Re: migration of 30,000 desktops to Linux enabled by a cross-platform app
Roy Schestowitz wrote:
____/ Lefty Bigfoot on Monday 21 January 2008 08:15 : \____
On Fri, 18 Jan 2008 07:18:04 -0600, Matt wrote
(in article <gG1kj.2275$Sa1.695@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>):
India's largest Linux rollout forges ahead despite tremendous odds
Elcot's decision to switch platforms was a daunting task but the
opportunity to bypass yearly software licensing fees was an irresistible
incentive
1/16/2008 6:00:00 AM
by Kanika Goswami
On May 26, 2006, Elcot (Electronics Corporation of Tamil Nadu) let in its
first penguin. Things would never be the same again.
A year later, Umashankar and his team had moved 30,000 computers and 1,880
severs belonging to some of the state's schools to Linux -- creating
possibly the largest Linux rollout in India.
"First they migrated from Outlook Express to Mozilla Thunderbird for
Windows. From there they took the mail folder and put it into the Suse
Linux system, and started operating Thunderbird over Suse Linux system.
Novel, isn't it?" Umashankar asks proudly.
This interest helped his campaign to migrate completely to Suse Linux, from
a 100 percent Windows environment.
Notice the importance of a cross-platform application (Thunderbird) to
the project's success. The project director claims the approach to be
novel, but it was discerned years ago and will be one of the most
important elements of the Linux migration paradigm of the next 5-10 years.
It's not remotely "novel" to do that with Thunderbird. It's how
I got my email out of .pst format 4 years ago. They think this
is "news"?
That's just the point. It has been possible to trivially escape Windows for
quite some time. The barriers have a lot to do with perceptions and lack of
patience (Linux is not "cheap Windows").
Maybe the guy meant to say "Novell". :-)
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