enterprise-ubuntu team mailing list archive

["Kaja P. Christiansen" <kaja@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hello everyone,

Though I was unable to attend the 2nd IT managers' meeting
and so do not know in detail all reasons behind starting
Enterprise-ubuntu group, I was very glad to hear about the new forum.

I work for a university. Software environment in offices is dominated by MS,
while Linux rules research and education, especially at the Faculty of
Science.
In fact, there seems to be very little (if any) difference between
infrastructure
of a large company described by David Partain and a university.

To years ago I decided to move Linux clients from RHEL/CentOS
to Ubuntu. The switch went well, but there have also been hurdles
that had to be solved.

I'd like to support Davids 4 suggestions for threads to discuss
and will address calendaring and mail in a while. I am also
interested in discussing  'The use of virtualization for MS Windows
applications' suggested by Andreas Kernke and all aspects of network
distribution of Ubuntu to a larger number of clients.

Best
Kaja



On 01-11-2012 22:55, David Partain wrote:
> Greetings all,
>
> As one of the people pushing for this discussion at both of the last
> two UDSs, I thought it might be a good idea to offer my reasons for
> having a discussion.
>
> I work for a very large company.  That company, like most large
> companies (and many smaller ones) has invested very heavily in
> Microsoft infrastructure of various flavors (Exchange, Active
> Directory, Sharepoint, Windows on the desktop, and so on).  Whether I
> like that or not is in fact entirely irrelevant to the task at hand. 
> That task is to make using Ubuntu in that environment as easy and
> pleasant as possible for users who choose to use Ubuntu.  While many
> things "just work", there are plenty of areas where it's not as easy
> as it should be.
>
> Of course, one could say that this is "giving in", and there's a part
> of me that certainly agrees with that.  However, when working for
> change inside any organization, whether large or not, telling people
> they're wrong and that we have to do everything differently certainly
> doesn't work.  My strategy is instead to make the client an attractive
> alternative to using something else.  If we can do that by fixing
> things that just don't work or are painful, we've done a very Good Thing.
>
> I think there are multiple threads that might be useful to discuss:
>
> - What pain points are there to using an Ubuntu client inside a
> Microsoft-dominated corporate environment?
> - What is painful in an environment that _isn't_ Microsoft-dominated?
> - What solutions to these issues have people come up with and can we
> get them documented?
> - What alternatives are there for various bits of IT infrastructure
> (calendaring, mail, document management, collaboration tools, storage,
> etc.)?
> - etc.
>
> The word "boring" has been used to describe what we want to
> accomplish.  I personally don't find it a bit boring.  Making Ubuntu a
> viable alternative inside the largest companies in the world is
> anything but boring, and I firmly believe that without making Ubuntu
> play nicely in environments that aren't particularly friendly is
> absolutely critical for that to happen.  Just my opinion, though :-)
>
> Cheers,
>
> David
>
>