Reply to: Microsoft Licensing

[Lucifer Box]

I might vote Labour next.

Why not move to Birmingham? You'll be voting Labour no matter which party you put your cross against.

[DimPrawn]

I might vote Labour next.

[AlfredJPruffock]

Is it just me or would it be easier to install Linux and then do wtf you like?

This statment is as shocking to me as Chico confirming that the Iraq war was a mistake, I remember when Dp would defend MS against the upstart LINUX with great gusto... The Times they are a Changing ....

[TheMonkey]

some stuff ...

there's openoffice which personally I use at home ... like the fact that the doc format is xml etc. and can export to PDF ...

koffice

gnumeric

abiword

Yes I use OpenOffice - works wonderfully. Talks MS Office formats perfectly as well. Here's what the guts of an openoffice document look like (they are all zip files!):



Note the images are actually NOT in the XML which makes the whole format really easy to generate and process.

[madhippy]

if you install linux, what desktop and word processor and spreadsheet software do you have a choice of ?

Milan.

some stuff ...

there's openoffice which personally I use at home ... like the fact that the doc format is xml etc. and can export to PDF ...

koffice

gnumeric

abiword

[Fleetwood]

hth

[milanbenes]

if you install linux, what desktop and word processor and spreadsheet software do you have a choice of ?

Milan.

[TheMonkey]

But you need to spend 15 hours to find vendor drivers for Linux then spend few more days trying to find out wtf they wont compile on your system...

I haven't had to do that for about 6 years. Obscure hardware normally screws you but we're talking servers here.

Surprisingly, everything works fine on my windows-specific toshiba M50!

[AtW]

You don't need to do either on Linux.

But you need to spend 15 hours to find vendor drivers for Linux then spend few more days trying to find out wtf they wont compile on your system...

[TheMonkey]

Just to add, to install Ubuntu on a desktop:

1. Stick CD in and boot off it. It boots to the desktop (!!!) on a live CD in under a minute.
2. Double click the install icon on the desktop.
3. Fill in 4 dialog boxes (regional settings, wipe disk, user account, confirm)
4. Wait 10 minutes.
5. Reboot
6. The update wizard pops up when you log in. Click ok and wait 1 minute and it's updated. No reboot.

Done. Things you don't have to do:

1. Register
2. Activate
3. Do the OEM install wizard
4. Find out what hardware is in the box and source all the drivers for VGA, RAID, Chipset, blah blah blah.
5. Reboot numerous times between driver installs.
6. Argue with adobe ps drivers.
7. Get nagged by anything.
8. Argue with WGA or windows update.
9. Install office, activate it and register it and update it etc etc.

[TheMonkey]

15 minutes to install, 1h 45 mins to install the vendor drivers and lock it down properly, rename accounts etc.

You don't need to do either on Linux.

[AtW]

Joe in "there's always a smarta*se" mode.

You cloned disk?

[Joe Black]

2 HOURS! That is less time than it takes to install win2k3 on 3 boxes without any configuration

Hmm, the last time I installed W2K3 took me less than 15 minutes.

Joe in "there's always a smarta*se" mode.

[AtW]

Microsoft prices for consumer grade stuff ie like Windows XP is actually a very good deal, and they are also okay for small dev with Action Pack and ISV Empower programs (this one for up to 2 years though), but if you go upwards you will get totally ripped off: okay, not as bad as Oracle, but still way too much given near free alternatives.

[TheMonkey]

Ironically I spent today replacing a copy of SBS2003 with Ubuntu Linux in about 2 hours because the company wanted to add another 50 users to their SBS deployment. They found out they'd have to split the hardware into 2 boxes and purchase the licenses accordingly ~ £20k for separate exchange and fileserving. They got a linux company to do the admin remotely for £200/month and an abitary sum for me to set it up in the first place on their existing Dell kit.

I dumped the whole of exchange into PSTs for the original 5 users, installed ubuntu, configured the mail server (postfix/courier imap), set up web mail (squirrelmail), set up samba as a DS, set up file shares, configured backups, frigged their PIX and we were off. 2 HOURS! That is less time than it takes to install win2k3 on 3 boxes without any configuration.