Novell Begins Desktop Migration

It looks like Novell is starting to practice what it preaches (or at least use what it sells) by migrating their internal desktops from Windows to Linux. The full scoop can be found in this vnunet interview with Novell CIO Debra Anderson.

Like many migration efforts, Novell has taken it slow. They first started shifting employees to OpenOffice.org for productivity, then set about migrating users to versions of Novell’s Linux products (some installed the Enterprise version, while others installed the SuSE desktop). They set attainable goals without rushing, and so far have come very close to achieving them. So close, in fact, that Anderson is calling the migration a success.

I like the fact that she spends a lot of time talking about the intangibles of migration. Sure, she discusses some of the obstacles some employees faced with OpenOffice.org (and how they’re addressing them), but she also talks about getting the buy-in from other executives and business managers. They have an intranet dedicated to providing training to employees, which has become their 2nd-busiest internal site. They have FAQs, and they have representatives from each business division on the migration team. Very well handled in my own not-so-humble opinion.

Finally, here’s a segment of the interview about one of the benefits of moving to Linux:

Q: How does the footprint of the Novell Linux desktop relate to Windows XP?

A: Much smaller; that’s the nature of the OS. And equivalent documents are much smaller. It’s just amazing. We’re talking magnitudes such as one-tenth the size.

This reinforces John C. Dvorak’s statement that Word is an unwieldy kludge, and I’ve noticed it myself when comparing the same document in both OpenOffice.org and Word formats. Some people balk when they see some distributions grow to 3-4GB in size for a full install, but they forget the number of applications that come with a Linux distro versus Windows XP, which is several GB itself for the full install. Cough up several hundred meg more for Office (over a GB depending on what you install). Meanwhile, with Linux, full installs net you hundreds of apps, including multiple desktops, an office suite (sometimes several), multiple Internet services, a plethora of browsers, graphics applications, games, and in some distros, movie apps and DTP suites.

Just leaves more space for my photos, writing, and mp3s.