Not all of the attendees at LinuxWorld are actually running Linux in their environments ... yet. Every year, a number of folks that are still running Windows come to LinuxWorld for the latest perspectives / technologies related to making the switch.
Earlier today, I caught up with Jon Walker, CTO of a company called Versora. This year, they exhibited in the Novell partner pavillion, where they showed off their new Progression Desktop 1.1 automated tool for migrating from Windows to Linux. I asked Jon a few questions, and here's what he had to say:
How should an organization decide which Linux distro to use?
It just depends on what their objective is. For most mainstream enterprise environments, the most appropriate distros today are probably SuSe, Redhat or Novell Linux Desktop. For a pure open source, GPL implementation -- Debian is the best fit. If you want an environment that's easy for Windows users to adapt to, Xandros is a good choice. Gentoo has been proven to ease the pain of software installation. And for general ease of use, Ubuntu and Mepis are popular choices. There are different pros and cons associated with each -- and plenty of information in the public domain that an organization can tap into to make the decision that's best for them.
What are the toughest technical challenges in Windows-Linux migration?
First handling applications that will not run in the new environment, especially line of business applications. Second migrating a user's system settings, application settings, and data in a way that makes the user's experience in the new Linux environment a good one. Our new version of Progression Desktop helps with the latter challenge and we have a number of partners that help with the first challenge.
What does an organization do with Windows-only apps when migrating to Linux?
They have four choices, really. One is to port the applications, if they have access to the source code. Two is to re-write the application, which most organizations don't have the time luxury to do. A third is to discontinue the use of the application. And the fourth is to run a thin client, Win4Lin or emulator (in this case, if the applicaiton in question is on the codewaever list, you're in luck).
What are the most common approaches to Windows to Linux Migration?
I have seen a broad spectrum of approaches all the way from little to no migration of the end user settings and data up to fairly sophisticated homebrew scripted approaches. For anything over a 10 user migration we of course recommend using automation to to perform the migration. You might be surprised to know that the typical medium sized organization of about 1000-1500 users has hundreds of supported applications. I was involved in a Windows migration involving the U.S. Navy a few years ago and during the planning phase we discovered that they had over 65,000 officially supported and sanctioned applications in their IT environment. A fortune 500 company would typically have thousands to tens of thousands of applications that they support.
Why should folks migrating from Windows to Linux talk to Versora?
We help to ease a lot of the pain associated with migrating to Linux by automating the process. This saves our customers time and money and increases end user productivity and satisfaction. We also come from the Windows migration market so we have extensive knowledge of both the Windows and Linux platforms and how to solve the problems associated with integration and migration. Lastly, we can scale simultaneous desktop migrations across the enterprise by integrating with systems management tools
Posted by Dave Rosenberg on August 10, 2005 08:48 PM
