Comment Re:Europe is broke , Linux to the recue (Score 1) 137
I haven't really much exposure to Linux on the desktop but as an architect responsible for delivering a Windows 7 desktop to 150,000+ desktops, training is most certainly an issue, from end users, on site support teams all the way through to the backend admins. I assume there would be a step change in support tools and processes. There certainly is a big change going from Windows XP or even Vista to Win 7.
In my opinion it would be naive to think that a more to a completely different OS doesn't mean a complete re-training exercise from top to bottom. It also doesn't mean that it isnt unachievable, especially if Linux / Unix already has some penetration, perhaps in the workstation space, and therefore desktop support and the tools required / processes are already somewhat defined etc.
Your experience of people bringing in broken PC's to fix is a world away from an enterprise environment. I suspect have no conception of the process involved in designing and executing a simple request that in practice spans several resolver groups, some of which will certainly change as a result of an OS change.
You've also completely ignored the application compatibility angle. The OS is but a window to get at your apps and therefore to that wonderful data. App compat is the most important part of any desktop refresh at the moment. Come the wonderful day when every app is HTML 9 standard or whatever the desktop may be irrelevant but right now it isn't. Please don't tell me you are going to get 15,000 apps working on WINE and maintain support agreements with the app vendors or move everything to open source and migrate the data across to the correct format at the same time.
In most enterprise cases, the vendor hardware sourcing agreement is separate from the OS refresh cycle. If you can sync or extend that refresh period (assuming Linux can run on older hardware better and hence the refresh cycles can be extended) then all is well but you probably need the support of the hardware manufacturers. I don't automatically see that becasue Linux *may* work on older h/w better than Windows you necessarily *can* make this happen but I don't necessarily discount this either.
I'd also note that in most cases, reliability is probably more important than speed within the Enterprise. Depends on the worker model. Both is of course very nice :)
A PC may cost 800 dollars since the price could includes warranty & break-fix support to a certain SLA response time over the lifetime of the device. A laptop will be much much more.
Btw, my org is on a 4 year h/w replacement cycle. Windows seems to cope fine enough.
Hope this helps
