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Easing over to open software platforms

I’m migrating over to a Thinkpad T61, having last moved to a T41 in March 2005. Since research is core to my personal development, I’ve been diligent about preserving my digital files. My laptop stores documents created on a personal computer as early as 1994, with an archive of documents converted from mainframe files back to 1991. Thus, to move over to a new computer, it’s taken three days (and nights) to transfer:

There must be thousands of IBM employees annually who upgrade from one computer to a replacement. The company provides excellent utilities for migration that undoubtedly take less than three days. Most people would probably follow the path of least resistance: to move from an existing Windows XP platform to a new hardware with the same XP operating system.

I have a concern on the longer term, though: Microsoft stopped selling XP in June 2008, and support for XP Service Pack 3 ends in April 2010. Microsoft’s flagship product is clearly Vista. I expect to be on this laptop for another three years before becoming entitled to a replacement.

IBM as a company has been running a beta on the Technology Adoption Program for a new “IBM Standard Desktop – Vista” since April 2007. In parallel, however, there’s also been a beta on Open Client for Linux with version 1.0 released in November 2005 and version 2.0 released in June 2006. We’re now at version 2.2. This is an complete software package configured and tested on the standard models of laptops that IBM issues employees. Internal technical support specialists do the work of keeping up with newest software releases (e.g. Lotus Notes 8 and Lotus Symphony 1.1 ). Their work reduces my effort to maintain my PC, after I’ve moved my content over. In the case of a complete breakdown of my computer, I should be able to get an emergency replacement and be back up and running in less than 24 hours.

Around the office, people have been each choosing one of three paths.

(a) Move from an existing Windows XP platform to the same level of XP (SP3) on a new computer.

This feels like a ticking time bomb to me. I’ve got tens of thousands of computer files and am conscious of the Y10K problem cited by Stewart Brand in The Clock of the Long Now. I don’t want my computer records to become inaccessible. It’s not just the XP operating system, it’s also the continuing support (or non-support) of the Microsoft DOC and PPT formats. Standards committees have rejected Microsoft’s proposal of OOXML in favour of ODF — the Open Document Format. Why move to Office 2007 when the European governments haven’t endorsed the new Microsoft document formats?

I don’t plan on retiring over the next decade, so I may refer to my legacy of documents for quite a while. With some electronic documents older than half of my sons, I’m erring on the side of caution. I want to gradually ease myself off closed software platforms as much as practical.

(b) Transition from XP to an Apple platform, and OS/X.

At IBM Research, there’s been a pilot program to try out Macs. While Thinkpads used to be the only choice for IBM employees, IBM sold its PC division to Lenovo in 2005, and has a 5-year remarketing agreement (that is renewable).

There’s two ways to get a Mac at IBM: (a) make a business case for the company to provide you with one, and get approvals from your first-level and second-level manager; or (b) buy your own on the employee plan with Apple and get active in the Mac@IBM internal self-support site. The company doesn’t have a rule against using employee-owned devices in the workplace.

We have Macs in the house, so I’m well-immersed in OS/X. In terms of openness, I’m afraid that Apple is becoming the new Microsoft. Apple used to be more responsive to community-based development, but sent a signal in closing the OpenDarwin project in 2006.

In addition, while I think that Apple produces hardware of relatively high quality, I have an ergonomic constraint. In the early 1990s, my long hours on a mouse resulted in neck strain that had to be corrected by visits to a chiropractor. Since then, I’ve been a convert to the trackpoint, supplementing the “pointing stick” on the laptop with one on an external Ultranav keyboard. Mac OS/X supports a two-button mouse, but the Mac trackpad doesn’t come with a second button. When Apple sells laptops with a trackpoint, those Macbooks may become a reasonable alternative for me.

(c) Transition from XP to a Linux platform.

I’ve been watching the Open Client for Linux development, based on Red Hat Enterprise Linux Desktop for some time. In many respects, the browser is the new operating system, and Linux is well-supported by IBM — especially in the external marketplace. I’ve been encouraged by Bob Sutor starting a life without Windows, and living with Linux for three months before finally removing the Windows partition.

I’ve been preparing for this third path most seriously over the past year. In my spare time, I’ve taken a few steps:

As much as I may be an early adopter, I have a day job where clients usually expect outputs in Microsoft Office and/or Powerpoint. Thus, a variant of the third path — Open Client for Linux — is workable as a dual boot installation: take an XP platform, and add Linux as alternate software. This led me to the following activities over the past three days:

I now have 98% productivity across both XP and Linux. I can do all of the normal daily office activities, i.e. use browsers with all of my same bookmarks, edit documents, check day job e-mail, check personal e-mail, use instant messaging.

My direction is to use Linux when I’m working with heavy-duty modeling tools, i.e. those applications that developers use (e.g. in Rational Software Modeler and Websphere Business Modeler). I’ll be in XP when I need less-corporate and more-personal applications (e.g. loading my MP3 player, or ingesting digital photographs).

To get to 99% productivity — reducing the reboots from Linux to XP and back — I need to follow through on instructions to install VMware Server so that XP applications will run on Red Hat Linux. On the Ubuntu 8 distribution of Linux, the Wine translation layer is now part of the standard package. For business use, the commercial version of Wine, called Crossover Linux, supports Red Hat and is inexpensive. Since I spend many hours per day on this laptop, I’ll gradually learn whether reboots will or won’t be an annoyance.

I’ve been following the progress of Linux-based laptops such as the Asus Eee PC. In a few years, when spinning hard disks are replaced by solid state drives — for laptops on the order of 64GB storage, recognizing today’s iPod Touch comes with a 32GB flash drive — we could all be using Linux … whether we recognize it or not.


P.S. For people inside the IBM firewall, the above instructions were informed by “A Linux Install Guide” on WikiCentral. I haven’t finished the VMware installation, but am following the instructions on “Running WinXP inside VMware on a Raw Partition” on WikiCentral.

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