[CS-FSLUG] Interesting from a SUSE elist.

[Fred A. Miller]

> On Tuesday 25 January 2005 03:05, Ben Higginbottom wrote:
> <snip>
> > The last I heared was that it was still going ahead but at a slower rate.
> <snip>
> 
>  You're right.  I just got done reading an article about Munich's migration 
> and it's going to be a slow one, due to be completed in 2008.

Belive me for an install base as large as Munich's (14,000 IIRC) a 4 year 
migration isnt at all slow. IBM is looking at probably a minimum of 5 years 
to migrate all 200,000 desktops, longer if they port all their software 
suites. Novell switched to a dual boot system and OOo last summer and will 
have migrated to NLD fully by the end of this summer, which I thought was 
amazingly quick.

Trinity is looking at a 3 - 4 year migration, we went dual boot with win98 
over the summer and ironing out all the major issues with the clients took us 
through to October, when they start being used for formal lessons within the 
next few weeks I'm sure a whole load of other issues will crop up as well.

Making the clients look right is also amazingly difficult, slight style 
differences can cause all kinds of issues, such as single clicking on a 
directory/folder to open it or clicking on the title bar causing it to shade 
as opposed to go fullscreen can cause a casual user to get worried. Were 
using KDE3 with Plastik to give it the windows look, but when I was setting 
up the desktop due to my years of using CDE or XFCE or similar I put all the 
launchers on the kicker as opposed to icons on the desktop which threw people 
initially because they were so used to icons being on the desktop.

The second hardest thing is convincing people that linux != windows in any 
shape or form, its something completley different, and approaching it with a 
windows mindset is liable to lead to disaster.

We've also had to factor in time for the teachers to learn not only linux, but 
the other apps they would be using such as OOo. Theres also a not 
inconsiderable number of kids who have been using Linux for a few or more 
years who are practically salivating at the chance of getting one over on 
teach with their 133t sk1llz, which is yet another thing to factor in and 
build safeguards against.

Finally there are the kids who have started their GCSE preperations. Its 
totally unfair on them to expect them to jump to another OS when they have 
much more important things on their minds. Not to mention that we couldnt 
find them a suitable database client/tool in time, hopefully those who will 
be starting their GCSE's in september will be able to use Base in OOo2, so 
long as OOo2 is finished in time and the relevant teachers can get familar 
with it. Which means that we'll be able to defenestrate ourselves (should the 
bosses want that) by the earliest September 2007.

Belive me any large scale desktop conversion is far, far from a walk in the 
park, but on the upside you do get to have kids come and complain that Gnome 
isnt installed, and get to tell them it never will be due to the lack of 
lockdown options :)

Regards,

Ben

-- 
The only bug free software from MickySoft is still shrink-wrapped
in their warehouse..."