The Microsoft Support Myth.

Last week at our weekly Ubuntu User group meeting, one of our members made a statement that I’ve been thinking about this week. He said besides people in the Information Technology field, do you know of anyone that has actually contacted Microsoft for support, not the knowledge base, or internet searches but plucked down hard earned cash for Microsoft Support. My answer was no I don’t know of any Mom or Pop that ever has. In most cases I’m their support, and I bet if you’re a IT professional you are your friends and families support as well. So where did the myth of Microsoft support come from. The truth is Microsoft’s support comes from the Windows supper users out there like you and me. Funny thing is I don’t use Windows at home any more. At work as we move to virtual computing environments and have even started to migrate some desktops to Ubuntu, windows is becoming less important there too. When a user needs some Linux support just like with Windows they call me to answer the questions not Canonical (that’s the guys that support Ubuntu). Microsoft got the credit for all the hard work we, the technicians have done over the years. I suspect that the Red Hats, Novells, and Canonicals in the coming years will benefit from the new breed of Linux technicians as well, but the difference this time is I don’t mind so much after all they gave me the Operating System for free,  gave  me fantastic resources to work with like the Ubuntu forums,  and actually update there software to something I want to update to. I use to say Linux has got a long way to go before the average user is ready. Now I say it’s more like a short little trip, but either way I know I’ll be the one installing the drivers, optimizing hard drives, and writing the scripts.

Ron Paul’s Sweet Web 2.0 Web Site.

No matter what you might think of the politics, Ron Paul has one of the most technological advanced Web 2.0 websites I’ve seen. Most notable is the real time updates to contributions on his home page. This site is real polished and I for one would like to know more about who designed it and what goes in to making it as good as it is.  I like the links to  digg, flickr, and other web 2.0 offerings. I would love to know if your using  Linux  for any of this too (hope it’s Ubuntu if you are). So come on Ron Paul let us geeks know what runs your site.

Can Ubuntu Linux Really Run My Small Business?

Fantastic story I came across, it really show what can be done with Ubuntu and businesses.

Click here to go to the story.

On a side note my wife’s photography  company is also ran on Ubuntu, but just like you will read in the above story, she needs some good accounting applications. any good financial software out there for Ubuntu, she needs something that can track customer orders, and inventory? Any Ideas?

Yahoo buys Zimbra, Yahoo please just leave Zimbra alone and reap the rewards.

Yes, this is old news but. My company has been evaluating a new email system, the two candidates are Zimbra and exchange 2007. To me it’s and easy choice Zimbra, but the suits ever so scared by the phrase “open source” want Exchange they think the support from Microsoft will be better. Funny thing is not only will Exchange cost us an arm and a leg, getting any kind of support from them during this evaluation phase has been lets just say lack luster. Zimbra on the other hand has been a dream not only did I set it up in under and hour(that includes installing Ubuntu 6.10 I’m not even running it on the server it’s on Ubuntu desktop) it’s running on a dell GX-280 with just 512MG of RAM. My test includes a group of 20 beta testers and we’ve had no issues running it on this set up. As a comparison Exchange needs a 64bit system (that is if you want support) it has to be a server and you better have  a gig of RAM (more like 4 gig’s to be on the safe side). I’m not sure what the issue is about why people think Microsoft support is so great. During my evaluation of these two products, Microsoft has called me 0 times. Zimbra however, has called just to make sure we got installed OK, sent me emails to links to all there support forums, gave me 30 days of premium support, and the day of the Yahoo purchase called me to let me know everything will be ok and it’s business as usual  for Zimbra. Like I said I’ve sure made up my mind which email server I want.

Got me a new Website!

Well I finally got me a real domain name www.dthomasdigital.com look for some real stuff on the site soon. With luck it will be a one stop shop for all things Ubuntu.

Ubuntu New Mexico’s First Software Freedom Day

Ubuntu New Mexico’s First Software Freedom Day, and we didn’t do to bad, all and all we handed out about 30 disk and talked to allot of people. We plan to be in a higher traffic area next year, but I think we did ok, I’m pretty pleased. I’ve been handing out all the remaining packets we created to people at work, and even people just walking down the street I’ll have more on this soon on the New Mexico Teams Wiki. Here are a few pictures of the day.

We had a great time, can’t wait till our next event The Gutsy Release Party.

Just Installed Gutsy tribe 5 nice but some work still needs to be done.

My first impressions it’s nice but….. I’ve been needing better dual monitor support in gnome so I was really happy to see that it was going to be included in a nice graphic interface (ok we always had it but you had to manually edit your xorg.conf file, what a pain). Well the control panel is there but it sure is not working for me at all, I had a hell of a time getting my monitor to even show up, fought getting the right resolution and as of this morning still no dual monitors (I have an ati x600 dual head card, so any one have any ideas). Yes I know this is an alpha, but this is the one thing I feel needs some work big time. Now the good part once I did get the resolution right on my monitor (just my single monitor) it sure did look pretty, even with my monitor issues it’s still even in an alpha stage better than windows.

United Nations recognition of Software Freedom Day

The Software Freedom International Board will be aiming for United Nations
recognition of Software Freedom Day as a day of international importance for
2008. We wanted to let you all know so that you can try extra hard to keep
track of the numbers and successes you have over Software Freedom Day, as it
will all contribute to our case in helping the world understand the
importance of Software Freedom.

This is how I feel about it:

My family is very lucky, I’d even say we are a family of privilege. We never go hungry,  have two cars that are paid for, and live in a very nice 3 bedroom home. I work a very easy rewarding job and make enough money that my wife gets to stay home and raise our 10 year old son. I’m not bragging nor  am I saying this because I feel guilty. I’m saying this because in this day and age we should all be exactly where I am today. We must ask ourselves why are we not? Wars, famine, and disease plague our world. Governments, multinational corporations and the industrial war complex play us like chess pieces each and every day. The dependents and demand for oil fuels the greed of these black organizations while polluting the very earth in which we all live. My good life could at any moment be stripped away from me as it has from so many people before me. In America we have a constitution that has been pulled out from under us by fake fear, the removal of civil rights, and an unjust unpopular war. I’m still not sure who our enemy’s are. I feel my only recourse is to fight the only way I know how, supporting free movements, true and just as I can find them. We all have the right to be a part of this world not just the ones that can afford to participate. The free software movement is something I feel very strongly about. It gives those, who if certain people had their way, would normally be left out in the cold unable to contribute to society.  This is a need that in this age of the  digital economy is more important than ever, the playing field must be made level if we are to succeed as the human race. The future of my family depends on this, the future of your family depends on this. If taken lightly, ignored, or swept under the rug we will be forever under the shadow of oppression. If you think this is over the  top remember men have become billionaires thanks to software, the richest of men are due to technology and the energy technology consumes. They will not go silently into the night , they will fight and fight to the death to hold on to the power they so crave.

Craig Mundie — Microsoft’s technology chief what he says about Linux

Craig Mundie: Well I don’t know whether I think it is a great threat to Windows. I think that there is a contingent in the marketplace who want to experiment with those technologies, or have environments in which they want to deploy them.

If there was some sudden adoption of this at some much greater scale than we’ve seen in the past, certainly that would represent a greater impact on our business.

But many people predicted a few years ago that the same thing was going to happen in the server business and in fact last year was notable in that it appears that the Linux server marketplace plateaued in terms of growth, while the Windows server business gained share.

That was a surprising result for many people who predicted that that Linux share would inevitably increase, but in fact it didn’t, because I think people came to understand and value what they got for the money when they brought products from Microsoft. They realized that there were other factors than initial purchase price that play into the ultimate long term economics associated with running systems.

So I have no reason to believe right now that we, over a period of perhaps three to five years, wouldn’t see soft share gains at the desktop level. Globally we can continue to provide a value proposition that will keep us in a relatively stable share position.

Read the full Interview here

Boy those folks at Microsoft sure have the talking points down, not sure if I agree with him on the server side of things. I’ve removed 2 windows servers this year and replaced them with Ubuntu Servers. Planning more for next year.

P.S. Zimbra is so nice to have around it makes exchange look like a booger (yes thats a technical term).

Ubuntu Technical Board votes on Compiz for Ubuntu 7.10

The Ubuntu Technical Board voted yesterday to ship Ubuntu 7.10 (”Gutsy”) with Compiz enabled by default. Although Compiz has been featured in Ubuntu 7.10 Tribe prerelesases, the board has had difficulty determining whether or not it is reliable and functionally complete enough to warrant inclusion in the final release. Read the rest here.