Three Windows to Linux Migrations (and Vice Versa)

daria42 writes "In this extended article, ZDNet Australia goes under the hood of three enterprises that moved their back end servers from Windows to Linux and open source software. Two of the companies ended up eventually going back to Microsoft, with the third one still going strong with Linux."

Re:Feeling homesick?

[AKAImBatman]

Read The Fine Article more carefully. The businesses they're talking about didn't use Microsoft Windows. They went directly to Linux and have been running it for a long while. Coffey, for example, had standardized on Mandr[ake|iva] back in 1999. They came to the eventual conclusion that Linux wasn't meeting their needs, and so they went shopping. They (unsurprisingly, yet frustratingly) settled on Microsoft software.

Re:Skill problems

[JWW]

I don't know what will happen with mods on this, but here goes....

In my experience I've found a striking number of highly technical, free thinking, smart IT people absolutely REFUSE to learn anything about Linux. Their world is all windows and if you try to get them to open up to new ideas they put their hands over their ears and shout "Na, na, na, I'm not listening!!!".

Of course that means that they really aren't the highly technical, free thinking, smart IT people they're making themselves out to be.

Re:David Braue

[romrunning]

"The problem was that just one or two people in the group [out of 15 IT staff] could do that, and it was hard finding people who understood that [open source] isn't just about playing with these tools, but delivering something. The moment we switched to Microsoft, the field opened up." I've seen this happen before when sometimes people are led to believe that OSS is the panacea for all their ills. However, you need people with a wide breadth of knowledge of different OSS applications in order to fulfill expectations. Then they need to have a good track record of actually implementing solutions versus theorizing about them, especially if they will be a "new hire." Many times it simply is difficult to find a Linux person with that wide range of exposure and commensurate experience in delivering solutions; often it is easier to find someone with the same broad range but in Windows apps (even w/consultants). Can you blame them for going with the easier path, especially if it would save them time (which means $)?

Re:David Braue

[Scarblac]

I think a real practical problem for Linux is that competent staff for it is really hard to find in sufficient numbers.

Re:David Braue

[NineNine]

Need to work on that reading comprehension thing a bit... You suggest that the company should hire some expertise, but the last line of the quote you used said explicitly that finding competent Linux expertise was difficult. That's a very valid point that you conveniently ignored.

Re:Skill problems

[Trelane]

he moment you need to do X over a VPN to allow people in other sites to do the same work, you might as well shoot yourself in the head now and save your users doing it to you in 6 months time.

or...

Use NX [nomachine.com] or FreeNX [berlios.de] as your X.

the Xorg and other x server devs are aware of the problem, and they're working towards solving it.

Re:Skill problems

[MobileTatsu-NJG]

"The problem was that just one or two people in the group [out of 15 IT staff] could do that."

I worked for a company that started with Windows 2000 and moved to Linux. Before Linux, we only had a part-time sysadmin. By part time, I mean he had other tasks to handle and if the computers did break, he'd go work on them. Everybody there was familiar with Windows so they did a lot of their own repairs. (It's worth noting that Windows actually played quite nicely with everybody. No BSODs, crashes, workstation uptimes > 2 weeks, server uptimes > 6 months (stupid power failures)... Etc.) We switched to Linux because we had to. (Long story, but it wasn't some itch to save money or anything like that. It was related to the work.) When we switched to Linux, well only one person there really had the knowledge to maintain it, and she was busy with her job. So we had to hire a Linux admin to keep it up. Wow.. the transition was painful. The engineers all had experience with Unix, but we still had so many stupid little problems from setting up the networks to just plain getting printing going. The only way we were really able to pull it off was to use VM-Ware with a boot into 2K. Argh. I imagine by now that they're not using Win2K + VM-Ware anymore, but it's hard to say. There's so much that goes on with software development that I just cannot imagine it.

In that particular case, moving to Linux proved costly, mainly because the Windows licenses were already paid for (not that that was a huge expense to begin with) and everybody knew it well enough to maintain it. I imagine in the long run it paid off, but it's hard to say because the move to Linux wasn't optional. I doubt they'd be using Linux today if the technology didn't require a shift.

In any event, I'm not bashing Linux here, just providing anecdotal evidence that suggests that the quote you posted was correct. This is why I grit my teeth over TCO arguments for either side. The reality is somewhere in the middle.