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I downloaded it and put it on a older machine in the other room that my GF uses sometimes when not using her laptop. It would not complete because the video adapter was unsupported, the latest that will run is 12.04 which is has on it. It is really only used to collect photos and for her Skype calls to family in Ukraine so I am not going to upgrade the machine.
In my office that is running 28 desktops on 13.04 and one server on 10.04 we have three additional machines with Windows 7, two laptops and the accountant's machine which is required to be Windows by our local bank. If there is any complaint, it is from two staff who get documents from agencies occasionally that come in .docx or xlsx format. About twice a month I am sent the files and I open them in my Office 2003 and save as doc or xls or ODT/ODS. No big deal.
Last week the company of which I am a minority owner, was taken over by a mysterious Russian "investor" who refuses to identify himself, who put two layers of managers between the company and himself. The original founder retired and sold his majority share. The new manager 32 year old woman who just came from a position in a large corporation and has no experience in either the field or in small or medium sized business needs every question or comment put into a report to go up the chain to unknown persons. She noticed that a girl in the office complained that some one sent an unreadable proprietary format xlsx. The new manager was shocked to to find out we were using a OS she never heard of and Office that was not MS Office and that started a round of high level but clueless discussions with people up the chain of command. She told me to prepare a report listing all the reasons for this breach of normalcy and how much time it would take and how much money was needed to correct this problem. I spend 2 days talking to vendors, comparing options, testing current computers to see if they were compatible with Windows 8.1....they are not since it requires NX and a few processor add ons. So the best price I was able to get was bare bone computers for 8000 rubles, office 2013 for 9000 rubles, Windows 8.1 for 9000 rubles for 28 desktop machines that have been flawless on Ubuntu for 3 and 1/2 years. This is less than 7 days before the start of our by far busiest part of the season preparing for 30,000 cruise passengers, their visas, scheduling, tickets for 24,000 museum and palace entrances all on specific appointment times, 60,000 lunches in restaurants etc.
I just finished the report and included a chart of time spent maintaining and repairing problems in the last 12 years....most of it made up since this is a relatively small business and small business does not have time for that type of bullshit reports....fix it before it breaks or immediately after but the fix it and not worry about because there are 15 different hats I wear. I went to Linux and problems with hardware, drivers(the bain of all windows users) and up time concerns just disappeared. Even if windows and office were free, they are still too expensive for a small organization with less than 50 employees. During the summer we have 150, mostly guides and drivers.
I added into the report that they would also have to add in a 60,000/mon computer specialist because I am not going to have the time to take care of all Russian language OS and Office since my Russian is not good enough to do it efficiently and it was never on my list of supervision duties in the first place, I did that, and the programming, repair and web sites and wrote the shopping cart only because no one else could, as typical in a small business.
So with 7 days left of relative calm I will be asked to set up 28 machines, figure out why each has a problem with some hardware driver, hire a specialist and suffer from dramatically higher problems overall with uptime, all because some oligarch with tons of money and no sense, who has never even seen a small business or office work decides Windows is better.
I think it is about time to dump this and go to repair full time and hire an additional tech. I have a great trainee now, a babe, 24 with a MSEE and eager to learn but I will need another body with some practical experience in mechanical systems, tools etc.
The problem is I never have and never will work FOR someone, even though I am an owner, my say, as the only person who knows everything about how the business works, is being ignored. We grew it from a start with 4 people(two employees and two owners) so obviously we knew something of how to grow a business to be dominate in a highly competitive field.
I concluded the report with a strong defense of not messing with what works very well by replacing it with something that costs an extra $100,000 the first year and and $30,000-to 60,000 each year after and ending up with a less reliable system. Plus added strong hints that I will likely start taking a lot of time off this season. I am not big into wasting my time writing reports that are ignored or even bothered with in the first place.
I just tried 14.04 as a ram drive boot on my laptop. Man, it loaded fast, desktop appeared in 18 seconds....from a slow USB2 port. Unity is more polished, it even found and loaded drivers for my 4g LTE modem without asking any questions, just popped with internet connection at 50mbs within that 18 seconds. This was not in the report but if anything 14.04 being an LTS is the sure way to go. I'll test more thoroughly....when I have time between "reports"
In my office that is running 28 desktops on 13.04 and one server on 10.04 we have three additional machines with Windows 7, two laptops and the accountant's machine which is required to be Windows by our local bank. If there is any complaint, it is from two staff who get documents from agencies occasionally that come in .docx or xlsx format. About twice a month I am sent the files and I open them in my Office 2003 and save as doc or xls or ODT/ODS. No big deal.
Last week the company of which I am a minority owner, was taken over by a mysterious Russian "investor" who refuses to identify himself, who put two layers of managers between the company and himself. The original founder retired and sold his majority share. The new manager 32 year old woman who just came from a position in a large corporation and has no experience in either the field or in small or medium sized business needs every question or comment put into a report to go up the chain to unknown persons. She noticed that a girl in the office complained that some one sent an unreadable proprietary format xlsx. The new manager was shocked to to find out we were using a OS she never heard of and Office that was not MS Office and that started a round of high level but clueless discussions with people up the chain of command. She told me to prepare a report listing all the reasons for this breach of normalcy and how much time it would take and how much money was needed to correct this problem. I spend 2 days talking to vendors, comparing options, testing current computers to see if they were compatible with Windows 8.1....they are not since it requires NX and a few processor add ons. So the best price I was able to get was bare bone computers for 8000 rubles, office 2013 for 9000 rubles, Windows 8.1 for 9000 rubles for 28 desktop machines that have been flawless on Ubuntu for 3 and 1/2 years. This is less than 7 days before the start of our by far busiest part of the season preparing for 30,000 cruise passengers, their visas, scheduling, tickets for 24,000 museum and palace entrances all on specific appointment times, 60,000 lunches in restaurants etc.
I just finished the report and included a chart of time spent maintaining and repairing problems in the last 12 years....most of it made up since this is a relatively small business and small business does not have time for that type of bullshit reports....fix it before it breaks or immediately after but the fix it and not worry about because there are 15 different hats I wear. I went to Linux and problems with hardware, drivers(the bain of all windows users) and up time concerns just disappeared. Even if windows and office were free, they are still too expensive for a small organization with less than 50 employees. During the summer we have 150, mostly guides and drivers.
I added into the report that they would also have to add in a 60,000/mon computer specialist because I am not going to have the time to take care of all Russian language OS and Office since my Russian is not good enough to do it efficiently and it was never on my list of supervision duties in the first place, I did that, and the programming, repair and web sites and wrote the shopping cart only because no one else could, as typical in a small business.
So with 7 days left of relative calm I will be asked to set up 28 machines, figure out why each has a problem with some hardware driver, hire a specialist and suffer from dramatically higher problems overall with uptime, all because some oligarch with tons of money and no sense, who has never even seen a small business or office work decides Windows is better.
I think it is about time to dump this and go to repair full time and hire an additional tech. I have a great trainee now, a babe, 24 with a MSEE and eager to learn but I will need another body with some practical experience in mechanical systems, tools etc.
The problem is I never have and never will work FOR someone, even though I am an owner, my say, as the only person who knows everything about how the business works, is being ignored. We grew it from a start with 4 people(two employees and two owners) so obviously we knew something of how to grow a business to be dominate in a highly competitive field.
I concluded the report with a strong defense of not messing with what works very well by replacing it with something that costs an extra $100,000 the first year and and $30,000-to 60,000 each year after and ending up with a less reliable system. Plus added strong hints that I will likely start taking a lot of time off this season. I am not big into wasting my time writing reports that are ignored or even bothered with in the first place.
I just tried 14.04 as a ram drive boot on my laptop. Man, it loaded fast, desktop appeared in 18 seconds....from a slow USB2 port. Unity is more polished, it even found and loaded drivers for my 4g LTE modem without asking any questions, just popped with internet connection at 50mbs within that 18 seconds. This was not in the report but if anything 14.04 being an LTS is the sure way to go. I'll test more thoroughly....when I have time between "reports"
Anyhow Ndiswrapper is a wrapper program to allow the OS to use proprietary hardware. In my case it was an intel wireless card built into the laptop. So, I kept at it but just could not get Ndiswrapper to work. So, I tried just Ubuntu and quickly ran away from that system as fast as I installed it! lol... I thought about and made a install disk for Mint 12 as I had reports from others that Ndiswrapper was working great on that version. I ended up not installing Mint 12...
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