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Introduction

Chapter 1.

For several years now, many people involved with computing and the Internet 

have harbored hopes that Linux might become a viable end user operating 

system choice for a broader segment of general purpose end users. At the same 

time there has been growing frustration with the problems and limitations of the 

current dominant commercial desktop OS offerings from Microsoft. In turn this 

frustration has fueled a greater need in the market for alternative desktop 

operating system choices. At the same time, Linux based desktop oriented 

distributions have improved tremendously as a result of the inclusive and 

open ended dynamics of the open source development movement.

The goal of this redbook is to provide a technical planning reference for IT 

organizations large or small that are now considering a migration to Linux based 

personal computers. For Linux, there is a tremendous amount of  how to  

information available online that addresses specific and very technical operating 

system configuration issues, platform specific installation methods, user 

interface customizations, etc. This redbook includes some technical  how to  as 

well, but the overall focus of the content in this book is to walk the reader through 

some of the important considerations and planning issues you could encounter 

during a migration project. Within the context of a pre existing Microsoft 

Windows based environment, we attempt to present a more holistic, end to end 

view of the technical challenges and methods necessary to complete a 

successful migration to Linux based clients.

  Copyright IBM Corp. 2004. All rights reserved.

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