[ale] Linspire chairman thinks desktop Linux is futile

krwatson at cc.gatech.edu krwatson at cc.gatech.edu
Mon Jul 7 09:49:54 EDT 2008


> -----Original Message-----
> From: ale-bounces at ale.org [mailto:ale-bounces at ale.org] On Behalf Of Jeff
> Lightner
> Sent: Monday, July 07, 2008 09:35
> To: ale at ale.org
> Subject: Re: [ale] Linspire chairman thinks desktop Linux is futile
>
> The main problem is shops that primarily use Windows for the desktop
> have, not surprisingly, Windows admins who have little or no clue about
> Linux and don't really want to learn.
>
> Unless an organization is willing to dump not only existing technology
> but existing admins (or do significant retraining of the latter) the
> hurdles to switching are fairly large.   Add to this the veiled threat
> that M$ has about doing "corporate audit" when you start talking to them
> about why you don't need their support any more and even management that
> would like to switch has a tendency to decide not to bother.
>

I see your point although it doesn't apply to us. All the admins here do multi-platform support so it's not as traumatic. Also most departments on campus are multi platform so there is a great deal of interest. We can be the proving grounds to get it working. There is an old adage in marketing. You don't have to be good to get market share, you just have to exist.

I've been on the receiving end of "retaliation by audit" (not by Microsoft) and it was really unpleasant. We came out clean so there were no repercussions but it did chew up a good bit of time.

keith

--

Keith R. Watson                        Georgia Institute of Technology
Systems Support Specialist IV          College of Computing
keith.watson at cc.gatech.edu             801 Atlantic Drive NW
(404) 385-7401                         Atlanta, GA  30332-0280



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