Linux not ready for Prime Time?

[Russell McOrmond]

On Mon, 16 Nov 2009, Bob Jonkman wrote:

> In a previous conversation we were discussing whether Desktop Linux was
> ready for Prime Time.  While Desktop Linux seems to be ready for
> Russell's Mom and Bob's Mom, it appears that Desktop Linux isn't ready
> for Prime Time  for companies that promote/install/support Linux on the
> Server:

   I didn't read the article, but I tend to separate technical, asthetic, 
political and marketing issues.   I recently did an 11 month contract at 
Agriculture Canada, specifically involved with installing the web mapping 
application that was the focus of the project onto their servers.  The 
servers are all RHEL4 and RHEL5 machines, and thus the people on our 
immediate team were running CentOS (to be compatable, but not be part of 
the expensive support contract) on our desktops.

   There were managers in this project who saw the CentOS and were 
confused.  They had never heard of Linux.  I asked them what they thought 
their web services were running on, and they assumed it was a Microsoft 
operating system (in fact, didn't even realize there was an alternative). 
I told them that there were many alternatives, and that the servers that 
weren't running RHEL were running HP Unix (Oracle servers, etc).


   Now -- does this tell you something about the status of Linux as far as 
being ready for prime time, or whether some managers (private or public 
sector doesn't matter) are ready for prime time.   I felt kinda embarassed 
for these folks...


   I know there are a lot of people in technical management rolls that are 
not qualified for that job, and only know what the marketing broshures 
they pick up from their golf buddies say.  That is a barrier for adoption 
of FLOSS, but it isn't a technical, usability, or other type of issue.


-- 
  Russell McOrmond, Internet Consultant: <http://www.flora.ca/>
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