of $4200 = $210.
      Charlie receives 5% of $4200 = $210.
      • ith a bank that worked the way Open Source works, Interest Calculations would be done more like this:
        Anna has $1000. Bob has $200. Charlie has $3000.
        Anna receives 5% of $4200 = $210.
        Bob receives 5% of $4200 = $210.
        Charlie receives 5% of $4200 = $210.

        I guess the Open Source Bank would give each of them a third of these 5%, so Anne, Bob and Charlie would get 30$ each (I'd get the remaining 120$ as a consultation fee)...
      • A better example would be the following one where interest rates are proportional to the investment:

        Anna invests $1000. Bob invests $200. Charlie invests $3000.
        Anna's interest rate is 1%
        Bob's interest rate is 0.5%
        Charlie's interest rate is 3%

        Anna receives 1% of $1000 = $10.
        Bob receives 0.5% of $200 = $1.
        Charlie receives 3% of $3000 = $90.

        If the three work the open source way and invest their money together, making it $4200 the interest rate is 4%:

        Anna receives 4% of $1000 = $40.
        Bob receives 4% of $200 =

  • Bad for economy (Score:5, Funny)

    by ultranova ( 717540 ) on Saturday October 25, 2003 @06:18AM (#7307356)
    In my humble opinion, migrating from Windows to Linux is bad for economy. Think about it. While new versions of Windows are packed full of advanced, bleeding-edge innovations, the new Linux versions are mostly indistinguishable from each other. Or can anyone here claim that migrating from Linux 2.2 to 2.4 brought a single new icon to their desktops ? Maybe 2.6 will bring a much-needed improvement to this. Back to economy. It's a well-known fact that a healthy economy demands an increase in spending. This, in turn, requires people to buy things. If people can get what they need for free, then they don't pay, spending decreases, economy suffers, and so do people. Therefore, it's the duty of every patriotic citizen to help economy by avoiding "free" stuff. Furthermore, it's a well-known fact that Linux lasts almost forever without maintenance; there's still people running 2.2 ! Obviously, this is a bad thing for economy. With Windows, there's the healthy drive to update every few years, followed by an equally healthy drive to update your hardware as well. Besides, think about it - the biggest Linux distributor is REDhat ! Now what does that remind us of ? That's right - when you're downloading Linux, you're downloading Communism !
    • Thank you for opening my eyes! How could i have been so blind all those years!
      I am deleting my Linux partition and i am buying WindowsXP as we speak.
      I too want to take spending away from trivial items and spend all my money for WindowsXP.
    • Communist states are well known for their drive to impose their will on the populace and to stifle any competition through fair means or foul (remind you of anyone?). If you want freedom, download Linux.
    • Well, buying a system from the "Gesellschaft fur Software- und System-Entwicklung [www.suse.de]" is certainly better for the German economy than sending money to Redmond, thankyouverymuch.
      Plus, all our CS students are trained on Linux, so there are plenty of Linux-savvy folks around here. Who will get paid for _developing_ stuff (on the Linux platform), instead of making money by holding companies hostage [microsoft.com].
    • Therefore, it's the duty of every patriotic citizen to help economy by avoiding "free" stuff.

      Indeed! I'm glad you brought this up, because the REAL damage to the economy is being done by people using supposedly "free" air instead of buying proprietary Canopy canned air. I thikn a lot of people have no idea how many jobs are being lost over this.

      But it's even worse than you may imagine. When people do use our proprietary canned air, some of it can leak into the atmosphere and mix with so-called-free ai
    • Wow. "Spending is good for the economy."
      Well thank you for the lesson in capitalism.

      Just a few problems with your short essay though.
      First of all, these "bleeding-edge innovations" you're so very fond of don't exactly have the greatest track record for reliability, stability, and last but not least security. Of course none of these things are an issue if you're only concerned with the pretty pictures on your desktop called icons, and yes I'm sure all of us in the linux community eagerly await the nifty new

    • Re:Bad for economy (Score:2, Interesting)

      by adrianbaugh ( 696007 )
      Why would people put icons in the kernel? (Well, other than the Tux boot logo..)
      I suggest you try tunning a distribution from 2 or 3 years ago, maybe Red Hat 6, and then comparing that with Red Hat 9. Or the equivalent Mandrake numbers or whatever else. There is a huge difference.

      Oh. Sorry. I have been trolled, I have lost :)

  • Now... (Score:3, Funny)

    by t4b00 ( 715501 ) on Saturday October 25, 2003 @06:22AM (#7307367)
    If we could only talk M$ into converting over....

  • Sounds like a good idea (Score:5, Insightful)

    by ajs318 ( 655362 ) <sd_resp2@@@earthshod...co...uk> on Saturday October 25, 2003 @06:23AM (#7307372)
    This is one massive case study, and it should be inspirational reading to anybody who has ever wondered if there was an alternative to Microsoft.

    As the migration progresses in Germany, so it will be copied in many other places - and mostly without the mistakes Germany will inevitably make {though, arguably, none of them will ever come close in magnitude to actually ever letting closed-source software anywhere near their machines in the first place}. Once somebody with some real clout has made a hard commitment to GNU/Linux on the desktop, then we will see real change.

    I wish every success to all who choose to wrest back the control of their destiny from the hands of the evil corporations. Theirs will not be an easy journey. I, too, have a little experience of what they must be facing; and yet, my humble effort - to do without Windows at any price, even if that prevented me from using a computer at all - just seems so insignificant compared to Germany's task.

    I'm also more than a little humbled at realising I don't know how to say "Good luck!" in German.

    • Re:Sounds like a good idea (Score:2, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward
      "Good Luck!" translated to German: "Tretet den M$'lern ordentlich in den Arsch und seht zu das eure Euro's EURE Euro's bleiben."

    • Re:Sounds like a good idea (Score:1, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Even if you know how to say "Good luck!" in German, you wouldn't be able to type it...

      "Viel Gluck!"

    • Re:Sounds like a good idea (Score:1, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward
      I don't know how to say "Good luck!" in German.

      Viel Glueck! (It should really have an umlaut by Slashdot isn't non-english friendly)
  • with less detail on RedHat/Ximian/GNOME and more on SuSE/Mandrake/KDE.

    You're never satisfied are you? "Geez, RedHat/Ximian/GNOME is so much better, I can't believe they wasted their time on S/M/K..." It's linux -- better yet, it's not Microsoft. So just be happy people are looking at open source, even if it's not your particular brew.

  • US tax preparation software, ie, Turbo Tax (shudders) or similar. There's not much else I can't do now with Linux.

    • Re:Works for me except for (Score:1, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward
      try HRBlock.com; they cost about the same as turbotax and they work online, so I did my last one with Mozilla in Mandrake. You do have to do a paper filing with them the first year, but after that you can be online forever.
  • One thing is clear, the majority of machine to be migrated are servers of some sort... most of the WKS will stay on Windows. This will encourage more and more programmers to invest time in open source projects. As a result, it will catapult development into new heights....
    great move...
    but it wouldn't wipe M$ from the planet...
    A dreamer, who thinks so...
    and a dangerous one on top of it (economically)...
    • but it wouldn't wipe M$ from the planet...

      No, but it's a start. We are just seeing the begining of the "snowball" effect. It starts out small, but starts growing exponentially. If the U.S. doesn't watch it, it will be the little cartoon house at the bottom of the Alps, with a snowball 5 times its size bearing down on it at an unstoppable pace. Germany, Brasil, other Latin American countries, the E.U....
      Hopefully the U.S. won't get bought and paid for too soon, or it will become the world's Former Sup

  • This paper is long overdue (Score:4, Insightful)

    by BillsPetMonkey ( 654200 ) on Saturday October 25, 2003 @06:51AM (#7307448)
    The core of the problem with Linux is it's PR. There's this gulf of understanding between us tecchies and the people who make "really important" decisions.

    The number of times our company (large retail group) has tripped up because of decisions based on convincing salespeople rather than technical merit make for shameful reading.

    This document has a stamp of officialdom though. Better still, a government stamp! Written by bureaucrats for bureaucrats! Yippee!

    There will be a copy on my Director's desk Monday. Whether I can get him to read it is another matter. But that's a different battle. I imagine there's a few UK government bureaucrats swotting up using this document too. I'm amazed and rather humbled that it's written in English as well!

  • stop the conversion! (Score:5, Insightful)

    by golgotha007 ( 62687 ) on Saturday October 25, 2003 @06:54AM (#7307451)
    i don't understand why all the linux folks want the mainstream public converted over to linux!

    i like the fact that because i run linux, i have more capability than the average windows joe.
    i like the fact that i am part of a technical movement that helps each other in times of need (newsgroups, forums).
    i like the fact that when my rights are threatened or otherwise, that it's this same group of folks that stand together (SCO?).

    one of the things that MS doesn't have is the 'comminuty closeness' that *nix users have.
    this closeness is why linux innovation is an par with the biggest software company in the world.

    i'm afraid that if linux were to ever win the desktop war, this closeness and community won't be as friendly or as helpful.

    sure, we embrace IBM now, but for how long? you do realize that the way we feel about MS is similar to the way our fathers felt about IBM in the 70's.
    • I don't have time, that's why I'm using Linux. Whether or not Linux or Windows is easier to use for first time computer users is irrelevant; I know that I can get things done much faster in front of a Linux box than anything from Microsoft. Practical, always.

      But then there's the philosophy. I really love the idea of sharing knowledge, sharing information. Luckily, the free (speech) software movement, the community, the openness doesn't impede the practicality.

      I remember the early days of the Net. There w
    • i don't understand why all the linux folks want the mainstream public converted over to linux!

      It's fun, we like Linux and want other people to be able to enjoy it as much as we do, more users == more apps == more users etc

      i like the fact that because i run linux, i have more capability than the average windows joe.

      Running Linux should not be a status symbol, period. If you want the respect of your peers, if you want to be seen as "elite" then learn to hack code - THAT is the right way to demonstrat

    • I think it's good to force people to use Linux.
      Then they will be so upset with things not working so they will start to get a life instead of sitting online 10h/day !
      That is really a good thing!

      If I were forced to switched to windows, I'd give up on computers....
    • I think that your missing part of the reason this closeness exists in Linux and not in Windows.

      With Linux, the community controls the product, so the community has reason to care about the product.

      With Windows, if they make a decision you don't like, you just cope.

      This means that Windows help==learning how to use what they give you while Linux help==learning how to find what you want to use.

      This is the difference which will not go away, thanks to the GPL.
    • And I don't understand this why you need this l33t mentality of yours. Because by the content of your post, the desire to somehow hold your use of Linux over the "normal" crowd as being something to be proud of is the only valid reason you have for not wanting to see more widespread use.

      i like the fact that because i run linux, i have more capability than the average windows joe.
      Fine, I accept that. I suggest you move on to the BSDs if you want to preserve your feelings of superiority. Or, even better
      • And I don't understand this why you need this l33t mentality of yours.

        look, i make a lot of money because there aren't many linux developers in comparison to windows certified folks.

        I suggest you move on to the BSDs if you want to preserve your feelings of superiority. Or, even better, make some contributions to projects.

        i don't need to use any of the BSDs. linux does exactly what i want, and if it doesn't, then i can make it act/feel exactly the way i please.
        contributions? i maintain 2 sourceforg
        • Sorry to have misread your position, but really, you never did make any point (that made sense) as to WHY you seem to feel that more conversion of PC users to Linux is a bad thing. Especially if you develop software for Linux! Far from bringing "competition", veteren Linux developers will be even more sought after if more people and companies adopt it. You should be the biggest cheerleader for more OSS adoption!

          You've agreed with my positive consequences, and not disagreed with my points arguing your po
    • "sure, we embrace IBM now, but for how long? you do realize that the way we feel about MS is similar to the way our fathers felt about IBM in the 70's."

      And if MS ever were to change the way IBM has, we would embrace them, as well. These are corporations, not people. Though slow and clumsy, theoretically only the name stays the same over time.

      We are fighting a war of ideals, not companies or people.

      Btw, regardless of how many people switch to Linux, the knowledge that you have gained over the years will a
    • i don't understand why all the linux folks want the mainstream public converted over to linux!

      I can't believe some people still hold this viewpoint. Linux usability, stability, and usefullness has improved several times over from 5 years ago at least in part because it has reached a critical mass in mindshare. I would like to see more people use and support Linux.

      In fact, I think it is critical that more people use Linux, as many hardware vendors still seem shy about supporting it. With more supporti
    • i like the fact that because i run linux, i have more capability than the average windows joe.

      You don't have extra capability merely because you run linus -- you have it because you *know* stuff. This would be true even if 100% of computers ran linux. Your average joe would just stick with all the default settings and whatever window manager does the most babysitting. Anyone who bothers to look behind the scenes, use the more advanced-but-estoteric interfaces, etc. will still be among the "l33t".

  • Something tells me that laxative sales in Redmond have just plummeted!

  • However posted this story should have his head examined. Its is both mixing facts about two different articles and turning the facts around in one go.

    The German article linked has more details on going from WinNT to Linux/FLOSS/Samba et.al, with less detail RedHat/Ximian/GNOME/SuSE/Mandrake/KDE.

    The [eu.int]
    EU article mentioned in Kurts mail, has more focus on RedHat/Ximian/GNOME than Suse/Mandrake/KDE.

  • linux user @ 56years (Score:5, Interesting)

    by sireenmalik ( 309584 ) on Saturday October 25, 2003 @07:48AM (#7307561) Homepage Journal
    I have never got involved in MS Vs. Linux religios wars! However, this summer my mom came to visit me in Germany (from Asia) and from her experience with both OSs i have a better opinion!

    I am a PhD. candidate. My work is wrapped around simulations for which I trust Linux/Debian. At house i've Suse 8.2 simply because it was the most painless installation of any OS i had ever made in my life.

    My mom has an incurable habit of reading and writing. When she arrived i thought i would use the holidays to teach her to "use-the-mouse" and if that succeeds then treach her to do "google and surf" . I thought internet would probably catch her interest. I have to admit what follows was a lesson for me too.

    Agreeing to the user-friendliness of Windows, i contemplated of installing XP as i thought it would make the job easier for her. It took some days before i could do that so for the intermediate phase i exposed mom to the already installed Suse. Partly because of my under-estimation of her IQ, and mostly because of her determination to prove to me that PhD is "just another degree" she could do "mouse" and "google" in a couple of days (half an hour after her first lone journey into the internet, i found 50+ empty mozilla browsers running!).

    About a week later i installed XP (partition) and asked her to use it instead. Here is the summary of her questions/discussion before i switched her back to Suse!

    1. Who are Carina, Angelaxxx, SusyDeep, TOM, etc? and why do you have friends like that??!?!?!

    I use t-online. Unsolicited messages are norm. People familiar with these messages would know the content of these messages! No matter how much i try to convince mom that i have nothing to do with "those friends" she is still suspicious of me :-)

    2. "People have lost fortunes in gambling. Its the slippery back of the snail. Stop gambling."

    You see, when she opened a website in Explorer she recieved web-advertisements. A lot of them. I do not know the reason and i do not have the statistics to back it up, but i have also felt that the number of advertisements/pop-ups are far more in MS Windows/Explorer as compared to Mozilla/Linux. She had seen advertisements from online casinos!

    3. There is something wrong with your computer because i can not read the text?

    It is one of those things that is almost unbelievable but the website (our local newspaper in Urdu language) which she could read in Mozilla simply did not show the text in Explorer. I know you would say "font" but hey which OS had all the fonts on its side!

    4. There is something wrong with your power-supply plug!

    Thats what she thought was the reason for the machine "rebooting" itself every now and then. Honestly, i have not had the time to figure out why XP does this on my AMD Athlon machine- auto-reboot 2/3 times per week? Till the time i know the exact reason i would just think that there is something wrong with power-supply cable!

    etc. etc.

    You get the picture why i simply switched back.

    I will add one thing before i pen off. I installed Suse 8.2 from DVD and it was the most painless installation experience of my life... 14-15 minutes and everything was working, including nVidia card and the DSL! I got to tell you that it went so smooth that i really thought that something was wrong! Once the system was running i could update everything (patches etc.) within half an hour with 2-3 clicks of mouse. I love Debian's "apt-get" now i love YAST too.

    I have a much better opinion now. Thanks mom.

    p.s.
    Back home, she is insisting that my younger brother install the "soosey" too :-)
    • This is an extension what i wrote above. It would not be totally fair to say that MS-Windows is not used at my house. My wife teaches computer at a local school and often uses children CDs almost all of which use MS-Windows. So I have kept the XP partition.

  • For the love of God (Score:5, Insightful)

    by p3d0 ( 42270 ) on Saturday October 25, 2003 @07:52AM (#7307567)
    Please stop using the acronym FLOSS [infonomics.nl]. That's the dumbest acronym I have ever heard, and I am including "GNU" so you know I'm serious.

    If we learn anything from the likes of Microsoft, I hope we learn a little about self-promotion.

  • Help ! - I need to migrate ! (Score:3, Funny)

    by bushboy ( 112290 ) <lttc@lefthandedmonkeys.org> on Saturday October 25, 2003 @08:08AM (#7307600) Homepage
    After reading this article, I really feel the need to migrate !

    Of course, if anyone could supply me with information on getting the following working under linux, I'd be very happy ! :-

    1. Microsoft Encarta
    2. Microsoft Golf
    3. Internet Explorer 5.0
    4. Windows Media Player
    5. Zonealarm
    6. Adaware
    7. Nortons Anti-Virus

    I'd really love some help - I need these quality applications to run in a Linux box, otherwise I just can't migrate !

    Arrhghgh !

  • OOoSwitch (Score:1, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward

    Hentzenwerke [hentzenwerke.com] publishes a book called OOoSwitch: 501 Things You Wanted To Know About Switching to OpenOffice.org from Microsoft(R) Office.

    Dunno if it's a good book but I'm glad someone wrote it.

  • No Exchange Killer Yet. (Score:4, Insightful)

    by LazloToth ( 623604 ) on Saturday October 25, 2003 @09:28AM (#7307794)

    From an administrator's point of view, it is refreshing to see an analysis of OSS alternatives that does not gloss over the difficulties of migrating away from the Outlook/Exchange groupware architecture. Too many "analyses" by OSS advocates seem to say, 'Oh, go ahead and give this cobbled-together approach a shot - - you'll work things out one way or another.' If it is your responsibility to guide executive decision making where your company's groupware product is concerned, you know that this is one place where a misstep could easily cost you your job. As much as I would like to look at something like Kroupware or OpenExchange, this report bears out my own investigations - - there's nothing in the Open Source world yet that can take the place of a well-managed Outlook/Exchange infrastructure. This is the crown jewel of the Microsoft monopoly, and they guard it well. When OSS can provide a confidence-inspiring mailbox mass-migration tool and a back end that fully supports Outlook, that's the day you can sell your Microsoft stock.

    • Re:No Exchange Killer Yet. (Score:5, Insightful)

      by pe1chl ( 90186 ) on Saturday October 25, 2003 @10:46AM (#7308048)
      With every migration, there is always the issue of "does the new product implement all 25000 features of the old product".
      When you start your migration with the assumption "the new product must do everything the old product did plus possibly more" you will not only limit your options, but you will also migrate to more and more complex systems.

      Instead, you should look at the requirements of the organisation, and define the properties of the system that will be implemented. Maybe Outlook/Exchange implements them, but that does not mean that it is the only solution to the problem.

      Don't try to implement an Outlook/Exchange replacement, but define what your company needs and implement that. Possibly it does not need all the features of Outlook/Exchange and thus they do not need to be present in the "replacement".

      We run an IMAP mailserver on Linux, with LDAP address book, and a separate web-based calendaring system. All are accessed from Mozilla on the (Windows) desktops. It works fine.
      The only thing I would want to be improved is the maintenance of the LDAP address book by nontechnical users.

      • I think you're absolutely correct on all counts. At one point in my investigation of alternatives - - I'm a Linux guy from about 1995, by the way - - I built a Postfix/LDAP/Squirrelmail testbed on a little test network. We invited managers to play with the system, using Outlook, Outlook Express, Netscape Communicator, and the Squirrelmail interface. While some people seemed intrigued by the Open Source concept - - meaning they were amazed that all this cost essentially nothing to put together - - no one saw
        • It probably depends on the people and their expectations, plus their flexibility when looking at solutions.

          We are running a system like that for over three years now, and our managers are very happy with it. In fact one asked me last friday to replace the Outlook program on his personal (home) system by Mozilla.

          They not only like the fact that it is free, they also like that it has never been down except for scheduled maintenance, and that we have never had a virus or trojan.

          For scheduling we use Maoron
  • Strange that they do not mention Mono or DotGNU in their discussion of MS .Net migration, but instead rave about the superiority of J2EE for a couple of pages. They go so far as to say .NET is Windows only...

  • open the pdf file with an editor and look toward the bottom...created with Adobe Acrobat on Windows!

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