2009 is the Year of GNU/Linux at Robert Pogson

Seriously, GNU/Linux will make great progress this year while that other OS languishes in doubt about vapourware and a current product with tarnished reputation.

IDC recently did a survey sponsored by Novell. Two key questions of a sample of the world’s small and larger IT organizations:

Q. Do you plan to increase your adoption of Linux on servers in 2009 as a result of the
economic climate and a focus on cost containment?
Q. Do you plan to increase your adoption of Linux on clients in 2009 as a result of the
economic climate and a focus on cost containment?

The answer was “yes” in about 50% of respondents, “maybe” in 20% studying the matter and “no” in only 30% of respondents. Of course, the degree of adoption is still unknown but it is costly to maintain support of a newer system if it is only a small part of the organization, so I presume these are significant migrations.

In my organization, the result is the same and we will move about one-third of seats to GNU/Linux. That would have been done already except we have done some work to get common authorization working for GNU/Linux and that other OS. We could easily replace that other OS for all the student-seats but there are conservative elements about… . This use of AD permits accessing files shared with AD security. Thanks,
WinBind, and Debian. The terminal server added to run the new clients will provide an abundance of storage so we could simply move all the students data and make Samba the domain controller, freeing up a powerful server to run the rest of the system. It all works, except spaces in usernames. We can switch to XFCE instead of GNOME to dodge that problem. or we could take out the cursed spaces.

My Mission

My observations and opinions about IT are based on 40 years of use in science and technology and lately, in education. I like IT that is fast, cost-effective and reliable. I do not care whether my solution is the same as yours. I like to think for myself.

My first use of GNU/Linux in 2001 was so remarkably better than what I had been using, I feel it is important work to share GNU/Linux with the world. I have been blessed by working in schools where students and school systems have benefited by good, modular software easily installed in most systems.

I have shown GNU/Linux to thousands of students and hundreds of teachers over the years and will continue in some way doing that until I die in spite of the opposition.