Headline FeedsLinuxInsider Talkback
|
|
See Full Story
When Bob Hecht joined Informa as its vice president of content strategy, he dreamed of rebuilding the London-based technical publishing firm's IT infrastructure using Linux and other open source technologies. However, with Windows entrenched throughout the company, Hecht settled on a more pragmatic hybrid approach: an open source content management server from Alfresco Software, backed up by open source applications MySQL, Apache Tomcat and JBoss -- all running on top of Microsoft's Windows Server operating system.
Many workplaces require MS-Windows in order to run specific applications or simply out of habit. I can add tools like PuTTY, Firefox, OpenOffice, XMing & similar (mostly from TheOpenCD & without having to count and account for licences) to option up whatever workstation I wind up sitting in front of.
>
This helps to make the experience saner, and to slice right back on the fluffing-around time before I can be productive on site.
>
I leave most or all of the tools installed, so users will begin using them. They may just export a PDF file from OpenOffice, or use some Firefox plugins, but it becomes useful to them, & is also one thing which works at least as well on Linux (or Mac) so isn't blocking them from changing any more. The workers who do change are much less prone to being taken out by the next virus to arrive.
>
However, the main use is to make a workstation safely more usable in as instant a fashion as is reasonable.
>
This works reasonably well -- so well that I typically add a fileshare to a local server for the OpenCD files so they're still equipped (without massive downloads) if I don't bring the CD next time.
>
This helps to make the experience saner, and to slice right back on the fluffing-around time before I can be productive on site.
>
I leave most or all of the tools installed, so users will begin using them. They may just export a PDF file from OpenOffice, or use some Firefox plugins, but it becomes useful to them, & is also one thing which works at least as well on Linux (or Mac) so isn't blocking them from changing any more. The workers who do change are much less prone to being taken out by the next virus to arrive.
>
However, the main use is to make a workstation safely more usable in as instant a fashion as is reasonable.
>
This works reasonably well -- so well that I typically add a fileshare to a local server for the OpenCD files so they're still equipped (without massive downloads) if I don't bring the CD next time.
