Has Anyone Evaluated Windows vs Linux Desktops
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That's the question there. We mention it from time to time but how many people have looked into it seriously enough to really have done a side by side comparison for a real world company to see what the reasonability of using Linux would be? Does not have to be a specific Linux desktop but something like Linux Mint or Ubuntu would be likely.
Has anyone done tests to see if they would have adequate compatibility? What about replacement applications? User acceptance testing or feedback to see if they like the option?
If so, how did it go? What did users think? What was the final decision? Which distros did you test?
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I think with web based apps becoming more prevalent the only time where it would matter would be specific use cases like SolidWorks or other must have Windows applications. For a normal office person, there should be no reason they can't use a Linux machine. They are easier to install/image, easier to manage, better performance, much more secure (if the user doesn't have a root password...why would they?), and much easier to license.
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As we have seen this past fortnight, Windows licensing can be a pretty big deal. Eliminating all of the licensing overhead completely can be pretty big.
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Its funny - @johnhooks is probably right, yet I know most if not all of NTG run Windows as their main machines. lol
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@Dashrender said:
Its funny - @johnhooks is probably right, yet I know most if not all of NTG run Windows as their main machines. lol
Mostly because we are 100% MS infrastructure. MS Office, Office 365, Microsoft CRM, Sharepoint, AD on Azure, Azure AD (both, it's confusing.)
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@scottalanmiller said:
As we have seen this past fortnight, Windows licensing can be a pretty big deal. Eliminating all of the licensing overhead completely can be pretty big.
You are welcome.
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@scottalanmiller said:
@Dashrender said:
Its funny - @johnhooks is probably right, yet I know most if not all of NTG run Windows as their main machines. lol
Mostly because we are 100% MS infrastructure. MS Office, Office 365, Microsoft CRM, Sharepoint, AD on Azure, Azure AD (both, it's confusing.)
Are all of these inaccessible on a Linuxbox? O365 can be wired in to Evolution via its Exchange Connectors. I'm unsure about which Microsoft CRM product you are talking about (Dynamics? or something else?), but there's a plethora of CRM products available for LInux and as Web Apps.
The CRM product and Sharepoint are the only things that I'm not certain of 'equivalents' for in Linux.
Edit: I use the term Equivalents loosely.
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Nearly everything works on Linux except for RSAT style tools.
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I'd imagine that some of them could be run via Wine, or as a Remote App from your Azure infrastructure (assuming that doesn't change the licensing for your Azure VMs).
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Running RSAT from Azure would mostly defeat the purpose since we'd already be RDP'd into the thing we wanted to avoid RDPing into
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Has anyone tested RSAT on Wine?
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RSAT on Wine would be interesting...im curious if anyone has tried it as well.
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@brianlittlejohn said:
RSAT on Wine would be interesting...im curious if anyone has tried it as well.
Sounds like a good evening project for someone
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@scottalanmiller I would but I don't even have a machine with Linux on it right now.
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@brianlittlejohn said:
@scottalanmiller I would but I don't even have a machine with Linux on it right now.
Fail
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@scottalanmiller said:
Has anyone tested RSAT on Wine?
Pretty sure they won't they are a windows update package and rely on too many windows features to work.
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@Jason said:
@scottalanmiller said:
Has anyone tested RSAT on Wine?
Pretty sure they won't they are a windows update package and rely on too many windows features to work.
That would be my expectation. As it does not even work between Windows versions, working on Wine seems unlikely.
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We are doing this now, actually. I just stumbled on this while searching for a different desktop topic but the timing is apropos. @gjacobse and I are looking into testing Linux Mint desktops in our environment. This is only for IT people, thus far, but so far the experience has been very good as we go into the first days of trying it.
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I like your write-up on X2Go. That seems a viable replacement for RDP / Terminal Services -- even running in a VM.
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Thanks. We are starting to roll it out more and more now that the team has discovered how effective it is.
