OpenMandriva Rock 6.0 Business Deployment Complete

Coffee break
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The time is now upon me.

As of tonight, OpenMandriva is deployed in my business. 4 employee workstations on identical Dell OptiPlex 7050 with Intel Core i7-7700 and 16GB RAM with 128GB SSD. These are older PCs from like 2017 or 2018.

I also installed on my main workstation / gaming rig. This one is a custom built AMD Ryzen 5 5600X with 64GB RAM and a AMD Radeon RX 6700 XT.

This deployment went about as well as a deployment could have gone.

For the 4 identical PC’s I made a disk image and then cloned it to each one. Easy peasy.

This is a test to see if OM can work in a business environment as opposed to the hobbyist environment of most OM users. There were some issues I had to overcome in advance of this deployment and there are some concerns to be aware of for the future.

My setup:

The PCs all share files via my Unraid server. NFS shares for the Linux PCs and SMB for the single remaining Windows 10 PC. The Windows PC handles the printing for now and some proprietary software I still need to use.

Issues I had to overcome before deployment was possible:

  • Thoroughly test OM for suitability.
  • Switch out Nvidia 3060 for AMD Radeon RX 6700 XT for easier compatibility.
  • Add NFS shares for the Linux PCs to more easily share. This was accomplished very easily with Unraid. I just exported NFS shares in addition to the SMB so that both windows and Linux can share the same files via different protocols. Very nice.
  • Find replacement software for everything not compatible (this was the easiest part)
  • Tackle the learning curve, was a Windows power user, now I am a Linux noob. (This is the hardest part.)

Concerns and risks for the future:

  • OpenMandriva is a very small group with part time developers.
  • The update server is sometimes down.
  • Finding OM specific information quickly is sometimes difficult.
  • I need to rewrite a bunch of Powershell Python scripts. This is a major investment of time and one of the reasons it took me so long to switch to Linux. What a pain in the ass! (I could just use a Debian VM since I can use Powershell on Debian. Would be less time involved.)

Software used:

  • Open Office for word processing and spreadsheets
  • Kate for text editor (We use this much more than OpenOffice)
  • Gwenview for Photo cropping
  • GIMP for photo editing
  • Brave for browser
  • Standard Notes for note syncing
  • Goodsync for backups to server
  • Duplicacy for encrypted offsite backup to Backblaze
  • Vim for documentation
  • NoMachine for remote desktop

(I tried to stick with standard software as much as possible)

Employees:

  • The employees took the change surprisingly well when I tested their workstations. They are all Gen Z and do have not used Windows much anyway so they did not need to unlearn any habits. They learned it faster than I did. One less thing to worry about.

Future projects:

  • Going to start live-streaming auctions on Whatnot at some point, need to figure out live streaming software.

We will see how it goes with daily use. The main concern is stability. During work hours, the PCs need to be doing tasks, not being tinkered with.

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pretty hard core coming from windows :grin: not even neovim with an nvchad setup? ::cough::

Next you’ll be using emacs…

As for the concerns, all that software is distro agnostic. Since I don’t know what the python scripts do I can’t speak to those. But with what you’ve described here in the forum you’d be looking at 1 or 2 days to set up with another distro if needed.

Just make sure your config files are backed up. May I recommend git and stow for that?

In no particular order…

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Thanks for the suggestions, it’s not like I expect OM to be gone tomorrow, but when doing anything for a business, you have to always explore the risks and potential issues, even if they are remote. Planning gets me through rough times and I’d say these days qualify.

I have Devuan installed on some personal machines, I am considering that my backup distro. Hopefully OM does the job, it has been pretty good for me so far.

I have daily backups scheduled, so no worries there. That is a very deep and paranoid habit for me, I check to make sure my backups are working at least once a week.

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I’ll set up a recurring donation as well. I’m no freeloader.

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Interesting. I use Borg Backup via a script, and Syncthing to sync the backup. Does the same job; both open source projects.

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I have been using it for years and I know it is reliable. Also cross platform. I use it to back up files from my Android devices and my wife’s Apple devices as well as windows and Linux. All the backups land neatly on my Unraid server, ready for offsite backup.