Desktop Operating System

So, what do you folks run as your main desktop O/S? We're Windows 7 Pro across the 5000 PC's but have to seriously consider what the plans are in 4 yrs when it goes out of extended support. At present just doing ball park figures, a shift to Win X, Office 2xxx, Exchange, AD/Server etc would be over £1m in enterprise agreements annually........

Anyone done a mass migration to Linux?

we are looking at a Linux desktop with Citrix to present the apps. it a hellishly complex process but would save the company thousands.

The management are split between O365 and this at present and the trade off between simplicity and cost. I guess as usual it will come down to who's MacBook will work best with what though!

£200 per seat sounds really high, considering Office 365 retail pricing is £78 per year (50GB mailbox, all desktop Office apps). Note this is not based on my current knowledge of MS enterprise licensing.

Majority of Windows 7 Pro, moving onto Windows 10 Pro. Currently about 4k machines on Windows 10 Pro with 10k O365 E3 licences purchased this year

Yep, moving 4,000 windows 7 machines to Igel

That's when server 2016 is ready and is proven to support GPU over RDP

Windows updates, AV, locally installed apps are too much of a headache these days. Even when running AppV, it's still a pain.

Should have said, 5k PC's/laptops with 8k users. O365 isn't currently suitable for application in public sector at present, or suitable for the current way we work.

8.1 across the board here.

Really don't want to roll out 10 though.

Win10 / 365 across the board. we were pretty quick to get in with win10, its the way the world is going & didn't see the point in holding back.

365 on the other hand took a year of planning, pausing, not giving a dam (shh).
We dont pay for licences (gold ms partner) and already had the hardware so for me it was just a huge headache. I'd rather have waited until MS showed a real direction they want to take it in rather than the mismatch of products it currently is.

LizardKing said:

Win10 / 365 across the board. we were pretty quick to get in with win10, its the way the world is going & didn't see the point in holding back.

365 on the other hand took a year of planning, pausing, not giving a dam (shh).
We dont pay for licences (gold ms partner) and already had the hardware so for me it was just a huge headache. I'd rather have waited until MS showed a real direction they want to take it in rather than the mismatch of products it currently is.

Click to expand...

Which bit is the mishmash?

rotor said:

Which bit is the mishmash?

Click to expand...

Predominately its the complete lack of a decent centralised management system between the products.

Running a hybrid just exaggerates this, some things you can easily do via the portals/remote powershell but simply resetting a password has to be done via AD.

Groups/Teams everywhere, Outlook groups, sharepoint groups, sharepoint teams, security groups, its never ending! but no mail enabled security groups

As an end user its really good, but an admin really needs to know what there doing (which is no bad thing) especially if you have to conform to any security standards.

And not forgetting the products that come out of nowhere! (unless of course your a constant reader of MS blogs).

LizardKing said:

Predominately its the complete lack of a decent centralised management system between the products.

Running a hybrid just exaggerates this, some things you can easily do via the portals/remote powershell but simply resetting a password has to be done via AD.

Click to expand...

As much as I like Office 365, I have to agree with this. We have a hybrid environment, which means some things can only be done via the on-premise server, and some things can only be done via the O365 portal, and it's not always intuitive as to where the settings are to be found. For example, assigning licenses is done via the portal, which is fine, but modifying email addresses has to be done via the on-premise Exchange server.

LizardKing said:

And not forgetting the products that come out of nowhere! (unless of course your a constant reader of MS blogs).

Click to expand...

Ah yes, the new products that randomly appear without warning. When we migrated over we had a number of service desk calls asking us how to use Sway, Delve etc. which none of us had ever heard of! I suppose it's not a bad problem to have compared to the old on premise days, where our servers would randomly stop responding

We're on a weird system installed by Satan himself and maintained by a team that only feed on the blood of innocents.

Wyse thin clients that log us into an overly locked down WinXP session over citrix (no notepad, calculator or run menu) with office 2007 (no acess though).

Part of my job is management of the trailer yards and bay doors... So I log into a Web portal with a username and password, load yardsmart via a citrix hyperlink... Then l use the same username and password to log into that.

Their is a project (3 years behind) to upgrade to Windows 7 and office 2010.

Woden said:

We're on a weird system installed by Satan himself and maintained by a team that only feed on the blood of innocents.

Wyse thin clients that log us into an overly locked down WinXP session over citrix (no notepad, calculator or run menu) with office 2007 (no acess though).

Part of my job is management of the trailer yards and bay doors... So I log into a Web portal with a username and password, load yardsmart via a citrix hyperlink... Then l use the same username and password to log into that.

Their is a project (3 years behind) to upgrade to Windows 7 and office 2010.

Click to expand...

Just WOW!

We have circa 60 desktops running very well on Win 7. We'll go 10 next but will do a slow piecemeal migration over the next 18 months or so I'd say. I'll try it on the more technically proficient people at first.

Not worried about app's as the core ones are on Citrix. Office will remain as 2010 I think.

I dread to think how much my employer pays for licensing fees for Windows. Before the split we had a combined workforce of around 320-350k globally. I would estimate that at least 95% of employees require access to a computer to do their job.

As much as you might like the sound of it, you're not moving off Windows on the desktop any time soon. Get some resources allocated to learning and labbing Windows 10 deployment and management and stop fighting the inevitable.