City Of Barcelona Will Soon Be Using Linux

[ZesPak]

WinstonWolf said:

Does it give you the same granular level of control over the client OS and user environment?

From an enterprise perspective GP is the real driver IMO. And I *really* hate saying that as a former Novell CNE...

Yep, used to be annoying when you had 200 Win machines and 3 macs (for the marketing dep), all sorts of 3rd party software to make it work better but never really fully there.

Set up an extra OSX machine in the end to manage a handful of macs :/.

[WinstonWolf]

Yup, this is where I see the problem with switching to Linux desktops (or it may be my own lack of familiarity of managing large scale implementations). MS have pretty much got the enterprise side of things sewn up (IMO) with Group Policy. It doesn't really matter how the machine has been set up, once it's domain joined you can do whatever you want with it. Push applications, lock/unlock pretty much every part of the UI, silently tweak any registry setting or run background scripts. It's very easy to end up with a consistent end user experience.

Again IMO, the directory and what it can deliver is more important than the actual OS.

[gavsdavs]

WinstonWolf said:

Yup, this is where I see the problem with switching to Linux desktops (or it may be my own lack of familiarity of managing large scale implementations). MS have pretty much got the enterprise side of things sewn up (IMO) with Group Policy. It doesn't really matter how the machine has been set up, once it's domain joined you can do whatever you want with it. Push applications, lock/unlock pretty much every part of the UI, silently tweak any registry setting or run background scripts. It's very easy to end up with a consistent end user experience.

Again IMO, the directory and what it can deliver is more important than the actual OS.

How do you give the users the facility to install applications from an approved, internally managed list of applications ? How do you permit, or deny users from sharing directories on their machines ? How do you collect information about installed software ? How do you collate eventlogs ? What if you have some apple or NT4 machines still ??

The phrase you need to think about is "Loosely coupled". You're proposing a "the directory" to be the be-all and end-all of configuration management of the entire server estate. That's just one tool and if you can't do what you need to with that one tool, you're stuffed. Yes, "a directory" is a powerful thing and you can have linux servers connecting to active directory for what they want - which is often ldap and kerberos for credential management. MS have bolted more bits on top of domain/directory connections like GP for windows hosts.

All of the equivalent site management stuff can be and is done on linux servers too, just with a looser collection of tools to do what's needed (access control, software installation/patching, inventory data collection, performance monitoring, etc, etc).

In large, heterogeneous estates, you generally end up with both toolsets running.

[WinstonWolf]

gavsdavs said:

WinstonWolf said:

Yup, this is where I see the problem with switching to Linux desktops (or it may be my own lack of familiarity of managing large scale implementations). MS have pretty much got the enterprise side of things sewn up (IMO) with Group Policy. It doesn't really matter how the machine has been set up, once it's domain joined you can do whatever you want with it. Push applications, lock/unlock pretty much every part of the UI, silently tweak any registry setting or run background scripts. It's very easy to end up with a consistent end user experience.

Again IMO, the directory and what it can deliver is more important than the actual OS.

How do you give the users the facility to install applications from an approved, internally managed list of applications ? How do you permit, or deny users from sharing directories on their machines ? How do you collect information about installed software ? How do you collate eventlogs ? What if you have some apple or NT4 machines still ??

The phrase you need to think about is "Loosely coupled". You're proposing a "the directory" to be the be-all and end-all of configuration management of the entire server estate. That's just one tool and if you can't do what you need to with that one tool, you're stuffed. Yes, "a directory" is a powerful thing and you can have linux servers connecting to active directory for what they want - which is often ldap and kerberos for credential management. MS have bolted more bits on top of domain/directory connections like GP for windows hosts.

All of the equivalent site management stuff can be and is done on linux servers too, just with a looser collection of tools to do what's needed (access control, software installation/patching, inventory data collection, performance monitoring, etc, etc).

In large, heterogeneous estates, you generally end up with both toolsets running.

Group policy does pretty much all of that (install on demand/restrictions etc). I'm not saying it's the best thing since sliced bread, but without an equivalent for Linux I can see why large scale implementations don't always succeed

Apple is *Nix, NT4 gets you a P45

[SystemParanoia]

[WinstonWolf]

Pfft, I've still got all the white books somewhere

I didn't realise they'd gone till I had a look last night...

[gavsdavs]

WinstonWolf said:

Group policy does pretty much all of that (install on demand/restrictions etc). I'm not saying it's the best thing since sliced bread, but without an equivalent for Linux I can see why large scale implementations don't always succeed

Apple is *Nix, NT4 gets you a P45

Of course, if you approach a large scale linux environment looking for a one-tool-to-rule them all answer like Group Policy, you're going to fail hard

[WinstonWolf]

gavsdavs said:

WinstonWolf said:

Group policy does pretty much all of that (install on demand/restrictions etc). I'm not saying it's the best thing since sliced bread, but without an equivalent for Linux I can see why large scale implementations don't always succeed

Apple is *Nix, NT4 gets you a P45

Of course, if you approach a large scale linux environment looking for a one-tool-to-rule them all answer like Group Policy, you're going to fail hard

But it's the Linux installations that are failing not the Windows ones, hence asking if there was a Linux equivalent.

[gavsdavs]

WinstonWolf said:

But it's the Linux installations that are failing not the Windows ones, hence asking if there was a Linux equivalent.

Ok you've lost me a bit here. What's a failing linux installation ?
Are you talking about companies trying to deploy lots of instances without any skilled staff or tooling in place that I was referring to ?

That would be like having a load of windows servers without active directory or group policy, wouldn't it ??

[WinstonWolf]

gavsdavs said:

WinstonWolf said:

But it's the Linux installations that are failing not the Windows ones, hence asking if there was a Linux equivalent.

Ok you've lost me a bit here. What's a failing linux installation ?
Are you talking about companies trying to deploy lots of instances without any skilled staff or tooling in place that I was referring to ?

That would be like having a load of windows servers without active directory or group policy, wouldn't it ??

The instances already mentioned in this thread. I’m interested in why they’re reversing the decision to use Linux.