Changing a company from 100% Windows to 100% FreeBSD.

[Lee Mx]

>From: "C. Ulrich" <dincht at securenym.net>
>To: Lee Mx <lee_ver_mx at hotmail.com>
>CC: questions at freebsd.org
>Subject: Re: Changing a company from 100% Windows to 100% FreeBSD.
>Date: Mon, 17 Nov 2003 15:48:24 -0500
>
>On Mon, 2003-11-17 at 09:27, Lee Mx wrote:
> > I am switching about 40 desktop's running different versions of
> > windows over to freebsd.  One of the primary requirements is
> > OpenOffice-1.1 and I've always run it locally on my laptop.
> > I'm considering running it over the LAN which would mean that
> > I suppose that I would NFS mount the binary and do the network
> > install.  Could someone who has done this tell me if they
> > recommend running it on the network or if it would be better to
> > just install it on each of the 40 machines.  This company and
> > every user, uses Office daily, especially excel.
>
>I've never done this, but OpenOffice is such a large application that
>this might not be such a swell idea. On my Athlon 750 with U2W SCSI,
>OpenOffice 1.1 takes 20 seconds to load from the hard disk. I couldn't
>guess how long it would take trying to pull it over the network, but I'm
>sure it would be a lot longer. Also take into consideration the fact
>that, unless your office is very well funded, you're probably don't have
>the newest equipment. If this is the case, you could consider running
>all the desktops as local thin clients. When a user logs in, they're
>really just logging in remotely to an application server where all the
>real work work is done.
I would love to do that, but I have no idea where to start
although Adrian was kind enough to send be a couple of links,
I'm not sure I get it yet.  If you have any other tips/links etc.
they would sure be appreciated.

>
>Advantages:
>- you only have to regularly maintain the application servers
>- "outdated" hardware works just fine for the thin clients as everything
>is run on the server
>- users access their data and do their work from any machine (also
>reduces "my machine" syndrome common in some workplaces)
>
Sounds great to me in my ignorance.:-)

>Disadvantages:
>- Allowing users to save things to floppy or CD could be slightly
>problematic (ditto for playing video and sound)
>- if all 40 desktops are in the same office/area, you'll probably have
>to set up more than one application servers and work out a solution for
>load-balancing and keeping them in sync
>- if your users use large apps like OpenOffice, you might need pretty
>hefty servers, especially in the memory department. However, it will
>still be less memory than what would be required to run OpenOffice
>locally on all 40 machines
>
>The client/server approach may not end up being the best solution for
>your specific situation, but at least it's something to think about.
>I've always heard good things from those who've implemented similar
>solutions in their organizations.

Thanks, Charles.  It is certainly something to think about and
test.

lee

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