The article defines the basic requirements that non-tech savvie users would typically require from a pc for their normal everyday use and outlines the pros and cons of satisfying these requirements on a typical Windows platform vs that of a Ubuntu installation.

There are one or two points in the article I disagree with (not all aging Linux versions provide support ad infinitum, just like Windows) but overall it serves as a fantastic starting point for non technical computer users that would like evaluate alternatives, or who would like to cut operating costs and downtime losses stemming from their computer infrastructure and software. It does point out one or two negatives of the current FOSS landscape (most notably Microsoft Office document interoperability) which newbies would be wise to take note of.

Given the continuous upgrade cycle (hardware and software) required to run the latest and greatest Microsoft software there is a very strong case for evaluating Linux and FOSS software, but the Linux landscape is extremely confusing for the non technical end user. Using Ubuntu Linux as a reference point in the article makes a lot of sense and is probably the best advice to give to newcomers.

There are a myriad of references to other pieces from within the article providing tons of additional information that will benefit the inquiring user tremendously, and overall its a great, well thought through and well written article that will help to promote the use of Linux and free/open source software.

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My previous installation was Suse Linux Enterprise Desktop (SLED) 10 SP 1. I was very happy with SLED, it is really rock solid, and has a really nice and polished feel about it. The guys at Novell really has turned this into an enterprise level desktop that can be used by power users and normal users alike.

So why change? Well, openSUSE has a much newer kernel, it has Gnome 2.20, and a myriad of other new and cool things which SLED will only have in it’s next big release, and being a geek at heart I like to play with all the new things as they come out.

The installation process:

Painless, and straight forward. I found the secret is to have your /home folder mapped to a separate partition than your root partition, that way you can swap out OSs and keep all your files intact without having to use an external drive to backup and restore your personal files in the process. And the best part of it, openSUSE picked up my user account from the SLED install, I selected it, and voila – logged in to openSUSE with my SLED account on the first start up and had my whole environment set up almost exactly the same as before. What a pleasure.

Gnome 2.20

I do like eye candy, and typically find myself installing new versions on software just to see what the new UI looks like. Gnome 2.20 doesn’t appear much different at first glance, but looking through the release notes it is clear that this is a serious desktop packed with loads of features. There’s nothing vastly different, just a whole bunch of added features making your every day experience that much nicer.

1 click install

From the sound of it, you can expect that these guys will patent the term, and they probably should. The concept is straight forward, go to the openSUSE website, search and select some additional packages that you would like to install, click the link, and let the magic begin. A truly great idea, and endless amounts of fun if you find yourself at the end of a broadband connection.

Compiz

Straight out the box I couldn’t notice too many visual differences, although it has been upgraded to a newer (0.5.4) version. I did some research and discovered all the eye candy is now in compiz-fusion. I 1-click installed it, and all of a sudden I didn’t have borders around my windows anymore and neither any cool spinning cubes with fish stuck at the center – mind you, I didn’t even have a spinning cube anymore. There are means and ways around this, and I did skip a few steps in the installation process, so I’ll have to get back to this sometime in the near future, because the compiz-fusion feature set is the ultimate eye candy right now!

KDE 4

openSUSE 10.3 also ships with a preview of the new KDE4, and seeing as I’ve never been a KDE fan, I haven’t spent any time on having a look to see what the fuss is all about. Personally KDE has always been too over the top for me, where I prefer the simplicity of Gnome, but if KDE is your thing, then you are sure to get some value out of the KDE4 preview.

Tomboy notes

This is probably one of my most used applications, and the’ve improved the new version and now they are offering a to do list as well. You can create tasks for a certain date, and set a priority as well. Completed tasks can also be hidden once marked as completed to reduce the clutter, or they can stay visible for you to witness your accomplishments.

Overall I am definitely impressed with what I have experienced in the last 2 days of the weekend since I’ve installed it, but as I use Linux as a tool in my daily work activities the real test will start tomorrow, and reliability and scalability will be proven. I am convinced the 2.6.22.5 kernel will prove it’s mettle and make for many pleasant work hours, and the rest of the openSUSE 10.3product will deliver the same.

Great victory for Linux once again, but here’s the interesting bit:

On Sunday, Microsoft and Novell said Dell has agreed to buy Suse Linux Enterprise Server certificates from Microsoft and that the computer maker will set up a services and marketing program aimed at getting users of open-source platforms to switch to the new Suse Linux offering.

Why oh why is Dell buying SLES licenses from Microsoft? It seems as if the “Micro-vell” pact reaches a lot further than just the initially mentioned 3 points, and it seems as if Microsoft actually found a way to make money from the one thing that actually stood a chance to diminish their monopoly – Linux.

Under the partnership announced in November, Microsoft said it would offer corporate customers a chance to license its Windows operating system as part of a package that includes maintenance and support for Novell’s Suse Linux platform

Now Microsoft keeps their big clients that were threatening to adopt Linux happy by giving them Linux and still keeping them as Microsoft customers, more money to Microsoft, who already distributed in excess of 52 000 of their annual 70 000 quota SLES licenses by March this year – clearly they arranged this bandwagon at a very critical point in their continued monopoly existence and used their existing customer base to fill all the seats to the brim with a few people still standing in the aisles.

I predict that this will drive a big wedge into the Linux community, and that this is the beginning of the 2 distinct camps forming among Linux users – the die-hard geeks that like Linux because you can recompile the entire kernel if you feel like it, and the new breed of “Microvell” users that will never have a clue as to what Linux actually means or where it comes from. This fact will however not negatively impact the Linux success story though.

Linux will now be seen in more data centers and more desktops thanks to Dell, Microsoft, Novell, and Ubuntu. The above arrangements have taken Linux out of garages and dark bedrooms and underground server rooms and vaulted it into the mainstream spotlight where it will continue to make a dramatic impact on the ever-changing computing world, as it deserves to. This is perhaps not Linux’s originally planned destination, but Linux is evolving with the times and adopting to the requirements and delivering more and more by the pound with each iteration, and hopefully we will continue to benefit from it’s mainstream exposure…

There will be a whole spat of debates within the Linux community on which distribution they should have actually chosen, and which one is more friendlier etc etc, but the fact of the matter is that all new PCs sold will no longer by default come with Windows – think about that for a second…

This is by no means only a victory to Ubuntu and Mark Shuttleworth, it’s a victory to our right to freedom of choice! Well done Ubuntu!

The one thing I found very interesting is that the Linux kernel has hardware architecture support for the Xbox, Sony PS2 and PS3, and the Nintendo Gamecube.

Another aspect where Linux really stands out is for its support for various different file systems, as well as virtual memory limits, and displayed better performance with scheduler time slicing. Vista also came in more than double than the Linux kernel in the SLOC rating for the kernel source code.

The comparison does not indicate the winner or loser of the kernel comparison, but given the amount of compared points you’ll have to decide for yourself which one you prefer. It’s great to see the two heavyweights side by side in so much detail, and looking at the amount of green and red columns it would seem as if Linux is clearly more adept at handling a bigger variety of hardware architectures, manage and utilize massive amounts of hardware better, and seems to get better performance out of the available hardware.

I have run both Windows Vista and OpenSUSE 10.2 (kernel 2.6.16) on the same notebook (Dell Latitude D820, 2 GB Ram, with Intel T2400 1.83 GHz chip) and there is a remarkable difference in performance overall with Linux being my first choice without a doubt.

There’s a lot of comparisons between the new Ubuntu release (Feisty Fawn) and what Novell is doing with SLED, regarding AppArmor and Xen, i.e. mainly centralized management and enterprise readiness, and while Mark agrees that Novell is doing a great job and acknowledges that Ubuntu is not enterprise desktop ready, he does cite some great examples where Ubuntu is already used in massive deployments and running successfully though.

One of the main parts of the interview that really stood out for me, and which I think firmly indicates where Ubuntu is being positioned is the following from Mark:

“At the same time , the exciting challenge for me personally is to build something that the world has never seen before. Which is an enterprise quality infrastructure, that is freely available – globally – and has commercial support and a commercial ecosystem around it, but on the other hand is also available to people not willing to pay for support. It’s important for me to focus on that as a personal goal. ”

Clearly Mark has a great vision of where he wants Ubuntu to go, and while he is not the only person to determine the outcome and the path for Ubuntu I do think it’s refreshing to find such a strong commitment and vision in the Linux space, which seems to be getting more and more cluttered by yet another new distro almost monthly that does one thing better than any of the already numerous distributions available…

So ignoring the Windows loving masses and complete end-users and focusing purely on the people making and creating the software powering modern enterprises today, i.e the developers and the architects, and especially in companies where they have already adopted something else than a pure Microsoft environment (Java, PHP, Linux, etc) the question does seem valid – “why are these people still paying for proprietary software when they can get the same thing for free?”

Herewith some of the roadblocks I have personally experienced in the last 5 years I’ve spent at an international enterprise organization.

Problem #1: Most managers and CIOs need to know “So who do we phone when the systems go down and our own staff cant fix it?” – and believe me, they just love this one. Ignoring once again the professional open source companies that have multiple people on a permanent payroll providing consulting and support (e.g. JBoss) this really is a justifiable issue and considering the excessive loss of profit in a system downtime situation a definite concern.

Unfortunately proving the stability and reliability of a system is no small task, and involves the input and time of many professional developers and architects which could otherwise have been adding business value by developing business specific applications – and not all companies have a dedicated R&D team that can look at these things.

Problem #2: If it ain’t broke don’t try and fix it. If you have any kind of existing legacy that suits 90% of the company’s needs then a rip and replace strategy will really only give you enough firepower to shoot yourself in both feet somewhere very soon down the line. Companies don’t mind spending money on something that gives them stability in their efforts to make more money – bottom line…

Problem #3: Skills & training. It takes skills and training to migrate from one product to another, and given the second roadblock these two become quite a devastating combination. Not all people like to figure things out for themselves, and not all OSS products have official training courses and proper documentation.

Problem #4: Security. Many people perceive OSS as insecure as many people have direct access to the source code. This is a very shallow surface only view, but a very big roadblock to overcome in the quest to utilize OSS in the corporate workplace.

Problem #5: Where’s the roadmap? Enterprise organizations typically embark on a long relationship with a company or a specific piece software because of the cost of migration as explained above, and many OSS products simply don’t have a 3 – 5 year roadmap of where they are going, which features will be added, etc etc etc.

Problem #6: Singular Leadership: OSS products are usually associated to and ‘owned’ by a single, unbelievably passionate person that started the software as a dream and that have taken ownership of the product (Marc Fleury, Linus Torvalds, Gavin King, etc). These people do however move on and one wonders how the future stability of the product depends on the new person in charge whom nobody has ever heard of. Granted this also happens in proprietary software companies, but you usually have a whole support structure underneath each leader that can take over at any stage.

As the aim of this post is not to point out the problems that exist in the OSS model I believe that the above provides enough of an indication as to why not everybody are flocking to free, open source software and replacing their proprietary, expensive software where OSS alternatives exist. I also don’t insinuate or imply that the above 6 points can never be overcome either…

I am a firm supporter and adopter of OSS where I can, and I have been fighting this fight for long enough in my company to know the ins and outs of the roadblocks as outlined above – but I am also the first to point out that if I have to start a new company from scratch that I will utilize as much OSS as possible to enable me to gain critical mass in a much shorter space of time, with less effort, and by spending less effort and time and resources on reinventing the wheel on a daily basis…

Below you’ll find a few hosting packages found locally and then finally the last column indicates the US provider i ended up choosing. The parameters for the report are quite basic, see what you can get for Linux based web hosting on shared infrastructure for roughly R50 per month.

So edisc looks pretty good as well, but clearly it’s one of the few in SA that does provide reasonable value. IX Web Hosting is one of the best in the top 5 in the USA, but personally I found their packages very good, and their service has been impeccable, with most things completely automated from your own control panel.

Disclaimer: This is by no means a comprehensive study and therefore there are many variables and providers excluded. The above companies were all discovered through Google and the result coincide greatly with a previous informal evaluation I performed. This post is intended as an indication only

CRM (SugarCRM), Database (MySQL, PostgreSQL), operating system (choose your favourite Linux distro), Enterprise Service Bus (Mulesource), CMS (Alfresco), Business Process Management (Intalio), JEE Application Server (JBoss), Portal (Liferay), Enterprise wide monitoring (Hyperic) and the list goes on and on and on!

Can anybody explain to me why we still have big enterprise companies reinventing the wheel on a daily basis by writing these products because they need a custom feature or two, or that they can’t embrace OSS because “Who is going to support us if it goes down”?

There’s clearly a whole new world unfolding right underneath our noses and we have to warm up to it and start taking notice of it, because it already has and will continue to change the IT landscape for the better.

To the the open source community – I salute you, and thank you for the countless hours of effort you pour into it for no/limited financial gains – may we all learn something from this collective effort.