Re: Mid-sized companies not interested in Linux - report -- lack

["Bryan J. Smith" <b.j.smith@ieee.org>]

On Fri, 2005-04-08 at 10:30 -0500, Aaron Kenney wrote:
> Quite frankly the system that is in place where I work now is not the 
> best for getting the most work done. I believe that getting more work 
> done is probably a good indication of how profitable the technology can 
> be. Unfortunately, our company refuses to put any money into IT 
> whatsoever unless it is critical to making the wheel turn. If the wheel 
> turns slowly, no one cares.

Well, you know your situation better than I.  I was just playing devils
advocate.

> Perhaps I should have also said that the director of IT does not think 
> it is my place to propose anything. My job here is basically to do 
> things that neither the director nor the network admin have time to do. 

I've been in those situations long ago.  Heck, even today, I routinely
find myself tasked with things that are actually the responsibility of
another consulting company at the same firm.  And I make them look good.

But I do propose things regularly.  I do it in writing, with diagrams
and details, as well as options, alternatives.  Probably the #1 thing
that gets the interest is when I point out what competitors are doing
it.  ;->

> This pretty much means that I have no job description, although I 
> believe that gives me some freedom to make suggestions, since I am the 
> one who is out in the work area the most and can see the kinds of things 
> that are, from an operational standpoint, stupid. When I asked for a 
> written job description when I was first hired on, my director gave me 
> this look like I was wasting his time. He told me he would do it, and 
> then never bothered. So there is some dishonesty there as well.

Well, job descriptions are good to have, I agree.  I had one position
where I left because I wasn't doing systems engineering at all.  I was
leading sales, development, etc...  I didn't mind, except that my
contract said I was a systems engineer, and the systems were going to
hell as a result.

Which made me liable.

> Smoothly is hardly what I would call it. Running FoxPro for DOS across 
> an IPX link on Windows XP is counterproductive.  There are just too many 
> issues with the programming for the DOS emulation to be smart enough to 
> run it how it used to be before the Windows network got thrown into the 
> works.

Actually, Linux is an very good solution there with XDOSEmu.  I've done
this countless times with old DOS financial programs.  It _always_
resolved countless issues when they tried to use Windows over a network.

All the instances run on the same system (XDOSEmu pumped to X displays
over the network), to the same data, using the same local Linux locking,
so oplocks are not an issue at all.  It's even better than Samba (which
can disable oplocks) because all locking is on the local system.

If you want support, instead of the Linux/XDOSEmu, consider Concurrent
DOS (DR-DOS based) instead.  It works flawlessly, absolutely no
emulation issues at all.  And there are options to pumping the DOS
sessions (COM/terminal, Ethernet/IP, etc...).

> It was assumed at some point that when the domain went up, 
> Netware would come down. However, there has since been no agreement on 
> what would replace the FoxPro stuff, so we continue to run the Novell. 

NetWare is a good solution, don't knock even the old stuff.  It sounds
like you have issues with Windows as clients, and not so much NetWare
itself.

> All because someone is too busy to make a decision or do some research. 
> That is just one example of several very ineffective things that go on 
> here. The FoxPro works, but some things in the program are flat-out 
> broken, and other things lock up the PC.

Then do some research, draft a formal, written proposal in the spirit I
stated above (reasons, options, alternatives, etc..., and what
competitors are doing).

For FoxPro for DOS, take an old system, built Linux on it, replicate the
database over (copying off-line would be idea), and start it up under
XDOSEmu to more than 1 X server (you can use free Cygwin/X on Windows).

If you run into any issues, see if Concurrent would give you an
evaluation copy of Concurrent DOS to see if that will resolve them.


-- 
Bryan J. Smith                                  b.j.smith@ieee.org 
---------------------------------------------------------------- 
Community software is all about choice, choice of technology.
Unfortunately, too many Linux advocates port over the so-called
"choice" from the commercial software world, brand name marketing.
The result is false assumptions, failure to focus on the real
technical similarities, but loyalty to blind vendor alignments.



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