Hey so I want to have a network of machines all using one file on a NFS some where. Basically I am moving my mother's office from Windows 10 to Linux because windows 10 shuts down too often while she is doing insurance work. They still need the MS office suite and I want to have wine on all machines point to one network drive. Also the user accounts are being handled by LDAP If that makes a difference
If MS office is a key program then unfortunately she really only has two options.
1: Use the cloud based MS office 365. Its 70 bucks a year for 1 PC and its 100 bucks a year for up to 5 PCs. If you are a student at a university, then you can get it for 80 bucks for 4 years which is not all that bad.
2: Switch her to OSX and buy a bunch of used apple computers.
2.5: You could also switch her to windows 7 which would circumvent the pitfalls of windows 10, but there are obvious trade offs with that way of doing things.
Wine is not something that I would recommend for professional use.
I am also unsure how LDAP on windows would translate to linux. I know it can be done, but IDK what that might look like. It could be a nightmare for all I know.
Wine is not an emulator.......dont expect miracles.
You got some old age windows .Dll's.
but wine is not the end of M$ ip, infact m$ has a choke hold on your cock and balls for event wanting to run a win environment.
....
opposite what else have been "explained.....dont switch to OSX", thats like switching from super nintendo to nintendo64......allwhile opensource has free options.
If you want a free version of office go for the numerous version of free office version. they're free, and well free, gl competing with that, even if you can make an half eaten apple icon, or a half closed window..
By shutting down, do you mean bogged down. As in it freezes or locks up? If so then upgrade that hardware.
When I say shut down I mean the system will literally shut off for a Windows update while in a meeting with clients and it causes business to be lost. My mother's office is fed up with the Microsoft operating system offerings and would rather have a non invasive alternative. Would it honestly be better to run Windows XP in a VM with office or is wine a better option
Your mom needs 3 things:
1: A system administrator
2: Revoke all users from having administrative privileges, local or otherwise.
3: BIOS update, test RAM and hard drives, and a clean reinstall of Windows, Office, etc.
You do those 3 things, and they won't have a problem with Windows anymore.
Free office programs sucks for professional use currently. It will still be several years before they are enterprise ready.
This.
If its just windows updates, then force windows to not update.
I am not really sure you need a systems admin, but you definitely need someone who thinks like one.
Maybe not. But the amount of babysitting of those users that would be required if someone foisted running MS office and other apps in WINE would be a full time job.
Oh with wine, I would not even bother with systems admin.
You would need a wine developer on staff just to handle bug reports. No no, I have experimented with running wine at a small business before and it was a total disaster. A client wanted to see if we could run notepad++ on 2 computers and needless to say it did not work out that well.
I thought you were saying to just use windows 10 and lock down all the windows 10 accounts and then hire a systems admin to manage the windows environment.
Which is honestly probably the best possible solution.
Yeah that's what I was saying
It was OP who was considering running MS office in WINE to solve a problem with a lack of proper system administration at his moms office... which is laughable.
Red with steak, white with fish or poultry.
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My mother's office isoving away from Windows for good for serveral reasons some have to do with Microsofts policies and telemetry collection others have to do with clients refusing to have their personal information put on a Windows machine for fear of it being sold by Microsoft. The fact is they are moving to Ubuntu 16.04.1 LTS a d it would cut down on the bandwidth of the office if they used a program installed on their machine than using office online. The windows sys admin was fired for a data breach and they determined windows was too insecure of a os for their work
Well damn.
If data security is that big of a concern, then I am going to take a wild guess and say that office 365 is not a solution.
I suggest you experiment with libre office or WPS. They ARE good programs, but the issue is that they have a hard time dealing with elaborate formatting.
So if a document has a bunch of tables or fancy letter head, there is a good chance libre office will simply not meet your needs.
On the flip side, you might not run into too many issues with documents like that, so it could also work out perfectly.
Also just fyi, ubuntu does a lot of that telemtry crap as well.
If this is a project you are going to undertake yourself, I HIGHLY suggest you check out opensuse. It has a proprietary program called Yast which makes computer management and maintenance a lot easier.
I would also research the data breach you mentioned. Linux is inherently more secure than windows, but it is still highly susceptible to targeted attacks. You might want to look into hardening the security of these computers in general.
Just a small note we use Mac's at work and office does not play nicely especially outlook the are many osx bugs that Microsoft just say they won't fix. If you have to ditch Windows 10 then Linux and libre is your only reasonable alternative for professional use. Time is very much money. Something doesn't quite add up though if your client is refusing Windows 10 I fully understand about the telemetry concerns but I doubt that it is an insecure platform surely the people using it are much more of the risk? Maybe there is a middle ground that word docs and excel etc can be edited on local Windows machines but stored on Linux? But it's far from my area of expertise.
LOL! This can't be real, unless someone talked them up to believing this.
Did the individual users have local admin privileges on their systems?
It is very real. In many data services contracts, paramedical services contracts, law enforcement or military service contracts, financial and insurance service level agreements, etc... these days, there is a no-Microsoft/no-Google clause. In many professions, there in an insurance premium when using Microsoft/Google products, or an explicit exclusion of insurance for the risk of prejudice through loss/proliferation/theft of customer data. This has been a factor for years, almost 10 years now. New contracts also exclude any insurance coverage for prejudice because of malware for customers using closed source software.
If you're after government contracts, there is often a clause that you have to use open source software exclusively, or can only use closed source software from an approved list, and Microsoft products are not on that list any more, despite the "transparency stores" Microsoft has set up in order to try and convince governments and different agencies.
If you produce machines that have to be approved according to the newest NATO data security standards or other governmental data security standards of the latest generation, you also have to exclusively use open source technology for the data handling, you can't even use some Microsoft filesystems any more, even if you use open source software.
Comapnies that provide payroll services or medical data management services or the likes, can save tens of thousands per annum in insurance and certification costs by simply banning Microsoft or Google products. That makes training people for the much more user friendly and productive open source software alternatives really attractive, because the savings in the first year despite the cost of giving everyone training, are absolutely worth it, and with the strongly reduced risk of causing prejudice and getting sued by customers, it's a no-brainer for many companies.
[Note: Editited due to moderator feedback]
I did a quick search for that, couldn't find anything. Maybe you have something.
Yeah, no. Microsoft software and services are embedded at every level of US government. I don't know what goes on in other parts of the world, but I'd expect a fairly high penetration there.
I tried googling this as well, came up with nothing even remotely close to this assertion. Plesae post a link.
If this is as common as you make it sound, surely you can provide a couple links regarding this as well.
Please provide some links on this too. I'd love to see proof positive info about using FOSS as a productivity enhancement.
Finally,
OP, please respond about my question:
Did the individual users have local admin privileges on their systems?
Find your own links and arguments, this has been documented with several articles on this forum for a very long time, you're in no position to demand from other people that they waste time on prechewing the food that doesn't interest you anyway because you're only out to pick a fight with any and all, as witnessed by your dozens of flagged posts and suspension history.
This is OP's thread, not yours, OP doesn't owe you anything, you're in no position to demand anything, but you owe politeness and a behaviour that fits somewhere under 80% of the Gauss curve of statistical social behaviour. You're very non-standard deviant for the moment in that department, so you're categorizing yourself as a statistical anomaly that needs correction.
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I've tried to find info that backs up the absurd claims you've made. Nothing available. So you're wrong unless you can prove otherwise.
Fine. I'm just curious about the system administration practices that led them to this point. As a sysadmin for over 20 years, I know that most users will cause their own problems, and it takes strict system administration procedures to prevent that. But what OP is describing has nothing to do with Microsoft's telemetry gathering.