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Feature: Migration
Freedom Partners leaves Microsoft for Nitix
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Comments"We used to run on Microsoft 2000 Exchange Server," Kaupp says. "We wanted to host our own email and do some file and print sharing." In the late 1990s that was cutting edge technology, but the automotive industry has moved to the Internet in a big way, according to Kaupp. "The companies are moving everything to the Web, and the Internet is becoming the lifeblood of our business."
One problem with the old environment that made Kaupp consider moving to another operating system was Microsoft's lack of customizability. Every employee needed an online workstation to keep abreast of inventory levels, check upcoming shipments, and communicate by email. But Kaupp was having a problem controlling inappropriate Web surfing. "With Microsoft, you had to build a list of places people couldn't go," Kaupp says, and coming up with that list was a hit and miss prospect at best.
There was another challenge. Vermont is a largely rural state, and the dealerships in the Freedom network are miles apart. The network's Jeep showroom alone is 35 miles away from the rest of the dealerships. With a T-1-based WAN, Freedom was paying more than $1,000 a month just to keep that dealership connected to the others.
"We wanted to have VPNs available for our owners and managers," Kaupp says. "I talked to the VAR from whom I was buying equipment, and he recommended Linux," in the form of a Nitix server. It seemed to provide the answers Kaupp was looking for. With Nitix, Kaupp found he was able to block employees' access to inappropriate Web sites by allowing access only to sites on the "approved" list. Also, by implementing a point-to-point VPN, Kaupp was able to replace the T-1 service and save Freedom several hundred dollars a month.
In addition to the added security and cost savings, Kaupp likes the simplicity that Nitix affords him. "I can't even put a monitor on this server," he says. "The really nice thing is that the operating system is so small that it's all installed on a chip. You could trip over the power cord and turn it back on and it comes right up. My Microsoft server, to reboot it and get everything started takes 15 to 20 minutes."
Tina Gasperson writes about business and technology from an open source perspective.
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on Freedom Partners leaves Microsoft for NitixNote: Comments are owned by the poster. We are not responsible for their content.
"One problem with the old environment that made Kaupp consider moving to another operating system was Microsoft's lack of customizability."
Reads like a win for Linux to me.
I converted to Linux many years ago because I could not customize Windows 95 (Lose95) enough to keep it running. With Linux things just run and run. There are always a few ways of doing anything and one of them will work for you. With Microsoft it's their way or the highway and their way is always in Microsoft's best interest, not the user's.
Another example is a project I am working on to convert a whole school to Linux, minus 50 machines that still do something useful with Windows. We plan to add 150 seats using Linux terminal servers and thin clients. We can afford twice as much hardware by not using Windows and we can make better use of that hardware because Linux is very flexible. For instance, in open areas where there are numbers of users we will use thin clients based on barebones PC's with extra video cards permitting six users to sit at one machine with mouse, keyboard and monitor. Just understanding the MSFT EULA is as much work as configuring this centralized but flexible system but once configured, the pain is gone forever. The EULA always comes back to bite whether it's the BSA or finding out that the EULA does not permit more than N networked machines sharing files. I want to deal with businesses that love their customers unlike Microsoft. If they loved their customers would they sue them and restrict their rights to use their own computers?
Like you, I too use Linux terminal servers, in my case, in the form of K12LTSP. K12LTSP takes a lot of the "geekiness" out of setting up a Linux terminal server. I have it installed on my laptop as a workstation OS. I was showing off the educational apps to a teacher one day, and she said "wow, that's cool, what is all that?" I described what it was, and, a few months later, she took it upon herself to download and install K12LTSP...with only minimal assistance from me (she needed a slightly customized setup due to her network structure). She is a Windows and (occasional) Mac user; she had never even *seen* UNIX or GNU/Linux before, and she found it very easy to use. As for keeping the system updated, once I showed her "yum update", her exact words were, "That's it? Oh my god, *anyone* could do that!"
K12LTSP is now in production use in her school.
And that is the exact problem Gates uses his "Charitable Foundation" to fight. As I see it, his foundation allows him to give Windows away for free, and thus to compete with Linux on price, without affecting his exhorbitant retail price structure.
His "charitable" foundation gave grants of hardware and software to over 70 schools and colleges in the NorthWest, in the name of diversity/minorities because "their" education was so "poor". The foundation is now in its 5th round of donations.
<a href="http://www.evcc.ctc.edu/template.cfm?doc_id=1509" title="ctc.edu">http://www.evcc.ctc.edu/template.cfm?doc_id=1509</a ctc.edu>
The grants will fund the start-up of five new schools and accelerate the efforts of five existing schools to become high achievement models through improved teaching and learning and enhanced access to technology.
Whose "technology" do you think they'll fund access to? It can't be Linux because Linux is truely free.
It's an easy scam: Microsoft "donates" software to Gate's foundation and takes a retial value tax write off on it. The foundation "grants" the software to the schools as a charitable donation, along with hardware. It's like crack dealers giving out free samples.
Chose Linux for the block.
Posted by: Anonymous Coward on July 13, 2006 07:49 AM#