linux adoption within IBM

I've got this article in my feed pool: http://blogs.zdnet.com/BTL/?p=7386

It's about the linux adoption rate within IBM, which seems to be rather slow, according to the author. Also, one commenter said IBM should donate OS/2 to the open-source community.

While donating the OS/2 to the community seems like an interesting idea for me, guess what: I am considering migrating to linux as well, as the business desktop for me.

There are a couple of factors I need to consider before I do this:
1. Time. I need time to play with it and not disrupt my usual activities which relates to current projects I'm involved.
2. While I'm migrated to Fedora at home's desktop, since I've joined IBM, my Fedora desktop acts as gateway for Internet connectivity and I'm stuck on Win XP on my laptop :) So there's a factor of familiarity using the Linux OS inside-out.
3. The rate of probability for something not working on Linux is still higher than WinXP, and for me, fixing things on XP is easier than fixing on Linux. This is translated in tame wasted on collateral activities.

So, the strategy I might adopt for moving towards Linux could be to run things in parralel for at least 6 months.

But I'm getting there. Slowly ? yes. So what ? As long as I can get my job done, me and everyone not directly involved with Linux has other priorities than migrating to it just for fun.

The discussion of Linux adoption is useful for other contexts, where tax payer's money are wasted on MS licenses with no additional benefit. In such context, as my personal one, it's a matter of support and being able to manage/fix things quickly.

For the larger community of IBMers, those who are tech savvy enough with Linux, they've already migrated. The other part is using Win all other the place, you cannot enforce a policy of migrating towards Linux.

But hear me out, next year I will give it a try on the business laptop, I'll let you know the outcome.

want to contact an IBMer ? could not be simpler ...

than sending an e-mail, of course :) But, just for the sake of it, you can Sametime IBMers. I found this today, though it might be old news for more experienced users/partners. There's an older article (2006) written by Chris Pepin as to how to proceed if you want to contact an IBM employee, if your organization uses Sametime internally, and of course if your employees have valid IBM accounts, which btw are free to create. Read the description here

As I've discovered today, there's no need to have the Sametime client within your organization, it's enough to access http://extst.ibm.com/, authenticate with your IBM account and you'll recognize the standard Sametime default HTTP interface. There, you can just follow the "Launch sametime connect" link, which will launch the Java Sametime client, then just add the SMTP email address of the person within IBM you wish to contact.

If that person is online with the extst.ibm.com community, you can have a chat. As I've managed to join this community at my Sametime client startup, if you'd like to get in touch, I'm available on this method as well :)

YellowSphere

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openoffice scrolling on thinkpad

In my 'change how I do things' way of life, past days I gave OpenOffice a try when I needed to create a guideline document, more than 50 pages, with screenshots.

Big Blue gave me a ThinkPad T60 for work. I noticed that the scrolling with the little red button they call it TrackPoint is not working in OpenOffice. Then I searched the net and found some ideas on forums that a driver update for this TrackPoint is required.

Guess what, it WAS required. What I did was to go to Lenovo support, install a System Update software which would search for updates on Lenovo for the T60, then installed a Think ... Driver (cannot remember the exact name). After that, OpenOffice can be scrollable, at last ....

another notes 8 video. and some comments on my side.

here's a newly discovered video via the domino blogosphere. This got me thinking: can anybody evaluate the impact it will have on the market ?

At this moment, I think it will be huge, because:
- it now contains free office editors.
- it's redesigned, approaching the interface for the current mail clients - talking about Thunderbird, what did you think ? :)
- it leverage the Composite Applications buzz word which seems to be Eclipse-Java-RCP all the way. (I still need to find the time and get into the Expeditor, in order to better understand what's going on).

My idea is that probably 2008 and 2009 (two years frame) will demonstrate if IBM's strategy was right. I personally think it was, looking at how it is adopted.

When seen on my laptop, many colleagues are saying: wow. And several asked me: how do I upgrade, I want this. And they have it now. Of course we're IBM, but I've seen this reaction at customers as well. So, all and all, I think the adoption rate will be much higher than for the previous releases. And probably the conversion rate as well :)

Back to the clip, to improve this conversion rate: