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<title>Windows Defectors: Why Linux Is Worth Migrating To, Sometimes LG #97</title>
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<h1>Windows Defectors: Why Linux Is Worth Migrating To, Sometimes</h1>
<p id="by"><b>By <A HREF="../authors/roberts.html">James Roberts</A></b></p>
<p>
<BLOCKQUOTE><EM>
[James has agreed to coordinate the "Windows Defectors" series
long
<A
HREF="../issue95/lg_mail.html#mailbag.1">requested</A>
in the Mailbag. This series is for those new to Linux who come from a
Windows background. In spite of the series title, it's not just for
those who have stopped using Windows completely. People who still like
Windows, use Windows grudgingly, or deal with Linux-Windows integration
in LANs will also find the information useful. Unlike LG's other
series, this one will be written by multiple authors, since there is
such an interest on writing on this subject. The next article in
this issue (by Tom Brown) is also a Window Defectors
article.
<P> We're considering changing the series title to something less
negative (e.g., "Linux For Your Mom", "Leaning Towards Linux", "Windows
Immigrants Help Box", "c:\>, Drive-In for Windows Users", "At
Liberty Under the Hood", "Linux Incognito" -- all suggested by Petar
Marinov), but we're leaving it as "Windows Defectors" initially
because that's what it has been known in the Mailbag. -Sluggo.]
</EM></BLOCKQUOTE>
<P><TT>"Those who ignore history are doomed to repeat it."</TT>
<CITE>-George Santayana</CITE></P>
<P>Have you heard that quote before? I expect so - and that's part of the
point of the quote. This is the first article in a series aimed at the
many people who are interested in Linux, but currently use Windows. It aims
to ask, and perhaps answer, questions such as:</P>
<UL>
<LI>Why should anyone defect - or migrate - from Windows to Linux?</LI>
<LI>What should be migrated?</LI>
<LI>What are the benefits, if any?</LI>
<LI>What are the problems?</LI>
<LI>Are there work-rounds for the problems?</LI>
<LI>Who should consider this option?</LI>
<LI>Who should avoid it?</LI>
</UL>
<H2>What's the context?
</H2>
<P>All such discussions have a context, and the context I intend here is
that of the Small and Medium Enterprise, or SME. I'm not addressing the
issues for the single desktop, or for the large multinational corporation.
In fact, for both these extremes the issues are arguably simpler: at one end
it's just personal choice of platform, at the other the resources are
available to implement customised solutions as needed. But it is the SME
area that has in the current, somewhat-recessive economic circumstances,
consistently been identified by the IT industry as the last largely untapped
potential growth area. I'm referring here to small installations of between
two and a hundred desktops and servers. This SME area is price-sensitive,
hasn't upgraded for years, has no IT management: it's where Linux can make a
difference, and it's where I reckon it's hardest for Linux to enter - for
reasons that I will describe later. If the problems can be solved here, then
Linux will become 'sticky' at this level of the 'ordinary' user.</P>
<P>In this first article I'd like to set the scene, and this is why I
started with the Santayana quote. I've noticed that people with a UNIX
background often have had little contact with those who have been weaned on
DOS - and vice versa. The target business that I'd like us to keep in mind
is a small office - say eight or ten users altogether - and if this small
office has a history in computing, it will generally have been in DOS and
Windows.</P>
<P>So let's review where this typical office is now, and how it got here.
It's a long and somewhat sad story, but in the end, you'll maybe see why,
once, Windows NT was better for our clients than XENIX/SUN, and why now
Linux may be better than NT.</P>
<H3>Anti-flame note
</H3><P>Before we start, let me state that I am convinced that GNU/Linux is
a masterly piece of work on the whole, and an astonishing achievement. Since
it's made by humans however, it's not perfect, and inevitably it's the
imperfections that I'll have to emphasise. The alternative options are also
imperfect, that's why we're looking at Linux. But in some areas the
alternatives may have strengths that GNU/Linux lacks. Please take the
comments in the appropriate light. I also have to say that all trademarks
are acknowledged.</P>
<H2>Blast from Past
</H2>
<P>I'd like us to think back ten years or so - at which time (by mere
coincidence) I'd just joined a small UK SME VAR as hardware tech. Within
about ten days of starting I'd been bumped up into a systems and end-user
support role as well. The VAR was then primarily a Novell reseller and
customiser, and I quickly got to know the advantages and disadvantages of
Novell 3.1. At that time most of the clients were solicitors (lawyers), and
their systems typically were running a Novell server on a i386 or i486 with
SCSI drives, with up to twenty-five diskless net-booted i386 workstations,
running WordPerfect.</P>
<P>Overall the server/diskless workstation was a very good fit for the
clients' needs; it was reliable, fast (the 10 Mbps network was faster than
contemporary IDE drives) and easy to maintain (all the configuration files
were in one place).</P>
<P>It was also abstruse, non-intuitive (indeed, counter-intuitive at times)
and completely non-user-friendly. Any minor configuration error was often
fatal. But it did work, and did the job well.</P>
<H2>Enter the Band-wagon
</H2><P>Then Windows for Workgroups came along. We could put a network of
twenty-five peer-to-peer workstations into a site for much less than we
could do a Novell installation. Not only that, all the hardware was readily
available and used standard parts (the diskless workstations needed specific
types of PSU and weren't easily upgradeable). Moreover, with the Windows
system, the clients had the illusion of a familiar system - most of the
decision-makers who wanted to introduce networked systems already had
Windows boxes at home. Also the clients could install their own extra
software packages without invoking our aid (and paying for it).</P>
<P>Pretty soon we were installing a lot more Windows for Workgroups than
Novell. Of course, it didn't take long for the downside to be apparent - no
central installation of applications, no central control of rights, no user
controls whatsoever, big problems with workstation backup, insecure
peer-to-peer networking. So our recommended system included a Novell server,
which solved some (but not all) of these problems.</P>
<P>Then Windows NT came out - and it was cheaper than Novell, both for the
server and for the client access licences. And for the client, again it gave
the illusion of familiarity - it looked like Windows. And for me, it came
from the architect of Digital VMS - it was written by someone who did know
what they were doing.</P>
<P>Meanwhile, Novell had changed their OS completely to version 4, which no
one I knew found easy to use. They had introduced large-scale management
tools, which merely muddied the waters for our typical installs of 5 to 10
clients, and it cost more than version 3.x.</P>
<P>Pretty soon we were selling networks made up of Windows for Workgroups
workstations with a Windows NT 3.51 server, for a much lower overall cost
than the previous Novell-plus-diskless workstations solution, and with
pretty reasonable reliability and performance. Of course, building all the
workstations took time, so I developed a custom cloning system that could
build ten identical workstations in about fifteen minutes each.</P>
<H2>Nixing XENIX
</H2><P>By then (and we are getting to 1995 or so), we had become pretty
well-known and had a good reputation for looking after clients, so more
than one solicitor came to us to replace their 286/386 XENIX-based system,
which was by then getting pretty long in the tooth (like me now!). I never
installed any RS232 terminals, but I removed a lot. They'd done a good job
for their owners, but the replacement - with Windows 95 on the desktop and
Windows NT 3.51 on the server - was like jumping forward a whole epoch,
compared with the 9600 baud green-screen serial terminals in previous use.
Was Windows actually as reliable? Well, yes, given the age of the systems
being replaced, it was in fact more reliable.</P>
<P>So things went on, and as they went on the problems of this Windows
computing paradigm - which had always been apparent in contrast to the
Novell/diskless paradigm - became more and more cogent.</P>
<P>Windows 95 was effective - it's a masterpiece of forward and backward
compatibility in my view - but it was not stable. It crashed easily. It was
not secure. It was big, and the interactions within the systems were
unpredictable. Add third-party software (and a different mix of such
software on every box) and problems would arise that no-one reliably could
solve. We got used to reformatting and reinstalling.</P>
<P>Windows 98 was better, and more reliable, but much bigger again, for no
very good reason. It still crashed unpredictably, and took even longer to
fault-find or reinstall. Windows NT server was pretty darn stable (after a
few service packs), and so we all looked forward to Windows NT 4 coming in
1996, with the back-end stability of NT and the new interface of 98.</P>
<P>I adopted NT4 workstation as my personal desktop as soon as it was
released, but I had to dual-boot with 98 because NT4 did not run games
well - and I like games. However, NT workstation was too expensive to sell
into our clients in general, so our standard install was Windows 98 on the
desktop and Windows NT 4 server on the back end, and this worked pretty
well.</P>
<H2>Setting Sun
</H2><P>In 1996/7 we sold this system into various sites that were running
Sun Solaris/SPARC. It was interesting how this came about. Why ever would
someone using Sun SPARC workstations want Windows? Well, for freedom, odd as
this may seem given the current context. </P>
<P>At the particular sites in question, 'the Sun' was under the exclusive
control of 'The System Administrator' - who would install only what they
wanted to install, after triplicate written requests, passed back up to
company HQ and triple signed off by company IT. Maybe. Meanwhile the workers
and researchers, who just wanted to get things done, were bringing in their
own Windows machines and running SPSS or MathCAD or some custom sample
analysis software on them just to get the work done, and meanwhile the new
spectrometers in the lab came with Windows-based software that had to be
copied BY HAND to the UNIX system! Yes, Windows and Windows networking at
that time actually represented more 'Freedom' for these people, and
eventually the lab Sun systems were retired and sold off.</P>
<P>Do I feel shame? No! I remember two issues. One was concerning a video
lead for a monitor. The video lead - which if I remember correctly was
standard apart from the blanking off of one pin - was $150, about, from Sun.
I could source the same lead (apart from the blanked hole) for $7. And the
price of a network card? Don't ask. Meanwhile, it took twenty minutes to
link the lab pc talking to the machinery into the network - something that
had been on request for a year. Any company that exploits a monopoly in this
way develops users who detest it. Yes, any company.</P>
<H2>Back in the future
</H2><P>So we get up to 1999 and Windows 2000 Pro. Windows 2000 is as good
as Windows has got. It was pretty solid, pretty easy to use, fast,
adequately tuned, and a good desktop system. But Windows 2000 Pro had a
deliberately broken networking model, presumably to force a contrast with
Windows 2000 server. Windows 2000 Workstation would only handle ten clients;
this was reminiscent of the Intel tricks with the 486 series. The Outlook
mail/groupware client was also broken, in that core functionality had been
moved to Exchange server, and as far as I could see for one reason only: to
make clients buy Exchange server. I didn't like this. But Windows 2K was
still a good bet for our clients, although it was getting really overblown
in size and slower and slower every issue.</P>
<H2>The Plague years
</H2><P>Then the viruses started to really hit.</P>
<P>Then Windows XP came out.</P>
<P>We don't sell XP, if we can help it.</P>
<P>We have a few problems with it. We don't like the licence (it's a
potential problem for most solicitors/lawyers and anyone else with a duty of
confidentiality), we don't like the desktop (it's an insult), we don't like
the vulnerabilities, or the slow performance, or the sheer undocumented mass
of it all. But that's not the <em>real</em> problem. The <em>real</em>
problem we have is that soon we won't be able to get Windows 2000 any
more.</P>
<P>There's a problem in another area too. Many of our clients are running
Windows NT 4 server. It's very solid. It works. It does the job. But there
will soon be no more security updates or support for this version, and we
will have to migrate clients to something else. Windows 2000 server, 2000 AS
or especially Windows Server 2003 are a ridiculous overkill for an office
with six client machines, as well as being much more expensive and needing
huge hardware resources to run. So what else can we install to replace
NT4?</P>
<H2>Enter the Penguin
</H2><P>Now, back in 1993 I had ran into Slackware, presented as a cover
disk with Personal Computer World UK. I installed it and played with it, but
it didn't do anything I needed. Nonetheless, I kept an eye on GNU/Linux and
installed most builds of Slack, then Red Hat. We bought in a pre-configured
GNU/Linux Slackware box in about 1996 to run as our mail server, initially
on dial-up and then ISDN, and over 5 years it never crashed. The PSU failed
one day, and I managed to migrate the system to a different box and a bigger
hard drive and get it all working again (I never was sure how). Many people
say that Windows is unstable. With the NT series and all relevant patches on
supported hardware - I just don't think that's true. I've had Win NT 4 boxes
stay up for years. But that GNU/Linux could so easily match or exceed this
performance impressed me.</P>
<P>Moreover, GNU/Linux has over the last few years transformed its graphical
desktop capacity. Not only are there lots of interestingly geeky X-desktops
available, but two mainstream competitors for Windows 2k/XP, with generally
enhanced capabilities.</P>
<P>Two years ago, with the launch of XP and the developments in Samba, I
decided to seriously evaluate the potential of Linux for replacing Windows
NT 4 on the backend with a GNU/Linux box running Samba. I installed every
mainstream distro I could get, on every box I could test it on. I played
with it, broke it, fixed it (sometimes) and did my sums. Then we put some
test boxes into clients, mostly as mail servers/file servers with AV
integrated, and they have on the whole been working flawlessly ever
since.</P>
<P>But all is not sweetness and light. There are some problems to overcome
in retro-fitting GNU/Linux into a Windows network, and now I've given the
history I've just laid out, I hope you'll see them a little differently.</P>
<P> Next month I'll start discussing what sorts of problems
we've encountered and how we've tried to work with them.</P>
</p>
<!-- *** BEGIN author bio *** -->
<P>
<P>
<!-- *** BEGIN bio *** -->
<P>
<img ALIGN="LEFT" ALT="[BIO]" SRC="../gx/2002/note.png">
<em>
James is the coordinator of LG's "Windows Defectors" series.
</em>
<br CLEAR="all">
<!-- *** END bio *** -->
<!-- *** END author bio *** -->
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Copyright © 2003, James Roberts. Copying license
<a href="http://linuxgazette.net/copying.html">http://linuxgazette.net/copying.html</a>
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<p>
Published in Issue 97 of Linux Gazette, December 2003
</p>
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