Posted on 01/29/2005 11:42:59 AM PST by Bush2000
IBM goes silent on Linux desktop effort Big Blue mum about progress of the company's move to open source clients
By Robert McMillan, IDG News Service
January 25, 2005
More than a year after IBM's (Profile, Products, Articles) Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Sam Palmisano challenged his company to move to the Linux desktop by the end of 2005, IBM has significantly toned down its rhetoric on the subject of open-source clients.
"We don't have anything we want to say that's definitive," said Nancy Kaplan, an IBM spokeswoman, as she declined to comment on specifics of the roll-out. "There are people using Linux and nobody is telling them to stop," she said.
IBM's Linux migration plans were made public in January 2004, just months after IBM Chief Information Officer Bob Greenberg formed an internal initiative called the Open Desktop project to facilitate the move.
"Our chairman has challenged the IT organization, and indeed all of IBM to move to a Linux based desktop by the end of 2005," Greenberg wrote in a November 2003 memo. "This means replacing productivity, Web access, and viewing tools with open standards based equivalents," he said.
IBM executives said at the time that they had approximately 15,000 Linux desktops within the company and predicted that they would have between 40,000 and 60,000 desktops in operation by the end of 2004.
IBM's Kaplan declined to say whether that goal had been met or not. "I don't know if there was ever a goal of 40,000 users; I don't know if there are 40,000 users," she said. "There's nothing mysterious about it; we're using Linux."
Whether IBM's Linux users are getting any help from IBM's internal support staff is another question, however.
According to one IBM employee, who asked not to be identified, the company has created a Linux version of its standard desktop client, called the Client for eBusiness. Based on the Red Hat (Profile, Products, Articles) Linux distribution, the Linux client includes the Open Office productivity suite, a Lotus Notes client running under the Wine Windows emulation software, and the Mozilla browser.
Though IBM volunteers have set up an internal IRC (Internet relay chat) channel where Linux problems are discussed online, users may experience problems running IBM's internal Web applications. Most of those applications are written for the Internet Explorer browser, which has not been ported to Linux. Internet Explorer is the only browser supported by IBM's internal support desk, according to another IBMer.
"If you don't use Internet Explorer, you might not get very far with them helping you with the problem," he said.
The majority of IBM's Linux users to date are technical users in the company's product development and research and development groups -- users who are technical enough to support themselves, the sources said.
IBM is using Wine to run Lotus Notes software on thousands of clients, according to sources, but ironically, the company's internal use of the open-source Windows operating system emulator did not translate into a ringing endorsement in a guide to migrating to Linux clients, published recently on IBM's Web site.
Wine is mentioned only in passing, in a section entitled "What to do if all else fails," and it is called a "temporary workaround" to get an application running on the Linux client. "This is not a solution for the long run," the guide states
Your relentless efforts and lack of internally consitent logic lead me to believe its one of the above. Either that or you're just coo-coo for Coco Puffs.
Personally I think you have too much training and knolwedge invested in Microsoft.
Other than that, well other than that, your post is moot.
Wrong, I've been in the tech industry since before "microcomputers" or "desktop computers" even existed. A degreed EE, I started out working on Data General equipment, designing interface boards for military equipment. Throughout the years, I've used them all, from the first TRS-80 cassette systems all the way up to Cray, working for the DoD has advantages like that, if you're good at what you do. VMS? One of the main things I did, including being one of the first to integrate PC's using pathworks. Unix? Sun Solaris, HP9000's, even SCO. Netware, on Compaq and others when PC networks started getting hot. We dumped pretty much all of it, when NT 3.1 came out though. It was real breakthrough, bringing incredible ease to the management of systems via a user friendly and completely capable gui.
The only thing that has come close in all these years were the Next systems we had for a short while. They were really sleek, and fast, and had a "windows 95" capability about them well before 95. But they were hard to get in quantity, and little to no third party applications available. Apple still makes a good little system, but it's too hard to find developers in large quantity that are proficient with them. Which by the way, is yet another major benefit for Microsoft products in today's market.
So despite your attempts to pigeonhole me as having little experience to know better, or slander my credentials, I've once again shown you guys really don't know what you're talking about. I'm nothing more one of the majority of people who use Microsoft for good reasons. Why you can't accept that for what it is, and choose to instead attack our credibility and push foreign freeware down our throats, despite it's obvious dangers, I'll never understand.
My guess is, you guys can't stand the fact that someone has made computers accessible by the average guy. You'd rather stand behind the glass in your white coats and declare the data center off limits for mere mortals. Since you haven't noticed, take it from me, time has definitely passed you by. Today people want something easy, and powerful, and a wealth of application choices and programming talent. Clearly, Microsoft provides that, whether it pains you or not. And your new open source alternatives have a boatload of questions, from their very legality, to how they provide unprecedented advantages to foreign governments. If/when you ever answer those questions fully and satisfactorily, we might give you a shot. Till then, you're sales pitches are ignoring the obvious.
Well, that was the A) choice.
I'll take your word for it and since your last post read like a MS brochure in parts, now I'm leaning towards B) Shill.
I really don't want to move to C).
Perhaps, but unlike you, he's a little slow. Behold how he sings like a Microsoft salesman when you push his buttons. And this after betting his house that he's not a shill.
You've been doing some shilling yourself, I see.
Throwing spears, too. Very informative.
You keep implying this, yet you've no proof. Put up or shut up.
ROFL! Talk about complete horsesh!t. Do you really believe this stuff? More likely, you hang around people who do, or those that have brainwashed you into such nonsense.
Yet, again, you've spent a lot of words, yet said nothing. Specifically, you've failed to post a case arguing in favor of software patents and why you think they are a good thing, yet lambast anyone who thinks otherwise. OTOH, I've posted my case against software patents.
Maybe not, but everybody saw your cheerleading, if not outright assistance, from a mile away.
So that makes you guilty of forced sterilizations and abortions, since you cheerlead for Bill Gates, eh?
Completely wrong, just as I wouldn't be liable if someone broke into my house, and stole one of my guns to rob a store.
More like:
You dropped your guns on the front lawn and someone picked them up and used them in a crime.
At the very least, you're guilty of negligence.
Just a good ole American, who supports US built products over your foreign fakes, and willing to expose how quickly you're willing to threaten US national security just so your buddies over at IBM can sell us all out to the Chicoms. Must suck to be you, with guys like me around.
Wrong on all points, again. Go argue with your tiny minded friends instead, I'm off to an exquisite dinner myself.
I see you keep squealing out the same line, yet provide absolutely no facts.
Well, enjoy your dinner, piggy.
Well, selectively American.
...who supports US built products over your foreign fake...
Unless they come from Utah (Novell's SuSE Linux) or North Carolina (RedHat)
...and willing to expose how quickly you're willing to threaten US national security just so your buddies over at IBM can sell us all out to the Chicoms.
But Microsoft, who gave away their source code to the very same Red Chinese, gets none of this invective.
Must suck to be you, with guys like me around.
Oh yeah, we tremble when you're around. /sarcasm
As an IBMer let me just say LOL!!! You must be looking over my shoulder.
BTW, one of IBM's hot new cell chips is called Golden Eagle in house.
Oh, I am so full of spears. But wait, aren't you going to tell us about all the people you laid off?
Back when you were singing The Microsoft Song, you said that, "we cut our operating budget by close to 75% when we went with the Microsoft products." Were those outsourced Baghwans who lost their jobs, or were those "good old American workers?"
We didn't layoff anyone that I recall, I work for a nationwide defense contractor and we just moved those guys that wanted to maintain their specialty with Oracle and Unix around to other customers that needed lots and lots of Unix expertise, there were plenty in that boat. We were smarter though, and also saved hundreds of thousands of dollars per year in maintenance contracts alone that were having to be paid to the Unix hardware vendors, just so we could get parts the same day if we needed them. Instead we bought 2 PC servers for every 1 we needed, sat it in the closet to cannibalize later and still saved most of the money we were paying on those ridiculous per year contracts. At one point opened up some Microsoft support contracts, they were packs of 10 support calls, but eventually quit buying them altogether simply because we weren't using any of the calls.
There were a few other guys that stuck around for a while, then decided they didn't like the fact that they weren't treated like royalty anymore when some of the users started showing THEM things with the new desktop apps, so they buggered on off to somewhere else where they could play their Unix god role again for some other company. Good riddance, we're far better off now that we don't have to deal with the prima donnas with techno ego problems. As you can see on this very thread, some of them have severe emotional issues.
It was a risk, I've been in a position of high authority for some time but if we would have failed we could have lost an entire contract. Since it's worked out so well though, we're entrusted to manage things ourselves more than ever before. They offer me civil service jobs all the time, but fact is, they can't touch my salary, and they know it. But they're more than willing to pay it, since my network runs smooth as silk, with thousands of clients, and mission critical applications. I wouldn't dare risk my status on some foreign freeware, and quite honestly you look like an complete nincompoop for even suggesting it. As the title of this thread indicates, even IBM isn't stupid enough to run their own operations on it.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.