Re: [tlug] Is Linux Helping MS to make Windows better?

[Graham Briggs <grbriggs@example.com>]

> Depends on whether you are an admin first or a collector-of-salary
> first.  Low purchasing cost -> the buck stops with the admin.  In many
> organizations the admin is already made responsible for many things he
> doesn't really have the authority to fix.  He doesn't want more.
[snip] Well, I'm an admin first, but I'm not the guy who is anywhere 
near the yes/no decision on global deals driven out of our head office, 
although we all have input in a consultation phase. Would I burn my job 
because I didn't agree with a decision? No way - I have a family to 
think of :) .  Maybe I didn't explain well on this. The way management 
look at the purchasing and deployment of systems is that they're 
hardwired to expect a certain level of cost, and if something doesn't 
reach that they tend to think it's poor quality. I know this isn't 
true, and obviously so do most tech people, but to a manger with a 
budget, strangely it does. They're also trying to keep to a global 
standard.

I guess where I'm driving this is how can companies move away from MS 
to Linux. A friend of mine in the UK went from MS to Redhat 
9/Openoffice in an office of 50 people and it went relatively smoothly. 
For me, I have a LOT more users and machines (and other techies), and 
links to different offices all over the world. I guess it's about 
mindshare and understanding, but from my perspective, that's where the 
challenge for Linux is. I managed to save the Macs by calmly making 
gentle points over a few months, and by personally supporting them 
(they didn't require hardly any).  So then, it's a 'toe in the door' 
game plan, one Linux machine at a time to see how we can use these 
boxes in better ways that MS. If you've paid for MS Select or similar, 
there's virtually no incentive to move from MS if your PC team can 
support them, and as has been posted, 2K and XP are better than their 
predecessors.

I appreciate discussion in this forum though. I'm trying to learn more 
about Linux on the technical side, but I'm also curious on the business 
side for how a company - any company - could switch to Linux from a 
long term MS installation.

Thanks for the input Stephen, it certainly made me think about a few 
things I need to consider in the decision making chain.



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