| W. Chris Shank on 10 Jul 2007 16:44:31 -0000 |
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Ok, here are my $0.02 which are sure to produce plenty of flames. 1) The mac disc is probably multi-sessioned and likely needs the proper bootloader. If it's from an iBook, it's a PPC disk and probably won't boot from any Intel based CPU system, real or virtual. Get your hands on a x86 disk and go with the latest version of OS X. There is a significant difference. 2) January will come fast, faster than you would ever be able to switch OSes and infrastructure. I recommend ordering as many XP Pro licenses as you can afford or will need right now. That should get your current infrastructure through another 18-24 months. You'll need this time to make any transition. 3) Xandros is probably the most Windows-like OS and will probably work more reliably with your AD/Domain infrastructure out of the gate. I don't particularly like this distro. I used it years ago, so maybe it's different now. But when I used it they had all sorts of weirdness - like rewritting critical conf files on each boot and releasing new versions every 6 months and requesting payment to upgrade. 4) Ubuntu is probably the best FREE linux for desktop use, however I think it lacks enterprise management tools. You can still manage it in bulk - but it takes a lot of know-how and custom scripting to do this. SuSE may have good enterprise tools at this point and if Red Hat has their Red Carpet service working for desktops these should be considered. If you are SERIOUSLY considering a switch - here is how I'd do it: A) Get senior management buy-in 100%. Without this, all else is doomed to fail. B) Convert Windows NT/AD domain to Linux Samba/OpenLDAP infrastructure as much as possible. This will give you a good non-proprietary LDAP for both Windows PCs and Linux Desktops to authenticate against. If you must have windows servers, they should be able to join the Samba domain as well. You may need at least one Windows Terminal or Citrix Server for those pesky windows apps that you can't live without. C) Develop a "Golden Image" of your Linux desktop with all the applications, codecs, etc you need. Setup your terminal server / citrix clients to run the applications directly. I forget what this is called, but essentially you are running the app on the terminal server and only the app's window is on your client. It give the illusion the app is running on the local PC. Your linux desktop should be setup wth automount on the users HOME and other Windows shares. This part takes a lot of thought because a user may need to save files from Linux and open them with the Windows TS. This needs to be pretty transparent or users will revolt. D) Move single task users or other "early adopters" to the new image so they can test it. It's critical that these users are either eager to make the Linux desktop work or are so clueless that they won't know the difference. Any users moved reluctantly at this point will only derail the effort. They will find NO positives and needle in on every negative they can. Trust me. E) Go to C - rinse and repeat. With each repeat you should begin to win converts. F) Gotcha's and pitfalls. Watch out for sophisticated outlook users. I've not yet found a Linux email client that makes them happy. Note: What to do if your infrastructure runs Windows AD, Exchange, and SQL Server: Plan to migrate to Vista and look for a new job. ----- Original Message ----- From: Art Alexion <art.alexion@verizon.net> To: plug@lists.phillylinux.org Sent: Monday, July 9, 2007 11:20:17 PM GMT-0500 Subject: [PLUG] [slightly OT] (Mac OS X) Is it me or can't you do this with Linux? I work in a windows shop. We have been informed by our PC vendor that only Vista will be available as of January. As IS and the users will all be forced into a change, we decided to explore non-MS alternatives, including Linux distros with windows-looking interfaces and Mac OS. We figured we'd try to install OS X (10.4.2) in a virtual machine and test it out with the app servers we will have to keep for the time being. I have some Mac install discs that came with out iBook, but it doesn't seem that they are ISO 9660 as k3b won't recognize the source discs. Is it me or are the Mac install discs not ISO 9660? And, what suggestions for a Linux desktop distro that minimizes the shock to reluctant converts from windows? -- _____________________________________________________________ Art Alexion PGP fingerprint: 52A4 B10C AA73 096F A661 92D2 3B65 8EAC ACC5 BA7A Keyserver: hkp://subkeys.pgp.net The attachment - signature.asc - is my electronic signature; no need for alarm. Info @ http://mysite.verizon.net/art.alexion/encryption/signature.asc.what.html _____________________________________________________________ -- W. Chris Shank ACE Technology Group, LLC www.myremoteITdept.com (610) 640-4223 -------------------------------- Security Note: To protect against computer viruses, e-mail programs may prevent sending or receiving certain types of file attachments. Check your e-mail security settings to determine how attachments are handled. ___________________________________________________________________________ Philadelphia Linux Users Group -- http://www.phillylinux.org Announcements - http://lists.phillylinux.org/mailman/listinfo/plug-announce General Discussion -- http://lists.phillylinux.org/mailman/listinfo/plug
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