SuSE clarifies "Linux on the desktop" Statement

MrEfficient writes, "ZDNet UK has a story in which Dirk Hohndel, the chief technical officer of SuSE Linux, clears up an earlier statement made by the chief executive, Roland Dyroff, about Linux's readiness for the desktop. "

Comments

Linux Printing Sucks

[hedgehog_uk]

One of the best things about Windows, in fact, one of the only truly wonderful things about Windows is the printer support. It's very easy to install and configure printers. When I print, to my HP890c I can hit a button in a dialog box that selects 'econofast' mode. This prints quickly (12 secs for a test page), with pretty good (300x300dpi) quality.

The same test page printed from Red Hat 6.1 takes almost THREE AND A HALF MINUTES to print. This means that a 10 page document would print in two minutes from Windows and over half an hour in Linux. It was quicker to reboot into Windows, print and then boot Linux again, than to print in Linux. This sucks hard.

I finally managed to work out how to get Linux to print quicker, but it took a very long time and I had to download, compile and read the source to Ghostscript to do it. Your average user couldn't/wouldn't do this.

I'd love to take time off work to help out with one of the Linux printing projects, but am far too busy at the moment trying to get an interactive TV project on air (I'll try to fix some of the bugs in the print driver though). Maybe in the summer...

But until Linux printing is as good as Windows, it really doesn't have a chance on the desktop.
</rant>

HH

Yellow tigers crouched in jungles in her dark eyes.

It depends on which desktop ...

[HalJohnson]

Home or corporate? Personally I think Linux/BSD is a very good choice for corporate desktops. Anyone who's ever had to deploy and maintain a farm of Windows machines in a corpororate enviornment knows how much of a headache it is. Even with NT Workstation carefully setup, there are too many things a user can do to damage the installation (and that's not even taking into account the things Windows does on its own).

I know of at least one place I manage that I'm considering moving away from NT Workstation to either Linux or FreeBSD on the desktops. Its a small shop (about 20 desktops) which relies on a DOS based real-estate management package. The primary reason I'm considering the move is the flexibility I have with the configurations, which brings me to my next point ...

So many people are convinced that the solution is to "dumb down" the desktop environments to suit the users. Personally I think that idea is way off base, and I tend to agree more with the concept of hiding advanced functionality in order to not overwhelm new users. Although I believe that is also less than ideal. Computers are powerful devices, but everyone seems to think they need to be made as easy to use as an appliance. I'm sorry, but I think it's a tremendeous waste of such a powerful and flexible machine. What we need is a way to educate users. Show them that they can do more with these machines than browsing the web, writing documents, and sending email.

Its depressing when I see people buy brand new high-powered machines and really not use them for anything beyond the basics. Its understandable that these are the reasons that most people purchase computers (aside from the "me too" hype), but we need to show them some of the wonder that we experience.

I love technology (and I bet you do too), and I realize everyone isn't like us. But there is more than the web, more than word processing, and much more than email. The real question is, how do we gently push the masses into discovering it for themselves?

How do we educate them without scaring them away? Or are the wonderful flexible machines we all love not really suited for the general populace? Are we doomed to a world where there are distinct information appliances for the cornerstones, where the PC as we know it is a dinosaur? I hope not.

(I seem to have gotten semi-OT here, my apologies)