6.2  Migration plan details

In this section we want to discuss in which steps the migration will take place, 

which possible problems we could come across, and how we will establish the 

functional continuity.

After assessing a current ITSO desktop and its environment, as we have done in 

the section before, we have to build a plan that will include the necessary work to 

make the client functional after removing the Windows operating system.

6.2.1  Client approach

The ITSO resident workstation would fit into either the Basic Office or Advanced 

Office workstation logical segment, as defined in 4.4.3,  Functional segmentation 

  Fixed function to general office  on page 65. And since the users use these 

workstations primarily for authoring technical papers using FrameMaker, as well 

as doing research using a Web browser, they map most closely to the Fat client 

type, as discussed in 4.4.2,  Logical segmentation   Thin, slim, or fat  on page 64

6.2.2  Graphical environment

Another key decision that has to be made is what type of graphical windowing 

environment will be used on the Linux client. Alternatives are discussed in 4.3.2, 

 Linux desktop environments  on page 53.

In this special case, we are not going to discuss advantages and disadvantages 

of one or the other environment; both of them would provide enough 

functionality.

But as Gnome is the default session manager for Red Hat distributions, we 

decided to stay with this choice for our sample scenario. The version that is 

included in Red Hat Desktop 3 at the time of this writing was Gnome 2.4.

6.2.3  Hardware

Another topic to be considered before migrating is the hardware that is in use.

In this case, no peripherals are connected to the client, and all other resources 

(like printers, for example) are accessed via the network. 

The migration PC platform for this example is listed in Table 6 1 on page 116.

 Chapter 6. Client migration scenario 

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