http://www.osnews.com/story/2039/Linux_and_the_Path_to_the_Desktop Exploring the Future of Computing en-us Copyright 2001-2012, David Adams adam+nospam@osnews.com Wed, 15 Feb 2012 15:34:10 GMT http://www.osnews.com/images/osnews.gif http://www.osnews.com http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? .. though I think the author was overly blathering about sysprep he`s definitely hit the nail on the head. Just having a workable desktop that people want or can use doesn`t cut it in todays corporate desktop. The backoffice of the corporate network is where the desktop really happens. I`ve just rolled out Captive Directory to two offices. I ghost a machine, join it into the domain, add it to 1 group and all the software that user needs is installed and configured automatically. If I want to change everyones wallpaper, I`ll do it on the server and the change propagates out. If a user starts deleting .dll`s, next reboot the software is automatically repaired and noone notices a thing. I can repackage and distribute any software, changes, anything I like, without visiting 600+ desktops.
This kind of corporate control exists nowhere in the Linuxland, and until it does (and I hope it does one day) Linux will never make an entry into todays corporate user market. Wed, 30 Oct 2002 19:19:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? 1. Do kickstart-style installs, where the configs are also on one central server ( for static ips via mac or something )
2. You can export user directories via NFS .. people have done that for ages ( i think )
3. Most distros have pretty good hardware detection, you can go from 1 box to the other without too much hassle ( some XFconfig stuff maybe )
4. the list goes on and on ;-)

Gernerally I think this guy just needs some justification for not being willing to learn something new. Wed, 30 Oct 2002 19:25:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? I will take your points one at a time
1. Kickstart style. I do not know what it is, and I have been around for years. Perhaps you can supply mopre details.
2. Certainly NFS is an option. But does it offer the same benefits as the options in windows, and have you compared them ? Are the tools available and workable for hundreds of users across a domain, etc etc.
3. Most images of Linux will crash n burn if you change hardware. That was one of my points. Remember, I was making a statement about Making an image that WORKS when you change the hardware, and on the occasions it does not work, its simple ro resolve. ie - I could take an image and it would run on k2, k3, p2, p3 processors using an XP image.
Occasionally I have found the IDE hardware can cause issues but you remove that before you go to image and set a standard IDE before the reboot.

Have you ever compared how to roll out these systems, or are you merely sitting there assuming Linux cuts the mustard without inspecting. Let me know what roll outs you have carried out.

Thanks
DS Wed, 30 Oct 2002 19:43:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? I have been there W2K network with 200+ computers to manage. The reason you don't see the tools is because they are different from Windows. Using Redhat's kickstart utility you can script installs and do network installs. Linux has a small PXE boot version to use to boot the client for network access.
MSI motherboards use a version of Linux for there bootable bioses. Find a Solaris Admin and ask him how they do it. *nix is different from Windows. The problem is that as a Windoze user you have to learn a lot about *NIX networking solutions before you can implement them. I have been working hard on being able to provide a total Linux solution and the more I learn the more I need to learn to do it effectively. Keep reading sites like this and do some google searches on Linux Networking and you will be amazed at what is possible. NFS and LDAP are your friends. Wed, 30 Oct 2002 19:48:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? >>I dont get the point .. maybe its just me

Me either...you can setup thousands Linux machines using
ftp or nfs install, scripts etc.
How do you think I instaled 25 Linux desktop on our company..doing one at a time, manually?? no way!

more info here:

http://linux.web.cern.ch/linux/aims/research/doc/kickstart/
http://www.compaq.com/manage/toolkit.html
http://www.linuxjournal.com/article.php?sid=4139

Bas Wed, 30 Oct 2002 19:50:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? If you didn't talk to Microsoft/HP/Dell, you wouldn't have learned all that ghosting/prep stuff. If you don't talk to redhat or ximian you wouldn't hear of the alternatives either. Maybe you should follow some courses on the subject? After all, it's only fair that if you learned stuff about windows, that you should also learn stuff about linux, if you want to make a comparison.

The bootmanager Grub has optional network support, or you can use bootp/tftp directly.

You can install a whole bunch of computers using kickstart (or you can use images).

You can update and install software on them using up2date or redcarpet.

Use ldap, nfs/afs for login and home directories. Or you could go for the X client-server approach, where all those 100 computers just act as a thin client for a couple of servers. (so you only need to worry about a couple of machines)

Do massconfiguration using cfengine, or ssh, or a bunch of perl scripts and cron jobs. Wed, 30 Oct 2002 19:51:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? I have seen countless times I had to rebuild a machine (when I worked as a W2K Network Admin) and it died when I moved the install over. W2K will not move between machines when the chipset is different (Intel-->VIA or vice versa). Redhat will move anywhere you want it to go. And with Grub I can even move it from IDE to SCSI Hard drives. Wed, 30 Oct 2002 19:53:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? I agree about LDAP, and NFS. But your comment re'the more I learn the more I need to learn to do it effectively' speaks volumes.
I somehow don't see Dell /HP/Other doing this for the customer.

DS Wed, 30 Oct 2002 19:54:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? SYSPREP is great but Perl and Shell scripts are more powerfull.
At the end of a kickstart install you can run any perl or shell scripts you come up with.
Plus you can't install windows from FTP. Wed, 30 Oct 2002 19:56:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? I agree about LDAP, and NFS. But your comment re'the more I learn the more I need to learn to do it effectively' speaks volumes.
I somehow don't see Dell /HP/Other doing this for the customer.


I am not sure how you moved your install over. But Ghosting and following certain guidelines works.


DS Wed, 30 Oct 2002 19:58:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? Most images of Linux will crash n burn if you change hardware.

Check out kudzu, detects and configures hardware which has been added or removed. Installed by default on redhat for example.
Btw, if you recompile your kernel with optimisations for Athlon, and leave out a whole bunch of drivers/modules you can offcourse expect trouble if you switch to a 486 with hardware you didn't compile the modules for. You will be fine with stock kernels.

Unix/Linux is an entire different operating system with different design decissions. It's kinda obvious you will have to learn new stuff and put some effort in it. Wed, 30 Oct 2002 20:02:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? I freely admit a lack of knowledge in the area. The article was written due to this, BUT also due to the lack of coverage in many of the articles regarding new linux distributions, AND the fact that I want to know more.

One thing I would like to say is much of the comment here is welcome, and I am reading your comments and responses. I think many others will as well. Please keep them coming.

Unless people KNOW and have a way to roll out Linux desktops, it can't happen. And its not discussed enough.

I have still not seen enough to persuade me that you can build a linux desktop, with the settings I would look for, and with data settings and users settings, registry and security settings, and the ability to change and update central images, and the support of vendors and suppliers to the same level as I can get from MS and suppliers.

But.. I may be wrong Lemme have it

DS Wed, 30 Oct 2002 20:05:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? Just plug src and destionation harddisks and do

cat /dev/hdc > /dev/hdb

if the harddisks are different, just make a script that partitions the destionation hard disk, copies the files over, and sets up the bootloader, it's not really hard. Wed, 30 Oct 2002 20:05:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? Most Linux installations do not require the same frequency of a 'clean re-install' that Windows does, hence little work has been done on imaging software. Don't layer common Windows practices onto a Linux network, and then complain that Linux does not have the tools to fix this non-existant problem. Dropping in a CD and re-installing without formatting the /home partition will repair your box without damaging user data (you do have a seperate /home partition don't you?).

And when push comes to shove, rarely have I run into a box that I have configured that I could not just drop a pre-installed harddrive into to recover. The most I've had to do is reconfigure X. In my experience, Linux handles switching of hardware much better than any other OS I have used, since the pre-installed harddrive was usually not done on the same configuration. This is common practice. I've done many an ftp install in a box with lots of memory, and then dropped the harddrive into a box with 32Meg (FTP installs requiring more than 32), and have kudzu/harddrake detect the changes on boot. Wed, 30 Oct 2002 20:09:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? Linux is different but not all that difficult.

Try setting up a central server and export the dir's that are common, like the /usr, /lib, ...
so you can share all the apps.

also try out knoppix, this gives you a good idea on how to make your own custom bootable debian cd.

just remember it's different but not all that hard.

:) Wed, 30 Oct 2002 20:14:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? I somehow don't see Dell /HP/Other doing this for the customer.

Different operating systems, different customs, different companies. Talk to Red Hat, Ximian, Suse. But I don't know why you believe that HP/Dell/IBM wouldn't do this. Didn't IBM help out the German government to switch to Suse, including a couple of desktops?

Do you really think that, while reading all those stories about governments and companies that put linux on their servers and bunch of desktops, that they did all the installing one by one manually? Or configure them one by one? Or that they didn't have any sort of support? Offcourse not.

The tools are there, talk to someone who knows those tools. Just like you did when you had to install 200 windows machines when you first started working. Wed, 30 Oct 2002 20:14:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? *nix Networks are just different. They are very server-centric.
You really do not do things on the client machines you just change settings at the server. The real cool thing you can do in linux is mount system directories across the network.
As far as I know you can not mount C:Program Files across the network. You can however mount /usr/local/ across the network allowing you to centralize your applications and your updates.
Thsi requires Computing Horsepower but that has become much more affordable in recent years Wed, 30 Oct 2002 20:15:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? Guys, too many of you are posting regarding setting up a copy of machines or disks.

Remember, I was looking for something server side managed, server based data storage, server based mail, roaming profiles, settings, security, image maintanence and updates, and machine recovery.

The first comment here mirrors my general comment exactly. Is he wrong ? Am I wrong ? If we are why is it so many companies feel as I do that its a road you just cannot go down ?

Even I am capable of copying a disk from A to B

If you roll out linux in your shop, please say how you do it, the tools you use, the basic methods, where you keep your data and why, how you recover from a failed drive or machine, AND USER training and acceptance. Remember, I would not be able to just GIVE 100 users a whole new environment without huge nightmares. Each user would have to go through retraining and would need help. Remember that if you did roll it out in many businesses you may well have to cater for user retraining, and persuading management about the pros/cons of such changes.

There may be many people reading this topic who perhaps like me are curious, yet either do not know its possible, or maybe remain skeptical about its reality in the trenches.

Let me put it another way. You have Linux distributions. Why when they offer the ability to install and create a system using a simple GUI have they not done more work in this KEY area

You really will have to cater for people like me if you want to win the desktop. You'll have to build amd maintain, and improve tools that MSCE admins can run and work with IMHO in this area.

DS Wed, 30 Oct 2002 20:19:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? Problem is that linux people need to get of their high horse and make Applications easier for end users to use and install.

Typical situation:
End User: I cannot install xyz
Linux Guru: Oh you are missing abc and need to go to www.abc.com

End User: Ugh ok.. Why didn't it come in the installer

Linux Guru: You get what you pay for

Or
End User: I cannot install xyz
Linux Guru: Oh you need to edit all of then and run make again
End User: I don't know how to do that

Linux Guru: Or you don't know what you are doing thats the problem.

For Linux to be on the desktop it has to be easier than Windows Wed, 30 Oct 2002 20:20:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? Perhaps I just don't know enough about linux but I work as a student tech in a university computer lab. We have 178 some computers to administer and the thing that makes our job so much easier is a program called deep freeze (link below). Basically it creates a static image of the drive and any/all changes made to the computer are gone after reboot. This is a *Very* nice feature.

Why? Well we can give the users administrator privleges, let them install whatever crap they want and then just reboot the computers and see all those changes go away and the computer revert to a clean slate. This allows the greatest flexibilty possible for the students and the techs. We don't care what they install and they don't have to worry about security programs getting in the way of installing programs (you would be amazed how many college textbooks come with cd-rom programs anymore). Also, it solves numerous headaches of students installing crap like bonzai buddy and us having to spend alot of time removing it.

I mean, ASFAIK, you cannot do something similar with linux. Sure you can lock down the computer but you can't give them root nor can you make all changes go away on reboot and start with the same fresh image - once again, AFAIK.

Note: not that we don't have *nix computers, we do, but they are locked down very tight and most students prefer not to use them - same with the mac's.

link: http://wwww.deepfreezeusa.com Wed, 30 Oct 2002 20:23:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? I'm curious as to which distributions you have been looking at. Not to start a my distro is better than yours, but until recently, Redhat and Suse have concentrated on the server side. Mandrake on the other hand has emphasized the workstation. It comes with more gui administration tools than any of the others (of course, if you're a die hard command line user, you can edit the conf files by hand, too). There are gui tools for user administration, group administration, network administration, printers, file sharing, internet connection and probably a dozen more.

As for graphical installs, AFAIK all of the main distributions have come with graphical installers for quite some time now. Most of them even have where you can select a "class" of installation such as workstation, server, desktop publishing, etc.

Since you're looking specifically at a Linux desktop solution, it might be good to focus on a desktop oriented distribution. Wed, 30 Oct 2002 20:34:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? I'm not sure about where you work, but at the company I work for, we would consider it a plus if an end-user couldn't install package xyz. And while I admint that dependencies aren't pleasant, they exist in both Windows and Linux. Also, Linux allows multiple versions of a library to co-exist, Windows doesn't, or don't you remember DLL hell (at least XP has tried to fix that).

Finally, if you work for a company that does want users to install software without the IT staff's knowledge, must modern distributions use some type of package manager (rpm, urpmi, apt-get) that automatically installs the dependencies for you. Wed, 30 Oct 2002 20:41:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? BUT also due to the lack of coverage in many of the articles regarding new linux distributions

I also never read anything about "SYSPREP" in any article regarding new Windows versions. Your article is the first I read about it. But I did read articles about kickstart, cfengine, up2date/redcarpet, ssh, afs,.. It's just a matter of which sites you go to.. I doubt you will find the information you are looking for at www.winplanet.com :-)

Your main problem is that you are mixing up your problem with a solution. Describe your problem without any references to microsoft tools, or the things you used to do.
While you describe your problem, you talk about sysrep, images, profiles, and whatnot. Don't do that! :-)

You have a hundred computers. You want easily install an operating system on it, and automatically do custom configuration on that. No problem, you can use kickstart. You want to update and install the software on those computers, no problem, up2date can do that. You want to be able to dictate what users can change about their desktop, and what is mandatory. No problem, gnome2 and gconf can do that. You want to be able to dictate what programs they run, no problem, use basic permissions or acls. Use pam to impose extra restrictions such as preventing them to login before 8am or using to much resources. You want the user data and login information to be centralized? No problem with LDAP and nfs or afs. What else? Wed, 30 Oct 2002 20:46:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? I just couldn't agree more with the author's opinion. of course for some issues there is an answer but

> ... also due to the lack of coverage in many of the articles regarding new linux distributions

This is one of the main issues. A lot of solutions presented in the comments are barely documented. As a "Windows Engineer" (:$) I feel like I have to re-invent the wheel for each obvious thing that Windows can by default.

> Keep reading sites like this and do some google searches on Linux Networking and you will be amazed at what is possible. NFS and LDAP are your friends.

Sorry, but I need to find portal sites that discuss such technical issues in detail. And I said portals where people share their knowledge, not general HOWTO pages. (Altough I have to admit I don't always find that stuff for Windows either). NFS and LDAP? Add Samba and build your own W2K domain controller? OK. Show me a page who describes which distro to use and without programming all that stuff myself. Where I just have to provide a Kerberos Realm name, then add some users and add clients to that "domain".

I would believe you CAN do all that stuff with Linux, but there isn't a distribution who provides this as one integrated package.
My customers are often smal companies with typically 30 users. When I setup a new Small Business Server, I can't afford to spend more than 1 to 2 days on that. So I need a solution that implements fast.

Oh, also: such a customer doesn't really care about a license cost of one server they buy every 3-4 years. What is say 1000$/€ every 3 years compared to the cost of hiring an Admin (for support) on average 50 to 100 days a year? Think total IT budget.) So even then, Linux should make you deploy faster to really make a difference! If I have to spend 1 day extra to implement it, I loose the bargain of Linux license cost. (Please don't tell me that Windows needs more support. It does on a certain degree, but those NT servers really don't crash that often.) Wed, 30 Oct 2002 20:53:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? This is the approach that Sun is taking with their own Linux distribution and workstation product(s) coming in 2003. There will be a backend server which maintains config info, profiles, data stores, etc. The workstations will be "fat" clients (local apps if needed, some customizability, etc), but can be reimaged or net-booted (kickstart) as needed to reset to a default config. You'll also be able to put "thin" clients (SunRays) on the network for people who truly don't need "their own" copy of apps, etc.

The concept is aimed at large deployments of workstations (call centers, large corporations, etc) where the admins need to leverage themselves across many hundreds of systems.

A version where your existing hardware is used is being investigated, but like the author mentions, having many different makes/models/etc makes automating/standardizing more difficult. Wed, 30 Oct 2002 21:05:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? When you first mentioned "imaging" in your article I thought that you were going to talk about the marketing concept of product imaging. In my opinion, product imaging has as much to do with what you are taling about. I will try to explain.

Ask your self two questions: 1) What do I think when I hear "Microsoft Windows"? 2) What do I think when I hear "Linux"? I almost guarantee that what you think of is mostly what has been imprinted in you mind by what you have heard (marketing, ads, etc.) about the product. In your case (the author) it sounds like you have a great deal of experience in Windows administration, so this will help in keeping you down to earth.

It turns our Linux does have imaging capabilities, which are quite easy from my perspective. I commonly tar up a Linux installation and uncompress it to a new partition and it works just fine. Though there may be issues with this; tools such as kudzu (mentioned above) help in detetecting hardware, and I know from experience that there are issues like this in Windows too. Another tool that I found great that actually detects hardware is the program used in Knoppix (also mentioned above).

Back to product imaging, perhaps it is also the responsibility of Linux companies to reflect a good product image of what they are trying to sell. Linux is know to be hard to install... Windows is know to just work. I don't see it as your fault (the author) that you haven't heard of the tools to do your job under Linux, to be surprised I'm not surprised. It took me years before I even heard of Linux. Then again, how do you expect any company to rival a marketing giant like Microsoft. Wed, 30 Oct 2002 21:07:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? Indicate that in some areas, its not that the tools exist, its that we don't know about them.

Could it be that we need to get some Windows engineers, and some Linux engineers on a duel project where people can compare the tools, methods, successes and failures

A test implementation if you like

I think its very fair to say that Windows admins may struggle to roll Linux, and Linux admins may struggle to roll Windows, and that seems to show here with neither side really being able to understand where the other is coming from, at least so far.

Is there anyone out there who works on both sides and can assist with our current thoughts ?

DS Wed, 30 Oct 2002 21:08:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? I have not seen a Linux desktop that would be acceptable for me to even try and roll out in any area of the desktop


But DeadRat v8 is the most desktop friendly os yet! It has clear fonts, gnome, kdzu-ntite .... what did you say? They are basically following everyone else and not moving forward in hard areas, such as what was said above? Geez, i wonder who is?

Mandrake... no. Lindows ... no. Slackware ... different market. Debian ... different market. Lycoris... maybe. Xandros ... i wish i had 30mil to make a couple beach houses and a clone of Corel Linux. Suse... yes.

When will the leeches of the linux community (lindows, xandros, DeadRat (tm) ) abandon dead or un-needed standards (ie gnome and other projects made as protest to other applications that had once had a non-free licence) and start moving towards proper competition with each other and with windos?

I dont care if this release of DeadRat(tm) includes clear fonts and X v4.1, i already have those ELSEWHERE, and 3+ MONTHS AGO!! Wed, 30 Oct 2002 21:09:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? Good point! Wed, 30 Oct 2002 21:15:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? If you like Debian, FAI (Fully Automatic Installation) seems to be a nice tool for doing mass installations.
link: http://www.informatik.uni-koeln.de/fai/ Wed, 30 Oct 2002 21:17:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? They've ghosted linux on thousands of servers. Wed, 30 Oct 2002 21:20:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? Kickstart is to Redhat as Jumpstart is to SUN.

It gives you the ability to install the os on a system with predefined answeres to the install script.

I use Jumpstart at work for Sun Servers and workstations and it saves A LOT of time.

Kickstart could do the samething in the Corprate desktop world. RedHat put's out Kickstart, I don't know if you can use it with other distro's or if they have there own. Wed, 30 Oct 2002 21:28:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? RedHat Kickstart Manual:
http://www.redhat.com/docs/manuals/linux/RHL-8.0-Manual/custom-guid... Wed, 30 Oct 2002 21:31:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? While this is OSnews, most of the talk here seems to be about USING the desktop, what you want to learn about is administering the desktop. This will require lots of learning, and that's why UNIX admins are usually paid well.

You seem to be a very knowledgeable windows admin, which is good. But I've(as a CS student) heard of many of the aforementioned tools for Unix, but I've never heard of SYSPREP. My point is that just as I am not a Windows admin, you aren't a unix/linux admin, and you don't seem to have experienced the culture/environment.

I would recommend you try it on a spare desktop, and then either read newsgroups/web articles, or go talk to Redhat or some other vendor like others suggested.

I think the biggest reason you don't hear of these tools for Unix/Linux is because most have been around for long enough that they are just expected, by default.

If you decide to try linux seriously, even just for yourself you may be surprised just how much you learn about windows in the process. (Similar to how you can learn about your own culture by going elsewhere for a while. Hence the popularity of going abroad during college.) Wed, 30 Oct 2002 21:32:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? I work with hpc clusters more than the desktop, and I know of some tools that might help you.

Imagine/Ghosting Try the System Installation Suite (SIS) at http://www.sisuite.org This tool combines the functionality of VA Linux's SystemImager and IBM's LUI tools. I have only used the imaging part, and then only as part of the OSCAR http://oscar.sf.net cluster distribution, but I know it works with at least RedHat and Mandrake.

Terminal ServerSpeaking of Mandrake, I know they now include a XWindow terminal server configuration utility. I haven't used it yet, but check out http://www.mandrakeforum.com/article.php?sid=2279

Security I have used the Bastille http://www.bastille-linux.org tool to tighten security. I like this tool because it teaches you about security as it is doing its job. (Mandrake sponsors this project, but it is not limited to one distribution.)

One thing to note about allowing people to install programs...it often doesn't require root. A decent program will allow itself to be installed just about anywhere, including the user's home directory.

Forums almost every piece of software you find on a Linux box has mailing lists for developers and users. Look at Freshmeat http://freshmeat.net and Sourceforge http://sf.net (and Google of course) if you have trouble finding the software's home. Mandrake has http://www.mandrakeforum.org and http://www.mandrakeuser.org where they provide both free (I have spent some free time answering questions, as do other users) and paid support.

Even though I keep mentioning Mandrake, I am not stuck on them. I am simply most familiar with that distribution at this time.

I hope this helps.

Andrew Wed, 30 Oct 2002 21:38:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? Well. I'm by no means a sysadmin. However windows sysadmins with attitudes like this piss me off. You had a buttload of ms tools that you got to learn when taking your MSCE and some other ms courses. About all the registry tweaks, bootflags..config settings elsewhere. After a few years you get so used to your tunnel vision world, that you forget about even thinking about alterantives. Well get this: Linux is a different OS. It has different tools. It has different needs.
For example it has far more flexible network installation..Can windows do http/ftp/nfs/hd/cdrom/iso-on-hd..etc install? Can windows do diskless thin-client? Oh guess what that roaming stuff..works just dandy with nfsmounted home. Pair that up with something like LDAP for authentication and you get everything that you need. Oh whats this? need to install software remotely? well there is about half a dozen tools to do that...Perhaps the dumbest would be to run a script to automagicly ssh into box..rpm -Uvh needed stuff and logout.
Also, regarding setup time. Just in the time that it takes to install windows/Backoffice server/whatever, you could have a linux system up and ready(assuming that you have some experience in the field and setup similar servers before).

And lets not forget the wonderful "call microsoft to disable activation part", you don't worry about that in linux, its non-existant. Stuff like disabling MSN messenger equivalents is also dirt easy in linux. Oh what about having a nice tight firewall script(on clientside, so the server doesnt even have to worry about it) on the client machines to restrict the sort of network services they can use? Can you do that in windows?

Also, you can even setup a samba server and have the xp machines roam using it

Anyway, sorry for the big rant. I guess the point I'm trying to make is that you are very biased about ms administration and refuse to open your eyes to alternatives. linux is capable of at least matching your setup feature-by-feature. Now regarding straightforwardness of windows servers: I can't figure them out. I can setup IIS, etc. But for example trying to get ip aliasing to work..where you have 2 ip addresses on a nic and one of them is a dhcp one..can't figure that out for the life of me on windows. So now I have to 2 static ips on 1 nic..192.168.x.x and 10.0.x.x networks..For some reason filesharing only works over 192.168.x.x even tho I'd love to make it work only for 10.0.x.x but I have no clue where I should even begin looking in windows. I googled and googled and googled and came up with nothing.

PS
oh right..imaging software->linux has lots of that. its called cat & dd & friends. Wed, 30 Oct 2002 21:42:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? If you need support for your Linux try mailing lists
https://listman.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/ Wed, 30 Oct 2002 21:43:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? Oh what about having a nice tight firewall script(on clientside, so the server doesnt even have to worry about it) on the client machines to restrict the sort of network services they can use? Can you do that in windows?
Yes, you can, starting with W2K: Ipsec.exe. Not technically comparable to ipchains/iptables, but there is are similarities. Wed, 30 Oct 2002 21:49:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? I'm a TechAsst-Admin for a hosting company. We use linux boxes exclusively for our hosting solutions (custom tweaked slackware). How do we do production machine "image" installs? We have our generic "image" tar'd up on a server. The generic kernel has our most common chipsets, cpu, etc. We update the image every few months. We do a network mount & run our own "install" script. Done. It even partitionsformats the drives for us All in about 10 minutes. We've done this in various co-locations to the total amazement of the win2k guy next to us doing their 80 update reboots. After it's up-n-running, we'll do a kernel recompile if needed for special hardware... Wed, 30 Oct 2002 21:54:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? Bild:

Hello, in my old university (upc, barcelona, spain). We used to have that same system, but we used Linux.
The computers booted with REMBO:
http://www.rembo.com/rembo/feat.html

And restored a linux or Windows98 image everytime. Then when it booted you just had to login, and the servers automatically restored all the user preferences (mail, browser, adress book, personal folders). It didnt matter if you booted linux or windows, you always had your things wherever you were.

We also had Sun Ray's thinclients all over the campus. And of course, you could also store anything (mail, adress book, programs, projects), and restor them in any thin client.
You could also froze your sessión using an smartcard, and restore it in another thin client.

At least it can be done in a couple of ways. Wed, 30 Oct 2002 22:15:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.sun.com/products/sunray/sunray1/ Wed, 30 Oct 2002 22:19:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? Install Windows .NET Enterprise server RC1 that looks like XP and it eat about 84 Mb of RAM
Install RH 8 with Gnome 2 and it goes for 150 Mb of RAM.
When linux fix its XFree problem will be ready for desktop. Wed, 30 Oct 2002 22:30:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? 1. "Image rollout:" Install Mandrake or RedHat. Make an autoboot disk and perform automated installs on multiple identical machines. Or, do an install, and then use Partimage or beloved Ghost to copy that partition(s).

2. Protection of system files: Mr. or Mrs. Desktop Luser has an account and password to log into the machine. But not root access... so they cannot mess up their system. And if they do, just restore the backup of their home dir that you did last night during the sceduled cron job, possibly even residing on a CD-RW right in their own desktop machine. You did backup, didn't you?

3. Remote administration: Log in via VNC, X, or (shock, gasp, CLI panic) SSH.

4. Configuration changes: Linux uses text files to store cofig info. I know that the format of these files sometimes changes from program to program and between distribtions, but if the super ballsy sysop/bofh got down and learned the formats(or tweaked the source code a little), changed could be made via the above methods, or via a shell script and scripting language, although I know nothing of those two things.

5. There is no operating system that I have ever used that is easier to use as far as device driver support. If the kernel comes with what you have in the system, just type modprobe (kernel driver name). Then, if it cannot load, it just won't load. No making winblows try to uninstall that driver for that question mark device in the device manager, or any other of that plug and pray bs. Only DOS and OS/2 are easier, and they lose out to Linux mainly because you have to reboot them, and Linux you don't.

6. Centralized storage of documents: mount -t smbfs \profile-server%username%documents /home/documents or something like that. Ever heard of SAMBA? Windows-style file and printer sharing?

Linux has some of these things, maybe all of them. Just take the time to learn them. I was glad when I decied to learn how to make DOS do just what I wanted, and amd glad I made the same effort to do the same with OS/2, Linux, and even windows 9.x. Just invest a little more time, and get more in depth. Wed, 30 Oct 2002 22:38:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? First, Windows .NET enterprise RC1 eating only 84MB RAM? ehem...

X is now eating 35MB on my box, and Metacity around 9MB...

Second: You don't even need to install a graphical environment to get a linux server. Wed, 30 Oct 2002 22:41:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? I think what you're searching for is exactly this:
http://www.rembo.com/rad/

-Flo Wed, 30 Oct 2002 22:47:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? PH
yes, .NET only eat 84 Mb in a new instalation, and also all the critical services are disable by default.
Anyway, i like linux but i hate XFree because is big, slower and very limited.
You could say me that MS products are insecure, some are unstable and so on, but one think that MS build fine is GUIs.
Linux need a more flexible engine to get the same power of MS products in the desktop.
And i agree with you, i don't install graphical environment in linux servers, SSH is good enough.
no more posts. :-) Wed, 30 Oct 2002 22:53:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? In the end you won't need to do as many reinstalls of Linux to "fix" problems. You can justify having fewer personnel on staff for support and saving money or you can keep the extra personnel on staff to research how to do all the stuff you are complaining about. Spending a little more now can save you a lot later. Just because you think the Windows install/fix will be faster now doesn't mean it will save you time in the future. I think the old saying goes, "Haste makes waste." Don't waste your companies money on the new licensing scheme just because you didn't want to spend the money on the research to find a way linux can do the same thing. Wed, 30 Oct 2002 22:55:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? With a little tweaking you can store the installed packages and the config in a database, so every say developer can have updated "image" IF his machine would break ( which isnt really a BIG problem ) and about changing the background. You could write a script that finds the ie gnome config file and changes them. You can do everthing that windows 2000/XP does for years in Linux and more.
You just have to be willing to learn how the system works and what it can to and how to automate/script. And i admit the learning curve is still not where windows is, BUT in the end it is the better solution to be flexible and not to be locked into the "easy" MS way of doing things.
The other point is that the MS way is a way into total submissioin.

Free your mind and rest will follow ;-) Wed, 30 Oct 2002 22:57:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? Install RH 8 with Gnome 2 and it goes for 150 Mb of RAM.

And how much of it is shared memory? And how much do you know about how Linux manages memory opposed to Windows? A couple of days ago there was a link to the pretty dinosaur book (Operating System Concepts) here on osnews, maybe you should read it...

And how much do you know about Xfree86 4 and it's extreme modularity and extensible protocol? Wed, 30 Oct 2002 23:09:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? If you want centralized administration and ease of deployment, investigate thin clients. Specifically:

http://ltsp.org Wed, 30 Oct 2002 23:19:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? From reading your editorial i seem to get the feeling that you want it easy, without any learning curve. All things you mentioned are possible on linux/unix often better somethimes a bit harder or maybe even worse, but still everything is there.
But what isnt there are nice gui tools to administrate a Domain like situation or a nice update tool to distribute new software or update configuration files on the clients, its all possible with some nice scripting and stuff. Yes it has a learning curve but somethings get easier. For example most software thats says its windows 2000 complaint isnt like it needs Administrator rights to run, most of the time with hardwork you can get it to work with maybe just some open keys in the registry and some files in the winnt dir, but this is not good. Most linux software works good in the multiuserbased system and needs no tweaking at all just a plain install, which is nothing more then pushing the default packackes to a client and installing them, very easy to automate.

What you say is true, thats why they use windows, they are scared to learn...to try and too believe that its easy to work with the tools that are availeble on the linux platform. After you get used that creating users is done on the command line and that you cant make mistakes and just click some more buttons will fix it you tend to take more care and do it right the first time, which in the end will save you time and will give your users less problems. MS admins tend to think its all so easy but administrating a pretty big MS shop can be hell if you let your admins fool around cause it all looks so simple.

Under linux you will have too learn, cause trail and error can be vert damaging to your system, now under windows click here click there, hmmm what did it do, nothing ? did it solve it ? hmm maybe that button will fix it...hmm no...lets look in the registry in all those undocumented config stuff...hmm now thats broken too, lets revert everything and try again. While under unix nearly everything is documented so its just a thing of good reading, most of the time reading is enough to solve your problem, though reading is very hard.

Wahhaha mega ranting

I think making linux luser friendlier will kill it in the end, since when it looks hard it can only get easier in the end. And my MS windows lessons are OWH it looks so easy but in the end arrrg it so fucking hard!

Quazion. Wed, 30 Oct 2002 23:40:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? Linux is weighed down by too much legacy material for it to be truly considered an excellent desktop/workstation replacement. Microsoft has been wise enough to make core changes when need be, but Linux suffers from too much tacked on without a re-engineering.

Example:
Administration of Linux is far harder than it needs to be due to the absurd Sys V runlevel garbage. Even the Windows Registry is more logical. Why there hasn't been a switch to an easy to use BSD style is beyond my ken. Wed, 30 Oct 2002 23:50:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? There are various ways to replicate an installation.

Mandrake for instance, will make you a disk that you can use to replicate the install of one PC, unattended on other, somewhat similar PCs. Differences are handled automatically by Kudzu.

So, then you just plonk the DVD onto the cup holder, shove the floppy in the slot and power up.

After that, for maintenance, you can ssh into any user machine anywhere in the world, without getting up from your machine.

So, I don't see any obvious way in which it can be made any easier. Wed, 30 Oct 2002 23:50:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? I read the article, and It did not appear to be anti-linux to me. It was a simple proposition:

This is how I do it in Windows. I think this is easy, it works well, and it's well known to Windows admins.

Can I do this in Linux, and if so, why is the process not so well known?

Is Bill Gates paying antagonistic geeks to show attitude to this sort of request in an attempt to put people of using Linux? Wed, 30 Oct 2002 23:58:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? Some other people above hit on most of these points that you can do this stuff with Linux. What's more important is that it really isn't neccesary. Issues that you have with rolling out NT based solutions just don't exist.

For example reading your article you seem to want to be able to:

1) Roll out inexpensive non custom desktops
2) Backup the user's information
3) Be able to remotely administer the whole thing

How about this strategy; the "desktop" is just running XServer software. Everything is running remotely on your servers which means:

a) The individual user's home directory is being stored on a server so its very easy to back up
b) The individual user's data files are being stored on the server so they are very easy to back up
c) The individual user's desktop is just running a simple XServer package so it doesn't get corrupted and if it does that is usually a result of a hardware problem. In any case you can just blow the image away in seconds; heck at $200 (not including monitor) you might just toss and replace the whole computer rather than have your guys try and fix stuff.

Remember all those apps are X apps which means they act as if they are running remotely all the time. They are also Unix apps so they are designed to support many simultanious users. There aren't any extra issues (like you have with Windows apps) running on Citrix. Thu, 31 Oct 2002 00:00:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? How would a company like Dell/HP/OEM/Other support a Linux build, its updates and support at least as well as those it gets when it works with Microsoft?

The exact same way they would as when working with MS. They'd have an agreement with a vendor (SuSE, Mandrake, or Red Hat, for example). The vendor would assist them in creating customized, workable systems, and provide whatever tools the OEM needs.

How would companies who then buy those systems from the supplier be able to do the same kind of images and updates in a similar painless way?

Red Hat has Kickstart. For documentation on Kickstart, visit their site. It seems very similar to Solaris's JumpStart, which I do have a little experience in. Essentially, on bootup, the machine asks a central server for a temporary install IP address and networking info, as well as where to get updates/install. It then goes to this install server and proceeds to install/update according to the rules the sysadmin gave the server. I jumpstarted a Netra with zero prior knowledge in a couple of days. Do some training first (you did some training in the MS ways, no?) and it doesn't even take much more than a couple of hours to write up a whole new set of rules/packages for a special situation (e.g. new machines to consider).

Why does there seem to be no Linux RISprep/SYSPREP tools available to both builders and business/users with strong support from the Linux Distributions, to do this level of support?

You don't seem to have talked with a vendor. There are. See the above. Additionally, you can roll your own. I had a floppy and a zip disk that I used to install 70 or so workstations back in around '98. I rolled my own then, unfortunately. It's not terrible, but it is involved. OTOH, you can do this and, though it, have the option of having full control over your system and installs from the ground up. MS presents you with no such option.

Do you know of a way I am not aware of?
Most everything can be done in a server-centric way. Authentication can be done via PAM modules (e.g. an LDAP-based authentication or authenticating to a Novell server). Home directories and applications are not installed on each machine; they can be installed locally or mounted off of a server. Since there is no registry, each program stores its global config files in a specifc location (which is also mounted off the server), and stores its user-specific config information in the user's home directory. Since you mount the home directories off the central server, the data follows the user around wherever the user goes. No need to worry about "roaming profiles," it roams already!

Additionally, one can have "thin clients" which have either only a windowing system running localy, and everything else runs off of a central server transparently. My former university did this. Alternativey, you can have the entire filesystem mounted off the remote server and have nothing actually stored on the machine. Finally, you can go to a nice extreme of this, and have Sun's newest thin clients, where a central server stores/runs their session, nothing is stored locally, and the user carries around a smart card with only enough info to authenticate themselves to the user. If they move around, they just take out their smart card, move to the new location, plug in their smart card, and their session comes back up exactly as they left it.

Many of the problems Windows solves with those tools you mentioned have been solved long ago by Unix developers, and incorporated into the system. I highly recommend that you have a long, serious chat with a RedHat, SuSE, Mandrake, and take the time to learn the system. It's similar to Windows in some respects, and vastly different from Windows in other respects. Yes, there'll be a learning curve, but how long did it take you to get to the level of Windows knowledge that you have? Please, take the time to really learn the system through and through. It's not the text-based system of the '70's, nor is it the standalone box you seem to think. It's a highly modular and flexible system from the ground up, and I think you'd really like it when you get to know it well. Thu, 31 Oct 2002 00:22:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? >This is how I do it in Windows. I think this is easy, it >works well, and it's well known to Windows admins.

Linux != Windows

Linux should never be turned into another Windows.
Just becaues that's what you do in Windows dosn't mean
that is how it should be done in other operating systems,
especially ones that are vastly different. It also dosn't
mean that it's the best way to do it either.

Like I always say...if you don't want to LEARN a new OS then use the one you are used too and stop complaining!

The OS shouldn't change just becuase it's not what you are
used to and you are too lazy to learn something new or different. Thu, 31 Oct 2002 00:26:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? Umm, the second "user" should have read "server", in the sentence fragment, "and the user carries around a smart card with only enough info to authenticate themselves to the user." Thu, 31 Oct 2002 00:30:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? The resent posts have managed to attack windows, windows admin, windows tools. Even posters attacking windows tools and systems because they don't work as *they* expect.

I went off and examined the Redhat Kickstart docs. Not bad. Not good either. I am sure the high level of configurability is useful somewhere.

Some of you have attacked me/other sys admins on a basis that we should go away and learn more. Or that we should spend some more time studying the fundamental differences in architecture, and the reasons why things are different. You are making a mistake that someone has the time to go to great depths in these areas. Sorry, real world means most departments have pressures that work against this, and thus, we are back at simple, easy to administer system and integration.

Let me remind you, I wrote my comment based on the idea that LINUX is now pitching for this AREA. I have no problem with that. I like Linux. But what seems to be missing here is the basic understanding that whatever you may think, companies are not likely to go and retrain their entire technical teams, and all their users based on your comments.

If Linux was pitching for server space and its normal areas I would have no problem. But its recent foray into desktop territory is worthy of discussion.

What is also clear, and I mean no disrespect to you guys who favour Linux, but Windows is compared to your suggestions even better than when I first made my comment. Looking at suggested pages, tools and options, its a disappointing mish-mash of variable tools, all created without a vision or any unification in mind.

Many of you even attack the end user, the very people whom would be your customers. That in itself is a cardinal sin.

No one has really dealt with the issue of retraining the users. Very few people covered the intergration of office tools, and the interoperability with other companies who would be still working on MS Office based solutions.

Just as I lack an understading as to some aspects others have mentioned, others also misunderstand how things work. One comment 'And lets not forget the wonderful "call microsoft to disable activation part"', shows an unbelievable and stupid lack of understanding.

When you get enterprise licensing with MS, there IS NO activation. Another stupid comment is 'We've done this in various co-locations to the total amazement of the win2k guy next to us doing their 80 update reboots' even though we have already said we run a central image where updates are done and its handled once for the enterprise.

Another comment" 2. Protection of system files: Mr. or Mrs. Desktop Luser has an account and password to log into the machine. But not root access... so they cannot mess up their system. And if they do, just restore the backup of their home dir that you did last night during the sceduled cron job, possibly even residing on a CD-RW right in their own desktop machine. You did backup, didn't you?"

Basically I know its a shock horror, amazing idea, but Admin access is usually replaced with 'power user' which acts the same way in the windows environment. I then have the suggestion that I run local Cron jobs on users machines backing up their /Home drives to a local CDRW. And then asking me or the user in sarcastic comment if we backed up.

So let me get this right.. either myself or the user is going to walk round the entire enterprise each night, and mount/unmount linux CDWR drives and do local /home backups even when I have said storing data on a local machine in todays age of one year HD drive warrant's is the most braindead, stupid, dumb assed lame LAME LAME way of handling this, and its something that was clearly stated in my comments originally. At this point my regard for 'Mr or Mrs Desktop Luser' as stated is higher than for this comment.

Many of you have suggested a remote NFS /home, which I would have on a server running a nightly backup.

I am not sure how to say this, but its important to remember you have to convince, and operate a system that starts and ends with the user, and the company. Some of you have stated good ideas and tools, and methods. No one as yet has supplied me with an all round idea of how an all Windows business could successfully carry it off.

Thats the market Linux is aiming at. At least with the desktop sales pitch. Whatever solution it is, its got to be a unified workable and downright simple solution. Both for technical staff and the end user, and with no, or at least limited loss of functionality. Its not the Linux market guys. Its a whole new ball game.

Most windows shops have specific software, bespoke to windows. Many tools and utilities, licenses and assests tied into what they have. When you have made your grand switch to Linux, and the users can't use the system you have put in, and none of their software runs even if they could use it, you'll have to find answers and solutions.

Sorry to rant, but some of you simply are not being realistic. You are going to have to have a solution that is better, simpler, cleaner, easier and with lower cost, and that before people will even consider it.

DS Thu, 31 Oct 2002 00:35:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? Everything a 'Professional ' would need from Server, Desktop, Printer, Network and integration perspective.

well, i'd say linux already has 'server' and 'network' covered, its far more flexible and powerful than windows in that regard. as for 'desktop' and 'printer', well, we're working on it, and its getting better every release. 'integration' is a misnomer entirely, the unix philosophy is completely against integration - it provides a single point of failiure and leads to things like the registry which can't easily be administered from a boot floppy in the case of utter failiure.

Central server or domain creation.

kerberos, nis/yp, ldap and many others, including your own personal scripts, if you so prefer.

Then the ability to create images that can be delivered to any PC on the network. SYSPREP/Automated install/update across network.

many people mentioned bootp/tftp, nfs, afs, coda, kickstart, red carpet, apt-get/dpkg. and once again, you can always write your own stuff and release it - thats how we all improve

Specialised routines for locking down systems, desktops, tools, data storage on the 'domain'. System failure/recovery.

backing up your central ldap or nfs/other fs server to a worm is the best way, but there are distributed fault-tolerant fs too. bastille will lock your system down and the intrinsic user system of unix means that you dont have to lock down the tools - theyre secure already.

unix has the best error reporting logging systems i have seen - you can have upwards of 1000 machines all reporting their syslog over ssh to a central server(s) which write them immediately to worm or tape. you can have custom log scripts checking these and tie that into your IDS. unix makes you the spider in the web - you can feel the vibrations over your entire network. Thu, 31 Oct 2002 00:42:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? DS, you are asking for experience from someone who has actually done or been in an envionment where large scale rollouts where done, I've been there. Personally I worked as part of a team that automated HP-UX/Sun/Linux mass deployments, centralized configuration management, cloning, etc, for a large (or once large) telecom co. (I'm not there anymore though)

Here is how the environment was setup.

1) Nothing but the OS is local to the disk. That way, if the machine dies, you can clone and put into place a new system in about 15-25 minutes. (from the largest server to the smallest linux machine).

2) Centralized network storage. We had a SAN solution with NFS servers exporting volumes from the SAN to the rest of the network. Access is controlled by using netgroups.

3) NIS. All of our unix users have NIS accounts. However, my brother implemented a systems where linux users could log in using windows userid's and passwords from a windows DC. There are two ways to do this. a) use MS services for unix in AD to run the DC as an NIS master. Works for all unix's b) use samba and winbind in the linux image.

4) Hardware is compliant. You have to make sure that you have an image that will work with the hardware you buy. (of course). You have to do this with Windows too. XP on a machine w/ a bunch of ISA hardware, etc, won't work too well.

5) For linux you do a customised kickstart installation with scripting in the post install section to initiate the post install procedures. In the kickstart configuration file, you can specify the software packages to install, and where to get them, etc. Your distribution lives on an NFS exported filesystem (which is actually on the SAN). Kickstart does an install from the NFS server, installs it's packages, and then starts your post install.

6) cfengine is your friend. We used a smart cfengine setup to manage all of our HP/Sun/Linux systems. With intelligent use of variables and filesystem layout, cfengine can autodetect the configuration files and tree that it needs, and can carry out specific tasks which you of course have to specify.

7) Centalized patching mechanism. We had a system of scripts that hid the OS specific details for patching. That way, each system used the same interface. This interface was then called from cfengine.

Each OS has it's own details for initiating an install. HP-UX is the best, you just ignite it from across the network, and it goes. Sun, you go to the console and do a boot -net install. Linux you put in the kickstart floppy/cd/etc (could be by network booting if you have the right boot image in the nic), and boot that way. After that you walk away and let the rest of the process take care of it. Thu, 31 Oct 2002 00:49:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? I'm not going to get in a discussion about how great the tools are for Windows or begin to point out the equivalents in Linux. That is the wrong premise to start with. Your view point is not from the direction of whether the Linux desktop is good enough for the average user, your view point is as an IT person and a Microsoft oriented one at that. You're talking about whats easy for YOU and what saves you time. That is not what is going to decide whether Linux desktops and Linux software begin to spread. What will be the deciding factor will be first and foremost COST. There is no doubt that Linux is a far less costly solution. The fantastic tools you mention were not there when Windows began its climb to dominance, they came later as a result of IT people and companies trying to become more efficient when rolling out solutions for users and customers.
Linux will do the same thing as it progresses.
What will start that process? COST! Linux is already happening on a daily basis around the world. You, as an Microsoft oriented IT person, will not make that decision. Your PHB employers will make that decision and TELL you to start using it because it saves THEM money. If they hold off on the decision to switch, their competitors will force the decision to switch on them simply because their competitors will be able to lower their costs and undercut your less enlightened boss. You may be able to convince your boss that Linux is not for your company, but eventually, after your company gets beaten in the market by those smart enough to see the savings in Linux, your boss will come back to you and your shortsighted opinion and perhaps ask to find find the door...out. Thu, 31 Oct 2002 00:53:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? Hi Tormak,

That's a fair better suggestion and helfully information than many have offered. Would you consider it a big ask for a bunch of MSCE's to roll what your team did ?

I agree re the hardware specs by the way, most beneficial to go that route. To be honest, many have pointed out Imaging and network role out. Seems no problem there. Its the backside setup that is concerning me. The NFS ideas are fine, as are security and other aspects. office intergration would have to be workable, and I like your brothers work re the Wind DC

I now suspect from all the comments that the systems and admin can be done by scripting and other methods. More work than Win, but all quite possible (least for me). I just doubt I would ever be able to allocate the time for it all....

DS Thu, 31 Oct 2002 01:00:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? ok:

imaging:
ghost works with linux,and as of ver 7.3 even supports grub

also,

there is a native *nix tool called DD

just like your windows network you can create your images and roll them out, almost all distros will pickup new hardware changes.

you can even script it with a small boot disk if you want.


Policeys and user startup scripts and Domains;
here, linux has more choices and flexiblity,

you can setup an LDAP domain with samba support built in,

openAFS you can have a network like system of user directory and workgroups accross the entire domain with user and group permssions.

with openAFS all windows cliets and all Nix are supported, i think even mac is supported.

you can even add SELINUX, to the domain and have major secuirty policey type controls over the entire domain.

and all the intergrated into an LDAP based domain means many
software and hardware will work with it , even win2k AD is based on LDAP.

software:

with the openoffice and abiword projects office software is not an issue.

groupware and imap:

there are many imap/exchnage replacements out there and many will intrgrate into your ldap domain, the only hanging issue here is calender support is kind of weak but , you can get it to work.

startup scripts:

becuase linux is a text based system you could have starup script check for updates with either up2date or atp-get(rpm ver or deb ver)

you could even roll out new software by just adding something like:
apt-get install openoffice

to the startup script
and everyone will get it, this could be used for updates too.

all in all this covers, most of you topics, i think.
its just a matter of knows the tools and how things work sure the howtos and docs in some projects are weak, but the IRC chat channels and web forums /news groups can offer you a ton of support.


Nex6 Thu, 31 Oct 2002 01:06:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? Hi,

Thanks, that kind of information is great. Thanks for coming back with it

DS Thu, 31 Oct 2002 01:10:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? Well, when it comes to free advice, you get what you pay for ;o).

I'm sure that there are a few enterprise-level sysadmins here (see Joseph's post a few spots above), but I really wouldn't expect too many to actually be hanging around here. You talk about going to Dell/HP/etc. for solutions for you Windows network, but you expect a hobbyist site to give you a migration plan for Linux? Get real. Read a few other discussions here, and you should realize that you're not going to get consultant-grade advice here. If you're really serious, these are the people you talk to:

http://www.ximian.com/solutions/

http://www.redhat.com/solutions/migration/offerings.html

http://www.mandrakesoft.com/consulting/migration

Once you've talked to these guys, *then* you can come in here and tell everyone how Linux isn't ready for the enterprise desktop. Thu, 31 Oct 2002 01:19:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? i know several microsoft admins....they have been doing microsoft for YEARS....back to dos/3.1 days...now moving on to XP and 2k domains/active directory.

learning one more microsoft thing is like taking another breath of air. it's natural.

if you think you are going to skim over some manuals, ask a few questions, futz around a bit with some distros...and in 6 months be ready to roll out hundreds of linux workstations ....you are in for a big shock.

i know a few linux people who could manage it easily. (not me)...but these guys have been unix/linux admins for years.

too many microsoft dronez forget that.

the challenge in the change to linux is huge for microsofties..it's a whole new way of thinking/doing.

many will give up. and that's fine...it's not for everyone. Thu, 31 Oct 2002 01:20:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? and openAFS is headed by IBM and it scales to something like over 10,000 users or something. Thu, 31 Oct 2002 01:20:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? "Linux should never be turned into another Windows"

Who said it should be? Business people are wanting to know cost-effective ways of implementing Linux.

"if you don't want to LEARN a new OS then use the one you are used too and stop complaining!"

Who said we don't want to learn a new OS? The inquiry is about how to implement Linux, not dump on it.

(BTW Which of the several OSs I use are you referring to?)

Try reading all the words, and understanding the whole of the post before going off at the mouth like an immature C/PM OS fanatic raving against the new wonder DOS.

To business people, an OS is not a religion substitute, it is simply a platform for running the tools of our business. Factors in that assessment are upfront costs and running costs. The assessment is binary - it is cost-effective or it isn't. Thu, 31 Oct 2002 01:33:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? 'if you think you are going to skim over some manuals, ask a few questions, futz around a bit with some distros...and in 6 months be ready to roll out hundreds of linux workstations ....you are in for a big shock'

Yes, maybe. But thats what the pitch is, right ? Linux for everyone and everything ? So I am putting my toe in and I am finding out.

I'll tell you this, If I decide I will do this, then I will. The question is more, how long would it take, and whats required, and is it achievable.

'many will give up. and that's fine...it's not for everyone.'

Erm, if you aim at the desktop, is'nt the point that you ARE trying to make it for everyone ?

Someone accused me of being some kind of MS zealot. My background is more AS/400 systems, and like many people, I have done MS sysadmin through a requirement, less than through choice. After a while you can get to operate the system without issues IMHO.

Why should I hate MS tho ? Its straightforward, it works, it pays my bills. But that's a side issue.

DS Thu, 31 Oct 2002 01:38:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? There are lots of good comments so far. I can tell you what I have researched, but not implemented in a large scale yet.

I've set up small networks with NIS as a central password server and NFS for central file sharing (including home directories). This works very well, but NIS is not considered a highly secure solution since it advertises the user list to the network. As long as you don't let users have local root access, and have a solid firewall, it should be fine.

LDAP is a more promising solution with better security and performance. However, the client side software for authentication is not easy to set up, at least about a year ago when I was seriously investigating it. Maybe it's better now. One of the drawbacks (as of last year) was that LDAP did not support netgroups which are critical for wide spread NFS sharing. This makes NIS more attractive.

Of course, you could also look into Novell's NDS (yes it runs natively on Linux now), but I prefer to stick with completely open source solutions.

Finally, there is Kerberos which is probably more complex to set up than NIS or LDAP.

As far as roll out tools. the other comments cover it well. Kickstart for automated installs, and ghost or drive image for clones. I have succesfully cloned many Linux workstations and they are much easier to deal with than Windows clones.

With Windows NT and above, you have to worry about unique SIDs when you clone. There is a SID changer that comes with Drive Image and Ghost that works fine on WinNT4, but not with Win2K or XP. As far as I know, you have to be an enterprise customer to quality for the official cloning tools from MS. Now, there may be some unsupported (by MS) cloning tool for 2K/XP but you are voiding your support if you use it.

How many licenses do you have to have to get a version of Windows XP and Office XP that do not require activation? Again, I thought it was 10,000+ desktops to qualify. I haven't read up on all the latest MS licensing so I am not sure.

I was a Novell CNE from 1993-2000 and I am currently a Microsoft MCSE since 1997. I've done large scale Windows domain rollouts (500+ nodes). However, I think MS is making things harder with their ever stricter licenses and product activation, etc.

I think the Domain model is a great one for small to medium sized businesses ( Thu, 31 Oct 2002 01:47:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? >Guys, too many of you are posting regarding setting up a copy of machines or disks.

That's good. Kickstart is a great tool.

>Remember, I was looking for something server side managed

Shell scripts

>, server based data storage,

NFS

> server based mail,

SMTP/POP, Openmail, Insite, Domino

> roaming profiles,

NFS

settings,

NFS

security,

Define "security". Do you mean "firewall" or do you mean "lockdown"? If you mean the latter chown and chmod will serve you well.

> image maintanence and updates,

NFS and Shell scripts.

> and machine recovery.

Add a grub entry for "recover", and boot a custom image designed to reload the system. If you have NFS, and permissions configured properly you can actually pull this off with *NO* data loss.

>The first comment here mirrors my general comment exactly. Is he wrong ? Am I wrong ? If we are

Are you wrong? Yes.

>why is it so many companies feel as I do that its a road you just cannot go down ?

They don't feel as you do. Many companies are switching EVERY DAY.

>Even I am capable of copying a disk from A to B

Then you can learn DD, NFS, NIS, chmod, chown, and basic shell scripting.

>If you roll out linux in your shop, please say how you do it, the tools you use, the basic

I rolled my own tools and pushed updates using cron, and basic shell scripts. I upgraded an entire farm of RedHat 6.0 machines to 6.2 in under 5 hours (230 servers, all in locations across america)

> methods, where you keep your data and why, how you recover from a failed drive or machine, AND

You keep your data on a server, if you lose a drive on a workstation have one prepared or use a boot CD or network boot to load it.

>USER training and acceptance. Remember, I would not be able to just GIVE 100 users a whole new

What user training? Sure they will be afraid of the new machine for a day, but it's not as tough as it sounds if it's configured correctly.

>environment without huge nightmares. Each user would have to go through retraining and would need >help.

Granted, which is why you train SPOCs (Single Points Of Contact) and leverage them during the migration. If you have upgraded users from 95 -> 98 -> NT -> 2000 you will be familiar with the process, it is no different when changing to Linux.

> Remember that if you did roll it out in many businesses you may well have to cater for user >retraining, and persuading management about the pros/cons of such changes.

I keep hearing "training" come up in the list of why nots, however it never seems to be a problem when a company decides to upgrade their OS, or their Email software.

>There may be many people reading this topic who perhaps like me are curious, yet either do not >know its possible, or maybe remain skeptical about its reality in the trenches.

It's not that tough. I'd say that any 6 month Linux newbie on a mission could provide a reasonable solution.

>Let me put it another way. You have Linux distributions. Why when they offer the ability to >install and create a system using a simple GUI have they not done more work in this KEY area

Have you installed RedHat Linux? Why does everything require a GUI tool for management? Which is faster over a remote link, SSH or PCAnywhere? LOL

>You really will have to cater for people like me if you want to win the desktop. You'll have to >build amd maintain, and improve tools that MSCE admins can run and work with IMHO in this area.

Why? The tools are already out there, I'm not going to "cater to you" if you can't get with the program then get left behind. The tools are there, if you are too "good" for them then that's your problem.

>DS
-Aitvo Thu, 31 Oct 2002 02:16:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? This is just one way to create your "image". It uses two tools, mindi to create a mini-distro bootable CD for rescue, and mondo to backup your system.

http://www.mondorescue.com

You pop in the CD, boot from CD and type "nuke" and it restores the entire system from as many CDs as needed. Can backup/restore over a network. You can repartition and resize partitions during the restore, change from IDE to SCSI to RAID, etc.

Thanks for the article, lots of *lively* discussion. I'm gearing up to replace a client's Windows desktops with Linux sometime down the road - they don't know it yet ;-) So it's good to read about so many options.

By the way, several other things to point out:

Webmin - another *great* remote admin tool. The Samba or SWAT (samba config) module allows you to set up a Samba server as a Windows PDC or server with just a few button clicks ;-) You owe it to yourself to try Webmin, even if you're proficient with vi or emacs (like me)... Thu, 31 Oct 2002 02:17:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? >>>Why should I hate MS tho ? Its straightforward, it works, it pays my bills. But that's a side issue.

hey dude, i never meant you personally. i was trying to communicate that switching to linux is not easy.

also, i don't hate MS software. I just don't trust the company.

m Thu, 31 Oct 2002 02:24:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? I have deployed and managed 120+ Ghosted Win98se systems for years, using seven different images for the various hardware and departments, it now works so smoothly that I did myself out of a full time job. Now I or my replacement can log in via modem from home to fix 95% of problems that crop up.

Managing multiple client Linux deployments does not have to be any different, and if you are willing to learn a little, is actutaly a hell of a lot easier to manage. You can either use Kickstart based deployments, or as per Win98se, Ghosted image deployments.

Symantec Ghost has supported Linux based Ext2 filesystems deployments for years, and the latest version, Symantec Ghost™ Corporate Edition 7.5
http://enterprisesecurity.symantec.com/products/products.cfm?produc...
even now supports Linux EXT3 providing "Comprehensive native support for the newest Linux Journal filesystem"

Individual client custom configeration is even easier than with Win98se/Win2k. Once the client has logged in via DHCP and is allocated a name based on it's MAC address. The client local init script can mount a remote NFS/SMB( Via SAMBA ) filesystem and run any scripts from a directory address ending in the clients DHCP allocated name. The /home partition can be hosted on a server and even distributed on a peer-peer basis via the CODA filesystem. Every thing in the Linux/X11 Desktop enviroments is build to be remotely operated and can be managed the same.

Even all of the above can be automated and professionally packaged, as it has been done in Ximian - Ximian Red Carpet™ Enterprise™
http://www.ximian.com/products/redcarpet_enterprise/

The solutions are already there, the solutions are getting easier to use, the solutions cost less to aquire and operate over time, the solutions can be greatly customized to enhance perfomance of the enterprise.

The problem is NOT the lack of a solution, but the lack of looking for one. Thu, 31 Oct 2002 03:30:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? >than many have offered. Would you consider it a big ask for >a bunch of MSCE's to roll what your team did ?

Once it's implemented anyone can deploy it.Implementing it takes time though. Implementing an environment where both unix and windows can co-exist requires people from both sides. You need unix experts and windows experts. An there-in lies your problem. I will readily admit that unix people are rare compared to mcse's. As an aside, lets be realistic, designing an environment is no easy task period. Designing a heterogeneous operating environment is much harder and requires more work. There is no way around it, and it has little to do with the relative difficulties of the OS's you are adding to your environment. It could be a very easy to use system like MacOS, or and easy to deploy system like HP-UX. It would be a big ask for a bunch of unix guys to *properly* implement a windows environment. Implementing and properly implementing are two completely different things. However, learning the in's and out's of another system as versatile as linux definatly has it's benefits. As a system's engineer and architect, the more tools I have in my toolbox, the better chance I have that I can choose the right tool for the job. If you only have one tool.....

>Its the backside setup that is concerning me. The NFS ideas

Like I say above, backside setup in a heterogeneous environment takes more work than a homogeneous environment and requires different design decisions. Our environment consisted of thousands of servers and thousands of workstations. Setup correctly (the unix side) could be supported on an operational basis of one person to every one to two thousand workstations.

>are fine, as are security and other aspects. office >intergration would have to be workable

As is control. As a windows administrator I doubt very much that you allow users to install whatever they want on their machines. Managing access controls is an area that will quickly make or break your environment. (The later Mandrake distributions have been nice from an interoperability point of view because they come with support out of the box for NT ACL compatibility (if you use XFS and Samba)).

>More work than Win, but all quite possible (least for me).

I would challenge the comment about more work than Windows. Having worked with very experienced and respected MCSE's responsible for the windows integration and automation, I would say that the effort is comparitive. There might be more thought required when designing a unix/linux environment than windows, but that's usually because you need to plan for windows interoperability b/c windows does not normally come with facitilties to readily support *nix systems. The unix/linux systems do have those facilities and their installation and setup can be automated. Also, I have found that usually the file management jobs fell to the unix machines (even if the filesystems were for windows users) because the effort required to script and automate such solutions is far less under *nix. (Also, many MCSE's that I've met don't have great familiarity with the windows scripting facilities, whereas it's a required skill for any unix admin).

If you want to carry this conversation on, please feel free to email me. Thu, 31 Oct 2002 03:43:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? Yet Sla7er, the village idiot completely forgets about shared resources.

So, his assumption:



Dah, 10 desktops = 10 sessions = 1500 MB of memory used, dah, GNOME 2.0 is bloat



Also forgetting that alot of the features in .NET have been disabled by default, meaning, you have a bare bones systems loading up using 84MB, not an achievement in my books.

Lets start activating the sound server, the terminal services server, and numerous other services required to see what the REAL requirements are. Thu, 31 Oct 2002 03:56:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? Who said Linux exclusively used SYS V run levels?

Geepers, get out of your house a little more often. Slackware have been using the FreeBSD scheme since God was a teenager. Thu, 31 Oct 2002 04:04:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? Na, that isn't it. Microsoft goes around giving out certificates to pimply faced teenagers who have never done any formal study and expect them to work miracles like securing a server.

I know alot of MSCE's who have computer science degree's who simply got MSCE's to prove that yes, they do have that skill as a degree is normally to generalised. However, unfortunately, the number of good MSCE's are normally drowned out by bad MSCE's.

How to correct this? bring in the UNIX/Matthew motto, "You have to earn the right to use a computer", ensuring that those who are simply in because its the "in thing" are purged out quickly.

Lets look at the "ease of use approach", it now gives admins the ability to think they know more than what they really do where by Linux/UNIX ensures, through the use of "tough software" keeps the admins on ground 0, realising they don't have all the answers and therefore ensurign they RTFM (Read the Fabulous Manual) and learn the basic fundamentals. Thu, 31 Oct 2002 04:13:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? Read the post, read the comments. I am shocked at the commentary/responses. The author has bought up some valid points as to the usability of the platform AS A DESKTOP environment, indicated some areas where he's run into difficulty, and has asked for some help. About five people tried to help, most of the rest of you merely sat back and attacked the author, his skills, Microsoft, and anything else you could think of.

What the hell is the matter with you people? The man's asking for some HELP, here! Jeez. Thu, 31 Oct 2002 04:44:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? The way I see it, the desktop is already there, except that it is too cluttered, though.

Also, the definition of what a desktop is still undefined. Simply ask two people what they think of a desktop and these two will probably give out diffent views of the same thing.

The situation, most vendors are stuffing all the decorations into one box, resulting into a very complicated set of tools that only a few will ever use.

It would probably be good to group common pieces and spin them off to another world, though. Example is completely separating desktop toolkits, like KDE, GNOME and [insert your favorite here] will have their own distribution. Independent and away from each other's reach. Thu, 31 Oct 2002 05:01:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? I cannot agree more. I actually bothered to READ all the comments before posting (which is, apparently, more than most have done) and give serious thought to AdmV0rl0n's questions. I noted that less than 1-in-7 responses were appropriate answers that were not simple restatements of previous comments. Approximately 5-in-7 responses were insulting in one fashion or another to AdmV0rl0n or MS admins in general. Somewhat less than 1-in-7 comments were either direct assaults of previous commenters or AdmV0rl0n or were way OT.

I just completed a MCSE course several months ago and found the whole thing very frustrating for me, especially since I had not used an MS OS seriously since WinFW 3.11 (having since discovered Linux and Macs). When I questioned my instructor, who is very knowledgeable about Linux, concerning why he could not recommend Linux for the workstation desktop, he stated that it was because he posted a similar question to a newsgroup and received little useful information and LOADS of flames. "If the Linux community is that hostile to outsiders, they're not going to get me or, my network, as converts."

As to AdmV0rl0n's questions, I cannot be of any more assistance on the OS end of things. I can, however, give some words on your office suite choice...

I would stay away from the completely open-source solutions on this one for two reasons (bring on the flame war):

1 - SUPPORT ! By paying for your office suite and signing a support contract, you can rest assured that YOU don't have to learn all the nitty-gritty on the applications. You can concentrate on keeping the network up.

2 - DATABASES ! While the variety of open-source databases are good and the quality high, this is where most of your retraining problems and expenses are going to occur. This is really the primary reason for reason 1. Many support contracts will include some training sessions (or discounts or at least opportunity) for key personnel who can then train their co-workers. Take advantage of this.

Make sure you get a suite that can handle MS file formats. StarOffice can do this. Not sure about Hancom or others. You need MS file compatibility to be able to trade files with vendors/partners/gov't. We don't have to like it, but it's a fact of modern business.

Anyway, I really hope this helps some. Thu, 31 Oct 2002 05:17:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? I think you're missing the point here, AdmVorlon.

You want nice nifty integrated tools to do everything. But, GNU/Linux is _not_ integrated. This is not MS Windows, where the GUI is the OS - this is UNIX, where the GUI is the front-end to the OS (for the most part). There is no central ratifying body (MS) to determine how everything is going to look. _If you want the advantages of Linux, you will have to learn to Think Different (tm). Don't look for "comparable tools". Linux is not the same as Windows. and thus does not need "comparable tools" for many things. There's no defrag tool because ext3 doesn't fragment (yes, I know that's an oversimplification). There's no wacky security options to figure out, because the OS enforces them by default.

I understand your defensiveness regarding some people's complaints, but look at it this way: how many hours have you spent learning to admin MS systems (I count "experience learning" in this as well)? Now, compare that to the number you've been admining Linux systems. You've gone to great depths to learn about MS stuff - why won't you at least give a few dozen to learning about Linux? I don't think that's a harsh complaint at all.

Step one: go to a vendor. RedHat will bend over backwards if you express interest in switching to Linux for anything (they smell the blood of fresh sales). They will answer your questions as concisely as you want.

Step two: Test it. You might find that your pre-conceptions of what Linux can or cannot do easily are significantly off. I know mine were a ways off - now, I can't function without Linux. Give kickstart a try, in particular - it only requires two computers, neither of which needs to be all that powerful. RedHat even includes a tool which makes setting up a kickstart config stupidly easy.

-Erwos Thu, 31 Oct 2002 05:38:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? Have you heard of the dd command available in all unixex including linux. you dont need a few thousand $ ghost or sysprep. Roaming profiles, that is for single user systems made to act liek mucti user. just share your /home on nfs. what more. all profiles and more settings are roaming, rotating and anything more you need.

it is more easy to maintain hundreds or more systems on linux networks than windows as you have more choice of remote admin to imaging to managing useras centrally than just one fixed with absolutely no flexibility way of doing things in windows world.

want to restrict you users desktop env or anything else for that matter, take a look at kde kiosk mode or just the power and flexibility of PAM is enough to acheive this.

The issue is that you guys dont see anything beyond the biscuits M$ throws at you and you are happy to be a loyal slave to them than go out and see the real world.

Just a search on google should give you all the answers you need. or ask your friendly neighboorhood linux guru or a professional consultant. I only request you and people like you to do you homework before you comment. dont exepct linux inc to market a utility like dd with brouchers and a few thousand $ price tag. Linux is a community effort and not a corporation selling some product. ofcourse there are companies which does these services if you want it that way. consult with them and get support from them. Thu, 31 Oct 2002 06:22:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? Hi
Having just waded through p'haps 30 pages of comments, I've a few to add myself. I am the sysadmin of a _small_ network ( Thu, 31 Oct 2002 08:18:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? Yes, you can do perfectly good image copies of linux systems with dd, or even tar! But, there is a project which I have been impressed with lately that does do very good cloning of hard drives in a manner reminiscent of Ghost. Check out http://www.partimage.org

My comment on the article is that in the windows world we tend to get locked into knowing about a suite of apps that we use on a regular basis, each one of which serves a particular function, eg. windows plus ghost plus ... However, for linux you don't need to go hunt down these sort of apps. They come standard with the system, and often are best if used from the command line or as part of
a powerful script. That is how you're meant to do it, and in order to know what to do, I am afraid the solution is to learn and learn. It is a very different way of looking at it, but the linux way in the long term will mean that you will have fewer proprietary products to baby sit, and the the system just works.

Let me repeat that one. The system just works. Period. And it won't get wiped out by a Code Red or Nimda. Less support required.

Of course if Dell had to preinstall linux, for them it would not be as much as a problem as for you, in their case it would just mean hiring the appropriate geeks... Thu, 31 Oct 2002 08:29:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? I have a mixed Win/Linux installation and I will tell you how we did it, so bare with me. Please note that it is a fairly small company (50 users) but I am sure that what we did is easily expanded.
We have 3 Linux machines in the backend. One called Public wich is an Athlon 2000+ 2 GigRam and 160 GB RAID 5 storage.

This machine exports with NFS and Samba a folder called public which is for every one to use and abuse:) Of course we have quotas for every user. The other Linux machine does NIS and Samba as a Primary Domain Contrloller.It exports the home directories for every user so every Linux user in the company has automatically those so called "roaming" profiles. This machine also does DHCP and Squid. The other Linux machine is just our gateway to the Net, so it acts as a firewall.

Note that we use Suse 8.0 for the servers and the desktops.
We have created a so called "info file" wich Suse checks everytime you start a new installation and looks for the default answers to the setup questions.

Our Windows users use Win2k and XP, and are all logging in to the domain wich is provided from the oforementioned Samba service.
All the users are created through Yast at the NIS server. The password file is repicated to the other server with the help of a script.

Note that Samba uses the Unix passwords and users, so any Windows or Linux user can seamlessly log in to either Linux or Windows machines transparently.

Also all the Linux machines are installed through nfs. We have copied the Suse DVD to that Public Server and with the help of a boot disk + the info file" disk we can setup any workstation regrdless of harware changes.

Well that is the basic idea. Excuse my English, but I am fro m Greece and English is not my native language.

Hop this helped you a bit. Thu, 31 Oct 2002 09:11:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? Maybe it's a problem of documentation. Whether it's possible or not, at least it's not visible! Maybe one of the guys giving solutions in the comments should write a howto. I can't, cause I don't know anything about the subject. Thu, 31 Oct 2002 09:29:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? There is nothing wrong with NFS provided it has been configured properly, please give detail in how CIFS is more secure. Any admin worth a grain of salt is restricting ports on his switch to prevent unauthorized access, and tunneling using NFS and NIS over SSH in addition to using allow lists. There are ways to make NFS secure, don't discount it so quickly. Thu, 31 Oct 2002 11:02:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? It makes me laugh reading articles like this. Having been a SunRay user for over two years these arguments aren't even relavent.

SunRays are ultra thin clients with zero state. All admin is done on the server and when you are running the Gnome / Mozilla / StarOffice combo life is sweet. If my 'PC' ever breaks down the mail boy runs up with a new one and plugs it in, no rebuild, no nothing.

And being involved on the support side I know that you only need 1/3 of the sysadmin resource to run a SunRay setup as you do PC's.

Step into the 21st century guys. No noise, no maintenance, no hassles. Thu, 31 Oct 2002 11:17:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? Okay I am not saying that Red Hat is here to save the world but I can roll out workstations faster in RedHat than I can in Windows (and yes I do this for a living) All with all their own customized name IP and config as I desire (and all off a network server. As for the My Docs being on a network server, thats funny I support many Windows shops and have seen some really tight security but the users still manage to save docs to the local machine, now under Linux I just mount their /home/username dir to the network server and they have no idea that they are living the safe way because 99% dont have an idea they are being mapped. (I can just make the rest of the file systems read only) This is all next to impossible with NT or W2K, and should I get started on interoperability, Samba integrates a Windows Network like a Windows 2000 Server never will (Windows, Unix, Linux, Novell all without huge added price tags) So in short YAWN I could do that years ago Windows is still trying to catch up Thu, 31 Oct 2002 12:07:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? Some far more intelligent comments recently. Much more useful. Thanks

Craig: NFS shares have always concerned me, but it is an option.

My current network guys is 110 PC's and Macs, + 4 Sun workstations, and several PC servers running NT4. To correct a few thoughts people expressed:

MS supplied us with the enterprise versions of XP office and XP pro, no questions asked, once we signed up for the new license. These require no activation and include the tools you need for prepping systems.

To be totally fair to MS, while their screwing us on the license side, the tech side is fully workable. There are few caveats and it does just work. I may provide a future post covering this to help in terms of understanding.

Cheers
DS Thu, 31 Oct 2002 12:15:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? I have worked with MS products since pre windows days (yep I set up a bunch of DOS stations using a serial network) I even came close to working on my MCSE. Delayed! I will still get it but my focus is Linux now. Linux has proven to me over and above stability, configurability. The tools are out there, but I would not recommend sticing a Win Admin in front of a Linx box and say go to work any more than I would take a Unix Admin and stick them in front of a Win box and say do your magic. (although that could be an amusing prospect)
Linux and Windows are totaly different beast (yes they are both beast, cant be helped at our level of technology) Rebutal .Net RC-1 takes 84MB and RH 8 takes 150 .NET will take a lot more memory in the final release(early releases are always shallow on memory usage) and Linux architecture is built on the principle to try to speed things up I have worked primarily with Windows up till a few years ago. Yes Linux will force you to relearn and yes MCSE will be worthless , but Linux is much more rewarding and I hate to beat a dead horse but my daughter is Three and I love to go home on time at night to see her Thu, 31 Oct 2002 12:40:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? 1. Use samba -- I have both linux and windows boxes going to my Solaris boxes using shares that smb based. No voodo here.

2. Kickstart is one of the primary reasons that a large company I know moved from a server farm of 100+ Solaris servers set up via Jumpstart to RedHat set via Kickstart. No other Linux company seems to give a damn about this and it gets very little press.

3. I have myself and about five programmers working from Linux everyday.

4. The funniest part of the article was about roaming profiles. If you use TCPwrappers on all your machines, set up NIS. It is not that hard and by god all my users have one home directory in one central NAS server and if we wipe their box out they reboot that box and start off exactly where they left off. Also, like you mentioned, the user A can log into user B's box in a pinch and -Boom!- they are sitting on their desktop user A has access to all their things. Look at webmin for a gui approach to server configuration. It really rocks for DNS/NIS administration IMO.

Linux is not for everyone and has IMO at least another year or two before it can be widely used beyond the Unix geek population.

Nobody has really spoken to the crux of the issue. If orgs move to linux then Windows folks have to re-learn old habits. Not only will it be hard but it simply might not be the thing for every company. Thu, 31 Oct 2002 13:05:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? First PC i used was Sinclear Spectrum 48kb, there was types and just basic software, than i bought an Commodore Amiga500 on 1992-93... Gosh, it was the most sophisticated PC i have ever used, there everything i needed on it, games, software, workbench etc.. i never worried about a system crash, i never worried about reinstalling the system, virus etc., it was faster than any PC of its time, it had the best sound, graphics for years till PC's catch with it, and never had the same pleasure and fun with any PC i bought after Amiga500.. and none was that innovative or sophisticted. Amiga 500's advantage was its architecture, hope one day some company would come out with something like Amiga500 again, and i would throw my PC to trash..

Hope Sony would do something like that, and make the next genereation of playstation consule more like personal computer, than we would enjoy the sophisticated architecture on sound and graphics and use it as office applications and graphics as well..

i don't think that anything so good would come out with recent PC architecture, we need an innovational thing like Amiga500 of its time.. And i hate HP !!! ask them what would we do if we loose our HP installation cd? and if we don't have an internet connection? HP's r the worst PC ever been built!! Thu, 31 Oct 2002 13:11:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? Have you checked into OpenOffice or Sun's Star Office for an MS combatible Office suite??
As for Email solutions how about Ximian Evolution and Connector or a Qmail or other MTA based mail rather than saying oh no there is not Outlook for Linux.. You can you Samba/NFS or even FTP for your installs and "roaming desktops" LDap/NIS for Authenication.. Webmin for remote administration which runs on SSL for security.. You can change permissions to allow/disallow services and the firewall that come built into Linux to prevent MS Messenger/Yahoo/AIM and also prevent outside filesharing programs like Kazaa/Morpheus from being able to get out.. how about a cetralized communtication messenger like Jabber so that people could communicate faster..
And If you need remote access you could use Freeswan/VPN all of which have manuals and Documentation that comes with your install.. And No I wouldn't suggest that a bunch of MCSEs try it without doing some studying and as with any OS update or crossover always do a test network always whether it is MS, Mac, Or Linux it is just smart administration.. Thu, 31 Oct 2002 14:20:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? Could someone (Eugenia?) update the article to guide potential readers to the comments section? Since most of his questions and doubts have been answered here, it would be a nice information source. Thu, 31 Oct 2002 14:36:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? Check out Bynari's Insight Server at:

http://www.bynari.net/

Basically, it can do anything that Exchange can do. The server is free (they offer a paid version with support), the connector is free for Linux, and it supports MS Outlook and Ximian Evolution email clients.

So using Bynari can be one big piece of the puzzle to migrate from MS Windows desktops with Exchange to a pure Linux network. You can mix and match Windows/Outlook and Linux/Ximian on the same network as you migrate.

Sweet ;-)

Fred Thu, 31 Oct 2002 14:37:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? Yes, yes yes. Look. I have tested from Mandrake, 6.0, 7.2, 8.0, 8.2, 9.0 and I KNOW about the APPLICATIONS.

I know I can do email, FTP, shared data, etc etc. My basic comment was built around how do people pull it altogether in a larger environment.

Its very easy to take one linux station, be it redhat, mandrake, yellow dog, Suse, Others, and get it so it is a workable system. I have no problem with that at all. Its fine for the single machine/single user/single task PC. Its not right for rolling 100 machines and ensuring everything works, integrates, and is able to operate.

People have now supplied me with plenty of information regarding the many tools available. I'll happily go further afield and do more research

DS Thu, 31 Oct 2002 15:04:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? I agree with comments that WindowS just work (and might be easier for rookie) but it is unfair in my opinion to just saying Linux not suitable for large environment. Yeah it might be a bit complicated at first but if you willing to spend about the same amount money and time to study the advance feature of Linux as what most Windows admin spent to get expert (maybe an MSCE), both system are comparatively equal in capability. In the long run, Linux is much more viable solution since you can tweak here and there.

I would suggest Mr. AdmV0rl0n to try get more info on remote application function (and maybe diskless terminal) for easier setup. Many project that focus on this such as http://www.ltsp.org and many others. And, Linux is still flexible enough so that you yourself can choose how to setup you system, maybe dedicated authentication server that can access application on other server or just simple diskless X terminal that run on the powerful server but display on outdated hardware terminal (at the speed of the server) or you can run diskless X terminal on local machine if your network and hardware is powerful enough. The best thing is that (as previously mentioned by sombody previously) the user can use any of the machine within the intended group to access his/her files, application, setting etc. without losing their favourite setting.

But of course, I did agree currently GNU/Linux is quite behind in the field of graphical preferences setting. Sometime you have to edit config files or running Perl or other scripts. But the truth is that, Linux still can do the task that Windows can do but as a cheaper alternative especially on the long run. Thu, 31 Oct 2002 15:33:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? First sorry for my rant last night, it was late

But seriously i think you should look at Linux Terminal Services. Its like you have one or multiple servers which host all the application, files and other stuff user might need like printer connections. Then you can reuse your workstations and have them boot off the network or use real X-Terminals ( i have read SunRays before and i think IBM sells them too.) I you need to update software you just update it at your server and BOOM it works at all workstations "Terminals".

Have a look at http://www.ltsp.org/ and http://termserv.berlios.de/ for tools.
http://www.ncd.com/products/hardware/ncs/ for hardware X/terminals.

The thing with terminals is they are "cheaper" then any workstation (yes i know the servers needed are expensiver) and they wont need a upgrade unless they brake down over some time. Just put some new terminals in the a closet on all departments that use computers and they can reorder new terminals them selve if they have used all, it should be just like a phone or tv. What you deliver is an infrastructure you can auto configure them with bootp and dhcp and the such. Then you only have too look after your linux servers. Happy camper. This is what i would do if i had a network with 100 clients.

Also read this newsforge article about the city of largo they have 400 terminal clients running on redhat servers. http://newsforge.com/article.pl?sid=01/08/10/1441239 very nice read i think

Goodluck in your research.

Quazion Thu, 31 Oct 2002 15:58:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? No sane company deals with this area of procurement on cost alone. Many of the suggestions would work wonderfully IF I were to create a new network, or setup a system for a company who was just starting out.

I cannot fully explain to the layman the kinds of detail required when taking a full Win32 shop and the users over to Unix. There are multitudes of problems that have to be considered, and just looking at individual items, mail servers, NIS, NFS, Samba is only half the story.

I can tell you for a fact here, that the company will not move from MS Office, so in this instance, I would have use some VM option, or Wine, and make sure that it worked across the enterprise. I have no doubt that its possible to configure. But I am reticent to say here I think its a viable, suitable, simple solution.

In addition, the programmers here use CVI, which is a Win32 bespoke compiler package. That in tern is then distributed to many client machines, microscopes, scentific machinery etc etc..

The mechanics of moving a business like this to Linux is neither simple, nor straight forward. If you add in other items such as the developments of Serial/USB/Firewire, and the usage of much equipment that tends to have only Win32/Win16 drivers.

I had already looked at nearly every available Linux distro, and in addition I have spoken with Caldera about Volution, and Samsung contact about Mail here. I'd happily move all the desktops to a mail server like that, and run LDAP. Its penciled in for after April budget allowing.

There are sections in the business that can be moved like that, and they will be, but it doesn't get away from my lack of knowledge, and the lack of advertised methods for Linux

Briefly, here is what I consider would be useful for a Linux Distro for someone like me:

1. Server Install, using the standard installer or some amended one I guess.

2. Services wizard, with additional items that tie into later wizards.

3. Linux DOMAIN/ENTERPRISE data storage settings, where you would select the data storage areas for users /Home,/Mail, usersettings/whatever else

4. I suppose this has to go somewhere, I'll put it here. Linux workstation bootdisk wizard

5. Linux workstation Image wizard, taking items from the above server wizard, domain/enterprise wizard to configure mail/NIS/NFS/Samba/other, and the storage of such image(s) for rollout via bootdisk.

6. Linux users and groups wizard, allows the domain user and usergroups to be built. I guess you'd have to store or collate the data from domain/enterprise settings wizard as well on this step.

7. The next step would be to unpack the chosen standard PC, and fire up the boot disk, and download the image. This covers pc's that fail in the future.

Now I have very much oversimplified the issues, but perhaps you can see what I am getting at. Something like the above that every distro comes with would aid people and businesses like me a great deal. I think if you look at ANY Linux distribution NOW, the machine install issues are basically gone. Its a nice GUI, and it works.

Can't Linux, and those behind Linux do the same for the enterprise, new users and businesses ? If the tools are there its a case of someone pulling them together, and doing a GPL distro of their own I would have thought

DS Thu, 31 Oct 2002 16:21:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? You do NOT have to use Linux. Stick with Windows if you don't want to take some time to learn Linux. You spent time learning Windows and so did the end users.
Linux is not trying to be like Windows so some things are done differently. Accept that and learn how to do it in Linux.
What is stated above is different ways of doing it and what each writer believes is the best option. Take one and go with it or research to find what will work best for you.

"You are making a mistake that someone has the time to go to great depths in these areas. Sorry, real world means most departments have pressures that work against this, and thus, we are back at simple, easy to administer system and integration."
With Linux spend some time now and save lots of time and money later. That's what it seems it boils down to for most companies. TIME to learn and suuport = COST. In the end Linux would be cheaper to run.
As for the end users Linux has done a great job (although there is still a little way to go) to make it easy for the inexperienced. Most distros have something similar to the Start menu and with applications like StarOffice which is compatible with Microsoft products there shouldn't be any problems. Email applications are one and the same but if you are worried about that then use Ximian Evolution which looks similar to outlook.
Sorry for ranting:~) Thu, 31 Oct 2002 16:54:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? Well, I'm over my head posting in this thread, but thought I'd make one comment from the point of view of the average worker, sitting at a corporate workstation. First, thank you Darren for an article that produced so much response and ideas!

There is the usual conventional wisdom about Linux on the desktop in the office. Just from that point of view - of the worker at the workstation, this is obviously the easiest end of things. I know many have said Mandrake has been good for this, but I don't know about it as I'm not as familiar with it as other distros. But, I know that Red Hat is ready on the client side. No more "almost there" - it is here. What they have done has surpassed everything and taken this to a new level for Linux. I cannot think of anything that would stop a worker from using it. They would have to learn a few new tricks, but nothing of any major consequence. There would be things that would happen, of course - users do dumb things sometimes or things they shouldn't be doing. XP is so much better now than previous versions of Windows (well, 2000 too), but there is nothing I can see in Red Hat 8 that would prevent the client side from working well. It's here!

And SuSE has announced their intentions for the workstation now. It will be very interesting to see what they come up with. Knowing SuSe, it will be very good. I say the client side is ready - now! Thu, 31 Oct 2002 16:58:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? >1. Server Install, using the standard installer or some amended one I guess.

Redhat Kickstart servers which allow you to set up an install from an image resting on a server very much like the Solaris Jumpstart system.

>2. Services wizard, with additional items that tie into later wizards.

You can elect what services are installed and run on startup. Fully admit that distros have to make this easier some do and some don't. All of the commercial distros have a tools to specify what services are installed through package management and unfortunately another tool to control what are actually started on bootup.


>3. Linux DOMAIN/ENTERPRISE data storage settings, where you would select the data storage areas for users /Home,/Mail, usersettings/whatever else

This is my favorite. Most network shares for storage should be handled through samba and linux tools for smbmouting and such like LinNeighborhood which when configured for the user's name and password and file manager are really good. However, all users should have an NFS mounted home dir which means all your user's home directory stuff is one place. Management should be handling through NIS combined with TCPwrappers. I know that both SuSE and Redhat have graphical tools for configuring both services on your servers and for configuring your clients for these services. Think outside of the NT domain box.

>4. I suppose this has to go somewhere, I'll put it here. Linux workstation bootdisk wizard.

Graphical tools for creating bootdisks are included with every major distro I forget quite honestly how this is handled with the Kickstart configuration. Google on Redhat and Kickstart for more information or download some of their pdf docs on this.

>5. Linux workstation Image wizard, taking items from the above server wizard, domain/enterprise wizard to configure mail/NIS/NFS/Samba/other, and the storage of such image(s) for rollout via bootdisk.

In Kickstart the image is contained on the server and the install picks it up with the settings for NIS/NFS, and other information. There is a graphical tool for configuring Kickstart included with Redhat 8.0.

>6. Linux users and groups wizard, allows the domain user and usergroups to be built. I guess you'd have to store or collate the data from domain/enterprise settings wizard as well on this step.

The best all around tool for configuring/maintaining server settings for NIS, NFS, DNS and other settings is not distro specific it is called webmin check it out. I set up a good deal of this initially with distro tools but for day to day work webmin with its web based interface is great.

>7. The next step would be to unpack the chosen standard PC, and fire up the boot disk, and download the image. This covers pc's that fail in the future.

Unpack machine fire it up from boot disk and it connects to Kickstart server and installs the OS from settings on the server.

The key is that IT folks are absolutely as locked into the Windows way of doing things as opposed to age-old Unix techniques of handling the same tasks. If Windows works for you this is not a problem. I am opposed to switching platforms for purely "religious" reasons of hating MS. However, most of the issues you talk about were not addressed originally from Redmond.

Network storage (NFS)

Domain setup (NIS)

Unified profiles (NFS mounted home dirs)

Unified installs of servers and workstations from templates or images (Jumpstart)

Unified remote configuration tools across even different types of Unix-based platforms (Webmin and other tools) Thu, 31 Oct 2002 17:00:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? Let me remind you, I wrote my comment based on the idea that LINUX is now pitching for this AREA. I have no problem with that. I like Linux. But what seems to be missing here is the basic understanding that whatever you may think, companies are not likely to go and retrain their entire technical teams, and all their users based on your comments.

They aren't going to have to retrain their entire technical team, but of course they would have to retrain their desktop support staff. Linux is a different operating system; supporting Linux boxes from an OS perspective should be entirely different than supporting windows from an OS perspective. At some point Unixes might create a clone admin system but the work is so different that its highly likely that the tools will need to be different.


If Linux was pitching for server space and its normal areas I would have no problem. But its recent foray into desktop territory is worthy of discussion.

When Linux was pitching for the server area you heard the same types of arguments; I suggest you look back to discussions from 95-98 on Linux servers vs. AIX, Solaris... Then people argued the Linux server configuration tools were too different from the AIX tools and nobody wanted to retrain their staff...

What is also clear, and I mean no disrespect to you guys who favour Linux, but Windows is compared to your suggestions even better than when I first made my comment. Looking at suggested pages, tools and options, its a disappointing mish-mash of variable tools, all created without a vision or any unification in mind.

That's the issue of organic vs. created technologies. In general there is no question that created technologies tend to be easier to learn. Conversely organic technologies tend to handle a wider variety of issues better in practice.

Also again you ignored the key point that problems you have with windows you simply don't have with Linux because Unixes have been supporting lan / mutliuser systems from the start. I along with several other posters have noted huge numbers of different paradigms for achieving the same effect which you have ignored.

Finally Linux isn't unified; RedHat, Mandrake Debian are unified. You shouldn't expect RedHat and Debian to be any more unified than Corel Office and Microsoft Office.

Many of you even attack the end user, the very people whom would be your customers. That in itself is a cardinal sin.

This is free software, there are no customers, there are members of the community. Part of Linux is getting away from the customer / provider model.


No one has really dealt with the issue of retraining the users.

Because that's an entirely different issue. In general most studies have shown that Unix / mainframe setups require less user training because the systems are more configurable for the administrators. But, yes depending on the level of skills users are going to require some retraining. You do retraining the same way you do any training.


Very few people covered the intergration of office tools, and the interoperability with other companies who would be still working on MS Office based solutions.

First off all there are mutliple office paradigms in Linux. Its a broad question. As for interoperability its at this point so-so.

Another comment" 2. Protection of system files: Mr. or Mrs. Desktop Luser has an account and password to log into the machine. But not root access... so they cannot mess up their system. And if they do, just restore the backup of their home dir that you did last night during the sceduled cron job, possibly even residing on a CD-RW right in their own desktop machine. You did backup, didn't you?"

Basically I know its a shock horror, amazing idea, but Admin access is usually replaced with 'power user' which acts the same way in the windows environment. I then have the suggestion that I run local Cron jobs on users machines backing up their /Home drives to a local CDRW. And then asking me or the user in sarcastic comment if we backed up.

So let me get this right.. either myself or the user is going to walk round the entire enterprise each night, and mount/unmount linux CDWR drives and do local /home backups even when I have said storing data on a local machine in todays age of one year HD drive warrant's is the most braindead, stupid, dumb assed lame LAME LAME way of handling this, and its something that was clearly stated in my comments originally. At this point my regard for 'Mr or Mrs Desktop Luser' as stated is higher than for this comment.

You don't have to store anything on the local machines. Heck you don't even need them to have harddrives at all. As for cron, cron is automated you don't walk around doing anything.


Many of you have suggested a remote NFS /home, which I would have on a server running a nightly backup.

I am not sure how to say this, but its important to remember you have to convince, and operate a system that starts and ends with the user, and the company. Some of you have stated good ideas and tools, and methods. No one as yet has supplied me with an all round idea of how an all Windows business could successfully carry it off.

Why do they want to? That's the main question. You seem to be happy with Windows costs, windows configuration, windows administration and the windows paradigm. In that case stick with Windows. An all windows business that is satisfied should probably stick with windows.

Most business however are not all windows. The core apps reside on a mainframe system. Most network services are provided by a mish mash of NT Server, Unix boxes, and custom OSes. The desktops and laptops are a mish mash of Windows versions with each user having some collection of about a dozen apps out of the several hundred the company provides and has to license.

Those sorts of business can transition to Linux. They have Unix administrators to setup desktops. Many of their apps are really mainframe apps and the interfaces could be much more easily provided over X and web interfaces than client server VB apps. They already have their users trained on using terminals within the NT environment. So they start transitioning more and more of their apps over to X interfaces then they switch the desktops over.

Thats the market Linux is aiming at. At least with the desktop sales pitch. Whatever solution it is, its got to be a unified workable and downright simple solution. Both for technical staff and the end user, and with no, or at least limited loss of functionality. Its not the Linux market guys. Its a whole new ball game.

The corporate market was terminal based for decades before the move to PCs become core to the business. The PC transition has been an expensive very labor intensive nightmare. What PC offered that mainframes didn't was user freedom. The lockdown simple image solutions you are talking about take away the main advantage of PCs. What most companies have in practice is a default starter image that gets totally customized at least at the department level and thus is impossible to support at a reasonable cost.

Most windows shops have specific software, bespoke to windows. Many tools and utilities, licenses and assests tied into what they have. When you have made your grand switch to Linux, and the users can't use the system you have put in, and none of their software runs even if they could use it, you'll have to find answers and solutions.

Sorry to rant, but some of you simply are not being realistic. You are going to have to have a solution that is better, simpler, cleaner, easier and with lower cost, and that before people will even consider it.

See above. Thu, 31 Oct 2002 18:36:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? I agree with some of your comments, in particular that of the already mixed shop with terminals and mainframe systems.

Your comment below:


You don't have to store anything on the local machines. Heck you don't even need them to have harddrives at all. As for cron, cron is automated you don't walk around doing anything.

Was seemingly a mistake. I was ranting at the Linux user who suggested it (Because it was unspeakably stupid), not suggesting local storage and CDRW backup myself

DS Thu, 31 Oct 2002 19:45:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? Linux's path to the desktop is blocked by 5000 angry geeks who demand that things remain unfriendly.
'It's the *nix way!'
'RTFM!'
'It's a feature, not a bug.'
'If we make it easy to use, people who don't know what they are doing will use it.'
'I like it this way, make your own.'
'You're just trying to make it like Windows.'
'I don't have time to make a readme/help file, I'm adding more [broken] features.'
'Works for me.' Thu, 31 Oct 2002 20:29:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? Your article is nothing more than thinly disguised FUD. Its a clever well wriiten article but underneath the oh so smooth arguments it FUD. Many posters have already offered up various methods and still you come back to your original premise that Windows (take your word for it) is better. LARGE HORNED ANIMAL KAKA!
I also deal with a large network that consists of mostly WinXP systems. I am right now using Ghost to clone an XP box. This is the second attempt because like so often happens with XP the clone fails after WinXP detects the hardware on the slightly different system from the one the clone was created on.
Your claim that it is less time consuming to use Ghost with all the various wiz-bang Microsoft tools than loading Linux from scratch is bogus and was a loaded statement in favor of Microsoft products. Its based on the presumption that it takes longer to load Linux than Windows using Ghost. Sorry, no sale here. A basic Linux workstation is going to take in the range of 10 to 15 minutes from start to finish and require less intervention during the install process than all versions of Windows.
Oh BTW, my Ghost install just finished for the second time and XP just hosed itself for the second time on normal industry standard hardware. So much for that claimed time saving with Ghost and XP. (i'm working as I type) The weak link in your plan is not Ghost, its XP. Another thing you neglected to mention is that Ghost is compatible with ext2 (and most likely ext3) according to thier manual.

"No sane company deals with this area of procurement on cost alone. Many of the suggestions would work wonderfully IF I were to create a new network, or setup a system for a company who was just starting out."

No saner company continues to use products from a vendor that constantly raises prices beyond market norm. They wouldn't stay a company long if they didn't bite the bullet and dump the costly vendor at some point. Thats is what is starting to happen to Microsoft. Too damn expensive!

"I cannot fully explain to the layman the kinds of detail required when taking a full Win32 shop and the users over to Unix. There are multitudes of problems that have to be considered, and just looking at individual items, mail servers, NIS, NFS, Samba is only half the story. "

The obvious attitude in the above says it all. I would wager that most of the posters in this thread are just as experienced as you. Your article and posts are nothing more than cleverly disguised FUD. Thu, 31 Oct 2002 20:37:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? """'It's a feature, not a bug.'
'I like it this way, make your own.'
'I don't have time to make a readme/help file, I'm adding more [broken] features.'"""
Who have you heard say this?

"""'RTFM!'"""
This predates the free unix clones, and is good advice if you are having problems regardless of the platform.

"""'Works for me.'"""
Perhaps it works for them and they can't think of what's wrong off hand? Computers are vasty complicated pieces of machinary and everything from hardware problems to version differences can cause issues. Again this is pretty standard regardless of platform.

"""'It's the *nix way!'
'You're just trying to make it like Windows.'"""
You don't use/admin NT or a Mac the same way you use/admin *nix; it's a different paradigm. Forcing one on the other isn't necessarily a good idea. Thu, 31 Oct 2002 23:19:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? OK, now that I have your attention, yes, asking if you backed up is a sarcastic question. Most windows oriented type people are morons. The type that you are says they don't like this or that about ms, then looks casually and not in depth at some other ways of doing things, and then decides not to take the plunge and learn a new way of doing things. Nowhere in that comment was a win-sysadmin-luser or and end-luser mentioned running around an office building doing backups. Moron.

And end-lusers don't have to be retrained. That is the argument made by GUI lusers over that of super ballsy CLI advocates- learning curves are small, and everything is out in the open, just waiting to be clicked on. Of course, Joe User or grandma's difficulty in dealing with a computer with windows installed is a fine counter-example to that.

UNIX has been around for a very long time, and Linux is a close clone of it. All of the important things windows can do, UNIX/Linux can do. They can do things that windows cannot even dream of. Remember when windows came out with links in NTFS? Took them a while to figure out how to do it, I guess...

Serious computer users who know of the broader world that contains windows AND all of the other OSes out there see windows for what it is: a headache either happening or waiting to happen, crippled and not good for anything but games and light word processing.

Also very nice is the invitation to comment, and then calling the comments stupid. I have read some of the comments asking you to just give Linux a chance, and they were not in an unkind tone.

Anyway, get brave in Linux and make me wrong for calling you a moron luser. Fri, 01 Nov 2002 00:42:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? I have recently installed RedHat 8 Personal onto a second hard disk on my home PC. The first disk runs Windows 98SE. I tried RH 7.3 and Mandrake 9 before my purchased copy of RH 8 arrived. While RH 8 is MUCH better than the other distributions it will not replace my copy of Windows 98 just yet. There is just too many 'techie' issues to deal with. May be after I have read my copy of Linux Administration Handbook I will change my mind. I should also say, I won't un-install RH 8, I will give it a go. Fri, 01 Nov 2002 05:45:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? Ativo: with regards to your comments that nfs isn't that bad, security wise, I must point out that security is not just against access from the 'net. I don't have my entire LAN on totally secure premises, so it is assumed to be untrusted to a degree. Anybody with a laptop could theoretically wander in and download, say, an accounts database shared over nfs or in the case of r/w homedirs insert a trojan. I don't like that.

CIFS provides some measures for encrypted password-based authentication, at least. Its bad, but nowhere near as bad.

Tunneling NFS is an option, and one I haven't explored well enough to comment on really. However I'd like to note that it uses RPC services etc so it could be difficult to tunnel, and its also fairly inefficient already. Fri, 01 Nov 2002 07:05:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? To Sla7er and others: regarding Xfree and it's memory-usage. Sure it LOOKS like it eats alot of RAM. But Xfree includes your AGP aperture and other things to the amount of RAM it eats. In reality majority of that RAM is NOT, I repeat: is NOT used. It might look like Xfree uses 150 megs of RAM, but in reality, it's just uses fraction of that amount Fri, 01 Nov 2002 11:09:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? It's fairly plain to me by this point that the author just isn't interested in an answer. Either the author is willfully ignoring the suggestions proffered, or his lack of knowledge about OS's outside Windows is tripping him up and he's not interested in learning.

I work with both *nix and Windows. This isn't hard. But you can't want "Windows under another name." Linux is not Windows. Forget about how you do it with Windows, and put forth some effort to learn how to do it with Linux.

The Author wants a remote installable desktop with presets that is able to migrate across platforms. Sysprep was mentioned. A number of solutions were presented. First, is the network install option ala Winnt.exe or RIS. Forget Sysprep, its crap. Linux installs can be performed from floppy, CD or BOOTP boot to over-the-network NFS or FTP install from a central server. Various Linux distributions have various means of providing the customization, such as kickstart. Mandrake has the handy option to save package selections and whatnot to a floppy, like a unattend.txt file. You can also use 3rd party imaging software to create distribution images stored on a central server for pre-positioned re-imaging. This has been possible with tools like Ghost for a long time, and you don't have to worry about requirements about HALs and disk controllers being identical.

The author was concerned about central management of security, applications, data, etc. This has been possible on Unix for years. The author doesn't seem to understand that everything not necessary to boot the workstation can be located and administered remote from the workstation using NFS. Prior to the PC "revolution" users connected to their home directories with their files and apps on a mainframe. The Admin controlled access to applications, files, and updating thereof from the mainframe. Insert "remote Linux server" where you see "mainframe." Use LDAP (Active Directory is an LDAP directory service with DNS and ACL integration - you can even configure Linux workstations to authenticate to W2k AD domain controllers), NIS, truly standard authentication protocols such as, ahem, KERBEROS, hell even Novell NDS for universal naming, authentication, and resource management.

I could go on but really this post is too long as it is. Linux can do what you want it to do, but it requires putting forth some effort in learning the OS (just as it requires some effort to learn Windows administration). The knowledge of how to do it isn't going to fall on your head like a gift from on High. If you want a single vendor point of contact to put it all together for you, and hold your hand when you break it, talk to a company that is serious about Linux. Like IBM or, wonder of wonders!, one of the bigger Linux distros like RedHat. That's precisely the kind of business RedHat WANTS.

Derek Fri, 01 Nov 2002 11:25:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? The city of Largo saved millions by doing this - all clients are the same, all setups are done on the server - and for 400 terminaks, the server they are using is a Dual Pentium 933, 3GB RAM and SCSI drives.
Simple admin, simple rollout, save millions - why do anything else?
see the story on
http://newsforge.com/article.pl?sid=01/08/10/1441239 Fri, 01 Nov 2002 11:37:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? I`d been managing PC in the past, Windows, Linux too. Linux can be customized. The domain is _not_ m$ unique idea. yp and NIS was existing long ago.

I think you are missing the turn-key enterprise solutions from linux. Its much more easier to provide for a singe product or a small set of product like windows. That can be caused by the diversity of the distributions and the speed of envolving. I don`t expect support from the big software companies. The general solution could be providing application generators, with a help of that you would be albe to customize closed source appliations for the local requirments. There is some other try too e.g. RedHat technical desktop. They planning 2 years between general updates. Fri, 01 Nov 2002 12:00:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? You bitch about not having the tools you need.
You bitch about not having been informed about them.
You bitch about Linux being hard.

Stop with the bitching, already.

Remember that Linux has a strong Unix heritage, and has been doing the things you want long before Windows ever tried to bolt on network support, much less the poor implementation of multiple user support.

You want roaming profiles? It's called nfs mounts with the aid of the kernel automounter.

You want server-based mail? pop3. You want it stored on the server? imap4.

You want a file server? Use NFS where appropriate. Use Samba for even better compatibility across operating systems.

You want highly automated software rollouts? Use one of the previously mentioned tools to create a custom Debian install cd and learn the magic of apt-get

So let's think about what you get in exchange for actually going off and educating yourself instead of sitting on here and whining:
1) Reliable software that tends to concern itself less with controlling the user and more with getting the job done.
2) The tradeoff of point and drool interfaces with software packages that work predictably, as in they don't try to second guess what you want.
3) The idea that robustness sometimes means "Can't mount home directory" is a valid error message, and not "Can't find roaming profile. Using remote, which will overwrite everything on the server, including all mail and settings to a revision level that was never used to begin with"
4) Most of your mission critical software is supplied by people that are concerned with making the best tool, and not "how many ways can we get the user to prove that the software is not pirated, even to the point that we'll regularly break it for the valid user in fear a single invalid user might get a copy"
5) Software that is designed on the old Unix philosophy "One tool, one task", not "If we integrate the web browser into everything, we'll have an excuse that it's irreversible by the time anyone realizes we just did it to maintain our own monopoly"
6) An overall reliable system that requires fewer people LIKE YOU to administer. As little as one-quarter the manpower by the last estimate I read.

A word of advice: No argument about Linux on the desktop is so weak as one followed up with "I didn't mean the desktop, I meant the server!"

-craploader Fri, 01 Nov 2002 13:18:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? Me thinks you didn't bother to read the comments.
You are probably starting the next dozen of people who start telling about NFS ;-)

We all know that you can replace Office suits and default network services. But how are you going to migrate if you main application is a native Win32 application, with customized code to be able to print special reports or labels to specific print devices? I never hear talking about those details, who in the end are maybe most often the reason why people can't migrate way from Microsoft.

Maybe we should stop discussing all the little details of solutions which could help, but take some time to make some conclusions? I'll start with giving mine.

The author was not bitching on Linux. Neither was it FUD. It was a good explanation of the average view Windows SA's have on Linux. We all know you can use NFS and Samba and authenticate Linux users on Active Directory etc. etc.
The only important point that - IMO - the author wanted to make, is about the lack of integration of unix products and the lack of a linux distribution presenting a nice boxed, customized product who provides all this by default, without you having to download an extra rpm or compiling an extra library.

Unices are technically better and oustand Windows in this perspective. Point, end of line.
Windows is better at providing an "easy to setup" (although not idiot proof) product, who presents (and this is important IMHO) a _fully_integrated_solution.

Following on this, the next point which should be taken, is realizing that if such a Linux product was made, it really could help to have it deployed and replacing Microsoft products. Is it a logic way? is it the right way? I don't know, but it probaly just is. Fri, 01 Nov 2002 13:36:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? The company I work for that is,

We use systemimager [www.systemimager.com]

These are clusters of Linux nodes used for parallel computing. Typically arranged in clumps of 32 nodes [64 cpu's]. The process would work just as well for desktops.

You get one node right then duplicate it.
Linux handles different hardware very well in my experience, the Redhat Kudzu and X11 configuration utilites work out of the box for most hardware.

There is nothing missing from the current offerings of office applications, koffice, openoffice, abiword etc
except that it is not Microsft, and so it is different and the problems you will get will be different. In the end though the software is open source and so more people can have a crack at supporitng it and you are not tied to the marketing whims of a sinlge vendor. Fri, 01 Nov 2002 13:38:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? LUI - http://oss.software.ibm.com/developerworks/projects/lui/ - The Linux Utility for cluster Installation (LUI) is an open source utility for installing Linux workstations remotely, over an ethernet network.

SystemImager - http://systemimager.org/ - SystemImager automates the installation of Linux to masses of similar machines. It is most useful in environments with large numbers of identical machines. Some typical environments include: Internet server farms, high performance clusters, computer labs, and corporate desktop environments where all workstations have the same basic hardware configuration.

GNU Parted - http://www.gnu.org/software/parted/ - GNU Parted is a program for creating, destroying, resizing, checking and copying partitions, and the file systems on them. This is useful for creating space for new operating systems, reorganizing disk usage, copying data between hard disks and disk imaging.

Partition Image - http://www.partimage.org/ - Partition Image is a Linux/UNIX utility which saves partitions in many formats to an image file. The image file can be compressed in the GZIP/BZIP2 formats to save disk space, and split into multiple files to be copied on removable floppies (ZIP for example), .... The partition can be saved across the network since version 0.6.0 .

Learn to use http://freshmeat.net/ there is a lot of software out there. Fri, 01 Nov 2002 13:47:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? If the author is serious about even liking the possibility of running his shop on linux, I would like him to contact me for a little tour of our shop. We are currently running 60 linux desktops and intend to roll out 100's more. The only support call we have ever had on these 60 machines is two for blatent hardware failure. A successful corporate linux rollout first requires a little research and planning. I feel the author is trapped into the MS way of running the enterprise and I can tell you it is just plain wrong. The MS way of doing things optimizes the sale of more licenses not the way things are run. The only corporate solution that is in any way viable is to run the machines like a terminal server. Linux by it's very nature is intended to be run this way. This will give you a very supportable and stable solution. All of our machines run a desktop that we can fully change on the fly and software is only installed on a single server. Imagine in the windows world to actually be able to deploy software pre tested to every desktop in less than a second. Users are unable to munge up the machine because they run in a totally controlled sandbox. I am willing to fully share my knowledge with you the question is will you take the next step. Fri, 01 Nov 2002 14:05:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? Sounds to me like you want Windows, not Linux. Sounds like you grew up on Windows and can't shake the FAT CLIENT mentality. Linux is based on the UNIX model. All the things you describe are available in UNIX and have been for years - before MS was doing it. Well, most things - some of what you describe - like the windows registry - don't translate to the Linux/UNIX world. If you want Windows or a system that acts like Windows, buy and use Windows. If you want a system that is cheaper, stable, includes productivity apps, and has an interface that a Windows user could quickly learn - educate yourself on Linux and the desktop options available. Don't expect Linux to be a drop in replacement for everything you learned on Windows.

Desktop Linux has the ability to integrate with a windows network - that doesn't mean it's going to do everything like Windows.

Server Linux can act like a Windows PDC. That doesn't mean it replicates every nuance and includes Windows utilities.

If you are truely interested in a Linux based network (desktop and server) then you MUST learn the file structure for linux, things like Kickstart (if you don't know what it is - you haven't tried too hard to learn linux), LDAP, NFS (again - if you don't know this - you haven't learned much about Linux), SAMBA. You could check out the Linux Terminal Server Project for some ideas and hints.

I understand your complaints and frustrations. But before you write an editorial claiming "Linux doesn't have this Windows utility" or "Linux doesn't have a wizard like Windows" - you should gather these questions/issues (and they are good ones) in a list and find out how you can do the equivalent in Linux. Because you won't be able to do it exaclty the same as Windows. If Linux worked exactly the same as Windows - it wouldn't be Linux - it'd be Windows! Fri, 01 Nov 2002 14:13:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? Centralized settings for desktops is not a real problem.
If you have centralized home directories, you have
centralized settings. Want all users to have the same background image? Easy, just deny the users write permissions to the kdesktoprc file in their home dir and then change the wallpaper network-wide with a simple shell script. You don't even need a centralized home dir for that, just looping over a network range with an ssh command is enough. Accomplishing the same with pre-built disk images is even easier, since you have absolute control over what is in the home directories. The same goes for pretty much any other setting. Need to run a program when a user logs in? /home/user/.profile, or .bash_profile, .xinitrc -
These all get run at some point or other, you can add your stuff to there.

The point is, this is a nonexistant problem, solved years ago. Bootable disks with network tools have been around forever. Want to clone a system over the network? netcat and tar is all you need. Want to clone disks and burn them to CD? Just use mkisofs to make an image file, use tar to clone the system, make a boot floppy with some tools and a script that auto-installs the desktop and you're all set.

Need the system to be robust and handle hardware changes easily? Sheesh, linux has been like that for years. Especially with modern PCI hardware. The only problem I can see is in multiple X configurations, and for that sort of thing there are daemons like kudzu.

Take a look at things like Tom's Root Boot (http://www.toms.net/rb/), I highly recommend it.

In truth, I don't really see why the author can claim to be informed about what Linux can and cannot do in this area. Maybe there are no point-and-click tools for it, but truthfully if you're an admin for this kind of network you shouldn't be afraid of the command line. Fri, 01 Nov 2002 14:30:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? I love linux vs windows debates. Fri, 01 Nov 2002 15:36:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? Some comments refer to a lack of Linux distribution yet I don't have a clue what version of MS windows are you referring to! I very much doubt that your comments pertain just to any version and second that they are probably not exactly the same across versions.

However, it is extremely clear that many of the posters show that the Linux tools are widely used, been available for ages and with little effort on other Unix based OS's.

When MS provides a full featured Office package at no additional cost, I might be more open to MS. Until then, no way is MS windows a consumer OS! Fri, 01 Nov 2002 16:52:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? The feedback has been great. Some has been harsh, but my original article may have been recieved as harsh on LINUX (It wasn't meant to be guys), AND my lack of senior skills with Linux was the background to the question.

Conclusions

1. Many skilled Linux people misunderstand why people ask stupid questions.
2. Many people who ask questions or have queries regarding Linux are not stupid, unpleasant or anything else.
3. Sometimes Linux IS going to be more like Windows even if you like it or not.
4. Linux benefits from sometimes Windows-alike tools and configuration.
5. Many of my queries about what Linux can do have been answered or take me in the direction someone would need to go to do the work.
6. Linux CAN do what people want the end product to be.
7. Linux is highly adaptable, but not the easy solution in some target area.
8. Windows does offer an integrated solution that SEEMS to be more integrated, offer the simpler option to the layman/inexperianced/business person.
9. Linux as a whole HAS the tools to do the work, but it seems not often advertised or known to outsiders.


Thank you all for your feedback. In particular I would like to thank those who came back with constructive critique, ideas, possibilities and answers, and to those who replied to my own email address.

DS Fri, 01 Nov 2002 17:01:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? Maybe you have never heard of any other operating system besides Windows, but Microsoft is still playing catch up to what was readily available in Unix in the 1980s. Disk imaging? it's built in. Type 'man dd', not that you'll ever need it. Norton Ghost was build as a work around to the primitive DRM (copy prevention mechanism) Microsoft attempted to use. A straightforward copy can create an identical (working) system image except for a few basic file-like structures that can be manually created like /dev and /proc (type: 'mkdir /dev /proc'.) What's more, you don't have to copy the whole image. You can create separate partitions however you like (typically /boot /home /var /usr /usr/local) and use the same base image for all systems with possible variations as separately mounted partitions for, for example, developers vs. sales reps. You can have *very* fine grained access control. You can use bootp or any of a number of other remote bootup scripts. You can have networked home directories or application directories, or remotely running applications (without paying for Citrix or Windows term server.) You can use SNMP to monitor the network. You don't need Primary and Secondary domain controllers. Those are artifacts from the days when Microsoft didn't understand DNS. You can share any directory much easier and more securely than in Windows. And you can share with windows (visit samba.org) if you have to. Chances are, some of the "shared" directories that you use right now are samba on Unix and have been for years. But NFS is much better than NETBEUI, believe me. And it isn't hard. 90% of this stuff works automatically. Just check the little box and click "install." When you have a working system, just propogate over the network. I could train your IT staff (say 5 techs and an admin) in a week for half the price of your 100 windows client licenses, or do it myself for the same.

Send me an email and we can negotiate a minimum quality of service arrangement and I won't require any maintenance "contract", but will offer 24/7 on site service at reasonable per incident rates. Fri, 01 Nov 2002 17:20:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? There's a lot of things to note that seem to be wrong with the reasoning behind this article. Most of the things he is asking for are already available for Linux or aren't necessary. First off, most modern complete Linux distributions are able to detect most standard hardware configurations, especially in on an X86 based system. While a few soundcards or software modems (which normally wouldn't be used in a business envirionment) are still on the undetected list, almost all other hardware made in the last 4 or so years is supported in Linux. The need to create master images based on systems configurations is uncecessary. The need for "Central server or domain creation" exisits, and thankfully you can just install a Linux based system off the network the same way you do a windows install, with some distributions you can even write up a small text based script that pre-sets the installation paramaters and picks the packages neccesary when you install so you can let the system install itself over the network.

With regards to his comment about LDAP and roaming profiles, LDAP is supported in Linux and using NFS one can easily have their user profile saved on the network allowing for a roaming profile just as in windows. All of their files and settings will go with them.

With regards to your other need "Specialised routines for locking down systems, desktops, tools, data storage on the 'domain'. System failure/recovery.", Locking down systems isn't very difficult, most graphical managers have a "lock" option no different then the one in windows, you can also set a screen saver to do a lock once it turns on. There are a number of user freindly desktops many of which look and act very similar to windows, in my experience end users have had little or no problem migrating from Windows 9X to the KDE graphical envirionment. Data storage on the domain is not a problem, there are two ways to set up domains but since you are already running a Windows based network I assume you would want to use SAMBA which allows Unix machines to act as Windows Network clients and servers, you can join workgroups, log onto windows domains with the client and create shares and create windows domain and domain controllers with the server. Recovery tools aren't usually an issue since Linux envirionments very simply don't really need recovery tools due to their stability. This is just a little bit of my complaint with this article. I really don't think the offer looked around hard enough for the solutions he claims to want out of Linux. Fri, 01 Nov 2002 17:27:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? The most irksome thing about your article is not your lack of knowledge. It is your unwillingness to concede the need for knowledge acquisition in your current environment.

You were not born knowing the things that you know. You had to learn them. When Microsoft trotted out Active Directory, VPN and however many other things, you did not already know them. You had to learn. That's the way it is, the way it always has been, and the way it always will be. New things require learning -- unless, of course, you are satisfied to take your chances and open your backside to whatever the world may see fit to fling at you.

To learn the Linux way of doing things requires a learning commitment, just like the Microsoft way of doing things.

Of course -- there is a buyback. My experience is that the Linux way of doing things will significantly cut firefighting efforts, thus leaving time to learn new and useful things. Fri, 01 Nov 2002 17:29:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? As others have pointed out, you apparently have no real interest in anything but Microsoft. I personally rolled out over 280 servers using Systemimager from http://www.systemimager.org/. I create a single machine configured the way I want it, take a snapshot of the system. I can then replicate that setup on as many machines as I choose. I was able to roll out the 280 servers I mentioned at a rate of 1 every 3 minutes. Each machine when it comes up is configured with it's own network address and hostname. If a machine loses a hard drive, I can replace the drive and reimage the machine. If I need to update all of the systems, I go to my image server, change the image and then via an automated script, I can have all servers updated. These machines are not local to me either. I work from my office in Texas with machines in the DC area and in San Jose. I could just as easily do the same thing for desktop systems. In combination with technology already discussed, like LDAP, NIS, NFS, and Samba, I can do everything you do with your Windows boxes at a fraction of the cost and have a more stable and reliable system on top of that. Other people at my company have used this same method to install over 1000 systems in just the past months. Fri, 01 Nov 2002 17:30:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? 'duel' booting is what I do when I close my eyes and fire up the Windoze machine I have to use here at work.

I think a very small amount of effort on your part could find these solutions in Linux. Go to http://sdb.suse.de or http://www.redhat.com/apps/support/ and do some reading. Type some of your issues into Google and do some reading.

I also like the earlier comment about talking to Linux Vendors. Copy your FUD piece and email it to SuSE, they could offer solutions to all points, I am sure.

TrT Fri, 01 Nov 2002 17:52:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? All the problems mentioned are problems specific to the shortcommings of Windows (Ghosting Keys/Computer names, resetting the complete hardware list, having difficulty managing peoples remote desktop, etc.). These problems do not exist in the Unix world. It is as simple as that. Fri, 01 Nov 2002 18:27:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? My company runs 1000 Sun Unix desktops - they require less support than their windows equivalent.
All the apps live on the server ( They are installed ONCE ).
The application is cached using a NFS CacheFS ( ie the application is only every read down from the server when it changes )
All the user data lives on the server.
Any user can use any machine - and it will always look the same when they login.
The operating system is installed by typing "boot net - install" - nothing else.

Most of this functionality is their in Linux. Alot of this functionality is not there in windows.

Unix makes a damn fine desktop, mangaement is not one of its issues. Fri, 01 Nov 2002 18:48:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? I am at a university where they have such a system where computers are reimaged on boot. The fact is, whether you want to install Linux or not, it is not very advisable to deploy machines with varying hardware as thi brings unnecessary complications. Have a vendor supply hardware which is identical, or close at least and remove this problem of needing to support dfferent hardware. Then you can reimage the computers without needing them to reconfigure themselves each time they reimage.

I think this makes more sense than trying to develop a system that tries to cater for too many differences. I am sure that a Linux install could be scripted anyway, which could mean you have an actuall reinstall instead of an image. And users could keep their files on their computers using ftp. Linux does seem to provide more options here. The tools might not be as easy as in the Windows environment, but for an admin, this should not be too much of a problem. Fri, 01 Nov 2002 18:52:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? Windows is by now the OS of choice for the Desktop because of what the user is able to see and work with.
The administrative side of the question is not much the point because:
Installing many of computers at a time in a corporation is a task for the real administrator. Administrators do not fear real tools even if they require more research / training, since the only thing that matters is the result.
For the home user it may be important that tools like ghost are well known for the masses. A Linux admin, however, should be aware of the many tools that exist for the matter:
NFS, LDAP, ALICE (SuSE), cloning and rescue tools, even bash scripting, perl....

Linux administration can be really beautifull and reliable if you are ready to learn how to. Without political or fanatical underground. Just for technology in it.

The reason why Linux is still be years away from Windows on the Desktop, are much more missing software for the "normal" user each day:

- Microsoft Office (Yes it is the best one around)
- Wetter frog with speech output
- Media player
- Good and EASY to use burn software
- CAPI drivers
- Understandable and powerfull printing sub system

These real problem are the applications, not the tools for the background work. Her is Linux the real Winner.

This will maybe never change because people are not intersted in changing the way the use to work and learn. Fri, 01 Nov 2002 21:14:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? First a few comments, then a potential solution.

When I first read this article, I thought it was clear and outlined your desire on how things you are familiar with in the Windows world could be translated into the Linux world.

I have worked on Windows, Novell and now Linux systems over the last 15 years and believe they all have their place. When I knew only Windows, that was the ticket. When I switched to Novell 4, it was apparent, at least to me, that in a large distributed network, Novell was superior product.

Having recently started using Linux, about 1 1/2 years ago, I have a great appreciation for it's strengths and abilities but cannot speak to the same level of expertise that most of the others here have. However, one thing I have discovered is that having an open mind, even if it closes when the next new thing comes along, goes a long way in solving problems in this industry.

Comment over, here is the possible solution:

Novell's NDS or eDirecory.

The best thing about this product is it's platform independence. It is standards based, X.500, and allows for centralized administration of the entire network.

Here is a link the second part of an article, it has a link back to the first part, and it includes links to other references.

http://www.linuxworld.com/linuxworld/lw-2000-05/lw-05-nds2.html Fri, 01 Nov 2002 21:30:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? I know how daunting moving from a Windows environment to a unix environment can be. I did it about 5 years ago. I've never looked back, and now when Windows users have a problem I have to refer them to the help desk because I just can't figure Windows out anymore. It and I have changed too much I guess.

Anyway, here's some pointers:

1: There's more than one way to skin a cat in Linux. What do I mean? Well, let's look at system configuration. On RedHat there's a tool called setup. That runs in a nice gui, and is easy to use. but it might miss a few things. There's another tool I can install called webmin. It lets me configure my box by pointing a web browser at the machine on port 10000 (i.e. http://127.0.0.1:10000) and is very easy to use as well. I can use ssh to "telnet" into my box and edit the configuration files by hand. I can use linuxconf in a text mode, a gui mode, or even a web browser based mode.

Each one of the admin tools has a different feel. Which is better? Hard to say. You just have to crank up one after the other til you find one you like or that works for you.

While this kind of plethora of choice is down right scary to a Windows user, it's the norm in Linux land.

2: Knowledge gained in Unix tends to stay useful for a longer period of time. That's because things only tend to change in ways they need to change, and the software has a natural tendency to stay static once it matures. Think about how hard it can be to find your way around on a Windows 95/98 box after a day spent administering NT or W2K. In unix, no matter how old or how new, the /etc/fstab file is still where we store info on the drives mounted on the box we're on.

When someone made an updated version the inetd package and called it xinetd, the directory for it's configuration went from living in the inetd directory to xinetd. I could find it pretty easy.

3: Unix in general has a harder learning curve when it comes to administration. It is especially steep right at the beginning. Unix and it's administration were set in place long before gui tools to administer unix were thought of, so all the gui tools run on top of the text files that unix uses for configuration. This is a good thing. It means that once you know where unix keeps its configuration info, you can always fix it, even if the box is barely booting. If you've ever had to reinstall an entire Win2K or NT server because of ONE simple mistake, you'll come to appreciate this.

4: Integration in Unix means something entirely different than it does in Microsoft. In Microsoft, integration is acheived by closely tying the parts of the OS together, often blurring the lines of functionality of different areas. Like putting a security dll into the web browser so you can't uninstall the web broswer. While much of windows works smoothly together, the integration makes upgrades a truly dangerous thing. In the last two years Microsoft has come out with two different hot fixes that would scram a machine so hard you had to reinstall. They couldn't be fixed. This was due to poorly thought out integration.

In Unix, integration is more like cooperation. We have to pieces of software that we need to integrate. We define the interfaces very well, making sure each package can survive should the other stop speaking to it. Then you implement it and test it to see how each package behaves when the other one either gives it the wrong data or stops talking.

5: No one will fish for you. Everyone will be willing to help you learn to fish however. If you can't figure out how to use a terminal server type setup, or aren't sure what to do, asking someone for a pointer to a web page or program that can help is seen as a good thing.

Asking for someone to tell you step by step how to do it in a forum is considered bad form. The reasons for this are varied, but the main one is that people don't want to duplicate effort. Someone has probably already done it, and you just haven't found their HOWTO or directions.

6: Escalate logically. In windows fixing a problem is different than in Linux. In linux, you first go to the home page of the package you're looking at. You read the HOWTO, the Manual, you try to figure it out a bit yourself. Then you google for a fix (google rocks, really). Then you try the archives for the general support mailing list for the product if you can't find the answer in google. Then you try the developer's list. If you are asking a developer's list for help, it is considered bad form to have not tried all the above mentioned first.

7: Commercial support IS available. Write a check for $10,000 to the guys who program Postgresql, and you can get them to answer the phone at Sunday at 3:00am and walk you through a fix that takes 4 hours. No problem.

Don't expect that treatment if you aren't paying anything to them. Their software is free, but their time isn't.

8: Time spent planning and learning is NOT wasted. It will always be better to spend a week planning a rollout so it takes a week, rather just jumping in an taking a month to roll it out, and having an unmanageable mess.

With Windows, you can often get away with what I call "cowboy adminning" You just jump in the saddle and go. Hell, you'll have to rebuild it in 6 months to a year anyway, right? In Unixland this is a bad way of doing things.

9: You'll eventually get all the time you put into the front end back when it's all running. Once you have everyone running Linux, the little niggling problems you have each and everyday with Windows will be gone.

The phrase that will disappear from your user's vocabulary is this: "I was just typing along when suddenly..."

Good luck, and do your homework, it's well worth it. Fri, 01 Nov 2002 21:41:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? There are a couple of huge mistakes being made by the author.

The first one being that the Linux is not an Operating System, but a System Kernel. GNU is the OS. Linux manages the hardware, as does exist a Windows Kernel, which manages hardware (What do you think system.ini is?). The Linux KERNEL is by far superior to that of windows. It supports natively much more technology than the Windows kernel, its only problem being that some hardware vendours don't provide the information about their hardware for the Comunity to make drivers.

The second one is the GNU is the OS. There are projects to make GNU run under Windows (So, the GNU/Windows system). As there are projects to make GNU run on the FreeBSD, (GNU/FreeBSD), And the most popular one form of the GNU OS being Linux (GNU/Linux).

Most things that the author mentions have been a possibility in the GNU OS for a long time. All you have to do is Ask the Comunity of users, and i'm sure you'll find out how to make Images, integrate with windows machines, etc, etc, etc. Fri, 01 Nov 2002 22:11:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? The author of this article alledges a triumph of Microsoft design.

We have indeed seen a triumph of MS design, but it is not the same one the author mentioned.

The triumph is MCSE certification. This, more than anything else, is what gives windows admins the attitude displayed by this author. Another poster mentioned something akin to this, but it was in the midst of a terrible rant, and was probably ignored...but truly, how many hours/days/years did you spend learning to do the things you do in windows? Really? Consider it for a moment. Now compare that to the time you spent trying to learn Linux. Or, perhaps more accurately, poking around at Linux and giving up because it "just doesn't have the tools."

I'm willing to bet that you didn't even spend 1% of your windows learning curve trying to learn Linux. Is it really any wonder that you can't do the things you can in Windows?

But this is not really the triumph. The MS triumph here is that MCSE and the like have *convinced* you that the tools MS provides are *the way you administer a computer* when in reality, they are just one set of *tools* to administer a computer *with.* For the skeptical, look over the preceding comments, and the author's reactions. Over and over very bright people (some of them undoubtably serious linux administrators who probably really do this stuff) have listed off literally dozens of tools and methods that can be used to accomplish the goals the author set out. But he has continually ignored them all. Where is the answer to the fellow who suggested asking google what they do? I'll bet their boxes (what, 15000 last I heard?) aren't all the same hardware, and I'll bet they didn't install them all from scratch... But the author only sees that SYSPREP isn't there...that the tools he *knows* aren't anywhere to be found.

MCSE has been one of the most successful MS endeavors ever. It has made thousands of people believe they are computer experts, when in reality they are Microsoft software experts. This is not to cheapen anyone who has this cert; it is certainly a Good Thing to be an expert with MS products...they are in very widespread use. But don't confuse that with anything it isn't. Because I guarantee, you go out and spend the amount of money and time on Linux training that you have spent on Windows training.......and figuring out how to deploy 200 desktops isn't going to work up much of a sweat.

Matter of fact...once you did that, you probably wouldn't deploy the 200 desktops anyway; the truth is, that's really inefficient. You would spend half the money on a monster server and some cheap clients, and not have to worry about how you were going to deploy a zillion full os's.

So there you have it. Sat, 02 Nov 2002 00:13:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? Heterogeeous computing environment is complex. Some design decisions can make migration easier.
Let me list the design issues:
1. Automated system installation.. 2. Common network wide user profile (roaming) 3. Authentication scheme (logon) 4. User data store 5. Software update 6. Backup restore
7. Applications tied to windows. 8 Remote admin....

Some solutions: kickstart(1) samba(2,3,4) cfengine(5,8) partimage(6) Terminal services....rdesktop, vncviewer, pxes(7) ssh, webmin(8)

Careful design is necessary for authentication method and data storage before rollout.
Moral of the story- test throughly. Sat, 02 Nov 2002 12:47:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? 1. Easy availability to MS technical data/solutions is a concern with MS OSes as well. How does an admin migrating from NT4 to 2K learn about Active Directory? Almost every nt admin I know had to retake a few MCSE classes and pour over admin books to familiarize themselves with new features, functionality and core changes in WIN2K. Most NT/2K admin information is not covered anywhere except in admin guides, classes, or on forums. Linux does the same.

2. Over the years, I have noticed a general decline in the technical knowledge and competency of MS admins. This is not to say that they are not intelligent, but having the software do everything for you without having to dig deeply into its inner workings brings an admin closer to the usefulness of a regular user. In my company we have a mixed bag of 2k, Unix, and Linux and one thing that's abundantly clear there is that the *nix admins know their $#!t, often easily troubleshooting 2K related problems when the 2K admins can't. Many 2k admins even have problems creating batch files, yet I haven't known a *nix admin that wasn't VERY adept at shell scripting.

3. Tools for automated installs of *nix boxes exists and they are as well documented as the Windows worlds solutions. However, you won't know about them if you don't look for them, study them or ask knowledgeable people about them. The same is true for the MS world. You learn the MS solutions in MCSE class or by reading the Admin guides. One cannot learn about either OS' solution reading a few articles in PC Magazine.

4. For good information on Win to Linux migrations, check out the success stories on www.ximian.com , www.redhat.com , www.desktoplinux.com , and www.suse.com .

It's easy for a Windows world to criticize Linux's perceived desktop difficulty. After 10+ years dominating the desktop, it's easy to hold it up as the standard that any desktop OS should attempt to match (just like the Apple/Windows was back in the old days.) In all honesty, when I began using Linux, I found it very difficult also, but as I investigated deeper, I found that it wasn't difficult, just different. I almost gave up, instead, I realized that the easier path is usually more costly and it would be in my best interest to learn a *nix. Now, a couple of years later, Linux has become my desktop and server OS of choice and I see the limits at work of having to use 2k. They were always there, I just didn't know because I didn't know to look. Many software packages that I had to pay a ton of cash for now doesn't break the bank. Gimp over Photoshow, Ghostscript over Acrobat, OpenOffice over Office. Those four software examples can save you $1000.00 per desktop. There's a serious incentive for learning the Linux alternative. Sun, 03 Nov 2002 08:40:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? gosh,

Linux Terminal Server Project (LTSP) - there is also a patch to it so that with one Linux Server and one Windows Termial Server u can boot winbozes over the network, 'because MS can't do it on its own :")
U have "cfengine" to deplopy, configure, monitor etc... thousand of machines...
U have NFS,AFS,InterMezzo etc.. to share user data on centeral servers...
U have OpenMosix to share the processor power...

Windows breaks if u just move your HDD on other channel, with Linux all I have to do is to edit /etc/fstab and grub/menu.lst file... i have done it many times..


Gosh MS has invented a some form of limited version of UNIX-"symlink", before a years ago... can't find the link and show how MS care for its custumers :") Sun, 03 Nov 2002 15:20:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? You make a correct assumption: there is NO unique "desktop computer" and while most "linux-on-the-desktop" articles seem to concentrate on the SOHO PC, you point out that you need a valid solution for large-scale corporate deployment.
The truth is, the solutions to the questions you ask are right in front of you.
1) Mass installation/configuration: others already mentioned kickstart, and you could keep the computers fine-tuned with custom init scripts in that image checking for HW or anything. Kudzu could be helpful too. A nice modular kernel is also a must.
2) protection against user errors: they can't touch it because they are NOT root! (Or should not be). As a matter of fact your IT support will face a lot less "help me, my PC is daed!" requests and will be able to concentrate on more constructive activities.
3) User handling: common dirs with NFS, AFS, Coda, whatever - there is only too much choice here and YOU keep the files, not a server in the other end of the world. You can also have custom "skeleton" presets for each class of user/desktop and keep them as user groups (executive, technical, h-desk, whatever). Also, a rightfuly thought firewalling can be a lot more protective against user-misbehaviour than the MSN services... And if you think that Average Joe can tunel or pierce a careful firewall, you shouldn't even mention MSN!
4) Technical support: I'm sure you will find a lot of capable persons to enroll in internal IT or *local* third companies to provide you with that. It's *your* choice for the best bidder - no strings attached! Ever!
I'm afraid that your entire thesis is simply a demonstration of why people keep using windows in places where no special windows-only apps and features are required: INERTIA!
hint: www.tldp.org Sun, 03 Nov 2002 19:55:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? It all boils down to this:
If you don`t speak french,you can never learn to cook:)
I am self taught, cut my teeth on a Winnt4 network build(migrated from novell3.1), built out of a reference book, 5 years ago,I was a copier engineer, now, I regularly install my company`s equipment on other ppl`s LANs, and consult on network design and implementation.
Now , after playing with Linux, I am slowly migrating my company`s entire network to it.
I wouldn`t even consider hiring a Microsoft Co-opted Servile Entity. All of those I have interviewed in the last 12 months show a serious lack of creative thought. One even admitted taking the exam 7 times "until he had learned the questions"
The main problem seems to be that "it hasn`t got X, or it isn`t Windows"
I drive a very complex, expensive, high performance diesel car.
My contemporaries criticism seems to consist of "aren`t diesels dirty and noisy"
My vehicle is quieter than most petrol equivalents, is less polluting than most petrol vehicles with an engine size 30% smaller, and is faster than my fellow director`s petrol Mercedes.
It also has higher MPG.
Unfortunately, it runs a version of Windows as an operating system for the SatNav, which is the least reliable function.
My fellow director has just ordered a new Petrol Mercedes.
Plus ca change.... Mon, 04 Nov 2002 00:07:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? If I lived in your area (I don't - not even the same country) I would print this article, collect some notes and sources, and use it in a presentation to your senior management about why they should give me your job.

You have dismissed alower cost option without research.The only thing that you seem able to say with any actual merit is "We are tied to Office", or "Re-training costs would be prohibitive", both of which could be overcome with sufficient work. No other technical argument holds water, and the amount of research required to hole each of them is startlingly small.

You appear to be an IT manager who is closed minded about technology solutions. Darwin works on these people. Mon, 04 Nov 2002 06:13:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? You really need to get somebody to kickstart your learning process's. I admin hundreds of machines via the internet. No trouble! Try going to a local lug "Linux user group" and connect with some competent folks to get started. That or beat yourself on the head with a clue by four. I am so fed up with incompetent winderz halfwits that are to lazy to get off their respective buttz to learn anything. Just keep beleiving what you want. I am preparing to serve your weeney winderz head on a platter to the bean counterz. I can provide your oganization with a complete OSS solution for pennies on the dollar of the cruft you pedal and manage it from halfway around the planet.
Wake up Mon, 04 Nov 2002 09:44:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? > Second: You don't even need to install a graphical environment to get a linux server.

Come on, you give a general windows admin a command line with no GUI, they haven't got a clue...

The problem is most windows admins want linux to react and run like windows, and are always forgetting that *they* had to learn windows, but refuse to learn Linux.... Mon, 04 Nov 2002 15:24:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? Are you clear about how much you are paying for this level of service ? (clue --- Walmart sell a 'raw' PC for 199 USD)

Do you get any warranty ? i.e. does your supplier take any responsibility for consequential loss, in case of any defects in the supplied software (e.g. allowing virus attacks)

Does the service you get empower you for the future, or does it just leave you needing to buy more of the service to continue in business ? Mon, 04 Nov 2002 19:09:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? Just wanted to point out that Ghost allows you to copy not only a partition but the disk itself, which allows you to copy a Linux installation the same way that you would copy a Windows installation.
Just another minor point, although Linux has most of the tools that the author assumes are missing, it does lack a common user interface to modify all those options. A good approach for Linux(I'm not aware if one exists already) would be to create a program similar to MMC which accepts plug-ins and although it is not great, does save you from using a different interface everytime you use a program.
Maybe Linux should look at MAC OS X for a sucessful implementation of efficient design, easy UI and robustness.
Windows provides a great development platform and many great ideas can be borrowed from it. Linux developers should avoid bashing Microsoft and Mac, and instead they should base themselves on things that these OS got right, and improve Linux to compete with them on all levels not just on the server side. Linux has all it needs to be the standard OS, it just needs to be polished a bit more to be more consistent, easier to use, simpler to deploy and more visually pleasant. It's interesting to note, that most of the major Linux distributions base their business model on support, so ease of use; might not be a priority for them.
I'm hoping for the day, where everything will be dll & blue-screen free, and Klez, bugbear will be all safely locked up in a museum... Tue, 05 Nov 2002 03:48:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? Just one thing: the word is "dual" (as in dual booting). Not "duel". That's when two things fight. You've used "duel" not only in the article, but also in responses. Typos are one thing, but if you want to be a writer, words are good tools to use correctly. Tue, 05 Nov 2002 16:50:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? In an earlier post somebody mentioned that NFS mounted directories are not secure. And to some extent he is right. However as it in Linux is possible to use specified TCP/IP ports you can easily tunnel NFS trafic through some encryption layer, e.g. ssh.

And you could use PAM and some kine of smartcard technology e.g. java rings to ensure that users are who they claim to be.

By using iptables you could also limit access to the NFS servers to clients with ehternet cards with known MAC addresses.

Setting up a secure system is much about knowing the weaknesses and get around them.

This actually has advantages, as you in Linux can combine modules as you see fit while you in Windows often have one monolitic solution. E.g. in Linux you can choose from using ssh, IPSEC or SSL to encrypt your network trafic,
while in windows you do it the windows way.

Like any monoculture Windows becomes more vulnerable to script kiddies. As there is one way windows security works and that's it. In the Linux world such a script would have to figure out how the system is configured before it will be able to do any harm. And in doing so chanses are that it have revealed itself and left traces in the logs. Tue, 05 Nov 2002 17:14:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? OK, OK, OK...

I am the Windows/Linux/Solaris Intel guy who works for a very large SUN reseller. As a result, I am pretty much neutral when it comes to the "religious wars" between the Wintel and UNIX/Linux communities.

In fact, I think that BOTH communities are very silly in how they badger, bait, and berate each other.

I do Windows and I do Linux and the MAIN problem that I see in the Linux sphere right now is NOT if the technology is there, is NOT if the documentation is there... it's there!

However the problem is:
=======================
1) Finding it,
2) Understanding it once you find it, and
3) Getting it to work as advertised (directly related to #2)

In the Microsoft world all 3 (three) are provided quickly and easily by the Borg... I mean Microsoft.

UNIX/Linux people look at this and "cop an attitude" about how "lazy" the "Windoze" integrators are. In return, the Windows people (justifiably) get angry and defensive.

And THAT is the root problem. It's not an issue of wrong v. right, or black v. white, it's an issue of cultures clashing and refusing to understand where the other fella is coming from.

In my mind the answer is for someone to get all the Linux solutions and answers together in a single portal - a la Microsoft Technet and all the other resources that Microsoft throws at their community.

Red Hat is doing a pretty good job of this and is being soundly criticized for it by the UNIX/Linux people because it is such "Microsoft-like" behavior.

Exactly - and that is a good thing IMO! If acting, "Microsoft-like" gets the Windows folks to join the Linux party then I'm all for it.

Ditto for the proprietary Intellectual Property that they've layered into Red Hat v8.0. Maybe I'm stupid and naive but I really like how easy to install, integrate, and customize RH8 is! Yes, it is indeed "Microsoft-like"... and your point is...?

In the end, and to summarize, until...

1) The "how to's" for Linux are as easy and accessible as Windows -and-
2) The CULTURAL lines between the Windows and UNIX communities begin to merge and blur.

...we will see long, lengthy, heated discussions like this one.

Thanks for listening to my mad ravings and happy integrating people!

/fwa Tue, 05 Nov 2002 18:39:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? samba is a very robust 'lanmanager' type server/client implementation.
not only can you emulate roaming profiles, PDC control, logon scripts, and most
of the other things you blathered on about, but you can also customize
things that the server will do when a client connects to a samba resource
(you could use this to automatically back up files sent to the server, or to parse files
sent to the server, or a PLETHORA of other things)
kickstart installs can be used to roll out a large amount of
machines with predefined software ready-to-use. you can customize
these processes yourself to include more specific configuration (like
specific XFree86 Settings)
Something that you didn't mention.. but I thought I though I would is the PRICE of 100 linux desktops compared to 100 XP desktops...
probably worth a few days learning curve at LEAST Tue, 05 Nov 2002 21:22:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? So there we have it.

Turnkey solution for Linux? Nope, apparently it does'nt exist. You have to go and learn about how Unix works.

Ahem - To the Linux guys out there, come back when you are ready. You are not going to get businesses over to your Unix way of dealing with your issues.

Linux is going to have to move itself to the end user side of things to make bigger impressions.

And no, Linux is not a bad product at all. But its selling itself to NON Unix people now. So you're going to have accept the idea that what works for a Linux/unix sysadmin will not work in that market as you believe.

In the same way as the Linux desktop computer now has a nice GFX installer, the turnkey server/network/services solution must follow if its to make the same progress elsewhere.

DS Wed, 06 Nov 2002 10:07:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? you didn't have to learn how windows worked? the first day on your windows computer you were able to create "turnkey solutions"?


somehow i doubt it. Wed, 06 Nov 2002 18:50:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? I can repackage and distribute any software, changes,
anything I like, without visiting 600+ desktops.


We do the same using Linux Terminals Server on 100+ desktops and we do not have a person spending full time on it.
The disk-less termonals have nor software to maintain.
The RedHat 7.3 Server does it all

You may start learning Linux

ajith Thu, 07 Nov 2002 14:45:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? Of course you have to go and learn about how Linux/Unix works, just like you had to learn how Windows worked. Maybe you were smart enough to know how to administer an NT/2K network without learning anything beforehand, but the rest of us mere mortals learn by studying, reading, and investigating.

As for your statement that "what works for a Linux/Unix sysadmin will not work in that market as you believe", Linux is NOW selling itself to home and office end users and the numbers are increasing daily. Read reports from IDG, Gartner, etc.

You've already admitted in previous posts to have a lack of knowledge of Linux in many of the key areas discussed in this forum. The only thing you have proven is that your lack of knowledge hasn't fueled you to investigate or learn, but instead to attack what you don't know. You haven't proven any shortcomings in Linux, you've only proven your own. Thu, 07 Nov 2002 23:53:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? he's looking for a windows _clone_

some people can not be helped. Fri, 08 Nov 2002 01:26:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://www.osnews.com/thread? http://www.osnews.com/thread? I agree with that statement, but our community (the Linux community) needs to stop acknowledging people like AdmV0rl0n. These people act like they want to learn but attack every answer. Linux advocates know what Linux can do. Windows advocates know Linux is a threat, this is why they resort to tactics like that. Instead, ignore them. They losing ground in the server market, they see that they will lose ground in the desktop market (this is already beginning to happen rapidly in the international market), and apparently the enjoy losing money both at home and in the corporate arena. There's a reason that Linux has become such a strong competitor and has gained the ground that it has without almost any advertising. Fri, 08 Nov 2002 02:19:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments