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Office-Worker Linux: It's Here and It Works
A few weeks ago, dot.kde.org featured a great why-should-this-be-amazing story about Linux being used as the day-to-day desktop operating system for city employees in Largo, Florida. Roblimo got a chance to see the system in action to find out how ordinary office workers are proving that the old "Linux is tough to use" shibboleth is nothing but FUD, and how a medium-sized city is saving buckets of money by minimizing the tax dollars spent on licenses and hardware. Oh, and they've also pre-empted the kind of costs (in hassle and money) that can face any organization that Microsoft suspects may have some licenses out of order. This is the kind of thing every elected official should have politely waved in his or her face by concerned taxpayers. The Largo system uses KDE on Red Hat, but since both KDE and Gnome are paying much attention to user interface, similar systems could easily be running on various combinations of hardware / distribution / desktop system.
That is exactly what 90% of computer users do every day. Not everyone is a sysadmin! (Thank god!)
What is a valid usability test?
Conformity is the jailer of freedom and enemy of growth. -JFK
I wasn't argueing that Windows does multi-user as well as Unix - just that it could do it to some degree.
How is using open source automation? People must _still_ support and develop the software you are getting a free lunch with. What happens when the people doing the actual work get burned out and leave it altogether? You will then have to _pay_ someone to develop and maintain the software.
I think much of the quality open source software out today has been very close to becoming (or has been) proprietary. Mozilla was proprietary. Qt was "locked" source code. Ghostscript is relicensed as GPL after a given time period. Quake/Doom/Abuse/etc. source code has been proprietary and released because the technology is very much obsolete. We all know how hardware manufacturers are very secretive of their technology. One can imagine the hoops XF86 had to jump through to get drivers for even the most common graphics cards.
Proprietary software will still be around in 10 years (most likely longer). My guess is it will probably move to subscription based software, and eventually to "throw-away," or run-once software (where software is more about the current state and will not have any significance later simply because software will change so much in short amount of time, therefore source code will be irrelevant). It will not remain "run program.exe" or "/usr/bin/program." Microsoft and Sun both realize this.
Dijkstra Considered Dead
so, um, what gives you the right to hit someone for being elitist?
what gives me the right to question your judgement?
oh my, i can't talk about other people without coming off as an elitist! i'll shut up now, and not interface with any other human beings, for fear of comparing myself to them!
speaking of maintainence:
Did you notice they opted to spend a bit *more* money for Thin Clients with no moving parts? No moving parts generally means less support costs in the long run (less shit to break).
The guys that set up the stuff really did a pretty bang up job. I might have done things differently, but that's the beauty of UNIX/Linux: there's more than one way to do it.
If you were me, you'd be good lookin'. - six string samurai
It is nice to see someone taking the dive into integrating Linux into a large scale situation. Especially "forcing" it on people who may have never used it. The best way to learn something is under pressure though and I wish them the best of luck at using this new system. Although I am sure the admin who is monitoring this stuff has a nice fat wallet now.
A tiny bit offtopic, but this is funny: One of our NT networking clients had this habit: Even though they had all those little computers in their "Network Neighborhood" folder, they still copied files to floppies and physically walked them over to coworkers in other offices.
We dance to all the wrong songs.
--Refused.
It is still automation. Of course humans are still writing the software, they are just doing it for free. Kind of like how robots dont go on strike or demand wages. Free software also takes advantage of the automation of replication. I can copy my piece of software and give it to a million people. I cant do that with windows software, or other proprietary systems.
This form of automation is the basis for the entire digital age. Microsoft takes advantage of it, but doesn't pass that advantage onto the customer. Only pirates get replication automation. Dont get left behind. Dont work for companies that license software as-is, with no responsability. Use freesoftware and pay for service contracts and insurance. Much wiser, I think. Plus the strange twist (paradoxical?) that freesoftware is usually more robust and stable than proprietary.
The future is away from proprietary commodities in software. There will always be proprietary specialty software, I grant that, but operating systems, web servers, web browsers, music players, on down the line, are all simple commodities and should be free, or cost a small sum (say your computer retail would charge to bundle them with your system). I'm glad I have staked my mental future on proprietary API's (win32 for most of y'all). I am free from manipulation, or so I think.
No. What kind of logic is that. Where do you think that M$ got its start? In the office of course! People will start using Linux at work and then want it for home too. As demand grows so does demand for games and MP3 players.
On a side note for the most part games and MP3 players are sub-culture of teenagers. Joe User doesn't play Quake III
The Anti-Blog
Windows 2000 can be installed off of a network as well.
Vintage computer games and RPG books available. Email me if you're interested.
One of the big gripes constantly hear about is not the usability issue, but the issue of users not being able to install software, make config changes, etc. In a business environment, users should *NOT* be able to do these things anyway - these tasks should be handled by the system/network administrator. Home use, OTOH, is still far off for most people. But games, AOL, etc. have no place in a business environment.
"A successful business figures out how to adapt to this new fact. "
:-)
Adopt to give everything away for free
Are you joking? To pay salaries you must EARN money, it really is as simple as that.
People don't and will never ever pay any significant money for little add-ons and stuff like that. It's not realistic, to sell something someone must be willing to buy.
You really should study some economy.
I'm glad they're using Linux. Unfortunately, there's no way the medium-sized business I work for could do that. For us, the problem isn't usability, it's software. And I don't mean a lack of MS-Office. Let me explain.
Like most businesses our size, we use a variety of custom, semi-custom, and prepackaged applications. While, yes, we could use free alternatives to our operating systems, office software, and email/scheduling software, there's no way in heck we're going to find a free replacement to our inventory, financial reporting, or human resource management software, for example, any time soon.
Even if someone came up with one, the cost of switching to the new packages would be enormous, given the complexity of such software and its impact on day-to-day business.
What's more, the specialized software we use requires that MS-Office be installed or it can't do simple things like generate reports. So, if we have to stay with these inventory, HR, and financial reporting packages, that means staying with MS-Office and MS-Windows.
Oh, how I'd love to move the whole corporation to free software. But there's just no way that's going to happen until all the mid-size apps are moved to Linux.
Until then, I'll continue to use FreeBSD, OpenBSD, and Linux on the server side as much as possible. But that's where they'll stay for the forseeable future.
If they're using NTFS & the proper security options are set up on the workstations, it's not a big deal.
What's a serious country?
So, we can look forward soon to a worm which attacks TSS servers as CR* did with IIS. Since most people will have no idea that TSS is enabled (and people will enable it blindly just as they did with IIS in 2KPro) we'll be asking ourselves a month in whether it's legal to shut down Winboxen run by idiot admins and home users.
At least X has been field-tested, doesn't xhost + by default, and doesn't run without indications that it's running.
"Cause there's 40 different shades of black, so many fortresses and ways to attack, so why you complainin'?"
Please don't take it for yourself.
:-).
I don't want to make "bad publicity" so I won't name the HOW-TO but it is someone who took the first version of your HOW-TO and translated it in French, the first version had a bug, you corrected it but the translated version wasn't updated..
I know at least two translation in French of your HOW-TO, one was updated and the other wasn't. Murphy law made me stumble on the one which wasn't updated of course.
I'm VERY grateful for your HOW-TO, it is very nice, thanks again!
And I agree:the guys at the UK forum ADSL guide are really helpfull and I try to give advice there whenever I think I could help.
They helped me when I needed help: I give back
FUD-a-licous
---- Den ene knappen er powerknapp, den andre er Bender voice knapp "Bite My Shiny Metal Ass"
Gee, how unusual. I suppose the average corporate drone is handed a Windows CD and an Optiplex?
Quicktime - no. Flash seems to work. Lots of other animation software Out There(tm) Realmedia. ( we don't need no steenking monopoly ) Google for Vietnamese font Linux and you'll find it's there.
Have you ever tried to get NT running?
i ven-right (what IS UP with that slashdot auto-spacing-long-lines-because-they-must-be-evil- and-would-confuse-the-reader-so-we-have-to-insert- spaces??-) mentality and start paying for things again (yes, I know a lot of linux users pay for distros, but VERY FEW do compared to the manhours put in to develop and sustain it, and VERY FEW do compared to the number of people who USE it.. Actually, it costs more to put out a distro because of the costs of the bandwidth that you must provide to allow people to download the thing) so that businesses will start to develop seriously for linux, things will not change. With the yelling from business about wanting a "profitable internet", do you think they're going to sink developmental funds into something that they're not going to earn any money at, much less turn a profit? Sure, volunteers and the occasional corporate sponsorship does work occasionally, but look at how long it has taken to get here, and how slowly it works.
... maybe ? is that it, that dot on the horizon? dunno... only time will tell.
Man what type of crack are you on? I've been a sysadmin here for 2 years, and tried to push out linux to users who wanted it on several occasions. And guess what? Linux is great -- that is if, and only if, you have perfect hardware and perfect setup and a standalone system. The minute that something is out-of-spec, linux goes AWOL and the poor desktop user is SOL because they don't know the difference between KDE and dd. OTOH, I've plopped in the install CD for W2K, filled in a few simple details, walked away, came back 30 minutes later and had a system up-and-running without any problems. Sure back in the day of WinNT4 (I humbly agree that Win9X was a POS, but don't get me started on why those existed and why customers demanded Win98SE and WinME...) there were a bunch of problems, but I have had very few problems installing windows 2000 systems (and *zero* on reputable machines (i.e. Dell), well there was that 1 problem, traced to a defective HD)... And secondly, as soon as the user wants to do something new with their system, they're SOL again, not only because installing isn't as simple as "click here to download, run setup.exe and you're installed" (albiet lately in linux it has gotten a LOT better), but also because the apps simply aren't out there.
Oh BTW -- check out my W2K Server, up for 131 days without a reboot, and also survived CodeRed without a scratch because I set up security properly from the day that I installed the server. There's a cool realtime stats program up on the CodeRed attacks and other neat things: here.
To recap, simply, I like linux. I think that it has a lot of potential but it simply isn't anywhere close enough yet to be a mainstream system. Remember this, and the fact that it's manhours spent with linux as well. I hate to be the harbinger of news here, but windows is much easier to use, period. There's no debate about that one, and with XP it just gets easier. Try putting your mother down in front of a linux machine, and then do the same with a windows machine. There is a reason why windows is used on 90% of desktops, and why Microsoft is the software giant that they are (reasons beyond the typical slashdottery about squishing competition and cheating and crap), more than just "being in the right place at the right time".. It's because, for better or worse, they have the best set of software products out there. Office and Windows are extremely successful because they're good, and people like them and use them a lot. That's a fact, hard to dispute.
I don't think that linux will make it as a mainstream OS anytime soon, or at least until most of the linux users (BTW, I think that part of the reason of linux non-acceptability is because of the typical i-love-linux-and-hate-windoze attitude and immaturity, not everyone, but just enough are immature and slander and swear and yell and scream and kick and fuss and act like children to give linux a bad name. Don't believe me? read our very own CmdrTaco. I think that he made some really good points there, the thermostat in hell must have broken that day...:> ) are part of the reason.
Oh well. I think that until linux users give up the I-want-everything-for-free-as-in-beer-as-my-god-g
Ahh... I'd seriously like to see a competetor to Windows and Microsoft products, but unfortunately right now I just don't see it, and
{/end rant}
If God gave us curiosity
4.1 is better than 4.0, but the Radeon has been working nicely with either for a while. I have an AiW Radeon and have been happily using hardware acceleration and the TV/DVD playback features since 4.01. As a side note, ATI still doesn't have good AiW Radeon drivers for Win2k, so you will probably have an easier time playing DVDs on Linux than 2k with that card.
As for loading agpgart as a module, it isn't an issue, so your problems possibly lie more in your kernel config rathern than in any inherent Linux weakness.
All said, however, you are right. Linux is a pain in the ass to setup. I've spent at least three nights configuring my current machine (the Radeon one), and, while informative, it was a wholly unpleasant experience.
because I put together a deployment cd, that way you insert CD, start automated install and walkl away... not need to waste money on norton ghost.
Also adding additional hardware profiles onto the same CD is easier...
Faster too in case one computer has different hardware (I.E. a scsi card for a scanner or capture device)
Still, having to download a driver that should have been there? (the network,video and sound were out before 2000 was made and RH6.2 even found them)
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
Sure, Windows does the job, I run it at home; but if this article proves that End User X, dumb as a post, doesn't mind KDE (I'd use it daily if my audio-apps ran in *nix), force it on em!
Many professions suffer from extreme arrogance--doctors, lawyers, and computer programmers alike. They assume that because they have the knowledge, those that don't must therefore be less intelligent.
Personally, I'd like to see arrogant schmucks like you take on the work that these second-class citizens you so often denigrate perform. Experience is the best remedy for those too close-minded to understand the viewpoint of another human being in another profession.
Instead of insulting the value of a fellow human's mind, perhaps you intended to point out KDE's proficiency as an interface for those lacking hours of spare time to learn an interface inside and out. That would be very valid sentiment.
Instead, you take it upon yourself to liken the other person's intelligence to that of a post. I wonder if this is merely an attempt to differentiate yourself from the populace that uses Windows just like you do, to proclaim that you are with the small group proficient in Linux and this somehow demonstrates superiority. I don't know what it is, and I won't spend significant amounts of time contemplating what your (and many others') problem is, but what I have figured out is that it sure doesn't help out the computing profession's image.
You tarnish the image as badly as a hypocritical, arrogant lawyer lambasting the peasants of the world for their misunderstandings of the law's intricate structure.
I recently let my girlfriend loose on my Linux box at home. Setting up an account for her was all I had to do - she's playing around with it and has had no complaints so far. And she doesn't even like computers (but goes out with a geek like me - go figure :). Yes, sometimes she does ask
where she kind find some application or other, but
comparing that to the problems the people at work
have getting their Windows boxes to behave, I
was surprised at how quickly she adapted to Linux.
d'oh. I spoke too soon. There didn't *used* to be an AOL client for NT. =)
-BK
Chemical Blog
IIRC, the only items that you can install on Windows that are dependent on IIS are distinctly labeled as a Server or a Service.
If you can find an application that is dependent on IIS and is not labeled as either of these, please reply.
Stupid users are a blight for both Windows and Linux users: On the Windows side, they don't understand that they have access to more of their PC than is necessary. On the Linux side, they won't take the time to configure their user account for additional privileges and label the system as "hard to learn".
The rest of your post was pretty incoherent, I think I'll just let it mean whatever you meant it to mean... or something.
Meorah
Protector of Capitalist views,
Meorah
What are you talking about?
ME, Win2k, 98, XP all have a Start button. All has the File,Edit, menues. All can copy/pase with the same key shortcuts.
I put 98 on my parents system at home, and then Win2k on my system while they are visiting. As far as they're concerned, Win2k is just a newer version than 98 with additional features. They don't really see any difference in usage.
Now, take the difference between Enlightenment and KDE...
Je ne parle pas francais.
Did you notice that the entire system runs the X protocol? I doubt they are even using XHOST auth on the NCD terminals (Of course I don't actually know anything). With the entirety of the X sessions going over the network in the clear I doubt that they are as worried about the security of their big beefy servers. Those can be kept on their own switches and under tight administrative control. I suppose that they could use SSH and maintain keyfiles for each user across all hosts serving X apps, but this wouldn't help with hosts that are serving Citrix apps and any user who can break root on one of the servers has access to all accounts on all machines anyway. It might give you warm fuzzies but I think that it would only add overhead.
Of course, I could be wrong. I'm just playing devil's advocate.
-- Remember: Wherever you go, there you are!
what about spedific hardware and software limitations? I havn't used linux very much myself, but from what i've heard its a great OS for a base system. word processing and most desktop apps have been moved over to it fairly easily, but what about going to some more powerfuly software such as video editing, digital video production or audio editing and production - which is what i'm into myself. There are a lot of surperb programs out there that would great on a windows platform, but I havn't found anything supporting linux. or am i just not looking in the right places?
I would love to be able to get away from microsoft, but until there is more program support for linux (wether its free or not), im stuck.
"Video bona proboque; deteriora sequor." -- Ovid
im a windows user whos been curious about linux for a couple years now.
every once in a while i get bored, buy a copy of linux and install it on my old 10gig drive. ive tried RH, Corel, Caldera, Mandrake, Debian. They all seem to insall pretty easily, but once its installed its tough to figure out where to go from there.
tasks that were simple in windows are nearly impossible in linux. to this day the only way i can figure out how to change res modes is to reinstall the entire OS. try asking for help? no im not worthy of help, im just a borg drone.
right now im using Corel linux because its the only one that ive been able to figure out how to use my cdrom in.
much as you'd like it to be, linux is NOT easy to use. and worse, its nearly impossible to find help unless you know someone personally to help you. (which i dont)
so i continue to poke around in linux every now & then, only to reboot to windows when i really need to use my system -sigh-
That's what I plan on doing when OS X.1 is released. She needs to burn CDs for her clients so I didn't want to jump on the bandwagon until that feature (and some bugs) were cleared up.
Just in case it works, try "CTRL-ALT-KEY_PAD_PLUS". That will switch between the currently configured resolutions, if there are more than one. The resolutions (and many other things related to hardware and graphics) are configured in /etc/X11/XF86Config. There is some documentation floating around on how to write your own video modes (getting a little bit more resolution, getting the image to line up nicely on your monitor, etc), but that's not terribly necessary with new monitors. Recent XFree86 also seems to know internally about a number of resolutions.
Note that changing resolution while running only changes how much appears on the screen-- the server will scroll the screen when you move the mouse to the edge so that you can get to the whole thing. The total size of the screen is set by the largest video mode listed for the depth (== bits/pixel), and can only be changed by editing the config file and restarting X.
If you want to change the color depth, either start X with the -depth <n> option or change the DefaultDepth parameter in the Screen section (where the resolutions are).
This information is from a number of different versions of XFree86, so not all of it will be right for your particular configuration. If all else fails, read the XFree86 man page (man XFree86) and possibly some of the other documentation it refers to.
As a more general point, there's a lot of good documentation for Linux stuff. The main problem is that it takes a certain amount of sophistication to know which thing you're dealing with, so you can read the applicable documentation. E.g., resolution is determined by XFree86, but background color/pattern is done by xsetroot, which may be called from a number of places, and what happens when you click on the background depends on your window manager.
Linux is easy... if your hardware is compatible. I just bought RedHat (7.1) on Saturday (11th) with the idea of running KDE but as of yet it won't install. This is the third time I'm attempting to put Linux on my PC and this is the third time I'm running into show stopping problems. My PC is old and my BIOS doesn't exaclty like my HD. But Windows, no matter how badly its installation procedure tries to mess up, seems to get up and running. Linux always seems to have some great difficulty.
This is great, and trully shows how Linux CAN be run. However, it is important to give specifics. Linux used generically could mean Debian.... Debian ain't user friendly. If you dig and dig and tweak and tweak, then it is a great system. I personally like it because it is so much better for tweaking. However, it is so VERY VERY slow to update... at least as far as (stable) *deb packages go. So many office equipment and utilities can't be used unless you upgrade this or that util... which requires > kernel 2.4, which requires this which requires that, and all the packages are well... unstable and are paradoxically interdependant to the point of breaking your system. (oops, got off on a rant, sorry).
The real point is not to adopt M$ strategy, wherein they point at one tiny fraction of a userbase, or some very small utility and say "That is the Microsoft (TM) Way!!!" It a fact that the end user can not upgrade or install any additional services or utilities like with a Windows desktop. Meaning they can't easily install a messenger service without it requiring other libs or such that they have to go through the horrifying process of completely upgrading their system just for one stupid utility, all the while realizing that on a windows box it is just a matter of double clicking the setup.exe and then setting the appropriate directory... ok, so maybe lots of places don't even allow that, and you must have an admin come in to do the simplest system change. However, most end users often find they must install some add-on or plug-in or seperate utility to get the functionality they want... Linux is definetely NOT friendly towards that. Try popping that bastard in front of your parents or grandparents (the ones that are not engineers). Have them compare the eaze of use between a windows box and the linux box. (again, I am not talking about GUI and such, but actual use over time). They would probably tell you after a while, that the windows box was so much more user friendly, but it sure pissed them off that it crashed all the time. They might mention that they wish you could make Linux more user friendly, then you could do like most here do and laugh in their face and call them a 'monkey' or such. How about taking the good from this (and NOT blowing it out of proportion) and learning from it. Then adapt it and make it grow and use it on other systems... soon you might have a great Linux Desktop revolution, but not until everyone can see reason (and reality) and not get blinded from their rose-colored-glasses.
and if you currently work on applications for linux, then for the love of God man... please don't make it a kludge.
Sweenie, you are one dumb mother.
weaning off floppies??
we removed all floppy drives over a year ago. It solved tons of problems IS wise and it eliminated the fired-employee taking files syndrome.
Work is for work, it stays there. If you want to work at home, then apply for a laptop.. if your super approves it then we give you laptop+docking station. (no CD drive or floppy but 2 extra batteries.)
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
Really? Microsoft Windows 1.0 was released in 1985; the first public release of X Window System happened in 1987. You might argue that MIT started work on X in 1984; but that still does not make it "long before" MS Windows..
Zigbee Central: A Zigbee weblog
Ah, must be some windows user who thinks that system administration is done through local keyboard and mouse.
I never visit my customers for upgrades. We do even upgrades remotely. The only thing the customer needs to do is turn on the remote access station and leave it on during the weekend.
my other sig is a 500 page novel
After having being bitten by a buggy HOW-TO (having problem setting up an ADSL connexion is not fun: I had to reboot to Windows each time I failed, to try to get additional informations), I sent an e-mail to the author of the webpage.
:-(
The e-mail was something like that: Thanks for the HOW-TO, oh BTW I found such and such bugs in the HOW-TO it should be like this and like that.
The webpage was NOT updated
I can't really blame him, because nobody pay him to maintain its webpage. Even if IMHO a buggy HOW-TO is "worse" than no HOW-TO at all.
Eventually, good information became available, but it remains that saying that Linux is better than Windows for hardware compatibility is plain wrong: when you buy new material, usually you want to buy the 'latest and greatest' of course, something that is risky with Linux..
It is not Linux community's fault of course, but until Linux has a much bigger market share, it will remain that way..
Excel is the spreadsheet, running on another server through a Windows/Unix interoperability application. Anyone know what this is? WINE?
All this is to say, where are the facts that support your statement?
I didn't make the initial statement, but I will respond. All my GNOME systems are up to date as of today.
The GNOME 1.4 release significantly diminshed speed and functionality to achieve only a baic file manager / web browser type app. Its very unusual that someone would create a new version that does LESS things than then old did, but I still can't create a new application launcher from the desktop or edit an existing one as with KDE
* The current GNOME control center (yes there's a new one on the way, no it isn't here yet) is confusign with its `test' `OK' implementation. This isn't consistent with many other GNOME apps
* 48 x 48 icons that are `supposed to look good' at 20 x 20 often don't. One size does not fit all.
* AFAICT there's no MacOS / Windows / KDE type style guide which can be used to define consistency between applications
* Defining a filetype -> program mapping is difficult in KDE but especially more so in GNOME.
* GNOME still has many programmerisms within it. Sawfish and GNOME might be seperate apps but from and end user viewpoint they should work seamlessly. Having a `meta' button under the GNOMECC which only defines options avaliable for the Sawfish branch is one such programmerism. And what does `meta' mean to a non tech?
Damn near forgot: I had to jump through some hoops so that I could change the desktop resolution and color depth. Not very intensive--editing some config files, running Xauthority (I think that was what I ran)--but more than they'd be able to, or want to do.
tough guy, huh? well suppose i bring in a laptop with a video capture card and monitor-out-to-video-in adaptor. I tweak together a tiny prog to get the laptop to start recording a lossless high-quality video capture as soon as it sees a handshake image, and I bring in a prog to display all files in my special format. (i.e. I get a binary of my entire hard-drive, or your entire network, or whatever). It's really not hard to transfer a few hundred kilobytes a second over fairly lossy video.... /all/ files on the system (even those not avialable to me) printed to the screen in this way. Total time between sitting down in front of your "secure" computer and when my laptop's hard-drive is reading all your nice secure source-tree? <1.5 hours. Even faster if you have a USB port and I can plug in a USB "keyboard" (really just a raw usb feed from my laptop, I'm sure you can do that somehow) that'll send it all the keystrokes I need. Did you know that win2k automatically adds any usb keyboard while it's running? It's really nifty to have two mice and keyboards (normal ones, and usb ones) on at once. Heheh. (Of course, these days motherboards don't care if you unplug your keyboard while the dang thing's running, so you could probably just get a serial-out-to-keyboard-in adaptor (remember the days when keyboards were serial devices?) and those I know exist. Ah the possibilities.
How do I get my prog onto your computer?
Well I'm sure you haven't disabled your CD-ROM drive. <grin>
Oh, and if you have, so that all I have available to me is the keyboard and the mouse, I can still make a batch file (even without any editors: "copy con test.bat", "ctrl-z; enter" when done) that in a few lines will write out anything I put in hex format to a binary exe. A few hundred lines of hex asm (sorry, not even an assembly file, a direct binary executable) will let me read bits from the hard-drive and copy them to windows NT's display driver hook...(although it might need to be long enough to look like a whole application). There are infinite hacks you can do to get your own executable to run under windows NT (but you need to have a little prior research), such as modifying a system DLL (one that will run under administartive rights, as almost all do) that isn't currently loaded or running so that it executes your program, then initiating whatever action causes that DLL to be loaded and run. My assembly code (which doesn't need to be very long, since I don't need it to do hardware checks, report nice error codes, catch any interrupts or do error-trapping, etc, etc) will be able to print to the screen any file you send it, and then another quick batch file will cycle through every file I have available to my username and print it to the screen. Hell, remember, I can even do root exploits to have
So to answer your question, no you're not secure. Hell, you're not secure until you do a body cavity check on me every time I walk in or out, because, if I'm allowed to bring in equipment, I can take out everything that's on your windows NT machine in <1.5 hours. Using only the keyboard and mouse that you provide me. Under Guest | Guest (/super/ priviledgeless! If I can run internet explorer, I can get it to modify my files in the way that I need). Hell, I can even use a USB camera if you secure the monitor from being unplugged (i.e. not reading the monitor-out, but reading the monitor directly). Gimme' a keyboard, mouse, monitor, and logged-in status (under any account name), and I can read every Windows NT file on my local hard-drive, available to me or not, onto my external medium, and all in under 2 hours (no matter how you slice it).
Linux anyone?
So if you don't want AOL or other crap installed, apply a policy that the user can't install it. You can cry all you want that OS A is better because on OS B you can't prohibit a certain action, but all you have to do is read a couple of docs and get your butt in gear.
Never underestimate the relief of true separation of Religion and State.
This is not a "special case," but one that could easily be duplicated in almost any government or business office environment that runs enough desktops to have its own sysadmins -- or at least a contract with a Linux-hip outside contractor -- to take care of the network.
The actual "special case" is probably the single machine senario (and certainly the "home" computer senario).
My wife has worked in more than a few government and commercial office environments that ran Windows, and they *always* had a separate IT or network support staff to take care of the computers. She wasn't supposed to add software or even mess with the things at all. In fact, in her last "real" job, doing customer support for a pager company, the biggest office computer network problem they had was employees bringing in software (especially games) from home and installing them on their own. Often the self-installed software screwed things up like mad.
Not only that it probably helps turn the IT staff into BOFH clones.
One thing I noticed when I installed Redhat on a machine (I'm a Linux newbie) was that it was very usable by anyone, provided someone else configured it.
And that's a good reason to prefer Mandrake over its Red Hat cousin (or Caldera or Corel over either) in that situation. Half the bitching here and elsewhere about Linux could be eliminated if people would pick appropriate distros for the job at hand, rather than becoming too attached to a particular one, often for ideological reasons, which are often the wrong reasons. Try several - cheapbytes is your friend. When you find one you like, buy a boxed copy.
The "right" distro depends on what I'm trying to do: I prefer Caldera or Mandrake on the desktop, Red Hat on servers (it reduces support problems), e-smith for garden-variety multi-purpose office servers, Turbo or Red Hat on mainframes, and Lineo or BSD for embedded devices. Choosing wisely (and widely) keeps you from the IT equivalent of hammering in screws with a pair of vise grips...
Oh, and be flexible - the costs for switching between distros are low and becoming less as we move to LSB-land, so don't be afraid to switch when it makes sense.
"The future's good and the present is nothing to sneeze at." - Roblimo's last
Unfortunately, when I came back from a vacation I found the dot had gone down again this weekend... *grmbl* We really need to setup some failsafes. Unfortunately it's not easy, and nobody has time as usual.
:-(
Our current Zope setup also seems quite useless for withstanding a slashdot attack. I'll have to consult the Zope guys (who have offered to help), but as a short term solution I switched to static hosting for the Largo article.
Later,
-N.
Oh My God!
I thought I was part of a userbase. I thought that using these systems made me part of a userbase.
How could I have been so horribly wrong?
Must I go and install Windows ME to be a part of a userbase?
134340: I am not a number. I am a free planet!
I make that two reboots apiece, although admittedly there is often a single reboot (which can be unattended) in the "install" phase of Windows. Of course, now you can install Linux off a network, with all patches, in just one reboot, so it looks like Microsoft is playing catch-up again.
UNIX? They're not even circumcised! Savages!
Sorry, I should have quoted the guy I was responding to. He said that it would be bad if Linux came to gain huge market share. His reasoning was that it would put a whole bunch of MCSE's who didn't have other skills out of work. I responded to this by trying to explain that if "magically" ...and only now do I realize that I'm responding to an Anonymous Coward with Score 0.. oh well.
Actually, unified scrap in X (KDE, Gnome) is the single largest remaining obstacle to Linux as a Desktop OS. Without global cut-and-paste, there will never be a userbase.
Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former. (Einstein)
"I have a computer, I give it to you, I no longer have the computer. That's not what's happening. "
And thats paying the bills how?
"Think of Netscape. "
Netscape lost to IE, they were dead.
All the apps (WordPerfect, etc) are kept on different servers and run with rsh. They use memory and hard disk space on a different machine. I imagine the /home directory is an NFS mount on a different machine with TONS of disk space. That server runs KDE, and only KDE, all the time, nothing else. It's not their file server.
main(c,r){for(r=32;r;) printf(++c>31?c=!r--,"\n":c<r?" ":~c&r?" `":" #");}
Umm, and what do u call Interix? they bought them last year...
Hetz (Heunique)
And it is not a variant of windows, it is totally different and in fact is not outdated technology in any respect, its still years ahead of microsoft (microsoft terminal server...or citrix winframe are just now able to do what X or X Window has been capable of for many years.
We run Linux at our company as a desktop OS, we are a mid-sized company with allots of +50 ppl. We have saved boatloads of money and we're not spending more time fixing broken installations than we did in the MS era (in fact less, since we can control the environment better). I find it hard to believe anyone who says that it should be harder to work with Linux than Windows for a office guy. A spreadsheet is a spreadsheet, it does not matter if its X or Windows. We got a perfect office environment that comes for practical free.
...but running the apps remotely is a huge deal. X Windows can do it with no install necessary, MS Windows cannot.
No port security on your switches? Tsk, tsk.
IMO, in a proper setup, one cannot connect an unknown system to a network. Everything else would be a security nightmare.
Joachim
People don't write Manifestos any more -- what's going on in this world? [Frank Zappa]
On the other hand, "good enough" and FREE is a darned good deal.
Yeah, that's why warez is so popular. Meanwhile, Linux is not "good enough" because of numerous hardware and software incompatibilities.
And if you've worked MS systems long enough, you'll find "good enough" and never crashes PRICELESS.
If you've worked MS systems long enough, you'd realize it's easy to make a Windows installation stable. If you spend the amount of time learning to run Windows as you do learning to use Linux, you'll end up with a very stable and functional OS. "Windows in inherantly unstable" is as much FUD as "Linux is inherantly hard to use". In the hands of a competent user, Windows is just as stable as Linux. On the contrary, in the hands of an incompetent user, Linux is just as unstable as Windows.
If you blame Microsoft for idiots who forget to patch IIS, would you blame the kernel team for idiots who run unpatched services? Do you think Linux would survive unscathed if an army of AOLers began using it?
-z129
This may be slightly OT but the above brings up a great point. Documentation for desktop Linux sucks. I know I will get flamed for stating so but it does. IMHO that is the single biggest reason more people are not using it on their desktop.
I know people will start screaming RTFM! but that is my point, the "FM" consists of a shit load of HTML pages and "man" pages that you must sift through to find the smallest amount of information.
From a user's perspective, if they want to get their PC on a network, they want to turn to the page that steps them through getting their PC on a network. They do not want to waste time reading half a dozen How-To's explaining the theory behind TCP/IP.
Anyway, that is my opinion. Anyone that wants to help Linux become mainstream needs to spend just as much time documenting and they do coding.
I've worked at several places where all work grinds to a halt because everything is nfs mounted and there are network problems; problems I've never had with roaming profiles.
Grinding to a halt is probably the lesser of two evils. With the profile writeback caching algorithm if the server is unavailable at logout you loose all the modifications...
MICROSOFT A "MONOPOLY". If MS were a REAL Monopoly, this (the largo thing) wouldn't be happening. This proves that the MS trial is a mistake. IT's been demonstrated it is funded by MS competitors (SUN,ORACLA and AOL).
Plugger for quicktime. Looks like a workable pain in the neck. I'll wait for Macromedia to give it up and make a free project.
Windows Media? Why bother with what is sure to become a former "standard" in the ever shifting sands of MS file formats?
Vietnamese fonts. Try this then go here for more help. Good luck, it's hard for me to judge any of this. Still, I can only imagine that you will do better with Linux than any MS software.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
Usage is not a primary or secondary meaning of shibboleth. Motto or slogan would have been better. Timothy's pretention.
While Unix supports to switch Workstations much better, it has problems too: neither CDE (SUN) nor KDE (Linux) handle different screen sizes very well - the panel can be all over the place, sometimes well off the screen.
All those unemployed Microsoft VB programmers will have to learn useful skills and get real jobs.
Maybe we can set up "Open Source" reeducation camps where they can be properly indoctrinated with party^H^H^H^H GNU philosophy.
If you would have read the article you would have realized that the folks at Largo aren't putting computers on people's desktops. They currently have over 400 X terminal devices deployed. These devices have no moving parts, and boot off of the network. Basically you plug the bad boy in, and you are in business. Any idiot could do it.
With this arrangement there is precisely one machine to administer, the server.
Using dumb X terminals as clients is so much less labor intensive than putting PCs on people's desktops that it is almost ridiculous to compare them. There is no need to painfully construct a master PC image, and there is no need to purchase big piles of identical PC hardware, and there is certainly no need to install operating systems on client PCs. Add to that the fact that the Linux + X Windows set up costs a heck of a lot less to purchase in the first place and you start to see how brilliant the folks in Largo really are.
It's a fantastic development for consumers of software - obviously. It's a great challenge for software-creating businesses -- a sea change. But ultimately, like all changes to the business environment, this can be a great opportunity for the fleet of foot, as well as being disastrous for those who fail to adapt.
heh.. yes you sound like a troll.
And every person has their opinions. I am not a fan of KOffice. To me it hasn't reached what Star Office 5.2 can do, let alone what Open Office can do. Now that, my friend, a true troll.
This an excellent example of how Linux can get it's "foot in the door" for everyday office use. Most of us already know that using it is not really difficult, especially when dealing with a limited set of applications, though setting it up and administering it can be a little tough for the average user. Presenting office workers with a stable and predictable environment and allowing them to get comfortable with it is the best thing that can happen for the OSS movement and the central server/diskless workstation is clearly an efficient and economical way to do it. This applies to both the admin and the user side.
Let's face it. Fear is primarily based on lack of knowledge and unfamiliarity. As more companies (and government agencies, etc.) get their employees to understand that our beloved OS isn't really so scary after all, and installation becomes increasingly easier, home users will eventually migrate on their own. Why? Because that's what they use at work and they're comfortable with it.
Do we have a ways to go yet? We sure do. But the more oppressive M$ gets (and they are taking it to the limit with XP) the better chance we have of gaining ground. I applaud the "City of Progress", where I happened to spend my high school years. Go Largo!
I found going from Win 3.1 to Win 9x more difficult than Win 9x to Linux.
I think MS got its start by selling a tiny implementation of BASIC for the Altair...and I am right. MS got a huge boost by "I Built Micosoft" (IBM) when they launched their PC and MS was able to find a simple DOS for them from Seattle Computer Products. They most definately did not get their start in an office environment.
Well I think that says it all... Quake still isn't running correctly... thus the system is useless, right?
sorry, not possible :-) all printers are network and unused ports on pc's are diabled in BIOS and locked.
now If you put a laptop on the network and can get the domain to believe that it is trusted then yup you will get that users files.
you didn't mention the one way to get all those docs.....
PRINT THEM! DUH.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
<sarcasm> Oh, right. Let me guess: where you work, all the secretaries installed NT on their own, and as soon as those W2K boxes arrive, they're going to upgrade. </sarcasm>
If it ain't broke, you need more software.
"The next step, then, is to come up with a killer game that only runs on Linux but gets the same hype and marketing as a PS2 game or major PC game release."
Like Tux Racer?
Having been "enlightened" by so many polite /. ppl, all I really have left to say is "Nice article" and "Thank you."
:)
<p>I think Roblimo should now be a poll option
One thing that many of the people on these forums forget is how much of a special case we are. Your average office work is never permitted to install their own software. People have been arguing the case for thin clients for year because the average office user has no need to do their own installations and should be discouraged from doing so. I mean, we don't 'em wasting time with net Quake or anything. Not to mention ungodly mess a user administered machine can become. And, if you're running the type of place where people share work-stations like in a call center or clerk desk then you need to preserve uniformity from one session to the next so as not to confuse or completly derail the workers. Customizing the desktop is one thing, but installing any random app is a bad idea.
In that light why the hell should the place even expect the users to need to know stuff like that. ? In terms of apps being available the usual course is to go through IT management and request it. And, if you have a user who's knowledgeable enough to want a specific linux app by name, why not consider moving 'em into the tech department?
why were they BSA audited in the first place? if they're too fucking lazy to BUY shit, then they're the last people we need on "our" side. fuck that.
The only reason im posting this long after the article was posted is because I wanted to say how cool all formes of linux/unix are. As far office use Star Office is a great program. So I recommend that you try linux/unix and Star Office if you don't already have them.
flamedaemon666
It's reverse psychology.
Me: You'll probably mod me down for this but ...
Moderator: Oh yeah!? Here, take these mod points! I sure showed you, bitch!
The scary thing is, it seems to work. How many +3-5 comments do you read that begin with, "I'll probably get modded down for saying this ..." So I agree with you. If they're expecting it, or are asking for it, I wouldn't want to disappoint them.
Jason
"Why should companies continue paying premium prices for commodites? "
:)
What planet are you from? Premium prices? Haven't you noticed the stock massacre that has occured in the IT-industry (including software development)? What is NOT because the prices are to high my friend
A economy can never be built on giving everything away. That is not market economy, that is communism. Not the same thing.
Easily, my non-tech-savvy friends could get used to KDE and become comfortable in it, but I don't think they could set it up to be usable (nor do they care, and rightly so, they shouldn't have to). They could actually install easily--the Redhat install was exquisitley easy--but as far as installing programs, setting things up the way they like, etc., I don't think they could.
Then again, many people can't do the same with Windows (installing programs and configuring it to their liking).
I work at small company that has four pc's in the break for its employees, they are Dell pentium 200's with a spanish version of Mandrake 7.0, no problem I just change the configuration for english under kde. The Latino employees that have had no experience on a computer have no problem using Linux and kde, chatting on the internet and browsing. We also us Sun Microsystems Star Office 5.1 spanish or english. They use Linux in the sales office and throughout the company with about ten Linux machines and two win9x machines. I can log into any pc in the company and have my desktop and files. The people in the sales office use Star Office to trade spread sheets with a company called IBM. We have the best of both worlds and have been able to take advantage of the abilities of both operating systems.
Of course that's how it worked. In the story about the IBM PC 20th birthday, Mac people were falling all over themselves trying to explain how the PC won over the Mac. It's very simple, people could pirate more software from their offices. Their offices used the BUSINESS machine which was the IBM PC not the toy Mac used in schools. That's also why everyone bought a PC, so they could copy software from work. Don't believe me? Bullshit! That's the reason we bought a PC... we could get all the good software for free.
KDE is nothing more than a Win 9x clone.
:) They're your standard 98 desktop, with the start button window replaced with a little K or a little foot.
Well, Gnome's just as bad.
I mean, look at them.. They're hideous.
Which kind of sucks for those of us who are sick of nasty nasty horrible interfaces.
It's driven me back to using nothing but Blackbox. Ah, I think I've got the gnome libraries installed for running a few minor programs as well, but X is a sleek majestic non-bloated beast now. Well, maybe not, but I'm saving a good deal of performance by not using the Two Unholy Sources of XBloat.
Uhm, when you build a server, you don't use pricewatch.com to find your components. Also, you have no idea whether its a rackmount server or a standalone. It could be a 3U rackmount, or even a 1U rackmount... small components cost a bit more than a clunky ATX form factor. Go build a server or 200, then come back and troll.
Protector of Capitalist views,
Meorah
b) Inertia -- "this has always worked before, and I don't like change"
Businesses are about to suddenly be rudely awakened to the fact that even if they stick with a pure Microsoft platform, they are going to be forced to change anyway, because MS is not making any money off existing installed Windows, they need to keep on selling over and over and over to the same customers.... They've now adopted a trend in most upgrades to their products that tie it to a forced upgrade of another as well. MS shops might think you only need to upgrade an application, but you'll end up have to upgrade the client operating systems, the server operating systems, and then re-buy all their CALs (client access licenses) too. Case in point: Suppose you're an MS Exchange shop and you've been running 5.0 for a few years because the bean counters said you have to get 5-7 years out of the expensive email system you bought only just a few years ago. The current product is Exchange 2000, but it will only run on Windows 2000 Server, not NT4, which is your shop's core NOS. So that means you have to upgrade (1) your server O/S PLUS (2) your Exchange server software PLUS (3) all your Exchange CALs PLUS (4) all your NT4 CALs upgrade to W2K Server CALs PLUS (5) if you want to use the new kerb-based authentication you have to upgrade the workstation O/S as well... in essence you have to repurchase your entire NOS infrastructure software just to upgrade your email software!!!. Talk about tying products together.....and you may ask,"If the Exch 5.0 system is still working fine and doing the job you need, why upgrade?", well if you want antivirus protection in the MS Exchange system (and nowadays, that is an *absolute MUST-HAVE*), you'll find that the main antivirus vendors have announced end-of-life of their support for Exch 5.0 Server already, with plans real soon now to end-of-life their support for 5.5 already announced. This is premature forced obsolescence of existing products , and is not only being done my MS, but others as well. All these corporate MS installations are going to have to change one way or another, and with the threat of BSA audits crammed down their throats, you'd be surprised just how many CIOs have had enough of feeding the perpetually hungry MS marketing monster. Once apon a time not too long ago, you used to be able to get 5-10 years of service life out of an expensive IT infrastructure investment. Nowadays, you're being forced to buy it all over again every 18-24 months and even the bean counters all over corporate America who were the biggest fans of MS software are sick of it too, especially now that the economy has taken a downturn. Linux and free open source stuff is much more appearing to them, especially since they've also learned the hard way that "vendor-supported turnkey apps" are a farce, that they can no longer get adequate support from the vendors they bought the stuff from a couple years ago... if those vendors are even still in business anymore. It is once again making sense to keep some development staff in house, since you don't have to worry so much that Programmer Joe that works for you will write a mission critical app, then bail out and leave you in a heartbeat to take another job at some dot-com outfit. Management knows that IT jobs are getting harder to find and they are once again willing to trust they'll be able to retain adequate in-house programming staff. That's what I've seen unfold in this business over the past 10-12 months anyway.
Anyway, even if the display/keyboard wear out, the thin client (less display/keyboard) has a better lifespan than the PC (less display/keybaord). But I agree that it's a moot point.
This is hilarious. You really think that even a novice user would /never/ try to do anything more? You think that they would /never/ start exploring their system? You're absolutely right that someone could probably pick up linux instantly if all they ever wanted to do was use mozilla. They could probably figure out to double click the little icon, but 99% of people eventually start to do more with their computer (do their taxes, import digital pics, rip mp3s or god forbid that they have to upgrade a browser or other program.) People always grow beyond what they know. My 55 year old parents even started exploring the contents of their system folder on their Mac after getting familiar with it, adding some new fonts, changing some preferences etc. Linux makes this incredibly hard to do and quite easy to screw up.
As for this story, the computers probably work out pretty well, I'm sure they had someone come in and show them how to use what they needed to get their job done and told them not to screw with anything else. This doesn't prove that linux is easy to use. Any system would be easy to use once you've been shown how to complete your tasks step-by-step. The question is, would they be able to start with what they know now and expand their familiarity over the system without much trouble? That's what makes an operating system easy to use.
If linux really /was/ so easy to use, why would companies base their business models on giving away the operating system and charging solely for tech support ? ;>
KDE was likely the most crusial choice. Even moreso than Linux. For the stuf office workers do all day KDE is realy the best Unix based solution (Not counting MAc OS X which I havn't seen myself but have herd good things about).
I am all for being nice to "the other side" on these things but what I see is people strugling to use Gnome for ideological reasons and other people getting work done with KDE for financial reasons.
You know Finacial reasons like "Less money spent on Asperin", "fewer monitors shot at" and best of all you can fix the problems that do come up for less than it costs to fix the stuff you pay a grand more per seat for.
--= Isn't it surprising how badly I spell ?
I think this email proves my point. A windows idiot who can plug in network cables, but has no clue how to setup the hardware when something goes wrong.
The 18 GB for KDE makes a lot of sense. I'll agree that a 3 year lifespan isn't aggressive for PCs, but your people don't need the power of a PC. Thin clients are are the right solution for your place. I think the idea of a ten year duty cycle on the thin clients is laughable. The screens and keyboards won't last that long. PCs don't cost $2000 any more, and they have warranties to replace failed hardware, just like the thin clients do. This is all a moot point, because the real advantage of the thin clients is being able to configure and do software upgrades from a central location. This alone could result in $300000 in savings. You don't have to convince me of the benefits of thin clients, I once did PC support in a place that had 1200 users. I love the idea of thin clients.
I have almost no experience with Windows Terminal Server. The cost of running Exchange still sounds high to me, but I'm too far out of my limited area of expertise to know. It sounds like you've designed an exelent network that meets your users needs well. Thanks for taking the time to respond to my post.
This is what happened at the last place I worked at (an IP Law firm). They wanted robustness in their Servers so I implemented both a Linux firewall and a Samba Server for home directories. WELLL! they didn't like that since if I got hit by the proverbial bus they felt they wouldn't be able to find someone qualified (course this is Ottawa where the two biggest employers are the government and High-tech) so I had to rip them out and implement boxes running NT 4 and Proxy.
The ironic thing is that before I left they were way over the amount of licensed workstations/servers they should have had and this place does intelectual law!! Sooner or later I am going to snitch on them to CAAST (www.caast.ca) just need a job first.
No I'm not bitter ;)
what that does is install a specific instance of windows on a particular client, but keeps the disk storage remote. This can be a big improvement, but it requires that all the clients be identical (impossible to maintain over time) or that each worker sit at the same desktop (which defeats one of the main benefits). It also keeps the support work at the client end which undermines the main benefit that Largo was enjoying.
No, Microsoft's OSes really are quite limited in the network world. X-Windows was designed for networking and handles this stuff without a sweat.
The rest of your post was pretty incoherent, I think I'll just let it mean whatever you meant it to mean... or something.
Oh well, guess I needed some sleep.
I'm just ranting about the CD swapping needed to install some RPMs in multi CD distros. Usually I make rpm -ivh £$%, note down the unresolved deps swap CD, install etc... It would be soo much easier if rpm had a clue on which CD contains which RPM... something like the BSD ports tree
As far as installshields is concerned isn't it so that windblows installers haul over all the shared libs a prog needs even if they are already present on the system to be installed? (thus growing the packege beyond insane sizes!)
Mi domando chi à il mandante di tutte le cazzate che faccio - Altan
"This is the kind of thing every elected official should have politely waved in his or her face by concerned taxpayers"
/. geek, but why should we expect any reasonably large government office to be swayed by this? If this were for servers, sure. The admins should have the experience to make a transition pretty smooth. But offices?
Huh? Why? I love Linux as much as the next
I've worked in government offices, I've seen these people first hand. They aren't the most computer-literate bunch, and they are doing well to navigate Windows. Not to say that they couldn't navigate KDE or Gnome, but why spend the time and money to teach them?
Bottom line (and it always comes back to the bottom line) is that it would cost too much to make the transition.
delete this please, was in response to the nazi post you deleted.
You can argue, however, the saved downtime Linux gives makes it an "easier" server environment, since it causes the average admin far fewer headaches. But that's not what this article is about... Actually it is... (a lot about that).
Far be it from me to want to support anything linuxy [ducks], but the best way to do corporate desktop builds is through ghost, or some derivative there of, with a script to tidy up afterwards. MS provides sysprep, and I would be absolutely ASTOUNDED if you couldn't write a linux build disk that connects to a server, downloads and extracts an image, and then runs a batch file to configure it, all without human intervention at all.
Not Meta-modding due to apathy.
Even though you admit its flamebait I still have to bite.
If you can change their views and switch them over to Linux, then and only then can you claim some sort of victory.
I thought the point of articles like this were to show those people that it can be done. In order reach that point other companies have to show they can do it first.
The alternatives for 400 full windows machines is to have Terminal Services clients on all the desktops.
Or to do what it sounds like they did and buy straight NCDs which have just enough smarts to connect up to the Terminal Server. No magic, no having to set up with a base-OS first in order to install the thin client; all your administration remains at the server. You don't require a workstation running Windows 9x to host the thin client software; you can get a diskless workstation if you want.
There are a dozen of ways to try to accomplish it. This just happens to be one way that works well.
Agreed. And cheaper than a comparable Windows solution, from the sounds of it (although, from the article, and as an earlier poster pointed out, it sounds like there's no redundancy on the server). But the comments about supporting hundreds of Windows workstations is misleading, even if only implicitly; it doesn't have to be done that way, but rather can be done in a similar way to the Linux implementation described. You'll require much more hardware for the Windows solution, and more expense in terms of software, and maybe more support staff -- but those support staff will be required to support the servers, not Windows clients on the user's desktop. That's my point!
I'm a sysadmin in a pretty much Windows only shop and I can tell you that I'd love to introduce my users to Linux but in our environment, the fact is that we use way too many custom apps built around Windows. Sure, these could be ported but not all at once.
None of Wine, Vmware, Win4Lin, possibly dosemu (if they are really old) will handle them?
This is exactly what I needed -- a Slashdotting so that I can finally try to optimize the dot server to handle it. (no joke) :-)
Cheers,
-N.
Wow.
Windows systems can be and are regularly used, totally unsupported, by novices. They add and remove programs and occasionally add stuff like printers and it's not a significant problem.
GNU/Linux systems do not yet, from what I see and hear, provide this degree of ease of use. This means that they are not considered sufficiently easy to use as they cannot be considered for unsupported novice use.
Office workers are supported, so this issue goes away - but they're not a fair test as the problem area (which is very relevant indeed for home users) is simply bypassed for them.
Why is this seen as a complicated or strange concept?
Greg
(Inside a nuclear plant)
Aaaarrrggh! Run! The canary has mutated!
...apparently VERY few people can configure Windows so it is secure.
Among these are Hotmail, Expedia, and Microsoft's own software security group.
Remember guys, this is Amerika. Just because you have the most votes, doesn't mean you get to win.--Fox Mulder
a) That only happens if you are an idiot and store everything on your desktop instead of an appropriate place.
b) I've worked at several places where all work grinds to a halt because everything is nfs mounted and there are network problems; problems I've never had with roaming profiles.
How is an nfs mounted home directory any different from a windows share that gets mounted with the user logs in? That's what we do at my current company.
since i am fighting behind enemy's line here in Redmond, i can tell you that city of Medina where Billg's mega house is uses Linux system, and the major local newspaper in Bellevue/Redmond area uses Linux, too. Please cheer me up with all Linux news...
Sure if the machine only has one user... Don't get me wrong, I like VNC but it's got nothing to do with this article.
What hardware? Damned near anything. I have more problems selecting hardware for Windows boxes, as Windows boxes are pretty much only good for gaming, and still, most Windows games come with strings attached in terms of hardware. ;P
Software? It's on CD. I pop it in, select workstation, and poof. Jumpin jeebus on a pogo stick.
Open GL? Why the hell would I need Open GL?
Why did it take you 15 minutes to find the PPP dialer? What kind of shitty distribution are you using?
Network where hard drives are shared? Oh, please, what newbies do *THIS*?! They ain't newbies if they can, on any operating system.
Put things in the menu? RTFM, though it's usually been my experience that you need to sacrifice three goats and carry out the ancient ritual of "Dragon Drop" or some such. I dunno what it is, but it sounds messy, like a dragon crushing a small medieval village while crapping and flying by simultaneously. You think bird crap on a car is nasty..
Bah. I'm actually disgusted with modern Linux distributions. RedHat 7.1 makes it so even someone's pet rock can have a working install up and running in minutes.
For the love of god, I didn't have to go digging through any configuration files!
WHAT KIND OF WORLD IS THAT?!
Recompiling a kernel is unnecessary for desktop users. The default kernel comes with most drivers they'd need in low overhead modular form and if you don't like it, run `up2date' (KMenu -> System -> Update) and install any new ones (yes, up to date can now do kernel upgrades).
Linux printing Pantone colours to that Winprinter over there
WinPrinter? The one which breaks down every five days under Windows? Here's an idea: rather than using a hundred dollar desktop printer designed for a single user who doesn't print often, lets act like very other business in the world and use large reliable laser printers (invariably HP Laserjet models). I've never found one which doesn't work under Linux.
Oh...and don't forget those TPC coversheets!
If I knew what these were (Transaction Processing Council?) I'd respond.
When you've figured out how to make Linux print as well as Windows, go print yourself out a dozen copies.
Use a business printer rather a home one. But if its an emergency, add a printser shared from a Windows PC to your Linux box via printconf.
My point is this: We can write all the pro-Linux articles we want on all the pro-Linux websites we want, and it's not going to do a DAMN bit of good because the information is not getting out to the ...people who need it. You wanna rant and rave about how great Linux is because it saves time and money? Great. Go out there into the real world and try selling that to a company who relies on NT for their technology.
If you can change their views and switch them over to Linux, then and only then can you claim some sort of victory.
While I easily coulda modded this down, I read it a second time (I always wait 'til after cup of jo#2 to moderate). In some ways I agree with your basic premise: Raving about Linux here won't convince those who don't use Linux to try it.
However, this site is also read by IT people who are not necessarily charged with running Linux networks. I for one work for a company that is tied heavily to M$ products, but often wonder if at some point using Linux on the desktop will be practical. I tried it a couple years ago, but unfortunately, in order to earn a living, I have to have Visual C++/Basic (ugh!!) installed on my system at home as well as at work -- unless I don't ever want to work at home.
What is comforting to see is that some day we may have an install base of Linux desktops large enough that some of us may be able to earn a living writing software for Linux, and I can begin installing it not only on my webservers but also on my desktop.
So this may not change the minds of the complete un-believer, but show me any argument that has ever succeeded in convincing a true non-believer in anything. I'm guessing that for those of us who believe in Open Source, but can't work with it day in and day out due to needing to feed ourselves, this will be confidence inspiring at least...
-- If at first you do succeed, try to hide your astonishment. -- Harry F. Banks
Linux is easier to install than Windows, but most people who run Windows get it preinstalled on a new machine. That's what MS wants, too. They don't want people buying machines and Windows separately, because they believe that people would steal from them.
Modern Linux systems are very nice, and in an office environment where document exchange with the rest of the world isn't important, where lots of people have the same configuration, etc., it will work well.
But Windows is easy to use as well, the people you hire will already know how to use it, people use it at home, your customers and suppliers use it, and so on.
People don't buy Windows just because they're stupid. They have their reasons. Just saying, "Oh, all of these people are wrong," doesn't get you anywhere. You have to evaluate the gap realisticaly, and work on closing it.
MS does this -- they saw the reliability of Linux and Unix as a threat, and they worked on closing the gap. It's not gone, but it's a lot narrower than it used to be.
"That's like saying the deployment of the cotton gin cost jobs. "
What you describe is jobs replaced by other jobs. When the products are given away jobs really disappear.
It's not at all about "protect programmers' jobs". It's about people getting paid just like everybody else.
"That leads to the most efficient utilization of resources in that economy"
We aren't talking about a working economy here, we are talking about giving things away.
Is it that you don't know Citrix MetaFrame exists or are unwilling to accept that it works?
If Citrix's website was up right now, I'd point you to a demo page where you could run a remote desktop over the web. Wow, intrestingly enough, the site just back up (or maybe it was my connection). The demo login is here. The UNIX/Linux client download page is here.
Freudian slip #3857
For WinNT 4 you could use software from Citrix that allowed for thin clients. With Win2000 and beyond that functionality is incorporated, as long as your thin client is running a minimal win32 setup. With Citrix, which had support from Microsoft you can run it on all Win3.x and up, DOS, Mac, and *nix. Not a dream, a reality in the Windows world.
I/O, I/O, its off to disk I go, with a read and a write, and a bit and a byte, I/O, I/O, I/O, I/O
Sean.
Guess why im running slackware now?
In fact, I wanted it to not boot the gui cause the gui was so damned bad.
I diss windows with the rest of them, and i hvae good reason.
In Soviet Russia you dant have to put up with these crappy jokes
And I don't think that the rest of the articles make for a mutual admiration society. I can use information like this when I discuss things like licensing terms, alternative solutions to problems with my co-workers. These are pertinent stories that can be used to advocate linux.
I don't want knowledge. I want certainty. - Law, David Bowie
Yes, linux is an excellent operating system, yes linux has it's purpose, but linux is NOT easy to use (compared to windows). Why would one come to this conclusion? I do not reach it because I myself personally find windows easier to use... But because industries do. Windows is obviously expensive per liscence to physically put onto a computer whereas with linux it is 'free'. Where are the savings? I would imagine they are in ease of use (productivity) and in support. If linux were easy to use, wouldn't it follow that companies would RUSH to switch to linux, given the massive savings? It should.
Did you know your cat is drilling behind your sofa?
windows machines have the same problem.
It's a matter of proper monitor adjustment.
Spoken like a true idiot - especially one with no capacity to learn.
IQ of 85.
I just installed Win2k and Redhat 7.2. Both bootable cdroms, both on mix match newish machines:
From first POST to "installed":
Linux: 35 min
Win2k: 45 min
Time to get drivers up to speed.
Linux: 0 min (had all my stuff)
Win2k: 25 min (nvidia, creative)
Time to get Quake3 running
Linux: 5 hours (still doesn't work right)
Win2k: 10 min
Time to get my RAID ATA-100 card working
Linux: 0 (it doesn't work)
Win2k: did it at boot, only took 2 min
-Jon
this is my sig.
Therefore, you must figure out how to _start_ with what's free, then add your value on top of that. Everyone ends up winning. You've become more productive (i.e. you deliver products of higher value). The customer gets more bang for their buck. The economy triumphs (as it can't help doing, as along as everyone attempts to maximize their bang-for-the-buck, and some outside force doesn't stop them).
Yes, KOffice has import filters for MS binary document formats. They're not perfect, but that's what happens when you have to reverse-engineer a proprietary protocol.
My point is to dismiss some very valid complaints as FUD, is ignoring the problems that do exist. Most criticism of linux should be taken as constructive. We can correct the problems that exist by identifing them, and addressing them. I think several distros have done that in the install process.
Sure, Email, Word Processing work just fine, but can't they be better? Can't they be a lot easier to use? Can't the word processors have better on-screen rendering of fonts out of the box? Can't all these tools have tighter integration with each other? Yes they can. 'Good Enough' never is.
Do we want to strive to have a product that is acceptable, or a product that is superior?
Beyond that, people need to be able to screw with it for fun. People who have computers at home, and play with them, in my experience, tend to be more productive with them at work. UI and Software installation problems can be addressed and correct these problems. Installing Mozilla on Linux isn't like installing it on Windows, but it should be, because there's no reason it can't.
First of all, let me say that I am pleased to see Linux being used in an "end user" environment where the common computer user will be exposed to it. However, there seems to be some confusion in some of the posts with regard to this article. Primarily the fact that some see this as an example as how to transition from Windows to Linux. It must be noted that previously the city of Largo was running *nix systems, SCO OpenServer in this case. Obviously, the transition from one *nix to another is going to be more similiar than a corresponding transition from Windows to Linux.
Secondly, as an avid computer geek, and a user of both Linux and Windows, I must say that (without regard to the cool "tech factor") Windows is much more user friendly. For my own purposes, I use Linux as my primary programming system, however most daily tasks (web browsing, e-mail, document writing, etc.) is done in Windows. Many replies here seem to state this as a good way to transition people from Windows to Linux by getting them familiar with Linux. The general theme seems to be "show people that Linux is not the hard-to-use, command-line-interface operating system." The article by itself is, however, a testament to this not being the case. A central server is used where all programs are stored and admistration is done by experienced professionals. The user never learns how to install programs, fix basic problems, etc. If a user of such a system were to buy a computer with Linux preinstalled because "I use it at the office," any good will exhibited by the user toward the Linux experience will be sorely lost the minute the user in question tries to install OpenOffice themselves, much less install the lastest ALSA drivers to get their new audio card working. Issues like these are fine when a system administrator is dealing with them, but present an entirely new issue when the end user is dealing with it. These are the types of issues that need to be addressed on the home desktop front if Linux is going to gain the widespread acceptance that it deserves.
Jared Hanson
Helixent Technologies
http://www.helixent.com/
-- Fighting mediocrity one bad post at a time.
Another big (HUGE) drain... Internet Explorer. The default location for the cache on several versions of IE is in the user profile! If you have a big hard drive, that could be 60mb, maybe even 2 or three times that. All uploaded to the server every time you log out, and downloaded every time you log in.
This is more a failure of a design. Since a network workstation does not need a per user web cache. Indeed most of the time the only kind of web cache a workstation really needs is a volatile one anyway.
If you have a high-paid IT person, and that equates to a more reliable network/computer for your users then you have probably saved money, or, better yet, allowed the company to make -MORE- money.
People waiting for their computer to be fixed are not very productive.
EIther because they cannot work, or they cannot work in their usual fashion. (Even if they can do their job without the computer you have completely disrupted their usual method of working. Productivity will drop considerably in most cases).
They were refering to a complete system failure, not just a program crash.
~LoudMusic
No sig for you. YOU GET NO SIG!
Please... If you have a problem figuring out the subtle differences between Windows 98/ME and Windows 2000, as a computer enthusiast, then I think Linux is doomed for sure. I think Windows is easy, as it is meant to be. It comes at a steep price, however. Nobody can argue that Linux is in any way easier for a typical user than Windows. Can you buy at Best Buy, throw it in the drive, and click Setup on the auto-run menu? You can argue, however, the saved downtime Linux gives makes it an "easier" server environment, since it causes the average admin far fewer headaches. But that's not what this article is about...
you don't have to install the latest kernel and packages if you don't need the features/fixes contained in them. You're better off to stick with the stable kernel contained in your distro, and then upgrade if you really need features or fixes in a newer version. For most people, the stock kernel will be fine.
The NT network here at work could be SO much nicer if they would change it out. Running NT is a BAD idea in terms of support. Not a week goes by that someone does not curse their crashing computer on my floor.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
Actually, the thing you have to remember is that the most often toasted parts of a computer are the power supply and hard drives. If they didn't hardware-raid their hard drives, well, they were dumb. However, they did mention that the computer had a dual-hotswap power supply, so that's not an issue (those things ROCK). As for motherboard and memory, It would be best to have backups, but those only go out every few years, so having active redundant pieces would be wasteful. I've looked into clustering for several applications, and found that it is usually better just to have a big, redundant server, with some spare hardware sitting on the side than to try the failover stuff.
Engineering and the Ultimate
Office working won't kill Linux - just like the fact that Linux is a great server OS doesn't make it a bad desktop OS. One of the big advantages of Linux is its flexibility - it can do everything well, from an embedded OS to an enterprise server running on a mainframe. In fact, getting Linux onto office desktops will help Linux on home desktops - after all, it'll make non-techs (office workers) see that Linux is not "that cryptic command-line OS for experts only".
This message is provided under the terms outlined at http://www.bero.org/terms.html
Second paragraph, quoting one of the admin assistants:
"...but I like to do it this way on my computer."
'nuff said!
Co-founder and designer at Music Nearby: http://musicnearby.com
I agree with most everything you said. Using Linux is harder than using Windows, and I still don't recommend it to anyone except people who don't mind experimenting and taking a walk on the technical side.
But even though it makes my life a little more complicated (e.g., having to sometimes compile apps, or download dependencies), I still use it out of the very principle you espoused: Windows needs some competition.
To be sure, as much as things have improved, you still have to be a bit of a technical pioneer to want to use Linux, but if nobody takes the first steps and becomes the pioneering early adopters, there will never an alternative to Windows.
Windows may not be ready for the average home desktop yet, but as this article proves, in a corporate environment where there is a support staff to deal with the technical issues, it is possible to use successfully. Yes, at this point in time, in some ways, e.g., applications, it is still more challenging than deploying Windows, but I applaud those companies who are poineering enough to give it a go and make it work. If everybody just takes the easy way out (perhaps even against their principles), we will never see any meaningful competition.
As far as software freedom gos, I personally don't have any problem paying a reasonable price for software, and I think most members of the silent majority don't either; however, commercial competitors to MS have had a difficult time competing. Making software free (either as in beer or speech) removes one of the barriers to get people to use your software. I feel that if Linux had not been free from the get-go, it would never have become as successful as it has -- it's freeness means that is is eclectic, it is not owned by any one entity. At this point in time, this seems to be the only way to even have a chance of competing against MS.
The other thing I disagree with is the Linux user issue. Sure, there are a small minority of users who have an attitude and flame newbies in forums, and certainly this probably causes some newbies to switch back, but by far most of the Linux users I know barely have time in their lives to read slashdot let alone post here, and they are all polite to new users. I believe that there is a vocal minority that does this, and the vast majority of people trying to get Linux ready for prime time (IBM, Sun, HP, Compaq, Linux distro companies, etc., etc.) are well meaning, polite, and helpful.
What the article didn't tell you was that all the money Dave and Mike saved the taxpayers by using Linux, went into Dave and Mike's wallets.....God bless America.
"Excuses are like asses, everyone has one and they all stink." - Adam Corrola
actually my first PC came with MSDOS 2.0
i downloaded win3.11 some years later from a pirate BBS. but i hated it. i continued using DOS until 95 came out.
Remember,
This was Hell !!
Nothing the same place, restricted acces, obfucate command limitations...
But we coped with it, adapted, learned (the SLOOOWWWWW way 8) and now this godda'm OS is everywhere.
All you need is a couple Perverse IT engineer...
And a Smaallll Budget, so you HAVE to use a free OS.
Also, a limited version of Linux could do it.
It IS to complicated to choose between 1874 different tools all doing the same thing but using KDE / Gnome / enlght / PutYourFavHere / Bash
LEt's Simplify.
Why not have a 2 level OS.
Not A La Windows, where everybody has the same leve (GUI) but one specific and SIMPLE GUI and a text console as hard and complete as you may whish ?
I have a collegue working for a corporate ISP who use this and run all of their desktops as thin clients under linux (slackware) and win terminal server and it seems to work very well - its not a 100% solution but its stable (they still use MS Office). We looked at this for our environment but decided that with 1500 users its a dog with new flea -, requiring increased bandwidth and server usage and more support on the back end (and more knowledgeable thus more expensive staff in this case - and its hard to quantify skillsets) - but its a step in the right direction.
But unforunately it's not Linux for the corporate desktop, something i am always chasing. What corporates want and need is a Linux distro that is easy to set up, easy for users to cope with, does everything their windows box does and with software that can save in the same formats, ie word, excel (so they can still communicate with the outside world) and which is secure and user friendly as well.
I have looked at a couple of solutions and some of the distros (Red Hat, Corel) are almost there but the back end software isn't there and besided here and many things dependent of the next kernal release etc etc, this may be good for a home machine or a Terminal server implementation but its no good for over 1000 desktop machines.
Stability, Ease of Use, Ease of Rollout and Cheaper support costs - thats what we want, Linux is Stable - (im not talking uptime as this is NOT relevant for a corporate desktop) but not easy to use for beginners, isnt easy to rollout and IMHO the support costs increase even thought its free as the ratio of support staff drops - (i think i read something about it bein 1 support person to 10 staff rather than 1 to 20 for Win)
That said i watch with bated breath praying for the day i can move to a new OS for my corporate desktops and get rid of the MS attitude - i dont hate their products i hate their arrogance.
I refuse to argue with Anonymous Cowards - if you want a discussion get an account....
While at it, we might ban non-professional fishing too. That's what those egoistic bastards who can't think from the fishing industry point of view deserve!
Oh my! :)
.. you never bothered to defend the real victims of the 'dumb as a post' colloqualism - the posts!
.. it's nice to know that KDE has made a dent, and that a substantial number of non-computer-experts like KDE! Cause when it came to knowing the actual impressions of KDE from a dumb-as-a-post non-computer-expert, I was dumb as a post! And it's nice to know the feedback seems to be positive .. this will help other dumb-as-post people learn and hear about KDE in a positive context.
Okay, so here it is. I make salary programming. I'm a programmer. I also write electronic music, and know the underground breaks/jazz scene fairly well. I can only assume you're dumb as a post in this area. I am dumb as a post when it comes to the heavy metal scene.
When it comes to my health, I'm dumb as a post.
When it comes to my legal rights, I'm dumb as a post.
When it comes to fixing my car, I'm dumb as a post.
When it comes to investing, I'm dumb as a post.
When any of the experts of these subjects calls me dumb as a post, I thank them for their knowledge and expertise.
Don't get so wrapped up in the semantics. I only meant to say that these users, when it comes to computers, are DUMB AS POSTS. There's nothing wrong with that, as we're all dumb as posts in some respects.
Dumb as a post wasn't meant to demean or otherwise insult these users; and I certainly don't expect them to be reading this, thus you can't claim I'm tarnishing the image. I only meant to say that when it comes to HR, I'm dumb as a post, and when it comes to an HR person knowing computers, they are dumb as posts. Lighten up and concentrate on the point, not the semantics. If we were always tip-toeing around our words and image, we'd never actually solve the problems that exist.
And hey
Incidentally, I'm not lambasting the peasants here - quite the opposite. I understand that these users don't have the time, interest, or level of knowledge required to properly assess OS and desktop alternatives. That was my point
SirSlud
"Old man yells at systemd"
I have yet to find a good voice mail system for linux and have kept all my voice mail functions on a windows system.
This sounds like a job for Asterisk PBX. A very cool Linux, software based PBX. A local (to me) Linux company has developed/is developing this. I've been at some demonstrations for it and it works great as a PBX. Check it out. I wouldn't be suprised if it would work for your voice mail system.
Well, not completely... in the windows world you can always use roaming profiles and save your crap to a share on a file server.
Problem is that these can easily end up huge. So logging in and out takes a long time. Let alone that logging in on more than one workstation can make a complete "dogs dinner" of the whole thing.
The really daft bit is that Windows could actually work with most (if not all) of the stuff simply staying on the server in the first place...
This story is nothing but mental Linux masturbation. It's an article posted on a Linux oriented website (dot.kde.org), linked to on an admittedly pro-Linux weblog, and being discussed by a group of pro-Linux computer users.
Your post is totally on topic. That's what I love about slashdot, the official blurb didn't mention the potential bias, so you did. The same thing happens with usefull links here too.
Hopefully a (linux) independant news site/paper will pick this up and confirm the numbers and get new quotes, stats, budget figures, and new interview material.
Such an article could be very powerfull once coaberated. Our government agencies occationally need a kick in the butt to resist slothy/financially stupid behavior.
Novel theory: Modern Man evolved from psychopath
We all know that the truth is, linux is hard to use for novices, and a good portion of linux users are not inclined to help newbies out. Read a few usenet posts to see this. "Linux is tough to use" is not FUD, it's the ugly truth.
... with xmms she can now listen to hours of music without changing CDs, and some of the other toys in her KDE menu she enjoys playing around with, but in truth her desires were relatively simple.
... not that any rational human being could blame her.
This simply isn't true, and my mother is a perfect case in point. Not terribly computer literate and with no desire to be, she simply wants her email, her web browser, and her word processor. Oh, she was delighted by the Bach, Beethove, and Mozart ogg's I ripped from her CD collection and made available on her hard drive
I bought her a $50 copy of applixware so she could read and write word documents, and guess what? She prefers her GNU/Linux box over her windows box at work by orders of magnitude. In fact, she has become much more zealous in advocating GNU/Linux and disparaging Windows than I ever was. Why? Because she, as a user, has found GNU/Linux to be much easier to use, much more stable, and much faster than her old windows install (to which she has never returned and which now provides additional storage for her burgeoning ogg-vorbis collection as she, herself, rips her own CDs using grip). Indeed, her discovery that it wasn't her, or her "stupidity" that was the root of nearly all of her computer mishaps, but the underlying instability of the operating system itself, has made her positively scathing when speaking of Microsoft. I guess she took Microsoft blaming the shortcomings of their products on her, and the denigration of making her feel stupid in the process, a little personally
GNU/Linux is as easy, if not easier, to use than any version of Windows out there, and as others have pointed out, many GNU/Linux distributions are easier than Windows to set up and install as well.
Yes GNU/Linux is different, and yes, users must be willing to take an hour or two to learn those differences (ie "something new"), but new isn't the same as "difficult" or "tough to use." I spent an hour with my mother showing her the basics of navigating the KDE desktop and the differences between it and Windows, as well as the differences between Applix and MS Office. Again, this wasn't because GNU/Linux is "tough to use," this merely because it was a little different, and therefor new to her. Indeed, according to my mother, Linux is actually easier than Windows to use, so yes, saying GNU/Linux is "tough to use" is FUD in no uncertain terms. Saying "we all know it is tough to use" is adds a whole new level of dishonesty to the discussion, indeed it could be said that such as claim is FUD to the second power.
Now my mom's non-computer savvy friends are bugging me to come and set them up with GNU/Linux as well, so it looks like Microsoft's worst nightmare is in fact slowly coming true: regular, non-savvy Microsoft users are defecting to GNU/Linux in increasing numbers despite all the FUD Microsoft and its shills can possibly muster. Sometimes justice can be poetic.
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
You could run rdesktop. 8)
I've opened a few .xls documents in KSpread and they opened correctly (albeit slowly and not exactly going easy on the RAM)...
YMMV
And no one gave a crap when we formed in 1995. We are Out of Business now, but we were 100% Linux (a couple of freeBSD servers too) until Oct 2000. :)
My MOTHER uses Linux (Corel) and was happy that she can leave it running for days and no glitches.
My fiance uses Linux (she prefers mandrake) and i have now set her up with a Diskless PC using our network. She had ZERO problems, she is not a computer geek (she's a writer). Our secretaries were told "The icon for yuor browser is here, the icon for the word processor is here", and this was when Linux was still raw! I have been preaching the joy of Linux for years, but I'm talking to deaf ears. The company I work for now was a 100% M$ house..I secretly changed over all the servers to Linux. People were saying how fast the file server was..it shows up in Net Neighborhood SOO fast! Well, this did cause a big problem with management (and the NT admin) because what I did, made their decisions "wrong", and it became a pissing contest. They didnt care that the network is more reliable and i was able to RETURN 5 servers because they were no longer needed. I hurt some egos, so now I am on "indefinite" leave...oh well, The new company I will be working for WANTS a Linux network..maybe i can secretly switch over the user pcs too
If you're not a Liberal in your 20's, then you have no heart.If you're still a Liberal in your 30's you have no brain.
The other problem I always had when I had a roaming profile is that you have to have the same perfectly vanilla application install everywhere. As soon as you start installing, say, Visual Studio, if it isn't on everyone's desk, roaming profiles are basically worthless
.ADM or .REG file.
The other variation of this is where you get programs which fall over if certain registry keys in the per user section of registry arn't there.
It must have been just too hard for the programmer to use IF...THEN...ELSE when reading paramaters. Or even providing sufficent documentation for a sysadmin to put together a
Going into your local Best Buy, you will find a copy of Mandrake 7.2 or Mandrake 8.0. Both of these Linux Distros can be put into the drive of a Windows running machine. You can then proceed to install Lin4Win. This is a virtual ext2fs in a large file on a Fat32 partition.
This will allow you to install Linux using a Windows splash screen. The Mandrake install is also very easy to follow. While this does run slower than being on a native ext2fs or Reiserfs partition, it is an excellent introduction to the Linux operating system.
--
.sig seperator
--
If you ignore the other uses of a tool, does that make the tool less useful, or you less useful?
One of our departments is seriously considering dropping most if not all Microsoft software if the WindowsXP licensing scheme stays as outrageous as it now seems to be.
Me and the network administrator (a grizzly old guard unix guy) are pushing for a *nix solution whereas the MSCEs are against it probably because they're afraid they're gonna lose their jobs if we dump Microsoft.
I've got two questions:
a) How to separate a good *nix administrator from a hack'n'slash I've-been-using-Linux-for-3-months-and-I-am-a-pro amateur?
b) Are people with MSCEs in general familiar with other systems as well (our's aren't)?
Biased. Plain and simple.
Granted, Windows is far easier to use than linux. That I will not argue with. Windows is not easy to use. Macs are easy to use. Windows boxen are ubiquitous. They are how the majority of computer users are introduced to computers, and that is a shame. Therefore they are the standard that all computers are compared against.
As for the fact that putting out a linux distro is expensive. Bull crap. Put out something popular on a slow link. If it's popular enough, it will be mirrored. At no cost to you. There are both Apache modules and FTP servers that allow you to specify bandwidth limits. I use both. It costs far less to put up an FTP server and host an ISO image than printing, labeling and distributing CDs.
The moderator that declared your post "Funny" had it right. You make some valid points (Microsoft is finally making some headway in the stability department) but declaring them "best" because they are the biggest is just plain foolish.
I use MS products at work, cause I have to, at home cause the game support isn't there yet for Linux, and never has been for Mac. But neither of these windows boxen are mission critical, or "on the internet" (i.e. each hides behind a firewall).
Each OS has it's strong points. Windows' strongest point is its prevalence.
If I worked there, I would still 0wn all of your files in 10 minutes just by bringing in my trusty old parallel port zip drive. I hope you don't have a false sense of security.
Ahem having to install Over 30 Win2K systems I disagree. Hell I had to ge the drivers for the nic card/video and Sound from the manufacturers while on the same PC (all 30 are identical and have the sticker proclaiming "MADE FOR WINDOWS 2000") model RH7.1 Installed without a fart.
Linux has beaten Windows hands down in the driver arms race... And Microsoft even admits it! check the Hardware Compatibility guide for W2K, it's shorter than the HCG for Linux.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
No, don't implement that god-damn PaperClip. I use Windows NT 4.0 at work with Exceed to connect to an IRIX server. I like for pointer focus to be follow mouse. But if you do that make sure your pointer never gets near that fucking piece of shit PaperClip. The damn thing grabs focus, then loses focus, then grabs focus, ad naseum. Only solution is to get to Task Manager and kill Word. Damn fucking PaperClip.
this will only work if you have gpm installed and running though.
and for two button mouse users, you must have third button emulation enabled. but the point is that whatever your 3rd button may be that is the one you use to paste highlighted text.
I hope you're not seriously suggesting that VNC or PCAnywhere is a good idea. It's not an application server. You're using *two* computers to get one desktop and nobody else can use either computer at the same time. VNC is how you turn two computers, one of them local, into one computer with the display bottlenecked by the network.
That only happens if you are an idiot and store everything on your desktop instead of an appropriate place. >/i>
The trouble is that the end users *ARE* idiots. No matter how thoroughly we train then on how not to abuse their desktops, they always keep putting several-hundred megabyte MS Access database files on their desktops instead of in the right place. Then when everything craps out when they log onto another workstation, it's *our* (the sysadmins) fault that it don't work right.
Face it, whoever designed the Windows implementation of roaming profiles must have been smoking crack or something. It's another half-assed, hurriedly slapped-together and shoved out the door before it was finished, and not well-thought-out "feature", so typical of MS.
IT IS NOT FREE
This really pisses me off in ways i cannot begin to describe - its a lie -Linux licenses are free but the support costs and running this piece of shit UNIX throwback are fucking horrendous, you need to hire increased staff and then train them on how a corporate environment works (seeing as how the only people you can get are the graudates or the uber linux nerds - then put up with them whihning about MS products all fucking day) then you have to have 1 for every 5 or so staff and then you have to make your linux systems talk to everything else you have from printers to graohics cards etc etc etc
Linux remains fundamanetally based on a 20 year ol badly designed technology and its not free - it costs as much as any other OS and theres the other side - the users in your enviroment lynching you for removing their easy to use familiar linux desktop and replcaing it with this shit
-----
And guess what? Linux is great -- that is if, and only if, you have perfect hardware and perfect setup and a standalone system.
-----
You've got to be joking. What kind of system *can't* you run Linux on? I have a 486 with 12MB RAM, two ISA NICs, a ISA I/O card, junk Trident VGA card, and a 420MB hard drive, and it's a router/firewall, www server, mail server, dialup server, and hosts some shell accounts, as well as various other sundry tasks. In fact, I've never encountered a PC that I *couldn't* install a given Linux distribution on. Sometimes you might have to recompile the kernel to fit that system's hardware, or to optimize it for a specific system, but why is that such a big deal? If you're a programmer, you already know how to use build tools. If you're not a programmer or you don't care; you learn the procedure once, and you're done with it. Couldn't be easier.
OTOH, try even *installing* Win2K on anything less than a 300MHz machine with 128 megs of RAM, much less doing anything genuinely useful with it.
There's a reason many of us use and support Linux, and it's not just to be anti-Microsoft. Linux is not wasteful like Windows is.
I'm sorry, but your point is completely and utterly invalid, especially because you didn't provide any background! All I can assume is that you don't know what you're doing, and that is why you have problems with Linux. (And before you go off on the "If it wasn't so hard to use, I can only click a mouse button!" path, just think how far you'd get on a Windows system if you didn't know how to install drivers or use the management console. You have to learn how to use ANY system, and just because you already know Windows doesn't mean it's superior based on that alone.)
... to read replies like the above.
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA !
- sigs are for wimps.
Roaming Profiles, plus System Policies, works. I've used it in Corporate as well as a hospital setting.
There are user profiles and there are the user files. The user profiles contain application settings and should be placed in a share on the network and downloaded when a user logs in. The user files should also be a shared home directory and are accessed only when needed.
Users should place shortcuts to the files they need, or file folders, on their desktop, not the files themselves. This can be enforced in several ways via System Policies.
I have had great success with these methods. Most of what I have seen mentioned in this thread are legitimate concerns that often run into, but can be overcome with a little bit of research. I suggest O'Reilly's collection of books on Windows NT Administration, particularly Windows NT User Administration and Windows System Policy Editory.
True but misleading. The default place that office 2k takes you when you want to save your files? My Documents. Since this is a folder that's on the desktop, it gets stored in your roaming profile. Every user that I have, and I mean every single one of them, stores their files in "My Documents", and I can see why. Not only is it easy when saving, it's also easy when loading. Guess where office 2k takes you when you choose "File->Open".
The difference between roaming profiles and NFS shares is significant. Specifically, an NFS share only requires the user to send data over the network that they are actually going to use. Everything else just sits on the network server until its needed. But with a roaming profile, the entire profile whether it will be used or not, gets downloaded everytime you log into a computer you haven't used yet. Of course, it gets cached there so that you don't have to do it again the next time. But then when you logout, if you made a change to any part of your profile, the entire profile gets uploaded to the server. Combine this with the fact that Microsoft does darn near everything they can to encourage users to store stuff in their profile, and you end up with roaming profiles being a *huge* drain on the system.
Key to financial independence: Spend less than you earn. Save and invest the difference. Do it for a long time.
> The success of linux on the office desktop is irrelevant. What
> really matters is the success of linux on the home desktop.
Not even close. The corporate world spends more by factors than the home market, and so Linux must find its way into the corporate world if it's to get widespread acceptance. I agree that soul-killing business apps aren't the best way to use Linux, but those business apps are a necessary step in the process.
> Sod Linux in the office, it is a stupid idea. Linux on the home
> front is all that matters. The rest follows naturally.
Actually, by history you've got it backwards. Familiarity is what most people aim for in a home PC, not "cool" features. People who got familiar with Windows at work, using lifeless applications, then went out and began buying Windows PCs for home use because it's what they knew. As an example, many users who started out with Macintoshes at home, then worked with Windows PCs, switched to Windows for home systems, for compatibility and familiarity reasons. For this reason, Linux needs to find its way on to the corporate desktop, where users will not be able to choose to avoid it. Then, when their enforced use breeds familiarity, they'll be more comfortable getting it for home use. The increase in home use then drives the demand for the cool features for which you're longing.
Virg
I suppose you've never heard of "roaming profiles"? Add in shared folders in your login profile and you're there and have been since NT 3.51.
Your point again?
Easy does it!
This comment has been submitted already, 276865 hours , 59 minutes ago. No need to try again.
The developers of this setup should have their fingers smashed with mallets... well OK that's a bit extreme, but I mean, really - if this is people's idea of a reference site for deploying Linux... god help us all. *head in hands*
I gave it a whirl this weekend. I wanted to get a new email client. I downloaded it and used that RPM manager thing to install. Guess what. I had to go download a bunch of libraries for it to work. What the hell is that? On my Mac I download something and it usually doesn't even need installing. Windows is a little different but the programs still have all the needed parts. Why can't linux be that easy?
"Solitare" that magic phrase is all you need, ask anyone who has had win 3.1 or later in the workplace.
They have 400 users relying on one server. I sure hope they have a backup server. Power supply failure, memory problem, motherboard goes...anything could bring down the entire office.
I would mod you down. But not for violating slashdot groupthink. I didn't bother reading most of your comment. I'd mod you down for bitching about how you expected to be modded down. That sort of thing is really lame. If you have something to say, then say it. Don't be a whiny little bitch about it.
One of the guys 'round here was talking about setting his mom up with Linux because previously she'd managed to repeatedly destroy Apple and Intel based systems. So he set her up with Linux, gave her a user ID, and she has no idea that root even exists. He even set her up a "Support" icon that opens a hole in the firewall for him to ssh in and fix things. Sounds like it's been going better. The main problem I can see with this is she can't just go out to CompUSA and buy software, but how often do the folks buy software anyway? Mine pretty much exclusively use what came with their computer. My room mate would have more problems, as she gets games on a regular basis. But that's why God made the Playstation 2, right?
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
The complaint that Linux is hard to use is not one necissaryly of GUI per se, it's set up. Basic quality assurance questions are hard to answer: What hardware are you going to use? What software are you going to use? Where is that software located? How do you install that software? Where is the software located on the Hardrive after you instal it? How do you get OpenGL to install? Why did it take me 15 minutes to find the PPP dialer? How do you set up a network where hard drives are shared? How do you put things into the menu?
If a sys-admin takes the time to form a planned approach for Linux installs, makes a custom CD for installing the "supported apps", then Linux can be usable. Problem is the Linux approach of shipping not only with the kitchen sink but 10 different kitchen sinks to choose from, all of which are disassembled and in their boxes is not one for newbies.
Burn Hollywood Burn
Jesus Christ, get a grip, you moron. All you do is cater to the typical Slashbot group-think mentality and get modded up for it.
People like you make me sick.
Idiot.
I only hope that this is some attempt at a play on words. The term "Windows" is undeniably associated with Microsoft. The only times Microsoft has had anything do do w/ unix were the release of Xenix, a now abandoned Solaris port of IE, and using BSD code for their internet tools.
It is perhaps to avoid any unneccesarry connection s to Renton that the X Consortium officially suggests that only the terms X, X Window System, X Version 11, X Window System Version 11 and X11 be used to describe the software.
Unfortunately, the innacuracies of your statement don't stop with the attempt to be cute w/ the MSFT/X connection. Being able to see your desktop from whatever machine you log in on not "just a dream in the Windows world". It's quite feasable under NT, using a facility called 'travelng profiles' or somesuch.
my sig's at the bottom of the page.
Hope this doesn't sound troll, but use KOffice. KDE 2.2 should be out today. I think it will include a much improved KOffice.
-Peter
. Penguins Surely Ca
Of course, having installed all flavors of Windows more times than I can count, I can state unequivocally that many Linux distros are much easier to install than Windows. Have you ever tried to get NT running? It's not exactly easy.
-Vercingetorix
"Necessitas non habet legem." -St. Augustine
most of these places the people who are actually using the systems spend very little time (if any at all) using the OS themselves.
usually they just boot up. click on one icon on the dektop and spend the rest of the day inside their application.
the trick is getting their 10 year old custom dos database app to work under linux, then all you gotta do is tell them which icon it is on the desktop
Just go to rpmfind.net and put in the name of the missing library. Heck of a lot easier than "Install Driver Diskette" that Windows would ask you for ("WHAT driver diskette???").
I'm emailing this to my boss, as it sounds exactly like the kind of thing our (dirt cheap) organization would want to use. (But no, we'll keep on paying Bill his danegeld...)
the comment about backups was certainly FUD. I support about 150 windows machines at work and if windows or MS Word does die, you'll only lose unsaved changes. This is very rare though, I only get about one reported case per month. Now if the entire hard disk dies which has nothing to do with the OS, then you might lose days of work.
Personally I'd mod your post up, but I can't so ...
In anycase, I think you did miss the point that I was trying to make. The point is that forcing the user to download data (either large or small) without respect to whether or not they're going to use it seems prone to create the problems that you are able to fix. That makes your fixes just bandaids. The real problem is a poorly designed architecture that requires you to download everything, even if you aren't going to use it.
And that's not really a function of the file sharing mechanism. That's a function of the way that the underlying operating system provides information to user programs. The windows way is braindead. The unix way scales much better.
Key to financial independence: Spend less than you earn. Save and invest the difference. Do it for a long time.
You think you are ever going to make linux the system of choice for the world without them ??
people use at home what they use at work and if you dont win the corporate market you dont have a fucking chance of winning anything else !!
The systems dont interoperate well - Star Office turns most MS docs into shit and wont cope with complex formatting (i use it at home) which defeats the purpose of it for offices (home users are different) The office support person.
What my staff have to do
Maintain Servers and network equipment
Manager and maintain phone systems and
photocopiers and printers and everything else in the office
Manage 20+ Metaframe Servers
Maintain and manage mail systems and firewalls
Web development and security
SAP support and development
Desktop management and upgrades
Hardware inventories and systems support
etc
etc
etc
They maybe have about 10% of their day for supporting desktops and what we do is if a machine wont work we reimage it - we run a Win 2k SOE and simply do a RIS rebuild - fast and efficient and we have build with the main software installed on it and the rest SMS delivered - users dont store any data on their machines.
Linux would increase the desktop support costs for us (we hav done a very comprehensive cost analysis PLUS there is the problem of getting suitable, experienced industry qualified support staff who can also and willingly, support win and win servers without complaints or 'we really shouuld switch to this'.
Corporates buy the products they buy for a reason and if you think users on a corporate desktop would not break a system then youre mad - i have seen it done to locked down and secured environments, we dont have unlimited funds so we cannot change
Pity really cause i love linux.
Linux prints better than windows. if you use quality hardware.
If you spend less than $400.00 on a printer then you are buying Crap. Hell _ can print "pantone" and even make color seperations on the dye-sublimation printers here and every other ptinter in this office. easily...
Linux prints faster easier better than the windows machines does....
What's your beef?
FIRSTUS POSTUS, BEEOTCHAE!!!
I'm sure to get it this time!!!
pleeeeeease?!!!!
Wrong. All Windows-based clients automatically get a CAL to utilize Terminal Services. You are only paying for the server software, in most cases. If you are using dedicated thin-client hardware, it most likely ships with the CAL built right in.
Yeah WindBlows is easy to administer for Home Use... shure... as hell!
I somehow recall that quite a few IIS were deployed unknowingly by home users just because some popup said the $%& application needed to install some (boh... you're not supposed to know anyway) component from the W2000 CD.
Cool, just made it so much easier for Code Red to FSCK happily.
APROPOS... actually IIS had started to pick up on Apache recently. Could this increase in the installed base incidentally (cough!) derive from some wild dependency in $%& popular M$ new toy (notepad?)
So back on topic... Shure installshileds are so much easier to use... no dependency prob absolutely... if there is one, WTF just pack in the whole damn shared lib!!!
What's the prob dude? Still stuck on analog modem? Ohh come on, get connected! These aren't the '80 any more, get a spakin' DSL/CABLE now! Yeah... dj-ing with 3-4 CDs is a major PITA with commandline rpm but so is dl freakin MBs of data for a stinking shareware!
I just don't undesrtand why can't multi-disk distros put a db of all the rpms so when I try to install a package I get to know what to get from disk1,2,powertools before fishing out any CD! BTW...Many times I had to guess the name of a package to satisfy a dependency such as mistery-lib.so.0.0.1 grrr...
Karma down below zero, huh?
Mi domando chi à il mandante di tutte le cazzate che faccio - Altan
We have over 200 staff running Citrix Metaframe on wyse terminals with Win2k Terminal Server on the back end and heres the rub.
Its a great solution BUT
1. Be prepared to increase your bandwidth A LOT - most of these users are on remote sites and we have one here with a 320 k link and 20 staff that is slower than a wet week -Citrix admit (off the record) that runing a full desktop and apps sucks up as much as 32k each desktop
2. Servers - Minimum has to be a dual pentium with a gig of ram - we specced all ours to be quad xeon with 2.5 gb and they work - but the costs hurt
3. No FDDs, no CD roms, Palm Pilots are shit to set up and much of the software doesnt run properly - Flash for one, printer driver unsupported etc etc.
But i agree with the comment on admins - the MCSE as god syndrome has fucked this industry and left us with morons - but dont blame MS for that totally, the training companies and the corporates did it.
I agree lets see an honest comparison
I refuse to argue with Anonymous Cowards - if you want a discussion get an account....
A business who open sources their software may have little downside, and potential upside. Think of Netscape. It can be a very smart move. The nature of software is very strongly toward a single huge winner. The market craves standardization. But whereas a traditional business might sell out to one of the big fish, in the software business, the big fish don't want to buy the little fish. They want to _eat_ the little fish. It would do nothing for Microsoft to buy out Netscape. The software's completely incompatible.
So what is a software business to do, when it faces being eaten by a big fish? Rather than simply going bankrupt, the software business can instead shift to a new model. They can open-source their software (something which actually costs a certain effort -- it's not free), and give it a new lease on life. Something which would otherwise have become worthless, instead retains some value.
Another way to look at it is as a clash between marketers and programmers. In general, marketers will beat the programmers every time. But open source changes the balance. A lean programmer-rich operation can take on a highly-capitalized market behemoth, by open-sourcing their code. It doesn't cost them that much, if the business is basically a consulting business. Within their open-sourced architecture, they have a unique ability to add value -- to keep the contracts coming in. All at a tiny fraction of the cost of the market behemoth. Also, small independent developers can find great value in using (and in the process, adding to) the open source codebase.
And so, by this mechanism, the software business may not actually be winner-takes-all, ultimately. Time will tell -- it's too early to see whether open source software will truly challenge the Microsoft's and Oracle's of the world.
In any case, whether it does or doesn't, there's nothing nefarious about it. It's quite natural. Just a fact of life which is unique to the software business.
Exactly how many novice Windows users do you know? I can't count the number of times I've been asked to fix my girlfriend's parents' computer... usually it's because they got infected with a virus or Windows decided to gut itself. Currently, my mom can't use OE to get her email through MSN. They sent an email to their users a few months ago detailing changes that needed to be made to make it work, but she couldn't figure it out (and I couldn't help her over the phone...). So she's without OE email until I come out for Xmas. (She uses Hotmail as her primary email anyway...)
Office workers are supported, so this issue goes away
Home users are supported too... not "officially", of course, but by someone who "knows computers", so your "totally unsupported" claim is a bunch of bullshit.
To within half a percent, pi seconds is a nanocentury. -- Tom Duff
I mean fully working, not working with a few patches, a few shell scripts and a couple of hardware tweaks, but fully working, out of the box. Use the Apple iMac as a target.
A few different models could be offered, targeted and tailored to different types of user.
The 18GB of disk is used for just KDE and not other applications. Those are on other servers. The server could run on far less than 18GB, but you can barely get your hands on smaller drives now. WordPerfect, email and other items that are saved are on the other servers. The 300,000 savings comes from projecting out having about 450 units, and swaping them out on 3 year rotations. 150 per year, budget 2000 each. 3 year upgrade cycles is not 'aggresive', and in fact about 1/3 of your users will be disatisifed with performance in the last year of the user of their machine. While thin clients are 750 dollars, they have a 10 year duty cycle. That comes to 75 dollars a year. A 2000 dollar machine every 3 works out to about 700 dollars a year. Plus you know darn well you have thrown a few extra parts into each of those machines during the 3 years. Some extra RAM, some extra harddrives, etc. The 750 dollar price for a thin client is a sealed terminal, with no moving parts. No extra costs, because nothing is upgraded. I wish as you mentioned that no one here at Largo used email, because it should would make my life easier! ;) In fact, all 800 employees have email and probably 600 of them are heavy users. Around 200-250 users are in email during the day. Email comes from another server, currently GroupWise on OpenServer. This isn't a shop where people just have a few green screen windows open. We have graphical software running all over here, some from NT and most from Unix.
The price quoted for Exchange is accurate, and perhaps could go higher. Everyone forgets that you have to start up the Win32 *client* software on NT then too in order to use it. It isn't just bringing up Exchange, its bringing up 250 concurrent Outlook sessions too on WTS. That means 800 NT logins, CALs. Centralized NT doesn't hold as many users, so then we have to bring up clustering, and *hope* we can run 50 users per server....and run 7 servers just to provide Outlook. Instead, using Bynari/Insight the server AND gui Client will all be brought up on the same machine. The post office will deliver email, and the 200-250 clients will all run on the one machine. The cost savings is high, along with much better stability.
Anyone that doubts this model is welcome to fly to Florida, we would be happy to give you a tour! ;)
If Linux were pre-installed like Windows, this wouldn't be an issue.
Guess what corporate admins tend to do with Windows OEM installs... The only people who actually tend to use these setups are the home/hobby group. Even then OEM installs can be sub optimal, especially for users outside the USA.
What are these trousers all about? They're made out of jam. Totally useless!
I work on the side for a professor who happens to be a partner in a real estate firm. His only reason to have a PC at home: so he can check e-mail and read word/excel documents.
The same goes for most of his employees. They're mostly 20-30 somethings who are heavily interested in real estate and finance, and could give a shit about computer games, the latest graphic cards, the coolest new gadgets, etc. Most of them don't have kids yet, and they just want to be able to write up a proposal at home or surf the web. So why are they all running Windows?
Because that's what the firm uses in its offices. They have had no exposure to other options. All they have experienced in computers is the Windows machine at their cubicle, so when they go shopping for a computer, they want what's familiar to them: a Windows machine.
If my professor and his firm switched over to linux, I'm pretty confidant his employees will want linux machines at home too. In non-tech industries, this trend seems to hold pretty steadfast - the real estate guys could care less about which OS they use, as long as it works for them both at work and at home.
kernel hackers read asm and binary. I read text. Windows is difficult to modify. Linux is easy. Force comes from MS and others who seek to profit at your expense.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
I guess I don't understand what you're getting at then. If your point is that using a computer is easier for someone who has an admin working for them than for someone who doesn't, you're right, but that's not really OS-specific. Are you trying to say that this case study doesn't prove that Linux is a good home desktop system? If so, you're right, it doesn't prove that, but I don't think anyone is trying to say that it does. The point of the study is that Linux is a great choice for large organizations with office-type requirements.
True enough. But if it the self-extracting exe does fail, you're SOL. No amount of googlizing can save you. And you can do that in Linux (e.g. Mozilla's installer), just most non-commercial app developers don't. And then there's the ever-popular "Remove Program" option, which usually doesn't remove everything. But again, this is tangential to the original point of the story, which is that Linux is easier to set up and admin for a large office organization.
Proof once again that self-deprecation gets you nowhere on Slashdot. :)
If it ain't broke, you need more software.
IMHO, the best way to provide corporate desktop computers is to buy hundreds of identical boxes, find the optimal installation for Linux and required applications, and then clone that configuration.
:)
Remember than Linux and Windows have different ideas of "identical". Simply having PCI cards in a different order is sufficent to be considered different by Windows.
so in Linux you'll spend hours on each one downloading drivers, setting up the configuration, etc. Windows pretty much requires the same time if you install it yourself and bother doing it right
IME this happens far more often with Windows than Linux anyway
but when you buy pre-configured boxen, it certainly looks like you've saved all that labor
Except you havn't because it ends up taking twice as long to hammer the OEM install into something you can connect to the network and have a reasonable chance of working than it would to have done it from scratch
That actually isn't true. WordPerfect runs in Xwindows on Unix. The bulk of the software here is running on Unix/Linux over Xwindows. While Excel, Powerpoint and Access are currently coming from WTS on NT, they are going to be removed in favor of OpenOffice hopefully in FY 2002.
c'mon, the fact that any config could be screwed up is a pathetic attempt to draw attention away from the fact that Microsoft Windows simply cannot do the things that X Windows can. With X Windows, I can walk up to any X-enabled workstation (the unix GUI) and I can run some or all of my stuff from my home directory anywhere in the world (firewalls willing), and I don't have to install or configure anything to do it.
Tim
The story says how the admins like being able to do software installation and maintenance centrally instead of having to run around to 400 Windows(TM) boxes.
;-)
In process interrupting the work of 400 people...
Which in turn leaves them time to help out the average Joe User with his/hers problems. Installation shouldn't be left to Joe anyways.
Actually it goes further, in that it shouldn't even be possible for Joe to install anything.
Of course this only works in a office-setting as the one described.
Which is a very large chunk of computer usage anyway
Guess most people can't afford a sysadmin at home
In this situation they might be called "relatives" or "friends"...
Look, just this question ...
How is it you started using MS OS at home ?
Most of us (Sorry for presuming) had their first contact at the office, using 3.11 Workgroup (*Good Ol' Time* 8), them came home one day with their first PC and used...let's see... 3.11 ? because you had an handy copy on admins desk ? and already used it everyday ? no ? really ?
My 0.2 cents...
It takes 40+ muscles to frown, but only four to extend your arm and bitchslap the motherfucker
Linux is hard to admin, but I have friends that walked in and use my compter with no problems, they can barely use windows. (OK, I have Enlightenment and virtual desktops so they were shocked when their windo scrolled off the screen)
Its hard for a computer admin (I.E. for home computers), but not for the end user. KDE, QVWM and the like offer a comfortable (ugly) windows-alike appearence so anyone can do their daily chores. They dont have to install software,set up dial up networking or anything in the office, they justhave to write the letter. Once linux is set u there is no problems. Different permissions for different users (i.e. users, root etc) mean thatit is less likely to need re-installing every few months.
As for the "elite linux user" crowd, they dont want to be bothered by peope asking "where is my start button" for the 5th time that day. Sites like www.linuxjunior.org are the places to go to for that sort of help.
I've been using linux exclusivly for 6 months, and using it as my main OS for 18 months, yet I have only just ventured into some of the more technical mailing lists. It was 6 months before I understood HOWTO's, but NHF's, PETS and helpful people on newbie discussion boards (LJR, LNO), got me on the right track.
then shouldn't we expect taxes to go down or is the government screwing us as usual?
It's a big hurdle though. Every bit helps.
If Openoffice gets up to speed, the transition will be even easier.
The story about how Mexico was going to deploy Linux in all their schools everywhere...
/. should revisit this city a year or two later when the current support tech leaves and find out if the decision to use Linux is still in place.
Followed up a year later by another story stating that never happened because Linux was too hard to use.
I say
Unfortunately, I have to agree with this. I work for a retail chain that has installed Linux systems in all our (350+) stores. Mostly they run our custom app, but fire up KDE to get their email from the corporate center. When someone sends them a MSWord document, they can read it by just clicking on the attachment, which fires up StarOffice.
The problem is, StarOffice takes *forever* (and a day) to start up! I mean, 30+ seconds is not unusual. So what happens is impatient people at the store click on it half-a-dozen times, which - several minutes later - brings up half-a-dozen instances of SO.
I'm trying to get them to swtich from SO to something that starts up almost instantly (AbiWord or KWord), but they're reluctant to change (needless to say, I came on board after it was too late to get them to install something that would actually work...)
On the other hand, "good enough" and FREE is a darned good deal. And if you've worked MS systems long enough, you'll find "good enough" and never crashes PRICELESS.
Using roaming profiles and Terminal Services you get the same effect, although as a former TS admin (old version - Winframe 1.8) I'm not a big fan.
The problems I had with it were too many programs were not designed to run on a multuser system (hardly surprising since NT wasn't designed as one) and so kludgy workarounds were required for even the limited set of apps that we provided via TS.
From what I understand reading about the Largo install on the KDE mailing lists, it seems that KDE2 has some small issues in this area as well, although in this case they aren't showstopping and he's getting immediate attention from the development team. Sure beats buying a Citrix support contract!
BTW, any administrator that lets users install their own software is a moron
Except that if the users have Windows boxes sat in front of them then stopping them installing software can be very difficult.
Roaming profile... oh no, deja-vu.. nightmares...
Seriously though, I was administrating a company which all users had roaming profile - and it's a PAIN in the ass if a user move from one machine to another - you simple have to wait until of his desktop will be copied from the server - sometimes is few megabyes, but some heavy users have gigabytes of data to move...
On Linux/Unix it's different - nfs mount, finished...
Hetz (Heunique)
Every now and then we see stories such as this touting that some organization has adopted Linux. The truth is that Windows still has the desktop locked tight. I'm a sysadmin in a pretty much Windows only shop and I can tell you that I'd love to introduce my users to Linux but in our environment, the fact is that we use way too many custom apps built around Windows. Sure, these could be ported but not all at once. What Linux needs is a reliable, simple, free X-server that will run on Windows. This would allow niche apps to be ported and run from a Linux server without the pressures of having everything ready for a Linux desktop at the same time. Once this has gone on for a while, more and more of these niche apps will be available on Linux making it a viable alternative at the desktop. I've dealt with many third party vendors and found that there are lots of programmers playing with Linux but the only (enterprise niche) apps that are making it to Linux are ones that can run on a server and don't need any client interaction.
I'm glad to see that Largo is showing originality, courage, and technical savvy by going with Linux.
Of course, the company I'm part of has rejected Linux and Unix completely; they're too scared to get into a market that the top brass doesn't understand. Our company can't expand into new markets because those markets use Solaris/Linux for heavy-metal processing. SO they stay in their nice, safe (?) niche, too frightened to take a risk on the future. The support staff doesn't want to learn Unix (they hate it without really knowing it), and the owner is enamoured of anything Microsoft. Ah, well -- they pay me well and don't restrict my outside activities, so I can afford to do the right thing on my own time...
A side note: I hadn't heard about this before -- which tells you how much I know about what's going on in my own area; I'm in Clearwater, which is adjacent to Largo.
Geographical note for those who care: Pinellas County Florida is just one big city from St. Petersberg to Tarpon Springs, covering a peninsula on the Gulf Coast of Florida. You can find Largo just north of St. Petersberg, and just south of the Scientologyville --- err, I mean Clearwater. ;)
All about me
we all note that you use the euphemism "an appropriate place" instead of saying something simple like "in your home directory". You do this because there is no appropriate place in Windows. It depends on the app, and the apps are overwhelmingly not designed for multiple users.
I've worked at several places where all work grinds to a halt because everything is nfs mounted and there are network problems; problems I've never had with roaming profiles.
lemme see... nfs is screwed up because the net is down, but windows shares are not screwed up because the net is down. This could only happen or is only believable, like you said, "if you are an idiot". Because, like you said, "How is an nfs mounted home directory any different from a windows share that gets mounted with the user logs in?"
Legitimately, you should brag about the things Microsoft products are good at. But networking is not one of them. To brag about MS Windows in an network environment is to show that you don't know anything about the alternatives.
But in any case, read the rest of the threads here so you can learn that the benefits of running X Windows have nothing to do with the benefits of NFS.
There's a difference between use, and administration.
None of those users admins their boxes. If the admins have done their job right, yes, it's easy to use.
Win9X is easy to half-ass administer, because that's about all you can ever do with it. Really getting into the guts and tuning the crap out requires the same level of competence as linux administration, often more - and only where it can actually be done, which is not much, in my experience.
wtg on moderating the wrong person.
As I said, I'm not going to compare the costs, because you can't. But MetaFrame is an add-on to give extra functionality to an already-extant feature of Windows, Terminal Services, which does come out-the-box with Windows 2000. And, if you're interested, every Windows 2000 client you have (including Windows 2000 Professional) has a built-in license to use Terminal Server. I know, it still doesn't compare to Linux, cost-wise. But you do have more options than people may realise; I'm just aiming to present a little balance.
By the way, what exactly do you mean by your commment that "it's impossible to set a 'thin-client device' on windows with std tools"? To me, this means that Windows, as it comes, provides no means to set up some sort of thin-client solution. However, it does; part of the Terminal Services solution includes tools to create a client disk maker, which will provide clients for Windows 95, etc. I'll quite happily admit that it's not a complete solution; if you want a Mac client or a DOS client then you need MetaFrame. (I frankly don't know the cost of MetaFrame, but it'll obviously be significant compared to a free solution.) But either I've misunderstood your comments or you're honestly misinformed. I'm not out for a flame or an argument; just to present some balance.
Where the network admins get involved is usually when it comes to interfacing with the main databases. With 400 seats, you _need_ a database system that makes MS Access look like a toy. (And I speak as one who has attempted to take Access right up to the limits MS admits to...) So unless you've somehow managed to put your whole database onto a IExplorer-compatible website, you are going to have to install a database client on each machine. The front-end one I'm familiar with (for a Progress database running in Unix) is a one-floppy disk 5-minute install, which is a heck of a lot easier than installing Win or Linux.
IMHO, the best way to provide corporate desktop computers is to buy hundreds of identical boxes, find the optimal installation for Linux and required applications, and then clone that configuration. But if they won't give you the budget to buy computers and put them in the closet until needed, then you wind up ordering one at a time for new hires or to replace broken down machines; almost every !@#$% machine is different (at least from lowest-bidder sources), so in Linux you'll spend hours on each one downloading drivers, setting up the configuration, etc. Windows pretty much requires the same time if you install it yourself and bother doing it right, but when you buy pre-configured boxen, it certainly looks like you've saved all that labor -- except for the six times that box is going to crash or catch a virus and have to be re-installed, but that cost comes later, and management isn't going to add it up and realize that buying the alleged industry standard was really boneheaded...
Funny that, didn't realize that you're running in 640x480 mode. I'd suggest that a better idea is to have the little text-boxes set to wrap=physical which means that it'll wrap at the end of the box, regardless of the size of your screen.
/.tters usually tear down MS at every opportunity. They take things that show how MS is decent, find one tiny little discrepency in the post, and use that to tear them down. Then they'll take a post about how linux has something wrong, and just say "Hey, not a big deal. Look at how everything else is good!" Pot and kettle guys... You'll notice that I was also Pro-Linux in that posting as well. I like linux, but unfortunately it just isn't where it needs to be right now to be a mainstream OS.
BTW - I've been an admin here for 2 years, and at most companies that I have been at before that, and most other companies that I know right now, give users "Local Admin" access on their own machines so that when they want to install their own CuteFTP or ICQ or anything they don't have to come yelling to me. It saves me and my team a lot of time. The basic deal is this: you get admin access, and if you fuck things up, all that we will do is swap your hard drive with one with a fresh install on it, and that's it. Takes us 5 minutes if they seriously fuck up their machine (which rarely happens), and if they're spending too much time dicking around themselves their managers will usually find out and yell at them. In either case, it saves us a lot of time in the long run. And, if you know anything about PCs, giving someone physical access to a machine means that they have admin access. Plain and simple. Give me physical access to (just about) any machine running any OS and I can get admin access, not a very difficult task. Sure, it is possible to tie down machines so tight that you can't get in, even with physical access, but it's simply not worth the hassle. So I am not "full of shit", and, by your response, I can see that you've never been an admin.
And the facts are, as you so quaintly put it, very simple, yes. Largo is using thin clients and in an environment where using something like linux is not a problem. They don't have complicated requirements, and their hardware is limited, so yes, a low-requirement OS with a few apps is all that they need. Try asking a large company that needs all those complicated applications and diversity to use linux, in which the applications aren't there, and you'll find it's not an easy feat.
And if you think I talk to much, don't read my posts!
And my post is only Pro-microsoft because
If God gave us curiosity
After much look at WinCE devices as terminal systems in our remote offices I was finally able to convince them to give the Netier xl1000 a try. It not only met all the requirements that the CE device could not but it exceeded them in many areas. They are in deployment right now.
Once that upgrade is done the main offices will move to staroffice and linux later in the upgrade cycles.
Admitidly the Linux upgrade is planned pretty far off in the future. But it's still a move in the right direction.
"Unix (and Linux) has the advantage of following a design philosophy for appications and documentation that is fairly consistent. "
Eh? Yeah, right...
Your roaming profile experience matches mine precisely. I have even written scripts to change the default save/open locations for MS Office, and every employee gets a lesson in where to save files. They still end up with multimegabyte profiles. Another big (HUGE) drain... Internet Explorer. The default location for the cache on several versions of IE is in the user profile! If you have a big hard drive, that could be 60mb, maybe even 2 or three times that. All uploaded to the server every time you log out, and downloaded every time you log in. What a pain! MS definitely does not have this one figured out correctly yet.
you've obviously never worked as a sysadmin, 99% of users are not even remotely interested in exploring their system or anything else. They just want to run the apps they are used to, and that's it.
If anything, it's the "power" windows users who are the bane of sysadmins, because they are constantly trying to install all sorts of garbage on their machines, and ruining them.
Except that there's a conflict of agenda's here: The only taxpayers with a real voice are the ones who vote. These voters are typically older and more financially conservative. As it happens, Microsoft stock (now in the DOW30) is usually an important part of their varied financial instruments.
It seems to me that the "smart," voting taxpayers, would rather have all taxpayers feeding them their Microsoft earnings, rather than saving a bit on state taxes by going with a non-MS solution.
Power to the Peaceful
The article was indeed preaching the glories of Linux. That's fine, however it's done using half truths (that's half lies for the pessimists among us) instead of the actual great benefits. Some examples:
"If Largo ran Windows 2000 as a server operating system, Dave says they'd have to run "a substantial server cluster" instead of a single machine, because "NT [or 2000] gets flaky when you run more than 40 clients, while Linux can handle hundreds." Dave has no exact figure for the cost of of an adequate Windows server array for Largo's civic needs; it was obviously so much more expensive than the Linux alternative that it was never seriously considered."
Half true. I've been using DOS/Windows for years... these guys were running SCO back in 1992. Linux is an understandable (and smart) upgrade path for them, it's familiar and it's compatible. More importantly, they were already familiar with it. However their comparisons to Windows based solutions make me wonder - being relatively new to Linux I'm sure I'd assume things fed to me by popular culture or the media if I was trying to plan a comparable solution. They're right about cost - a Windows based solution to do the same thing is rediculously expensive. It's not however terminally buggy. I personally run Windows 2000 Pro on all but one of my computers - they don't crash... ever. Neither do our NT4 or 2000 servers at work (all 6 of them). Then again, neither does my Linux box.
If they wanted to run a Terminal Services environment under 2000 with MetaFrame (for sound, true color, etc.) they could pull it off on that same server - with the same thin clients. This document (MS word... sorry) discusses Terminal Services capacity planning - you might want to look here for a rough comparison between the processor speeds in the whitepaper and those used in the article (a few quick calculations show a P-III 933 to be about twice as fast as a P-III 450, of course these are highly subjective benchmarks). Needless to say, they should be clustering under either OS for redundancy, not because of an hypothetically unstable configuration. Server crashes, whether Linux or Windows, generally involve rebooting or restarting services. However what happens when your hardware fails on the single machine supporting 800 users?
"Their 10-person IT staff supports 800 users running 400 devices (as Dave calls the thin clients). There is no way they could adequately support that many users and devices with such a small staff if they ran Windows on individual desktops. Dave says that if they had gone that route, "We'd be doing nothing but running around fixing PCs all day."
This is absolutely rediculous. We have 2 people (and 2 more who spend about 5 hours a week each doing IS work) dedicated to supporting about 175 users in 3 offices, all running Windows PCs, mostly 98. Our servers almost universally run NT4. Management hasn't had a single complaint in over 4 months. Email, websites, printers, etc. run without a hitch. If we wanted to make our lives easier - we could always deploy Windows 2000 and deny local administrator to the user of the PC. So long webshots!
Don't get me wrong - I don't have a problem with Linux. We use it at work for our firewalls, because of the low hardware requirements and the complete superiority of IPChains over MS Proxy server at the time we made the decision. I use it at home for my second PC because I want to learn more about it. However I do have a problem when an OS is touted as the only reasonable solution - when it's not. Linux may be the best way to go for these guys, if so please tell us the real reasons, like the cost benefits (familiarity, lower initial cost, etc).
My 2 cents.
So in the Win vs. Linux installation war, Windows wins because it's already installed. Work for user is zero. The only way Linux can beat that is to also be pre-installed either alone or as a dual boot system. But I'll betcha Microsoft's contracts with OEMs prohibits the latter option.
I can't speak for their applications, but from a pure UI point of view KDE and Win95/98 are very similar. Instead of a start button, there's a K. Menus are menus, you navigate through them the same. Running programs in the bar at the bottom, clock in lower-right corner. Upper-right X in window closes it. Other than that any differences are in the apps they use, not KDE.
Developers: We can use your help.
In an normal corporate work environment, employees are not allowed to install software and must use the desktop configuration provided to them by IT. Compiling apps is not a task Largo city employees will ever face. More accurately, they would probably face disiplinary action for trying.
It's not the time involved waiting for the reboot, it's the time involved sitting at the computer watching it so I can reboot it when it needs it. It's a total waste of my time because I have to pay a lot more attention to a Windows install than a Linux install. I can do other things while it copies binaries of the disc./p.
If it ain't broke, you need more software.
yea, right. 1600 x 32 MB = 51200 MB memory required just to get those connections up and running. 51.2 / 4 GB = 12.8 systems. At say $30k for a 4 way proliant your looking at $384k and that is a low ball figure since it doesn't include stuff such as license cost (1600 windows licenses and 16000 winframe licenses), setup costs, administrative costs for that number of machines, no planing for outages, power regulation, cost of housing that many servers, administrative costs. Not very cost effective if you ask me.
yknow thats funny. i spent a day touring a prospective employer. they ran a couple odd thousand win2k boxes. they showed me their custom financial transaction software. also their HR dept was all win2k. the help desk was running 2k.
the only blue screen i saw the whole time down there was someone who didnt know to press start>shutdown, and it took us all of 5 seconds to show them that
so i guess what im saying is i missed your point
Yeah, we use Progress here, too. Run a custom app written in Progress/4GL (or however they write it) within the database engine. We use two primary front ends to the database on the user workstations, both of which are part of most Linux distributions: telnet and ssh.
Or is that too far from your idea of a "database client" to count? (If so, we've got 50 people using a Progress-based app without any "database clients" installed...)
travelling profiles (a feature with which I am not familiar) may show you the same colors and shortcuts on your desktop, but that is a far cry from what the X form of windowing does. it wouldn't help you at all with the applications which need to run in a multi-user environment also. either they run on the server which completely won't fly in a Microsoft environment, or they'd need to run on the client in which case the support needs move to the client and you haven't solved any problems.
Really, you are not as smart as you think.
works for me
|---------------|
practically an AC
Every progression in the level of automation in our lives is always accompanied by fear and uncertainy among the people the automation replaces. Automation always increases the standard of living of the average american, and drives up productivity. True some people lose jobs, but it's usually for the better. I think it's a good thing we dont have to hire people to draw out schematics for production facilities anymore (replaced by CAD/CAM tools).
So if you are living off of proprietary software lock-in in a product that has equivalents that exist for free with no strings attatched, then I think it's better for humanity that you find another line of work in the same field (software development). You may not be making as much money, but so will the rest of humanity not be paying as much money to keep your counter-productive enterprise going.
If it does, I say, bravo, let's get on with it!!!
did you read the article, nitwit? did you understand what it was about? No, so stop wasting our time. why would you think anybody else cares about your tiny little corner of the world?
What a load of crap. ME and Win2K have almost identical interfaces! Win9x or XP's interfaces are also quite simular. Hell, you can even set up XP to look like Win2K if the eye candy bothers you all that much.
Sure, some start menu options or control panel settings have changed, but it isn't anything that the average user can't figure out in an hour. Compare that to switching from Win9x to KDE or GNOME, where the entire interface will be different, along with most of the user's day-to-day applications. Most people would need a full day of training before they could figure out how to get any work done on their own.
"If me and my wife can use Linux, anyone can."
Don't compare an entire organization to just you and your wife. A fully-staffed company takes much longer to retrain than just a few people, and you'll encounter resistance from people who don't WANT to change. Many people have used Windows for their entire computing career, and will naturally be afraid to switch to something different. THEY won't care it it's cheaper or more stable, they just want to get their work done with a minimum of hassles.
I'm not saying that switching to Linux on the desktop is a totally BAD idea, but don't expect it to be as easy as switching over your home computer.
I know you're expecting a flame for your comments, but I still disagree with some of what you're saying. I work in a shop that has used several flavors of Unix and Windows mixed. The management, for some reason, would love to pay all their money to Microsoft, and replace all of the Unix/Linux boxes with Windows NT/2000/whatever. Articles like this (and the one from a few months ago claiming insurers charge more for insuring Windows over Unix) are valuable because my boss can take these to his boss to help justify our using Linux in the backroom and in several of the labs.
Because if they do, I feel compassionate for them. Word sucks, but StarOffice sucks even more. Word hangs up very easily, but StarOffice hangs up, in Linux and Windows, and, besides, botches installation, so you have to install all over from scratch!
Hope they fix it in 6.0, openoffice or whatever, but, so far, I haven't even been able to install their snapshots for RedHat...
I keep waiting...
It's just a BloJJ
Answer: "Email the file to yourself."
These people seem to sort of be the poster children for why linux can be used on the desktop.
I don't get it. I've always done this in windows too. Used zipdisks for big files I didn't want to fill my mailbox with. Didn't have to mount and umount the disk either.
I've finally had it: until slashdot gets article moderation, I am not coming back.
"and guess what? Linux is great -- that is if, and only if, you have perfect hardware and perfect setup and a standalone system. The minute that something is out-of-spec, linux goes AWOL and the poor desktop user is SOL because they don't know the difference between KDE and dd. OTOH, I've plopped in the install CD for W2K, filled in a few simple details, walked away, came back 30 minutes later and had a system up-and-running without any problems. Sure back in the day of WinNT4 (I humbly agree that Win9X was a POS, but don't get me started on why those existed and why customers demanded Win98SE and WinME...) there were a bunch of problems, but I have had very few problems installing windows 2000 systems (and *zero* on reputable machines (i.e. Dell), well there was that 1 problem, traced to a defective HD)... And secondly, as soon as the user wants to do something new with their system, they're SOL again, not only because installing isn't as simple as "click here to download, run setup.exe and you're installed" (albiet lately in linux it has gotten a LOT better), but also because the apps simply aren't out there.
d -gi ven-right (what IS UP with that slashdot auto-spacing-long-lines-because-they-must-be-evil- and-would-confuse-the-reader-so-we-have-to-insert- spaces??-) mentality and start paying for things again (yes, I know a lot of linux users pay for distros, but VERY FEW do compared to the manhours put in to develop and sustain it, and VERY FEW do compared to the number of people who USE it.. Actually, it costs more to put out a distro because of the costs of the bandwidth that you must provide to allow people to download the thing) s"
Oh BTW --"
-Yawn- I'll give you that hardware in certain conditions, but you know the reason, why even mention it.
If you know what you are doing network installs of Linux are totally easy. Be even easier following Largo's way.
"To recap, simply, I like linux. I think that it has a lot of potential but it simply isn't anywhere close enough yet to be a mainstream system."
I tire of this, if you were a user I would be polite...Nahhh I will remain polite. What exactly do you mean by mainstream? Desktop? If KDE 2.2 was pre-loaded then you'd be wrong. If you have used it and tried it then you'd know you were wrong. In fact, KDE 2.1.1 is and was pretty much ready. "anywhere near"...Is a bad statement to make, 2 -3 years ago I would have agreed.
"Remember this, and the fact that it's manhours spent with linux as well. I hate to be the harbinger of news here, but windows is much easier to use, period."
The article above suggests otherwise, and if you get someone who is unfamilier with computers then you'd get a different reflection. Then you would realise, all OS's are hard to use.
"There's no debate about that one, and with XP it just gets easier."
Are you scared of debate? Yes life gets easier with XP as it takes your decisions away, not as popular move as you think. An OS is their to provide a layer between the hardware and the user. Applications are there to provide varied functions, from e-mail and word processing, to multimedia. Funny thing is, XP covers all this when it does not need to.
"Try putting your mother down in front of a linux machine, and then do the same with a windows machine."
Oh man, you really do churn out the same FUD. You are placing someone who has had training on Windows and probably been using it for a number of years, so how they run things without thinking at a high level. Now you put them in front of Linux and its not the same, "GNU Not Unix", well GNU/Linux not Unix and GNU/Linux Certainly Not Windows.
The real test is to place someone with no experience of computers, you will see them struggle on both.
"There is a reason why windows is used on 90% of desktops, and why Microsoft is the software giant that they are (reasons beyond the typical slashdottery about squishing competition and cheating and crap), more than just "being in the right place at the right time".. It's because, for better or worse, they have the best set of software products out there. Office and Windows are extremely successful because they're good, and people like them and use them a lot. That's a fact, hard to dispute."
Easy to dispute, go to the root cause. Windows was the only Operating System you could buy from most manufacturers. Why? People were scared about IBM, as IBM had been a monopoly. So...The people who made decisions on what to put on their networks, or to suggest for employee's to use Microsoft products as that is what most wanted to stantardise on, and yes indeed the only alternative was IBM's O/S 2 Warp. Thinking that a Monolopy (they have been convicted as being one, this was upheld) crushing opposition through illegal ways a crap reason? Its not the only and final reason, but its a pretty damned important one. With no viable opposition, or alternative applications would naturally flock to Windows. Why spend lots of money developing an application for Windows 3.1? Hardly no-one would ever buy it. This is the simple reasoning.
2 years sysadmin only takes you to 1999, not to 1989-1991 time frame, this is the period of change over. I saw it happening...No one back then had a crystal ball and would see how bad things would get. Trust me, they are bad. One reason for the tech market doing so badly is that there is nothing signficantly new out there, XP is nothing new enough, why should anyone upgrade and I think you'll it not doing anywhere near as well as Microsoft are hoping (I maybe wrong though of course).
"I don't think that linux will make it as a mainstream OS anytime soon, or at least until most of the linux users (BTW, I think that part of the reason of linux non-acceptability is because of the typical i-love-linux-and-hate-windoze attitude and immaturity, not everyone, but just enough are immature and slander and swear and yell and scream and kick and fuss and act like children to give linux a bad name. Don't believe me? read our very own CmdrTaco. I think that he made some really good points there, the thermostat in hell must have broken that day...:> ) are part of the reason."
What CmdrTaco pointed out was not that original I saw an article that pointed out that two kids were giggling at his Laptop that happened to be running Windows, when he asked them were giggling at it turned out to be because they thought windows "sucked" and that Linux was better. Well they were acting like children, because that is what they were. But the author did have a point to point out.
"Oh well. I think that until linux users give up theI-want-everything-for-free-as-in-beer-as-my-go
You do get the odd impression that most will not pay for anything, but thats a few and its their right as a free citizen. But a lot will come into Linux willing to pay for apps that are worth the money.
StarTux
No, I don't think I'm the only one who's ever used Citrix, which is why I was so surprised by the number of people here so blatantly ignoring it. Since you've obviously heard of it, you deny that it works, I suppose.
I read your post thinking you were referring to Terminal Services and roaming profiles when you said "one-size-must-fit-somebody solutions you Windows guys kluge up just don't solve the problem", which pretty accurately describes them both. However, I will take issue with you if you intended to include Citrix with them.
There are some things Windows can't do. Running a remote desktop is not one of them.
I use to work as a tech in a fashion company for about 2k users and boy does windows suck. I just run into the same problems over and over again and only one out of 6 calls at the most dealt with a hardware issue. I still remember how to use ghost-image by heart because its the only way to deal with really screwed up workstations that a ms-office reinstall won't fix.
Anyway, according to the gartner group the average bussiness desktop costs 11k per desktop. Not for the price of the office software/windows and the computer per say but due to support. I assume the TCO for a linux $1,500 workstation would be probably only 6 or 7k. I assume the extra 5k is for servers and networking costs that need to be maintained. Multiple the 6k savings per user for 2,000 users is 12million over a 2 year life span for each machine. That is some serious savings.
http://saveie6.com/
Why will it? From what I remember that is why dos/Win3.1/Win9x was purchased for home use. Because alot of people was using it at work. So the logic there is not a 100%.
Have fun
1) My Documents is where the users are supposed to save their stuff. Beats the previous scatter policy of c:\program files\microsoft office or whatever.
2) You can remap My Documents using a login script or profiles. Feel free to make it a network share.
3) The fact that the local desktop, including all the user's docs syncs with the server is a *feature* designed for laptop users or other roamers.
4) If you percieve all of this as a problem, it sounds like your network is seriously mismanaged. Guess what? Idiots could and will fubar just about anything, including syncronized file systems for Unix (AFS?)
an experienced PC user spends his life cutting and pasting, and the lack of this in common Linux desktop environments are a real obstacle.
If it's only text you're complaining about. Here's how you copy/paste between X apps in general:
select the text you want to copy, go to the app you want to paste it, and where you want it, middleclick. Before I knew this I complained about the bad support for copy/paste in linux too, but it just works differently.
Now, it's true that copy/pasting images and so on isn't there yet, but it will be, soon.
Yes, it can be done! I got very tired of Windows '95 crapping out all the time... I switched all PC desktops in our company to Linux in late 1997; 50 seats all running RedHat 5.0 with NextStep GUI as I recall... later switched to Mandrake / KDE and haven't looked back. And we're mostly still running the same old Pentium 120s with a mere 32 Mb RAM and have saved a bundle of money.
-- Crazed Linux Zealot since kernel 2.0.21
We had MSCE-but-business-sense-free cluefree PC support like that at my company for a while. Their solution to everything wrong with Windows was to re-image. To hell with your data (and they didn't provide enough LAN space to back up local data fully). Blow away anything that wasn't "Corporate standard". Ignore the fact that developers here all had various different tools - a DB2 Connect for NT install here, Sybase or Oracle there, XML Authority over in the next row. Just lay back down the standard MS-Office, locked-down browser, and corporate time-reporting tools and say "job well done."
No clue what people really need to do their work in the real world. Morons.
Windows is inherently unrepairable. Settings are basically not transferable (yes I know about tools which attempt to do this with some slight success). Ultimately it's Service Pack, oops stil no good re-image, oops still not right, upgrade to next version - oh now too slow. Guess you need to order a new machine.
Although I agree that Linux is not quite ready for the mainstream desktop in all cases, it is in some. It clearly is working for Largo. Hell, I even had my sweet-but-technically-challenged girlfriend use Linux to connect to the Net, browse the web and get e-mail with Mozilla, and use StarOffice to work on a paper she's writing, this weekend when we were away and I didn't feel like booting my laptop back over to W2K. KDE and Gnome are not unfathomable to the average user.
And Linux is far more maintainable and recoverable than Windows. Attitudes like "if you fuck things up, all that we will do is swap your hard drive with one with a fresh install on it" prove the point.
I can't speak for Terminal Server Client but VNC and PCAnywhere are no substitute for remote X, they are slower and more unresponsive than a Java app on a P90. Doing work for any extended period of time simply sends you insane.
Australian? Join EFA
..and what about copying/pasting graphics, or video clips, or complex docs + formatting, ... ?
UI consistency is a problem with Linux apps. Install difficulty is NOT. I support Windows PCs at work. Many of the problems I fix every day are caused by users installing crap on their PCs.
It is my opinion that users should USE SOFTWARE and administrators should install software.
Applying access control to system configuration is an effective way to reduce management costs. Linux wins big in this area.
I feel that what is holding back Linux is not the UI it presents to the users. What holds back Linux is the visually oriented IT staff that make the software decisions. Unix and its lookalikes are intuitive for literary type people. Linux will need good visual administration tools before it can win the hearts of the prolific visual point-and-click IT staff.
The question that comes to mind is, "Do we want to shoehorn visual people into a literary OS?"
-Mike_L
I wish I had moderator points today so I could mod this parent up, but I don't, so I'll just corroborate. Certainly, if the original post deserved a 4 (despite the fact that it was basically a troll), then the parent of this deserves at least the same.
I get LOTS of work done using XFce as my desktop, as much as anyone who uses KDE or GNOME, and it has fewer features (and less bloat) than either GNOME or KDE. Most of the work gets done in the applications, not in the desktop anyway.
In addition, my 12-year-old son has begun using Linux without any particular preconceived bias, and to my surprise, he has chosen FVWM! And guess what -- he gets all his work done! Imagine that, and he's not even using KDE!
Everyone has preferences, and there's nothing wrong with that. KDE looks and feels more like Windows than the other DEs, which might make it a good choice for recent Windows converts; but there are now several modern DEs out there, and to say that you can't get as much "work" done in them is simply false.
The truth of the matter is if that is what you are living with now I don't trust you to implement another platform -- you haven't mastered the one you are on and you are whining that it is flawed because you havent.
You totally missed the point, which was that the article was on dot.kde.org and not www.cnn.com. "Those" people you talk about read the latter, not the former.
I once upgraded GroupWise 4.1 to GroupWise 5.0. We figured we could bring people in to the classroom, show them the new frontend, show them how all the detail screens were exactly the same, and we'd be done in an hour.
Instead, we had people who had been using GW4.1 for over a year, who completely forgot how to do anything. They had to be retrained on every single feature in the whole package, even though only one screen had changed.
And over three years after having moved from WordPerfect 5.1 on Windows 3.1 to WP7 on Win95, we still had people saying they could work faster with the old system, and in fact why couldn't we go back to the old DOS network; that one never went down.
The point is, for the people who only memorize their keyboard shortcuts and mouse clicks they need to get through the day, they're going to need to be retrained for W2K anyway. And for Office. And for the new versions of every app they use. So why not train them on something better, instead?
And just so I don't have to address the hardware issues in another post, at that same job we had 200 new computers come in on one order, all with the same specs, supposedly identical. But the video cards and NICs and a few other things weren't all identical. We ended up having 7 ghost images to get everything working. Add in the older machines we were still using, plus the next shipment that came in, and we ended up with a library of over two dozen system images, just to try to get everyone to the same desktop.
If the only thing we needed to get working was a network connection, the OS booted from the network, and everything ran from the server, this would have been much easier. But this isn't just an argument in favor of network computing. According to the article, a single Linux server was able to handle the entire city. Doing this with Windows would have required a server farm. You then end up with the maintnence issues of trying to keep the server farm synchronized.
The fact that Linux is designed from the beginning as a multi-user system is what makes network computing feasible. This allows sysadmins to run applications from wherever they make sense. Give developers boxes with some horsepower to run their tools locally, but run the office productivity apps on the server. Give secreteries thin clients and run everything from the server. Give road warriers laptops that boot to the network and run a scripted apt-get from the local server to keep everything up-to-date.
Most of this is probably possible with Windows, but the last time I worked in a Windows shop (just last year) it would have been all-custom and prohibitively expensive.
Nope, no sig
MS used to have a "Paste Special" feature in their apps that allowed with or without formatting (or only formatting). Seems to have disappeared a bit, but Office XP makes some annoying widget which does something similar.
When I ask most of my IT friends about the problems with switching their enterprise to Linux, the first thing they mention is that they would spend a fortune re-training everyone.
I live in St. Petersburg, FL which is ~10 miles from Largo, FL. The people of Largo aren't known for being really intellegent (kind of a white trash city). So I gotta think if they can understand how to use KDE, then I'm sure any local government's employees could figue it out.
I guess most government agencies don't really care about saving money, considering tax money is basically "free" money to them.
I want my rights back. I was actually using them when our government stole them after 9/11.
This is not a "special case," but one that could easily be duplicated in almost any government or business office environment that runs enough desktops to have its own sysadmins -- or at least a contract with a Linux-hip outside contractor -- to take care of the network.
My wife has worked in more than a few government and commercial office environments that ran Windows, and they *always* had a separate IT or network support staff to take care of the computers. She wasn't supposed to add software or even mess with the things at all. In fact, in her last "real" job, doing customer support for a pager company, the biggest office computer network problem they had was employees bringing in software (especially games) from home and installing them on their own. Often the self-installed software screwed things up like mad.
Running a client/server network completely eliminates this problem. It also makes updating productivity apps a lot easier for the sysadmins.
- Robin
Even further correction:
Linux is hard to use as a home DESKTOP system for typical home DESKTOP users.
In a business environment it's actually ideal: Easy to lock-down, easy to upgrade (especially in this case.. Upgrade the software on the servers, there are no "desktops" to update), etc. Office workers use what you tell them to use (you may have to show them a few things, but how is this different from anything else?). My friend's mom uses UNIX at her work and she's oblivious to it. Windowmaker on her desktop. Click that to get to her application, enter her data, press that key, done.
Sure, there are things that could be more convenient (you still can't get any more integrated than MS Office), but you just learn to work around what you have.
The key is that work is BEING DONE. Today. In the "real world."
If you were me, you'd be good lookin'. - six string samurai
Using VNC or any of the other virtual terminal software is nowhere near the same as simply logging in and seeing your desktop and your files come up in your session. That's something that's almost exclusive to the Unix/Linux world.
Let see how many time will it take for a press release from m$ to go out and say that the work of municipal workers isn't comparable to real hardcore day to day business...
ME, Win2k, 98, XP all have different interfaces! Figuring out how to use them is a pain. People might as well learn to use an interface that works when the time comes to "upgrade", or that poor old computer feels obsolete because MS won't run on it anymore. If me and my wife can use Linux, anyone can.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
Yeah, that just makes me cry.
"Ummm...yeeaaahhh...if you could come in on saturday and ummmm...recompile the kernel with the latest USB patches so that your scanner will work...ummmmm...yeahh...that'd be great. Ummm...I'm also gonna need you to come into the office on Sunday too...yeeahh...you gotta get Linux printing Pantone colours to that Winprinter over there...yeaahh...that'd be great too. Oh...and don't forget those TPC coversheets! When you've figured out how to make Linux print as well as Windows, go print yourself out a dozen copies. Grrreeeaattt!"
Grant it there are better installs out there for newer users like Mandrake (what I've been using recently). As long as they keep the installation down to a minimal and configure it right (like putting links to only programs they need on the desktop) then it could be used easily. However, I wouldn't necessarily call this learning. I am sure they have used a mouse before and can double click crap to make KEdit run.
At my workplace, we are forbidden from installing Windows 2000 because it doesn't support the majority of PC's we have. Luckily I don't need permission to replace NT with Linux, so thats what I use now.
Those old IBM keyboards are awsome. They stand up to a lot of wear and tear. If the quality of the keyboards on the terminals meet these standards, then they may last 10 years. Monitor's are a different story. I seriously doubt you used your 17" monitor 5 days a week for most of the day. If you did, it's very likely out of focus and the phosphor is getting burned out. I have a six year old 17" monitor that I still use. I have some monitor's at work that are over 5 years old that still don't look to bad, but they are the exception, not the rule. Well before you reach 10 years, the cost of repairs and upkeep on these terminals will exceed their value. Sure some of them will still work. I've got a VT100 terminal that's well over 10 years old that still works fine. The display is a little burned in, but I work fine for what I use it for. It's also the one of two working ones out of about a dozen that were purchased at the time. It will likely see limited use for years to come.
the usual course is to go through IT management and request it.
/local directory. Simulation results can be huge. I'm talking 1-2 gig compressed. You need space to extract and read them too.
This would almost never work for me. The types of apps that I need installed are usually extremely specific to my work (simulator development) and things that I need today, not tomorrow, and not next week. I can only imagine the headache involved in getting things like MPI installed. Or a special graphics library. I *need* space to install custom apps. On my machine at work, that's been provided for in the
why not consider moving 'em into the tech department?
Because I've been there and done that and you'd have to drag me back kicking and screaming. I just can't deal with sessions that begin with
me:"Click your start button"
them:"My what button?"
me:"Your start button"
them:"Oh, here it is. My Computer"
me:"No, your start button. Its in the lower left hand corner of your screen"
them:"Network Neighborhood?"
and it just goes downhill from there.
something clever
The goal is very simple. It's about enabling me to do what I want to with my computer. I don't share a desktop machine with anyone else and don't need to. I doubt too many other people do either.
And no, there was no tweaking involved at all. These things work right out of the box. And anytime I am in a coworkers office and want to check on my mail status, etc, I can simply term serve into my desktop and check it. No special configuration etc. required. All you need is for Terminal Services Client to be installed - which is installed by default in XP. And all you need on the desktop you're connecting to is Terminal Services Server. Installed by default on Win2K Server, Whistler Server and XP Professional. (Not enabled by default on XP Professional but that's just one option to check.)
So I don't care whether it satisfies some exotic scenarios that no one uses. It does satisfy what _I_ want to do and what almost every one of my coworkers seem to want.
Mmmm.. Donuts
Maybe you are the one dreaming. Schools have been doing just that on Windows and Mac's for years. Some businesses have done the same. This is since Windows 3.11 btw.
It's here and it's quear.
It would seem to me that any company using custom software that doesn't ask for the source code is letting themselves get ripped off. If you have the source code, and it's in C, then porting should be vastly cheaper than replacing the software. As for the semi-custom, well you have a point there.
Go Lakers!
When Windows users could see their desktop from other computer.
Yeah, it is called VNC.
Excuse me, but your post rates very high in my buzzword meter.
He is the Path, the Truth and the Life
"I've plopped in the install CD for W2K, filled in a few simple details, walked away, came back 30 minutes later and had a system up-and-running without any problems" OTOH, I've put in a W2K install cd in, only for the damn thing to constantly reboot my pc just as it started to load the installer. Then for a strange reason it decided to NOT reboot, install W2K, only for it to then reboot every time W2K started. It turned out the motherboard (can't remember model, but was for a Pentium III), was incompatible, even with the latest BIOS. Had to get a new motherboard, and then it finally worked. Ok this doens't happen that often, but talking on IRC the exact same thing had happened to a couple of people. :(
start Lumberg
Umm... the correct reports I need... are the TPS reports... Umm, yeah that would be grrreat.
end Lumberg
Sorry, I just saw the movie the other night...
--
.sig seperator
--
If you ignore the other uses of a tool, does that make the tool less useful, or you less useful?
The reason is that Windows is non-multi user so the only way to run multiple users on a single physicle box is to instantiate Windows per user.
I'm pretty sure he was talking about Terminal Services flaking out about 40 users. Of the 3 large TS installation I'm familiar with, all of them limit users to about 50 max per box (running on Win2K/Metaframe).
Since he was running a few hundred simultaneous desktop sessions on the RedHat box, I think the comparison is a fair one, although without knowing more about the admin I can't decide whether he's qualified to make the judement about Windows limits or not.
I am not a competant windows system admin. My users run on samba (thank you very much). I know that samba supports group policies, but I didn't know that I could do this with it.
Thanks for the tip.
Key to financial independence: Spend less than you earn. Save and invest the difference. Do it for a long time.
i have to say THIS to people all the time. just because the windows install asks you to reboot doesnt mean you have to. every time it says "new hardware installed, would you like to reboot Y/N" press NO. then it will install the next piece and you hit NO again. Once its done, THEN you can reset.
i can install windows in half the time it takes to install linux when i do this.
I agree the whole formatted cut and paste is nice - but it can also be a PIA. Like when I cut and paste something from the web into an email (friends don't let friends send HTML mail) I mean it gets converted anyway - but I like seeing my email in true form before they get sent.
It would be nice to have somethign like Ctrl-Shift-V or something do the paste WITHOUT all the formatting!
Top Most Bizarre/Disturbing Error Messages
As an added benefit, under a non-MS system you don't need to deal with the 20 irritating "utilities" that get installed with, say, a SoundBlaster card. Apparently it's not worth the trouble to port them.
MacOS is still untouched for ease of installation (boot from CD, hit OK a couple of times and go get some coffee). But from what I saw, Mandrake has Windows beat, at least for someone unfamiliar with the quirks of a Windows install.
Then use SMB networking instead... doh... the network is down..
.xinitrc) hoping to hell most of the machines on the network are kind of the same. Then grep them out when you log off and create a new tarball and send it to your server via the most congested network in the building.
Seriously, if everyone is not using the Desktop to store work and are storing their work in an appropriate network drive... uh... the network is down...
Anyway, network seem to go down less often these days.
OK, how about someone writes NT profiles for Linux? I suggest a monsterous shell script to download a tarball of a user's home directory that uses sed and awk to dynamically edit the system files (.bashrc,
More seriously, how about caching the home directory? You could do it, but I'd rather spend the effort putting in a better network.
Xix.
"Everything is adjustable, provided you have the right tools"
I'm sorry, but in the tech industry, if you can't add to your skill set in a hurry, you're likely to get screwed. If you're MSCE, you need to stay current. If magically the whole world moves to Linux and you're MSCE, it isn't time to cry, it's time to go get those skills that work in Linux land.
Use the system policy editor, or do what they did in this instance and use a thin-client solution. Now, to get back to the actual point...
Look, there are hundreds and hundreds of valid complaints, but you've missed the point (deliberately, I think) of my original post. Read it again; and if you're going to rehash other people's arguments which I'm not even disputing, such as cost, or go off-topic again, well, don't!
Yes. Especially newer versions.
Sorry dude, but that's COMPLETE BULLSHIT. I was a member of a nine-person team (and I was the developer, and one other was the IT manager) who supported >350 management consultants on *Windows 95*. These are your worst-luser-from-hell nightmare types: demanding (and of course getting) the right to install whatever the hell they wanted, saving multiple copies of 500Mb Access databases "for backups" (of course the file servers were backed up daily), screaming blue murder whenever anything didn't work *just so*. It wasn't much fun, but we did it. So who's FUDding now?
I find it really depressing to find the "good guys" - Roblimo and the general Salshdot population - are, as many people have pointed out, just as happy to resort to knee-jerk FUD, myths and downright lies to support Linux and Free software. Free software is Free as in speech, and that's all that should matter. Trying to claim it's more secure or easier to use is a feeble attempt to gild the lily and the temptation should be resisted at all costs. IMHO :)
Another list to do one day - Open Source FUD myths of our time, starting with "Apache runs more of the web than IIS" and taking all those other pathetic lies about X Windows, Gnome, the joy of the CLI, the "many eyes == shallow bugs == all open software is secure and bug free" nonsense... Pardon my ranting, it's been an exasperating day all round. Just "-1, flamebait" me as usual when someone points out some errors...
This story is nothing but mental Linux masturbation. It's an article posted on a Linux oriented website (dot.kde.org), linked to on an admittedly pro-Linux weblog, and being discussed by a group of pro-Linux computer users.
That's great. Let me know when somebody offers up a different opinion, ok?
Nobody can tell me that this story, as good as it may be, is nothing more than screaming "Look, we're great! Let's preach to the choir!!!". Who would even think of visiting dot.kde.org, besides people who already know the benefits of Linux over other OSes? Nobody.
My point is this: We can write all the pro-Linux articles we want on all the pro-Linux websites we want, and it's not going to do a DAMN bit of good because the information is not getting out to the people who need it. You wanna rant and rave about how great Linux is because it saves time and money? Great. Go out there into the real world and try selling that to a company who relies on NT for their technology.
If you can change their views and switch them over to Linux, then and only then can you claim some sort of victory.
Until then, there is no point to these articles, as no new information is being spread and no new minds are being informed. We're talking amongst ourselves, while the world passes us by.
I expect this to be (-1, Flamebait) within 20 seconds of hitting "Submit". Do your worst.
Try and get into on of Sun's offices. They have smart cards that you just swip and, bosh! there's your desktop - anywhere in the world!
Couldn't you get OS X? Then you could both be happy, she gets the shiny happy user interface, and you get BSD underlying the glitz and a command line interface...
"Information wants to be paid"
Well, not completely... in the windows world you can always use roaming profiles and save your crap to a share on a file server. If you want total thin client, there's terminal services and citrix.
answer me a question: Is there anyway to open Word or other apps in KDE/KOffice? I'd love to nuke Staroffice, and as soon as I find a way to get to all my old .doc's, its gone ;)
I just had to shove Windows 2000 down the throats of my sales force. Transition from NT4.0. You should have heard the bitching/whining/crying/demands/etc... It doesnt matter what you put in front of them, they will piss-and-moan if it is different in any way. (Hell 2 years ago when I got here and made NT4.0 erase the login-name from the login screen for security they tied to hang me!) Changeing them to KDE or Gnome is no harder than any other change. In fact the Linux change will make the admin's life a dream. (No more idiots installing software that makes the system unstable!!! Damned AOL on NT!)
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
Hi, I use Linux a lot at home and it works just great without any problems. Windows is BULLSHIT and I had to reboot everytime I loaded a Damn Driver. With linux, I download most of my drivers as source code, then do the ./configure,make and make install routine and I am through...No REBOOTING AT ALL. The point is that if you do have the mindset to make the change, then you will. As for Windows XP, it's bull shit authentication scheme is enough to throw off people. Stop sucking Bill Gates Cock and get on to better operating systems like Linux or BeOs 5.0
Their decision has zero to do with Linux. More FUD from a scared little microsoftie.
Who would even think of visiting dot.kde.org, besides people who already know the benefits of Linux over other OSes? Nobody.
Thank-you! Now that I know that it's there, I will visit from time to time.
Go out there into the real world and try selling that to a company who relies on NT for their technology.
I can see myself pitching this to a client as an option. Can you imagine having that versatility of being able to continue to support NT/2000 or offering an extrenmely cool (not to mention cost-effective) solution? I can!
You're using her as bait, Master!
Little Girl Blue
Will Blow Your Horn
Click Right Here
To See The Best Corn
teehee teehee
"I'm a dirty white tomcat, enter my world..."
If you want an ERP app that runs on Linux, take a look at PeopleSoft 8.. 100% web based ( HTML and JavaScript). Runs fine in Mozilla. Financials, HRMS, CRM, EPM, and a Portal all on Linux ( or Mac, OS/2, Palm, Be .. whatever. )
See Ya
G_X
With Linux as the OS, why don't they just go all the way and do what the DoD did: Use Star Office!
OK. So I can't remember my PDC's/BDC's, Exchange, SQL Server and Terminal Servers (all NT4) at one of the world largest Oil companies supporting hundreds (500+) of authenticated and working clients without any significant problems?
Puhleez.
The cost issue is real, but the software being flaky is not. NT is as solid as you make it. Typical Linux FUD if you ask me.
Ryszard
- 'sup, G?
"2 reboots and no downloads", eh? I sure hope your box is behind a very restrictive firewall.
What newsgroups do you read ?
I read most of the alt.os.linux.*, comp.os.linux.*, uk.comp.os.linux and most of the KDE mailing lists, and everywhere there are people who are willing to go out of their way in order to help a newbie.
One other point I overlooked. This is a city government operation, which I would bet has less need to interchange "industry-standard" formatted files with other organisations than the typical commercial company, so it can better tolerate being "non-standard".
I have set up win95 machines to boot without gui. In fact, tis jsut a simple setting in a human readable text file.
Yeah -- really. But you know what? There are a large number of Linux users out there who, in having spent so much time learning Linux, that they've learned almost nothing about Windows.
They assume just because THEY don't know how to set it up to be stable that it can't be done. And they assume that just because THEY haven't seen it do something, that it absolutely can not do it. The fact is, most of them haven't got a damned clue what Windows can and can not do. They only know that most configurations tend to crash.
I'm more impressed with a user who has managed to tidy up a Windows machine than I am a user who has 6 months of uptime on a Unix box. I know which one is harder to do.
"Everything you know is wrong. (And stupid.)"
Moderation Totals: Wrong=2, Stupid=3, Total=5.
(before marking this as OT, please read...)
Anybody know if any recent version of AutoCad supports Linux?
We have a client that is willing to displace 1600 windows workstations with Linux, provided that about 24 of them can run AutoCad ('tis true...).
Right now our only option seems to be Citrix (PUKE!)
The only thing that has ever crushed me completely was trying to get Oracle8i and Designer going on a Lose98 box. After getting beat down about three times, even geek pride had to admit that some defeats are best accepted.
Get thee glass eyes, and, like a scurvy politician, seem to see things thou dost not.--King Lear
There is quite a difference between what you describe and what the FSF describe. The FSF wants to socialize businesses, go to sovjet or cuba and see what that does to a economy.
Open source isn't a change in business model, a business model can never be built on giving everything away.
So they would have to have a PC on every desk anyway? There goes the advantage of little-to-no maintenance on the desktop, and that still costs a hell of a lot more than a generic X terminal hooking up to a generic PC server.
but it is a windows problem.
In NT4.0 how do I make all fies saved drop to a network drive? you CANT. linux? you can force it.
Until windows gives me the filesystem power that Linux has it will be far behind.
Centralized file server holds the documents/whatever folders, the mappings to said centralized file server are restored via login script... so what exactly am I missing here? What's the benefit of bringing down your eloquently customized desktop "if all you need to do is send a quick email"? Curse you Windows for having a homogenous, more or less user-friendly interface!
Easy does it!
This comment has been submitted already, 276865 hours , 59 minutes ago. No need to try again.
One thing to remember is that people at the non-geek level will find any computer not so easy to use at any level. If you're actually interested in what goes on, Linux might be a little harder to get going in, but these are office workers here. What the need to know is how start up, customize a desktop, run apps, access files, and use their apps. From that point, KDE is a whiz. I recently changed my desktop to a not so recent version of KDE and was amazed at how far the Linux users interfaces have come along over the years. This is something that no office worker should have a hard time learning.
The major flaw form the novice geek view is changing configurations on the fly. That still messes me up. Other than that, the installs are reeze these days, and the other big merit is consistent behavior. I can log into my linux box and be assured that it'll run the same it did yesterday. I cannot say that for my windows machine.
/*Up until maybe 6 months ago there were many printers and network cards (reasonably curent models) still on store shelves without working Win2k drivers. */
And this is different or relevant how?
How many months did I spend without sound because there weren't any Soundblaster Live! drivers that would work on my Linux system because I had 2 processors? How many months did I spend without proper USB support? Just how many scanners can I not buy because there are no Linux drivers for them?
The river flows both ways and to be truthful, Windows and its variants have more (supported) drivers than Linux will ever dream about. Why is it that people who want to install Linux are encouraged to peruse a "hardware compatability" FAQ before they do so? I've never had any problem with hardware under windows. If I can get the OS to see it, I can get it working. With Linux, good luck.
I'm not bashing Linux. The fact is most companies are not writing Linux drivers for their products. We are, for the most part, dependant upon the hard work of *volunteers* to support the hardware. And, usually, the drivers are minimalistic and many don't take advantage of the hardware fully (ATI Radeon All-In-Wonder anyone?).
If you were me, you'd be good lookin'. - six string samurai
Thanks for the warning. I agree that floppy is an archaic technology, but I'm paranoid ehough that I don't keep my PGP/GPG keys anywhere but on floppies. Yes, its fragile. That's why I keep ten copies of it and no, I'm not kidding :)
So you installed win2k 30 seperate times? Why didn't you just install one and ghost it, move the image to a network drive or burn to a cd? if you did that 1 hour for first install of win2k (from post to desktop with latest security patches service packs and drivers) then 10min a peice for the other 29 boxes. Or you could have just used the MS intellimirror deployment services provided in win2k server.
I didn't say that's when I stopped...just that's when the desktop was up. Of course I then grabbed the latest drivers for everything, and service packs and so on. But you have to do the same thing with RH, surely no-one just runs the thing out of the box??
The original discussion was about how quick it is to get it up in the first place.
---- Den ene knappen er powerknapp, den andre er Bender voice knapp "Bite My Shiny Metal Ass"
That was easy to do in a university I went to. Unsecured ethernet lines, all I . . . *ahem* THE INTRUDER had to do was camp overnight in a broom closet with a single ethernet cable running above the ceiling. The intruder spliced the line, inserted a hub, and put in a throwaway laptop (an old Dell 486/50). That puppy in promiscuous mode was all that was needed to get every single password sent to the old VAX that ran the grade/enrollment system. As far as I know, the system is still there. Oh, and the BIOS being locked out? You can easily reset the CMOS with a minor amount of tweaking. If you want to go sneakers, it can usually be done without even opening the case. I'm not impressed.
funny munging
This article - a bona-fide, user-level Linux success story (that also gives deserved kudos to some very cool sysadmins) is on NewsForge and Slashdot so readers can print it out and hand it to their bosses, and taxpayers can send it their elected officials. In other words, this is an advocacy tool for *you* to use, not direct advocacy by *me*.
:)
WSJ and NYT and other media have reporters that routinely read Slashdot and, increasingly, NewsForge (Hi Lee, John, and everyone!) and use us as a source of story leads. If they think saving tax money by using Linux will make a story worth writing, they'll write it.
Remember, the vast majority of my writing *must* go on NewsForge or Slashdot because I work for OSDN. Yes, it's as strange to me as it is to you, but they *pay* me for this stuff.
Now, about external advocacy...
If The Washington Post's tech editor (Hi Rob) or any other general-circulation publication's editors wanted me to write a freelance piece about how Largo's Linux use is saving tax money -- or any other Linux topic, I'd be happy to take on the assignment. I've written Linux advocacy pieces for both The Washington Post and Baltimore Sun in the past, you know.
I have also been doing more F2F Linux "outreach" advocacy lately, mostly speaking to non-Linux groups. This is the bulk of my public speaking these days, and is a major reason you don't see me speaking at Linux shows, which I feel have plenty of speakers already, most of whom know more than I do. My big speaking schtick is showing non-Linux people how easy it is to use Linux for common office tasks by plugging my (Linux) laptop into a digital projector and showing how to *do* instead of just talking.
Sadly, I can't do much outside writing between now and the end of September. I'm on a book deadline, and it's *not* a Linux book (title = "Build Profits Online") although it has a fair amount of Linux and Open Source advocacy in it. Once that manuscript is finished I'll have a little more time available to write "side" freelance stories about Linux (or whatever).
Thanks for reading,
- Robin
As I read the articles I started out very skeptical, went on to be very impressed, and ended up pretty skeptical again.
It sounds like the system definately meets the City's needs, but it also seems like the Newsforge article is trying to overstate what those needs are. Lets look at the system specs.
400 Clients (800 Users)
Dual 933MHz system
3GB of Memory
18GB Hard Drive Space
Peak of about 230 concurrent users (from the first article)
Each concurrent user gets 11 to 12MB of system memory in which to work. They stated that they designed the system so they didn't have to hit the swap space. The 18 GB of hard drive space needs to be split between the OS application software and user storage space. Some users will need less space than others, so lets just ignore the space for the software and divide the total by the number of users. 18 GB/800 users = roughly 22.5 MB. How many people can here can honestly say that they don't have more space than that used for their email. The numbers tell me that the secretary they interviewed that was using Word Perfect, and email at the same time was one of their power users. I wouldn't be surprised if several hundred of their users don't even know how to access their email.
The big question is, so what? It's still a real system, that's meeting real users needs. The problem I have is that the article goes on to make tons of apples to oranges comparrisons.
It compares the cost of a thin client system in which users have very limited needs to a system with Windows desktops for everyone. How about Windows Terminal Server or other solutions that are more similar. I just don't buy the $300,000 a year hardware savings either. THese users have very limited needs, they don't need a new computer every year and a half, and $300,000 / 400 = $750 a year. Even if your buying new systems with monitors, that's way too much. $400,000 or $500,000 to run Exchange for their user base? Bullshit. I'm not saying that a Microsoft solution is cost effective, or even better excluding costs. It sounds like they found an exelent solution to their needs. The Sourceforge article however was too full of FUD to have much credibility.
CD-ROM is probably better for that purpose because it's RO. Harder to destroy when the feds kick down your door, tho.
Sure, many older and existing companies are stuck with Windows because of the cash they've shelled out for custom development.
;) aren't, and can switch if they want to.
;).
:p
However, many newer companies (And even a few older ones
Microsoft is fast losing its Iron Grip on the desktop market. Linux is spreading through it like.. Well, to quote a certain Microsoft endorsed PR mistake, 'a cancer'
Microsoft products won't be going away for some time, and I hope they don't. I fear they day that Linux 'controls all'. I want diversity. I want multiple operating systems in use. I want headaches, because it lets talented people get jobs while one-trick ponies wallow in a pile of magazines under a cardboard roof.
Anyway, what I'd love to see is a decently stable, working version of Wine for Linux, and something similar to Wine for Windows in terms of running Linux apps.
Yeah, I know its a troll but I have to bite...
Where is our DirectX, our Cakewalk, our Quake III?
DirectX - Mesa
Cakewalk - not a musical guy myself but I'm told there are some good midi sequencers out there.
Quake III - Quake III. Sheesh... cant you use a search engine? Here's a tip... www.lokigames.com - you can even use your windows Q3 cd with the download!
If Linux were pre-installed like Windows, this wouldn't be an
issue.
Linux desktops are just as easy to use. Perhaps a new user
doesn't want to learn how to install and configure everything
though.
At a business, though, there will be a competent admin to
take care of the system; and the only issue is training (which is admittedly a significant issue).
Mark
The story says how the admins like being able to do software installation and maintenance centrally instead of having to run around to 400 Windows(TM) boxes. Which in turn leaves them time to help out the average Joe User with his/hers problems. Installation shouldn't be left to Joe anyways.
I'd say that's pretty good for usability. I've encountered quite bit of Windows(TM) users who couldn't find their way around windows either, who would need the support either way.
Of course this only works in a office-setting as the one described. Guess most people can't afford a sysadmin at home ;-)
Just my 2 cents.
Maybe that means most of the people out there are already brainwashed. It doesn't really matter, because they're not going to suddenly start thinking like kernel hackers because we think they should.
That will only hurt them. It in no way takes the system or server down. They loose the configs and any saved files on there directory. They exit and log back in and it recreates there config files. Besides that is what server backups are for.
The other problem I always had when I had a roaming profile is that you have to have the same perfectly vanilla application install everywhere. As soon as you start installing, say, Visual Studio, if it isn't on everyone's desk, roaming profiles are basically worthless.
In contrast, a look around most Windows-using offices shows more blue default screens than anything else.
I guess people are so used to crashes that the BSoD is pretty much a common screen. If I had a dime for each time I've seen "Scandisk is scanning your PC... next time shut Windows down properly", I would have as much money as Bill Gates. Hey, wait a second...
-- Mike
No no no no no. SDL is small, fast, compatible. How is that anything like DirectX?
The idea that you could see "your" desktop from another workstation is just a dream in the Windows world. I suppose you've never heard of VNC/PCAnywhere/Terminal Server Client (for those of use running NT/2K Server)
The idea that you could see "your" desktop from another workstation is just a dream in the Windows world.
Ummm.. no. Have you ever used Terminal Services? I carry my laptop to meetings with me and term serve into my desktop (running windows XP). I have the choice to login in a new session or (the one I choose) to login as console. I am then connected to my desktop as I left it on the machine - with all the windows, etc. open just as I left them. I see "my" desktop from any machine on a network.
Mmmm.. Donuts
If only I had mod points. Do you have a flag? Whats that behind your back? These are the rules that I've just made up.
The server we built is a dual-933 with 3GB of memory, and 18GB of disk,this goes for about $9500 USD. Hope you got a tube of KY with that!
Buy a GeForce with its closed source driver?
Something which is very much against the spirit of OpenSource..
Or buy a Radeon?
Or buy a card with poor 3D performances? Or a 3DFx card with no future?
My fault perhaps, but frankly the other choices are not very "inspiring".
Oh BTW I want to upgrade my PC.
The Athlon 1.2 GHz seems to have the best performance/price ratio, nice.
Which motherboard should I buy? DDR or SDRAM?
The fun begins I know that there is some bugs with VIA chipset under Linux, oops I want to have a stable PC thank you, so I look for informations the Linux Hardware Database do NOT talk about buggy VIA chipset even if I know there are some problems, it doesn't talk neither about motherboard with the AMD 760 chipset (too new I guess).
So OK, you have to check the compatibility: sorry but it ISN'T SIMPLE !
And what should I do when I want to replace highlighted text ?
It's just the same with software. Why should companies continue paying premium prices for commodites? If you think they should in order to "protect programmers' jobs", then I'd say your thinking is misguided. Companies (and govt's!) should do whatever is most economically efficient. If it costs 1/10th as much to run your organization with open source software, then you're not only saving your company money, but you're freeing resources in the economy -- adding to the net efficiency of the economy.
Let's look at it at a micro-economic level, assuming that it really _is_ 90% cheaper for the typical office to use an open source vs commercial OS/office-suite/etc (we can debate that seperately). In that case, the market is sending a signal that alot of programmers should switch to developing from a base of open source software. In other words, as a programmer, perhaps you can be more efficient (that is, add more value per hour of work) by leveraging a huge base of open source software, than you can by developing for a proprietary system.
The argument I'm making is that it is always "best" for the economy if organizations use the cheapest available solution. That leads to the most efficient utilization of resources in that economy. Ultimately, that leads to the most jobs of the highest quality (whatever type of jobs those might be). If open source solutions are cheaper than proprietary ones, then it's better for the economy if they are used. The net result, in that case, would be a shift of programmer resources from building on a base of proprietary software, to building on a base of open source software.
The only real question is: is open source software cheaper than proprietary software? If it is, then it's good for the economy if open source is used.
The key is that they are able to do it with employees hired off the street with no linux experience.
The common complaint as to why Linux can't be used on the desktop is lack of application support or that Gnome/KDE are too difficult for people to learn. This proves those arguements wrong.
And what I was getting at with that point is that all these people have to do to get a new app working is talk to the admin, wait a day, and reboot.
This is an ideal case of Linux use; home desktop users will have quite a time getting galeon installed.
My contention here is that apart from the "my apt-get is better than your rpm is better than your new unheard of package management system", getting new apps running on a Linux box would be damn near impossible for people without the creativity to email a file home if they don't have a floppy drive.
I would generally agree that Linux Setup is much easier than Windows. But given an OS is installed, its much easier to double-click on a self-extracting exe and get a program installed, than it is in Linux. Consider RPM. Do an rpm -Uvh, and if you have the dependencies, its all good. But if you don't, it spews and barfs about not having some random ass library. The best thing you can do is googlize the library name it spewed, and hope you can find it.
And if you think you retort was A)ever-so-witty or B) sarcastic or even C)original (look at the number of clone posts), you seriously need to go and watch some Eddie Izzard :)
Microsoft started working on their windowing system called Windows in 1983 right after VisiOn was announced.
The cost savings in license fees and the opensource nature of the software is great but it's kind of funny to here them compare apples (thin clients running off a network) to oranges (standalone desktops). Of course they are going to save money time and efforts once they get a thin client setup going especially for administrative functions like secretarial work. Hell my brothers corp does the same with Windows via NetWare and Terminal Services. The 10 person IT staff to support 500 users is trumped by the 8 IT staff to support 800 users over an entire country he does. It's a financial institution btw focussing mainly on check processing and electronic funds transfers.
So yes this is a spectactular achievement but compare apples to apples it would make the argument so much smarter.
Always I heard that I wonder why the good old "select with the mouse to copy, third button to paste" isn't enough. Always worked for me, no matter if its GTK, QT, motif, or whatever
Make It Secret . Free JavaScript implementation of AES for your browser
But most people don't need or care about having multiple users use a single machine simultaneously. Terminal Services allows me to access MY desktop wherever I am. That's what it's intended for, that's what it does and that's what I want and need it to do.
Mmmm.. Donuts
This is a story about an organisation that's been using thin client devices (what we used to call X-terminals, and NCD have been making them for quite a few years) connected to backed servers. Moreover, the organisation has been using this model since 1992, with various backend server platforms. Currently, they're using Linux as the backend, and it's quite likely a good deal more attractive and easier to administer than the Unixware that preceded it, but remember that they've now had (assuming at least 2 sysmans throughout that time, probably more when they were initially starting with it) over 18 man-years of tuning and replacing components with better technology as it became available. Don't get me wrong, this sounds an impressive achievement, but if the organisation were to put out a request for tender for a new IT system today, would it take the risk of going with such an unusual approach?
I think we all know the answer to that: they'd go with industry-standard desktop PCs with industry-standard software. Because it would be "less risky".
So this is a new strategy for free software advocacy: "Call anonymously to the BSA, and tell them that your company is using unauthorized copies of WinZZ software. Then wait till the BSA audit to explain your boss about Linux and convince them of the benefits".
Umh, ... where was that BSA report telephone?
Windows 2000 has an automated network install and a cmd line switch to do an automated install, totally unattended. And how long does it take linux to reboot, a couple minutes depending on the machine? Why is that one action a total waste of your time and not the amount of time to copy the binaries off the cd. I just don't understand this mentality.
If they have been running UNIX and thin clients all along, what's really new? That they gave up their existing thin clients and switched to Linux-based thin clients? Sure it's "new" but not new in the sense that they were a pure Windows shop before.
Apple has done this by removing the floppy drive all together. But I know what they're talking about in the difficulty of weening users off of floppies. I stopped buying new ones two years ago for my users, and today they're still coming to me bugging me. We quite a robust mail system, and a file server with over 340GB of space. We don't need no stinking floppies! Besides, floppies are fragile and slow. Use the wire, that's what it's there for.
~LoudMusic
No sig for you. YOU GET NO SIG!
That works great for text. But it doesn't retain formatting information if I copy from Konqueror and paste into KWord. Just as a "for instance" I can do this from MSIE to MS Word-- with all formatting table structures, even hyperlinks in place. Is the situation better with GNOME, or any other desktop environment on Unix/Linux?
:)
I'm not naysaying... most of what we are constantly hearing the parrots say is "essential" for Linux to gain desktop acceptance is nonsense. Even my example is unlikely to be a common need. I've never done it except for testing it, nor seen anyone else do it. I also managed to crash MS Word during my simple test of that feature, so it may not be so useful anyway.
For general, typical office use, any GUI requires training and learning, and the curve for KDE or GNOME is no steeper than for Windows. And most of the "essential", advanced features MS Office provides have little to no benefit, since most users do not have the time or inclination to learn them (and if they do, they often have a peer group which isn't going to be keeping up, making the use of the feature largely useless).
I do not have a signature
And you're right, these kinds of articles are good, because they show that it can be done. However, the point of my comment was that it does no good to sit around and mentally masturbate about this "victory" when people in the mainstream still see Linux as a bunch of pimply-faced communists who want to steal everything (like it or not, that's the general image behind Linux).
We have to take articles like this and publish them. Not on a Linux-oriented site, and not to a group of people who already understand the benefits of Linux.
We need to get this information mainstream
So, if the something I want is not just a document, but the app that created it, I have to install the app on my desktop? And then Windows will not only launch it, but use the application settings from the registry on the other machine... are you seeing the problem yet? the various ad hoc one-size-must-fit-somebody solutions you Windows guys kluge up just don't solve the problem. Do you argue so hard because you can't believe that Windows can't do something, or because you simply don't understand the problem?
"How much does MetaFrame cost, with 800 licenses? (Dunno myself, but I'd bet on a few thousands, if not more)
Unsurprisingly, linux comes with all the fruit you need to pull a stunt like that. Windows? Not a snowball's chance in hell."
So it doesn't come out of the box. If you can aquire it what does it matter? Are you really trying to say every useful thing comes with any linux distrobution? That's a pretty high standard indeed. If cost is your only measure fine you win, yours costs less. But there are more thin windows clients than linux. That system works well enough that people will spend the bucks. They put their money where their mouths are and they profit from those systems.
"Let's indeed compare apples with apples: Windows doesn't have the tools you need to do serious work. Its outclassed, outmatched, outdated, overpriced, useless. It's not honest to compare that piece of crap with the millions of hours dedicaced hackers have put in linux."
It's humorus that you say that when work does get done on Windows and one can easily point to installed base for business and say if they aren't working than the windows boxes must be sitting there.
They aren't and you are out to lunch. Good try at a flame based on your own OS zealotry.
Interesting observation, but not exactly a mark against microsoft. In fact, if you are a competent windows system administrator, you should likely know about group policies. Then, if you know about group policies, you should also know about folder redirection and software publishing.
If you redirect your "my documents" to somewhere on the network, it will not copy it at each logon. Same thing for any of the other bulky "profile" folders you need to use.
If you set up software to be managed within your group policies, you can have it install to your user's workstations at their logon with great flexibility. This is even without SMS!
Knock on MCP/MCSE types all you want, but a good one will know all this and more. See This Link for more info.
The biggest problem I see with Linux on the desktop is not a matter of ease of use by the end user, because lets face it no matter how simple of a design the end user will still not be able to figure it out. The problem I see is with the support end. In our office we have about 2000 desktop machines and 8 techs devoted to supporting the desktop environment, that's 1 tech per 250 machines. Now these techs are pretty good with most issues, but if you were to put them in front of a Linux machine with hardware or software issues they would be lost. Even the one or two who are decent with Linux, when faced with solving an issue, resolution times would be tripled or even more. The problem is that a qualified Linux technician is in a higher pay range then a desktop support technician. So the money saved by using a free operating system is lost in the support.
Ok, I'll accept that.
Linux isn't hard to use. It's a pain in the ass if you screw with it for fun. But it isn't hard for most users. They just need Email, a Word processor and solitair.
And those run just fine.
This is all good news for KDE, but for Linux? There is no mention in the article of a switch from Windows to Linux. They were using an X display system before, now they just upgraded to the KDE desktop. This is not a big deal... everyone knows that KDE is way easier to use than other window managers.
While the article definately has a Linux vs Windows angle to it (and you have to admit, it's hard to talk about one being deployed without considering the effects the other one may have had, had it been deployed), I'm simply more interested in hearing secretaries extoll the virtues of KDE.
...
While this issue has been in full-fledged war mode for years, I think *nix proponants such as myself would have far more success focusing on the suitability and usability of KDE and Gnome than always boiling it down to a Xwindows vs Windows debate. Sure, Windows does the job, I run it at home; but if this article proves that End User X, dumb as a post, doesn't mind KDE (I'd use it daily if my audio-apps ran in *nix), force it on em! Well, at least in situations where it's my tax dollar
Of course, the long term upside is that newbies 'n average users would finally have some variety in their computing experience before they blindly pledge allegience to the only OS they see commercials for; thus helping solidify *nix and KDE/Gnome as a viable platform for the Everyday Joe in the minds of the consumer.
"Old man yells at systemd"
I have to agree, mostly. Just gave a p266, with mandrake 8 to a journalist and proof reader. Both are not exactly computer savvy and had only used macs. One of them couldn't get past the challenge of a two button mouse and the other had difficulty using a word processor (ABI Word) that did't look and feel the same as what she was used to . They're getting an imac next week.
Do you ever shut up? The facts are, simply, that this system is working fine in Largo, and would probably work fine somewhere else with similar requirements. Did you even read the article? They're using thin clients not high-maintenance money-sponge PC's on every desk.
BTW, any administrator that lets users install their own software is a moron. You're either a moron or not an administrator and thus full of shit. Your long pro-Microsoft rant suggests both equally. They have plenty of money for lawyers and marketers... they don't need your drooling testimonials.
P.S. Slashdot autospaces so idiots like you don't force us all to constantly scroll horizontally after you fucked up the page width with your ridiculously long, hyphenated verbal diarrhea.
And is it a mess when the same applications are installed in different directories.
Oh, right. Let me guess: where you work, all the secretaries installed NT on their own, and as soon as those W2K boxes arrive, they're going to upgrade. LOL! Can u imagine how long the phones were left rinign while they figured out Active Directory! Anyway Xp should be really simple for the secs compared to 2K :)
Do Unto Others As You Would Have Others Do Unto You - ONLY HARDER!
I think the real reasons more businesses haven't yet switched to Free operating systems are really a lot more complicated than "is it easy?" although that's part of it.
... we get used to things. I'm used to getting fish sandwiches at McDonalds -- I know there are better things to eat in the world, better uses for my food dollar, etc, but often, quick, easy, imperfect wins out. Knowing better alternatives is only enough when the perceived benefit it great enough to overcome the additional effort to obtain them ... in the case of Largo FL, that effort was clearly worth it! If it's not for a particular business, then ... ... it's not. I tend to think that people in my employ (government) promoting my general welfar have a greater obligation if not demonstrated ability to steward my money, and thus to damn well *perceive* that additional benefit with all their heart and all their might.
..." the listener hears only "DIFFERENT, THEREFORE BAD." The vague feeling of normalcy one gets from booting up a commerical operating system with a famous name, like buying a car with a known name, is one that a lot of business buyers seem to find valuable.
a) Current applications -- check out other responses in this thread. A lot of people have businesses that are tightly tied to Microsoft Windows and even to Microsoft Office (which some apps rely on as the printing system for generating reports, say).
b) Inertia -- "this has always worked before, and I don't like change" may not be on any corporate mission statement, but that goes to show you how much those worthless pieces of dreck really mean. Mission statements --BBLLEEEAAHHHHCCCHH. But it's true (I assert) that inertia is as great a force affecting human behavior as greed or even horniness is. Change involves risk and effort, invites attention to the changer
c) Ineffables -- which I think mostly are really sub-reasons for b). Many people have come to believe that certain multiple-key combinations are somehow intuitive, because evidently they were born with fingers poking at odd angles or something. So if someone says "Well, this system does basically the same thing your old one did, but in a slightly different fashion
Rationality is complicated.
timothy
jrnl: http://tinyurl.com/c2l8yr / foes: http://tinyurl.com/ckjno5
apt-get update
apt-get dist-upgrade
Sweet!
In short, you want music? KDE 2.1.2 has it...
Im betting KDE 2.2 should be even better, but Ill have to get my admin to upgrade :-)...
The only slight problem is that if you use both KDE 1.x and 2.x sound seems to hang sometimes...
hope that helps...
They can have all the eye-candy disguised as ease of use they want on their home computers.
:)
Erm, eyecandy? Ever been to themes.org? Ever run xplanet? Ever run Enlightenment with the ripple effect?
Linux has much more eyecandy available then windows
BTW, plenty of good points there too!
I know plenty of good, competent MSCE's. They'll be able to find jobs, because MS software will never go away overnight. But I know plenty others who flunked out of CS in college, and got their MSCE's because they could make just as much without going back and getting their college degree. Those people probably deserve to move on to something else!
>I still haven't gotten Windows to recognize the SMC Ethernet card and installing the driver from the floppy doesn't seem to be working.
as an aside, SMC makes crap ethernet cards. get an intel or a 3com.
The sad truth is, I've noticed that a lot of MCSE's are not all that familiar with Win32 systems, much less with other alternatives.
It seems like getting an MCSE cert has been a springboard for a lot of people with less than a year or two of experience as a computer user (much less as a system administrator) to get one of those snazzy "IT Jobs". When I read some of the course material, I was surprised at some of what I saw. A lot of it seemed like marketing spin wrapped around some "Click here to add a user" stuff. It was disturbing enough to me that I elected to forego testing in this area. I'm sure it never hurts to add another certification, but I can't see paying to support superficial training in lieu of documentation. I hope (and believe) that employers will deemphasize the importance of these certs in favor of the right combination of aptitude and experience. If that leaves me unemployed, so be it-- I'll go back to bartending.
But this doesn't mean the MCSE's you kow and work with can't become valuable. The beauty of Linux for me has always been that the docs are out there and none of the implementation details are hidden to either a. protect me from myself or b. protect profit margins.
Unix (and Linux) has the advantage of following a design philosophy for appications and documentation that is fairly consistent. Once you acquire a certain "critical mass" of knowledge, it becomes much easier to build on that foundation.
Set up a box in a corner, give all your MCSE's accounts, sit them down and point them at the docs and HOWTO's, and then look in on them in a week or two. Once some time goes by it should be easy to separate the learners from the "you-build-it-i'll-click-it" types. Of course, I wouldn't expect the answers to surprise you-- the ones who have endeavored to dig a little deeper with the Win32 configurations will be pleased with how much there is to explore in a unix environment, and if you are working with them you probably already know who they are.
I got involved with the 1.2 series kernels and have never looked back. The ratio of things that make sense to things that don't make sense is the inverse of what I deal with supporting our Win32 systems. It seems like these days I spend a lot of time grumbling over corrupt DLL's and mangled registries. These kinds of problems don't have analogs in the unix world-- yet. Hopefully things won't devolve to that point. I would love to see the benefits of unix trickle down to smaller companies like the one I work for. We (plural form used for responsibility diffusion, one person "IT Department") have migrated most services to Linux, and one day I hope the desktop will be ready. If someone would bring AutoDesk around, that would be the go-ahead for us here.
... Linux and desktops. Has everyone become that "windows"-ised that we can't figure out any non-Microsoft application? Maybe it's because I've been using computers for 20+ years, but I can remember secretaries (er, office assistants) using *Select* word processor on CPM DEC/Rainbow machines - monochrome word processing with an HTML-like syntax - after a day of training, they were competent users and able to efficiently and effectively pound out memos, letters, etc. ...
Sure, there's always a learning curve associated with a new platform - but the typical office user needs are limited to email, word processing, spreadsheets, etc. ... TBHWY, I find the Microsoft versions to be loaded with so much bloat that excessive time is wasted in figuring out why this paragraph is aligned improperly or some other esoteric bug with a Microsoft Office application. I'm not a big fan of WP programs (EMACS or any appropriate text editor for the platform - Ultraedit for Windows), but the new version of AbiWord seems to suit me fine, Gnumeric does all I need in a spreadsheet, mySql fills the bill for a DB app, etc. ... Granted, there's no monolithic email app, but I get along fine with Mozilla Messenger. And for my needs (in working on web development projects), GIMP is a more than adequate surrogate for Adobe photoshop.
The biggest shortcoming of Linux on the desktop is not the lack of quality office applications, but the short list of popular game ports - waiting 1-2 years for a popular game (if at all) to be ported ... though the situation will get better if many more like me predominately run Linux on the desktop and clamor for Linux games.
The big argument against Linux in the office, however, is all of the 3rd party crapware applications that companies have bought into, then found that the canned code needed tailoring and modification to suit the unique needs of the specific firm. Rewriting one of these sub-system applications would be no big deal, but many companies are beset with a plethora of these types of orphaned microcomputer applications, and moving all of them on to an open platform would be a formidable challenge, especially when the company may not even have access to core blocks of code due to licensing restrictions.
AZspot
Compare that to the simple, user specific, text based config files and programs like linuxconfig that manipulate them for those who demand a GUI. Don't like KDE? Run TWM or Afterstep. Ever run a different window manager under an MS OS?
take Windows and disable just about everything (something Windows handles really well)
Windows 3.1 maybe. Doze machines have had to start up the GUI ever since 95. You can't tell it not to run in w2k. Why fool around with that junk?
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
Linux and Windows NT are equally easy to use on the desktop after the sysadmin has set up the network and provided the users with a graphic desktop that they log into and don't have to worry about anything else besides their work. However, on a single pc basis if there is no sysadmin and the user has to do all the admin themselves then Linux is a lot harder to use than Windows. Most people never have to use advanced command line operations in Windows, they never have to configure programs by editing text files by hand and they never have to compile anything. On another note, the term hard to use could be used in different ways and a lot of times hard to used is confused with hard to learn. For example linux using command line may be hard to learn in the first place, but it is a lot easier to type a few commands to do an admin job than go through countless clicks and menu choices. Shifting a pile of huge stones from one place to another is hard to do by yourself, but isn't hard to learn how to do at all, whereas the opposite is true for the above linux example.
Nastard wrote (excerpted from above, I hope fairly :) ): "why should we expect any reasonably large government office to be swayed by this? If this were for servers, sure. The admins should have the experience to make a transition pretty smooth. But offices? ...I've seen these people first hand. They aren't the most computer-literate bunch ... Not to say that they couldn't navigate KDE or Gnome, but why spend the time and money? ... it would cost too much to make the transition."
...
One day, they're going to be shifting to other software. Whatever they're using now will have a major version upgrade say, or they switch from one proprietary vendor's word processor to another
If they're going to switch anyhow, why not break the cycle? One of the other comments in response to yours (below) points out how little even "trained" users often know about the software they use already.
Even if they need to use proprietary software in some forms, they should know that is a liability when the vendor goes under, raises price past budget allotments, discovers huge security hole, etc etc. So for those things which Open Source software *can* do, it should, as part of their obligation to spend my money well.
And what I "expect" from a government agency is different from what I think they *ought* to do. After all, they have the play money already, and every incentive to slightly *overspend* rather than (even) slightly underspend. Budgets don't grow if they're not all used, and every single government program has employees who would like it to have a larger budget.
timothy
jrnl: http://tinyurl.com/c2l8yr / foes: http://tinyurl.com/ckjno5
That reminds me. I remember reading something once that secretaries have actually had to use TeX. I am a programmer that does not know TeX. Of course I have not spent much time to learn it, but it is definately not intuitive. Just goes to show you that anyone can learn archaic computer interfaces--even if they do not understand all the bit moving going on "below" them. I've never really bought into the idea that some programs were more intuitive than others, but for programs with like-interfaces and a system that is coherent as a whole (which *ix will never be) it does start to make sense. I'm skeptical that Linux will ever be easy enough to use for people who just want to use a computer as a tool. Sure, we can have people use Linux in an adminstered workplace. I seriously doubt these same people would install Linux on their home machines to do basic finance and word processing.
Dijkstra Considered Dead
This is not a victory for Linux. This is a victory for one old variant of Windows: yes, X-Windows.
Office workers aren't a fair test of whether Linux is easy to use as they don't have to do enough on their machines. They turn up, use the word processor, spreadsheet and e-mail program (or whatever - you get the idea) they go. If it breaks, or if anything needs changing, they call the office support person.
:-)
The significant usability problem with Linux, from what I see, isn't in normal use but in modifying the config which remains hard and which these people don't have to do. Ergo, they're not a valid test of usability here.
IMHO
Greg
(Inside a nuclear plant)
Aaaarrrggh! Run! The canary has mutated!
You can compare these apples and oranges because, simply put, in the end the job they are to accomplish is the same. Supply the required office/administrative capabilities to 400 people in a work environment for the least amount of support headaches and cost.
There are a dozen of ways to try to accomplish it. This just happens to be one way that works well.
Apparently the company doesn't have email either. You'd be really hard pressed to keep someone who wants to take a file with them from not doing so.
We all know that the truth is, linux is hard to use for novices, and a good portion of linux users are not inclined to help newbies out. Read a few usenet posts to see this. "Linux is tough to use" is not FUD, it's the ugly truth. The people who realize this, and don't shrug it off as "FUD" are the ones who are positioned to correct this flaw.
Don't get me wrong, there's been tremendous progress made in linux usability, but the majority of it has been in the initial install area. There are still a lot of problems with UI consitancy, and any usability expert will tell you that this isn't a minor flaw. There's also the problem with installing software, because there's not the same one-click method for every program that Mac and Windows have.
Progress has been made, but we are certainly in no position to dismiss problems with linux' usability as FUD. When we do that, the progress will stop.
What will happen is that places like Largo do stuff like this, and it gets written up and circulated in technical journals (which is effectively what we're talking about here). Technical people see it, and now they have something to show to *their* bosses (assuming they're lucky enough not to have a PHB). Maybe 1000 people do this, and maybe in 5 cases it actually goes far enough to happen in that organization. Three of those five write up something about what they did, and then 3000 bosses get emails saying "Hey, maybe we should try this."
And five years from now, someone in the Wall Street Journal will write an article about how "10% of all Businesses Saving Thousands with Free Software". Boom! *Then* we'll see it explode.
Install the damn service packs or get off the net....
Ok, a little harsh; SInce I have W2K running without any either... but my Linux firewall keeps the idiots out.
Good one.
800 users, 1 server.
Call up the sysadmins and ask them to install your new, sexy app so it's available to everyone. I'm sure they'd *love* to do it.
Go on, do it. It'll be funny.
they will never have to compile that new, sexy app that only seasoned veterans can.
It's quite appearent by now that only seasoned veterans know how to download and apply IIS security patches too.
Heck, my office of 50+ Windohs users regularly need professional assistance. Not a one of them installed Windohs, the office suite, or setup the file & print systems, mapped network drives, etc etc etc. When the acctng dept gets a new app to access an online banking service or something the first person they call is the Net Admin.
try { do() || do_not(); } catch (JediException err) { yoda(err); }
rm -r /home/username or an easy click from one of the wonderful gui file managers.
Er, who cares what *you* think about this? The company I work for used to be a windows shop, until they went through a BSA audit. Then I went to management and proposed the switch to linux (which they knew about because of the great job it did as a server). Guess what, after paying through the nose in wasted time and resources for the BSA shit, Linux started looking pretty good to them. Now we're a Linux shop, running RedHat/KDE/StarOffice and users are being re-trained for the new environment. Apparently, the BSA audit was very efficient in convincing management that it's worth re-training your employees in exchange for not hearing about Microsoft ever again. And the users? Who cares. They're being paid to do their jobs, training is prvided to them, so they'd better learn to do it the way the company wants them to, since this particular way has been deemed the most efficient. They can have all the eye-candy disguised as ease of use they want on their home computers.
So to asnwer your point, yes, I've been there, I converted Windows shops to Linux, I keep hearing from my friends that their companies use Linux more and more and yes, I do think that this kind of articles are useful and inspirational. to those of us who actually go out and convince management guys that Linux is a better choice. For those like you on the other hand, who can only bitch and moan about how Linux is not ever going to makie it in what your head tells you from inside your ass it's the "real world", they're probably useless. You'll never get it anyway.
well that's the problem with being corperate. we cant afford to replace the switches every 4-5 weeks. 3com switches don't have port specific security and all of them here are even worse being over 3 years old. The best case is that my sniffer box will detect a new IP on the network and send a notification page (which annoys me to no end during regional meetings when the big corperate guys show up with their laptops.)
Tis life in corperate... and is the case in over 70% of the world... (Hell I can connect to 5 wireless lans that are not my companies from my office. Kinda funny how Verizon has NT servers that dont even require authentication to go snooping in the public folders....)
I got it better here than most, and besides the office is small enough that a non-employee can be chased out with a baseball bat...
Oh and security locks on the cases prevent simple cmos reset you need to do it software wise and without a floppy or admin access that feat would be damned impressive to me!
(No fair using a crowbar, you cant damage the PC physically)
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
But, what if people start becoming familiar with Linux at their workplaces ?. The goverments (in any serious country) should use Linux for Office purposes, there is no reason why not. It's good enough for that. And it is FREE.
The way I see it there are 4 milestones:
- Server
- Workstation/scientific computing
- Office
- Home
Linux is already heavily used as a Server, and as a Workstation. If corporate and governmental environments adopt it for Office purposes, then we are almost there. Home use should be much closer from there.Cheers,
Don Inodoro
Hi,
:)
Instead of google, I use rpmfind.net.
Yes, insert in the search box the library name that gets "barfed out" as you say. And then you get the list of packages that contain that library.
The very good thing: you get the results in RPM packages!!! And also you get the distribution that ships them. So finding RPM libraries for your distro never was that easy.
Try it. It's great
So lets all say it together...
apt-get update
apt-get upgrade
Its a shame that the leading Linux distributor is the one who created the most convoluted package system. But whats worse is that other distributors followed along.
Long live Debian!
Try to view this as a means to an end. A lot of non-techie people were first exposed to computers through the workplace. Many of them chose to purchase computers based on what they were already familiar with. If someone is required to use Linux in the office for six months, they may well come to appreciate Linux and want it on their home system. You want Linux on the home desktop? This could well be the avenue. Once it is open, get the DirectX equivalent and greeting card softward out there for the new home users.
What a bunch of windows FUD. I've been using linux for four years and windows a little longer, and I have spent countless hours on linux configuring it, tweaking it ect. I only know the system so well because all effort required to get it to do what you want. Sure, it's very extensible whatever, but I'm not even sure most people could understand the terminology in the install. Now you might say windows is just as bad, but looking back at the amount of time spent to make my computer do what I want it too, linux takes top honors, no comparison. Now I haven't tried RH 7.1 but I doubt THAT MUCH has changed. When it comes to usability, MSFT is king, that is unless you have a CS degree. PS: As far as rebooting goes, who cares, it does it on its own and post Win2k rarely needs to reboot after the install. It tells you nothing about the usability, only more geek stats.
Good question, Zippy.
Are you from this planet? Earth that is. Compare Linux marketshare with windowsmarketshare. It's not like windows is facing death anytime soon.
How much leeway are you going to give me on setting up the installations?
I'm just wondering because I could use RIS with a custom Win2k install that included a SP2 rollup, drivers, admin policies and my suite of needed applications.
It'd be completely automated, and I could walk an enduser through it over the phone. Hit F12 on boot, enter username/password, walk away...
Arguing that Windows is hard to install is futile because it's so bloody easy to customize the install with just the tools Microsoft provides.
When I saw this post I thought "something's up" because I have a hard time believing that people accustomed to running Windows could switch to KDE and not absolutely HATE it.
That's when I read they've been running Unixware for the last several years. Hell, they're accustomed to clunky interfaces! Moving from one clunky interface to another is no big deal. They simply don't know what they're missing.
I've seen secretaries and the like jumping through hoops trying to use poorly designed character/terminal interfaces in corporate environments who were PLEASED as PUNCH! Why? They didn't have a better system to compare it to.
So before you all start patting yourselves on the back, I think you need to give those secretaries some credit: Anybody can learn how to do most anything given time. There's no specific reason why a secretary can't learn to deal with clunky interfaces like KDE or Gnome just as easily as they can learn to deal with some hideous 1980's character based interface.
This says nothing about KDE's usability. It's still clunky. These folks simply don't know what they're missing.
oh, huh huh. I founda da part of da artical tat saz linix GOOD WINDOWS BAD.
MODE ME UP IM SO PATHETIC
Cutting and Pasting in Linux (a short tutorial).
Highlight text you want to copy.
Switch to app in which you want to paste the text.
Click the left and right mouse button and the same time.
In a sense, I must agree. Posting this on Newsforge and Slashdot may make us all scream "Yay", but it isn't going to get any executives to approve decisions to switch their desktops over to Linux.
Rob, might I suggest forwarding your story to some news places with a more diverse reading audiences: say WSJ or NYT? I think that execs and politicians would be very interested to hear about the savings they'd get. And that it does work.
"Free beer tends to lead to free speech"
...they're using WordPerfect for SCO + Excel, rather than WordPerfect Office for Linux? Is Quattro Pro really that bad?
And guess what? Linux is great -- that is if, and only if, you have perfect hardware and perfect setup and a standalone system.
...", that would be acceptable. But you don't know.
I have installed linux on several systems, and I've not yet come across a system where I couldn't bring it up to a usable point. Sure, sometimes the soundcard doesn't work, or the winmodem (which is actually a hardware interface to a windows program) gets cranky (but even those you can sometimes get to work). But in general hardware support is damn good for an OS that's barely supported by hardware manufacturers.
Also, I don't know what you mean by "standalone system". It is my experience that it's easier to network machines to a linux system than it is to network them to a windows system. With each new upgrade windows is redesigned so it's even more difficult to connect it with non-MS software, whereas with each new linux upgrade it gets easier to connect it with MS software.
OTOH, I've plopped in the install CD for W2K, filled in a few simple details, walked away, came back 30 minutes later and had a system up-and-running without any problems.
I've plopped in a linux install CD, filled in a few details, walked away, and came back 30 minutes later to a running system. OFcourse, it doesn't always go that easy, and not with all distro's, but Windows installs aren't always as dreamy as you describe them to be (and I know, I've done a lot of them, since I'm the tech guy in the neighbourhood). But I have to admit, that on average Windows installs just a bit easier than linux. But for most users installing any of the two is too difficult.
But let me also tell you a nice anecdote. Two days ago I got a phone call. It was my dad. After using MS software for decades he finally installed linux (without my knowing). He had gone out and bought himself a suse copy, and installed it up to the point that every single piece of hardware he had was functioning fine. And he hadn't even taken long to do it.
And secondly, as soon as the user wants to do something new with their system, they're SOL again, not only because installing isn't as simple as "click here to download, run setup.exe and you're installed" (albiet lately in linux it has gotten a LOT better), but also because the apps simply aren't out there.
First of all, in corporate environments you don't want your users to install software. Secondly, it IS easy for a user to install linux software, but just not on all distro's. Mandrake and debian are both distro's that excell in software installation. Especially debian, my favourite. Installing and configuring software is as simple as typing "apt-get install softwarename". You don't have to provide a destination even. That does the download, install and configuration for you. It doesn't get any easier than that. Or no, with the gui installer planned for the next release of debian it will, but it IS more difficult installing software in Windows in comparison with debian.
check out my W2K Server, up for 131 days without a reboot
Nice work. So you've proven that you can make a secure and stable W2K install. We knew that. Do you trust a home user to do that same secure install? I don't think so, otherwise code red wouldn't be known as well as it is. All OS's suck as far as secure installs go. You need to be a techie to know how to secure your OS. And when you do know how to, it's easy both in Windows and linux. It's my experience that if you don't mistreat it with alpha quality kernel patches, linux doesn't crash. Ever.
To recap, simply, I like linux. I think that it has a lot of potential but it simply isn't anywhere close enough yet to be a mainstream system. Remember this, and the fact that it's manhours spent with linux as well. I hate to be the harbinger of news here, but windows is much easier to use, period.
You like linux, I like linux, we all like linux. Windows is easier to use, indeed, but not much. Windows exploits the muscle-meory in people. We're all used to the peculiarities of Windows, so we can work around them. If you'd spend a while on linux it would become second-nature too. I use both Windows and linux systems at home (because linux doesn't run black and white yet), and overall I find them both as easy to use. Except that Windows provides me with more interesting problems, like joysticks working for exactly one minute and then failing till the next reboot. OK, I'm a nerd, so that doesn't really count, but the only real differences in usability between Windows and linux are that linux doesn't have as centralized a configuration (but it's not that difficult to configure your system anymore), and that Windows is a lot less configurable. On Windows I am stuck with that horrible window manager, no matter what. At least on linux I can use my favourite windowmanager, window maker.
There is a reason why windows is used on 90% of desktops, and why Microsoft is the software giant that they are (reasons beyond the typical slashdottery about squishing competition and cheating and crap), more than just "being in the right place at the right time".. It's because, for better or worse, they have the best set of software products out there. Office and Windows are extremely successful because they're good, and people like them and use them a lot. That's a fact, hard to dispute.
The only thing in there that I can agree with is that office is a good product. Not a great one, but it's decent. All the rest seems to be mere MS zealotry. Where have you been the last 20 years? Not once did MS come out on top by playing fair. They got a jumpstart by being the sanctioned OS for the PC, by IBM. Then the clone makers had to come to them too for OS's. Then they used their platform dominance to introduce incompatibilities with competitors products, so they could retain that market dominance. Then, when competitors were figuring out how to make their stuff compatible with DOS, they switched to Windows, long before it was decent enough to do that (early Windows 95 was hell). And there they made deals with resellers that they could get Windows licenses cheaper if they preloaded ALL PC's they sold with Windows. And since they already had market dominance by then resellers had no choice if they wanted to survive in competition with ones that already accepted MS's bribe. Which means that if you buy a PC in the store, you already pay for Windows on it. So if you want to run some different OS, you have to pay for your OS twice, especially since it's nearly impossible to get your money back for your Windows install, even though the user license says you can. And then they've messed with their API's over and over so competitors could never make an OS that ran Windows software quite right. OS/2 tried it, wine is an attempt at it, and there are a lot of programs out there that try to emulate windows, and fail, because MS makes their stuff incompatible on purpose. They've been found guilty by courts for that already, so it's not like I'm making this up here. Windows is successful because MS played dirty, and office is successful because it is good. And ofcourse (some) people like them, they don't know any better. Feed a guy shit from the day he was born and he'll eat it with pleasure. Most users however complain about "that damn PC", while it's most of the time not the PC that 's in error, but Windows. You should go work as a phone operator on a helpdesk for Windows users, it will drain you from your "MS is so good opinion pretty fast".
I don't think that linux will make it as a mainstream OS anytime soon, or at least until most of the linux users (BTW, I think that part of the reason of linux non-acceptability is because of the typical i-love-linux-and-hate-windoze attitude and immaturity, not everyone, but just enough are immature and slander and swear and yell and scream and kick and fuss and act like children to give linux a bad name. Don't believe me? read our very own CmdrTaco. I think that he made some really good points there, the thermostat in hell must have broken that day...:> ) are part of the reason.
Yes, I don't like Windows. Am I a zealot now? I don't like bacon either, does that make me an anti-bacon zealot? I am known to describe bacon in pretty harsh terms. People have a right to have opinions, even if they're wrong. Myself, I feel very right in disliking Windows, since I've spent a whole decade trying to keep MS software working before making the switch to doing my main work on linux. Life is better on linux. If it weren't, I wouldn't use it. Now, if I would start calling certain MS executives (*cough* ballmer *cough*) names (*cough* monkeyboy *cough*), then that would be slander. I'm entitled to my opinion though that linux is better than Windows, and you're entitled to your opinion of the reverse. It's when you start describing your opinion as fact that the hairs in my neck start to tingle, and my fingers start to itch, for a reply.
Actually, it costs more to put out a distro because of the costs of the bandwidth that you must provide to allow people to download the thing
Please tell me more about the time you visited a distro manufacturer and went through their bookkeeping with them. What? You never did that? Then stop trying to make these wild guesses. If you had said "i think it costs more
A year or two ago I read an article in one of the Linux magazines (Linux Journal or Linux Magazine) about an Internet-and-pony show that was touring cities in England. This was a show with a non-techie audience (basically a "Look at what this Internet-thingy can do for YOU!"). There was a counter that had several internet access stations, half running M$, half running Linux with KDE. None of the attendees seemed to notice the difference, usage-wise. Well, some did complain about the Windows machines crashing...
I you don't agree, try an experiment, take Redhat 7.1 and Windows and try to install it on a modern machine and see how it compares. My experience is that Linux will probably install, detect and set up all the hardware, reboot once and be up and running. Windows will reboot at least 3 or 4 times in the process, and then you will have to go to the web site for your video card and download the latest drivers, then repeat the process for the sound card, etc.
The difference between Canada and the USA is that in Canada healthcare is a right and gun ownership is a privilege.
Well how about that. I've been playing with computers since I was 13 (a looong time ago), and have installed basically every operating system I've ever used in the last 10+ years.
:)
Until I read what you wrote, it never occured to me that most people don't do that. They buy pre-installed, or an IT cave dweller installs and configures the OS for them. I insist my computers are bought without an OS installed, so I can do it.
Duh.
It is probably way obvious to you, but I've been arguing like the original poster has for quite a while now. "Linux is too hard for the average user to set up", but the average user never sets up Windows either.
Enlightenment comes to us all, even those a tad slow such as myself.
Alas gallinaceas de urbe bovis volo
Floppies are a transportation medium, not a storage medium. I don't store my importand documents in my unlocked car, because it's used for moving stuff from one place to another, not for storing stuff.
I applaud Largo for a job well done, however unfortunately not all of us can do that yet. As it stands now too many companies are buried too deep in Microsoft products that it would be a nightmare to make the switch. Case in point, I work in the programming department of a certain government entity. The entire network is based on Microsoft products as well as all of our custom applications we write. To switch this over to a *nix based network running thin-clients would be a tremendous task. Not impossible... but very time consuming and headache ridden.
.ph0x
I would be willing to wager that the majority of large businesses out there are in the same or very similar situation. This is, in my opinion, one of the major obstacles that holds off a linux invasion into the corporate world.
---
ps -aux | grep mind
Not sure what you are exactly requesting to do, but in a lot of network solutions that I've set up, there is a shared folder mapped to a specific drive letter on all computers, and users are instructed to save data to that drive only, which is backed up nightly.
Of course, what this article neglects to mention is legacy software. I've seen customers use DOS-based programs since there is no other solution. For these people, upgrading to win2k is sometimes a problem, ne'ermind a *nix solution. The saddest thing is that the source of the DOS programs aren't planning to make a win32 version until 2002. (For the curious, the programs xmits insurance information, without the program, claims cannot be transmitted and thus the business loses a huge percentage of its income.)
I see two types of objection to switching.
The "Necessary Condition" objections are mainly "Office", "Outlook", and "IE". Which is, alas, what everyone spends all day using. And until MS gets spilt up, this will not change. But also "that new accounting package", "my scanner", "our new CRM software", "our ERP project", and so on. And these are actually much harder to overcome. I think maybe we can identify a small group of users who do not use accounting, ERP, CRM etc. If we have to change all those, implementing Linux would actually cost us a lot of money.
Eh, before you say it:
StarOffice etc do not work well enough. Always some problems converting Word and Excel files.
VMware is slow, but it also defies the entire object (you still have to pay for an MS license)
Anyway, then there's the...
"Usability" objections. These are easy to fix in time - or they should be. But we are not there yet! I just spent a whole weekend setting up a new desktop machine for myself - Athlon 1 GHz, 512 MB RAM, RedHat 7.1. I had to do a kernel upgrade before it would see my Envidia graphics card. I still cannot print to my samba printer. And having installed machines ([pre-]CP/M, DOS, Win, Novell, Linux) for 20 years, I am not new to PCs or to Linux, but I still cannot figure out how to rewrite the Gnome/Ximian menus! And the config tool core-dumps: I have had 20-odd core dumps in the first day alone. And the lack of "OLE" drives me mad - an experienced PC user spends his life cutting and pasting, and the lack of this in common Linux desktop environments are a real obstacle.
So now I am looking for small groups of "expert users". Our (mainly hardware-) engineers come to mind first. But I am looking hard for real interoperability so we can roll out across the company. My estimate: 2 years out. I hope I am wrong.
---
BDOS ERR ON A:>
He mentions that NT/2K gets flaky with over 40 clients logged in, so they would have had to cluster servers, spending a lot more money just on that.
The best route for Linux is to get accepted by the office culture. Once that barrier is passed, then when people buy PC's they'll want to work on what they have at the office. The next step, then, is to come up with a killer game that only runs on Linux but gets the same hype and marketing as a PS2 game or major PC game release.
This is not the way to build a lasting empire.
Abiword has a Wordperfect filter in development.
The idea of rebooting==upgrading is actually pretty sweet. You can also consider that even if these were not diskless nodes, an admin could sit at his box and send (sftp, etc) the upgraded software to all of his clients. 1 script, 1 chmod, and 1 ./whatever. Thats just cool.
And yeah, if the exe fails, youre screwed. At least with galeon I was able to d/l the source and modify some makefiles, and I finally got it working. I would have had no such luck on Windoze.
I should point out that I live in Virginia, the state whose beach city paid the $129,000 to MS for license 'violations.' VA kind of sucks that way. I think were the first to pass UCITA as well. The ironic thing is that our governor is trying to eliminate the car tax, and he had some trouble funding this, so for a while he shut down all construction at state universities (Bastard!). I wonder how much money he could save by issuing a mandate that requires the use of OSS in government - he probably would have eliminated the car tax long ago :)
.. they managed to keep their users from revolting (a normal reaction when you take away their favorite programs) until I read this:
-quote-
Networks and thin clients are not new to Largo (motto: "City of Progress"). The city started down this path in 1992 with SCO (now Caldera) Unixware and its Motif-based IXI desktop that, Dave says, "looked a lot like Windows 3.1." Later they started using KDE 1 on both OpenServer and Unixware, and finally, in July 2001, made the switch to Red Hat Linux 7.1 and KDE 2.1.1, a change Dave says "has gone really well."
-end qoute-
Apparently these users were never exposed to a wintel system at their job (well, perhaps a previous job). Nothing bad about linux, but going from KDE 1.0 to 2.1 would make most users happy but it is something different than going from e.g. a properly installed and administered win2k system to kde 2.1.
That being said, I agree that KDE is userfriendly enough for normal people. You still have to learn some odd system specific things but not much more then on windows.
The real issue is application maturity (they run a closed source word processor to bypass that). Kword looks promising but is not ready. Staroffice seems reasonably functional but the 5.2 version is a rather peculiar thing and it is sort of difficult to use in a multi user environment because it installs a copy per user (never understood why).
The same goes for email clients, web browsers, spreadsheets. There are acceptable versions of each but getting it all together results in a rather inconsistent GUI and these programs generally do not integrate well with each other. So either you use one office suit (e.g. Koffice or gnome office) getting integration but also lacking features or you pick the best apps from various office suits getting a reasonable set of features and a near total lack of integration. Neither option is very appealing to someone used to a MS Office environment where you get any feature you need and excellent integration of the various applications.
Jilles
Your average office work is never permitted to install their own software.
But, guess what, they do.
Not to mention ungodly mess a user administered machine can become.
If it's a home machine, then it's only that person's problem, if it's a small business then there is an obvious incentive to do something about it.
And, if you're running the type of place where people share work-stations like in a call center or clerk desk then you need to preserve uniformity from one session to the next so as not to confuse or completly derail the workers
Probably the largest of these catagories is education, students arn't always the worst offenders either...
In that light why the hell should the place even expect the users to need to know stuff like that.
In no other area of business would it be acceptable for end users to be carrying out "maintenance tasks".
In terms of apps being available the usual course is to go through IT management and request it.
Also with it being done correctly if any kind of licence needs to be bought then there is a record likely to be kept.
If it's X vs. WTS (with/without Citrix) then X may be in a wee bit of trouble. Licensing and support are issues but the truth of the matter is that WTS wins when you cost it out (TCO).
The sad part is that the X clients (servers for you non-X people) have to be sized almost identically to the WTS boxes (15 to 30 users per CPU, minimum 1gb per 15 users or so -- all based on application mix) when you actually install the box.
It's funny how none of the other posters noticed what the parent poster did.
Put in the floppy and walk away.. Have it email me when it is done!
Got Code?
Guess what:
you have just put lipstick on a bulldog, as Windows was never designed to work that way and Citrix is a very dodgy proposition for anything that strays from the norm.
you have just paid for NT Server (500$) plus NT Terminal Server (8000$) and Citrix Server (I don't even wanna know) and that is for 10(!) users.
And-you-still-haven't-paid-for-the-admin'ly yours
ax_42
I had a similar experience. Win2K HATED my hardware. I had a new Asus A7V mb and 900mhz T-Bird. I could install Win2K, but it would crash CONSTANTLY whenever I did practically anything.
It's not enough to bash in heads, you've got to bash in minds. - Captain Hammer
The only thing that has ever crushed me completely was trying to get Oracle8i and Designer going on a Lose98 box.
I feel your pain. I got beat down trying to do exactly that too. Followed the installation instructions scrupulously several times, even after reformatting and reinstalling windows. Tried every suggestion I found on Oracle's site and elsewhere on the net. Nothing worked. I eventually conceded as well and ended up doing my project work at school.
It's not enough to bash in heads, you've got to bash in minds. - Captain Hammer
which is something ms is good at, half ass solutions.
A 'shibboleth' is a distinguising characteristic, often linguistic, used to differentiate between two different groups of people. For example, the pronunciation of GNU is a shibboleth to discern between people who are Gnowledgable vs. those who aren't (sorry). I think the word you're looking for is 'bugbear'.
Ceci n'est pas une
I can state unequivocally that many Windows distros are much easier to install than Linux.
I have Mandrake 8.0 and am still trying after a week to get it to install.
I have a Celeron 300a box, ABIT BH6, 128MB RAM partitioned 3 ways (old W98, W2K, Linux -- soon I hope).
The Windows 2000 installer located and identified my devices almost perfectly on the first try. There are Windows problems related to app installers that expect W98 and don't understand the concept of multi-user systems. But these are subtle downstream errors.
On the other hand, Mandrake's GUI install freezes the mouse (a plain Logitech 3-button) from the get-go. I have to try the text install, and so far it segfaults after I select packages to install and hit Enter.
Linux just isn't ready to be turned loose on Grandma yet. I'm an experienced admin on multiple systems (Unix, Wintel, and other) and it's giving me headaches. In a corporate environment, with a support staff and careful choice of hardware, it can work. For the home user, it's not ready.
Hey, why don't I add 'installiation' to this? I'm going from Windows, to linux, and frankly, I don't know if I can, because 99% of the software I want, requires a PH.D to install the dammed thing. Needing this, or that changed, compiled, or need this particular library, or this particular piece. I tried installing WordPerfect reciently. Hell with it. KDE? Forget it. (Gnome installed in less than an hour, hence I'm using gnome.)
Want to get more than office users to use linux? Fix the dammed install problem! Office users only need a pre-made system for them, made by a linux sysadmin. The home users like Windows users is what made windows what it is, and installing programs is *far* easier in Windows, than it is in Linux.
My idea would be a RPM type installer, but also offer the harder/compile this/change this installation too for ones who want such. RPM is hit or miss still, but when it works, it works.
One of the major problems I found, is dependency problems. If it needs something, then it should go out and look for it. Or at least say this package is at this web site. Please install it first.
Probably the *best* idea of all, is well written documentation. Check out 'TinyFugue' for well written install files, and an installing script. Only tar/gz file I've ever been able to install without a fight.
Shadowwalker Delaforge
In my haste to put up that ever-so-witty sarcastic retort, I forgot to comment on this. They don't have to compile that new, sexy, app, because the sysadmin can do it once on the server and it's instantly available to everybody. That's the real advantage of thin clients. Only one upgrade, instantly applicable to everyone.
If it ain't broke, you need more software.
I'd say that SDL was the open source answer to DirectX... done right (as a small, simple layer that can be added and extended as necessary). Just another nice thing that Loki did for the world.
Also, probably, many software architects at Sun et al. wince when someone says "C++" near them.
My exception safety is -fno-exceptions.
Ok, fine. Let's make a comparison about out-of-the-box software.
How much does MetaFrame cost, with 800 licenses? (Dunno myself, but I'd bet on a few thousands, if not more)
Unsurprisingly, linux comes with all the fruit you need to pull a stunt like that. Windows? Not a snowball's chance in hell.
It's impossible to set a 'thin-client device' on windows with std tools. On linux, it's natural.
Let's indeed compare apples with apples: Windows doesn't have the tools you need to do serious work. Its outclassed, outmatched, outdated, overpriced, useless. It's not honest to compare that piece of crap with the millions of hours dedicaced hackers have put in linux.
I'm not going to comment on the relative costs of the hardware/software, because it's all true: Linux vs. Windows will win out, pure and simple. But the story (about Roblimo's take) is comparing apples and oranges.
Look at how they talk about backups: it sounds as though their concept of backups in the Windows world is to have users saving documents on their local hard disk, rather than to a server. The users have become accustomed to system crashes and network failures. I'll address at least part of the former complaint in a moment. The latter is the fault of either poor network administrators (as opposed to systems administrators, or a flaky server that hasn't been set up correctly. One of the biggest reasons people think NT is unstable is because the pretty GUI encourages rank amateurs to call themselves systems engineers. Blame this on the paper-MCSE syndrome, or on Microsoft's psychology, or whatever: but let's at least be honest and admit that, should the quality of admins increase, so would the quality of experience.
The other problem I have with this, and what really prompted my subject line, is that the comparison is between a Linux-based thin client network and a MS-based fat client network. Hello? If you took away all the Windows desktops and put in something like Citrix MetaFrame, then guess what? You'd realise several of the same benefits that the article touts or implies as being advantages unable to be put forth in a Windows-based system.
If you take the article as being a good example of how simple it is to migrate users over from Windows to Linux, then fine. But the system level comparisons are obfuscatory at best, and dishonest at worst. Yes, there's no way you could get the same level of performance out of the hardware they use if you went with a Windows implementation; but an article that compares a 10-person IT staff supporting Linux (or any OS) on 400 thin-client devices with supporting that many devices all running Windows on individual desktops is simply not a valid comparison. Is that really fair? By all means, let's point out the advantages for Linux in terms of ROI, open-source, and so on -- there are plenty of valid bases here -- but let's also be intellectually honest. Pretty please?
but to get there, I had to take the difficult step of getting people to stop sending me Word and Excel files. Sending around insecure, application-specific files is a bad idea anyway unless it is absolutely necessary.
At least 95+% of the time someone sends me a Word file or Excel sheet, it is something that I only need to read, not edit, modify, and send back.
I'm an independent contractor, and whenever I receive a Word or Excel file that I cannot read in StarOffice, I politely reply back that I don't have Microsoft Office and I cannot read their files. I suggest that they resend the document either in PDF format, or RTF if they can't generate PDF. For Excel files, If they can't save as PDF, I suggest saving to an older version of Excel that StarOffice can read, albeit with some loss of formatting.
I have been able to change the file sending habits of a surprising number of people, especially when they realize that PDF files actually look more consistent on other people's systems, especially if they use non-standard fonts.
I do have one system with VMWare and one copy of Office for those very rare occasions that I receive a Word or Excel file that I actually have to modify and send back, or if the sender absolutely refuses to send another format, but this option doesn't get used very often, so I don't need it on all my systems.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Oh yeah, and until I met my room mate, I didn't think it was physically possible to destroy hardware from software. She proved me wrong by fucking up TWO video cards trying to install Windows video drivers. If I were billing her for the time I spend supporting her system, she could have bought a playstation 2 after the first video driver update incident.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
PCs come with windows pre-installed out of the box. Nobody actually installs windows anymore.
In probably the majority of situations OEM installs are overwritten. For the simple reason that most OEM's are incapable of configuring machines to work on networks.
It's good to see somebody finally getting it right! Amazing that it was a government agency.
Like the other dude said, this isn't about Windows vs Linux it's about the cost of maintaining 400 fat clients vs the cost of maintaining 400 thin clients. Using 400 Windows clients costs you not only hardware and infrastructure (network, admins, repairs) but also costs you licenses for Windows and Office. Circumventing Microsoft saves you thousands in terms of software cost. Of course then you have to take into account the limitations using a publicly developed piece of software has. Does it fulfill the needs of your organization in its current state and if not will the cost of adding that function cost more than a prepackaged solution?
I'm a loner Dottie, a Rebel.
That's not true. I've gotten far more help learning to use Linux than I ever got with MS. There are Linux User Groups (LUG) everywhere, and people I hardly know have helped me at work and sat with me at my house. I got to know them better that way. I've got no problem returning the favor and so far I've set up two other people's computers.
It's funny, because Linux is easier to figure out. Win3.1 was so poorly documented a friend HAD to show me how to use it. Going to 95 was a painful experience and I regret all the time I put into it. 98 was also painful, but more regretible. Linux, at times was not easy to get used to, but man pages online documents and books are all excellent sources of help. In fact, despite the useability claims Redmond makes, MS interfaces are are the hardest I've ever dealt with. The list includes VAX, VMS, Solaris, OS2, Mac, MSDOS, Win3.1, Win98, Win98 and WinME. Mac was a pain, but I liked it much better and learned it much faster than Win3.1. MS's position is paradoxical. They wish to convince users that PC's are hard to use, while prommising them that MS is easy to use. If they spent as much time making things as easy as they said instead of fudding, they might get somewhere.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
I have been an admin for 3 years. All of my professional time is spent on NT 4.0. I am using/learning Linux at home. Before my time as an admin I was a Network Tech and before that I was a Bench Tech for 3 years. I know that Windows is *now* a, stick in the CD and walk away for a half hour, process. BUT, I also remember spending up to a day taking a customers PC (formerly having MS-DOS 4.1) and scrubbing the HD and installing Win 3.1. After that ensued HOURS of tweaking .INI files, pulling beta Windows 3.1 drivers off of FTP sites using MSD and other tools to find out what IRQ'a DMA's, I/O Ports, etc.. were in use. Why was I doing all of this you ask? Because Windows had a VERY limited list of drivers. Almost nothing of any use came on the Windows floppies. Sometimes the OEM of the CD-ROM drive(Pre-IDE days) or sound card or video adapter or scanner interface card or whatever would have the Windows 3.1 driver, but just as many times you would have to call customer service and MAYBE they had an FTP site. probably though they didn't even know what FTP was and they would have to send you (by postal mail) a driver for their hardware to work under Windows 3.1. After getting the driver installed it never worked the first time through. You had to tweak config files and hardware settings and the Windows control panel was a trial of patience. So what am I saying? The only reason that you can "stick in the CD and walk away for a half hour" is because the OEMs write all of these drivers and give them to Microsoft to put into their OS and they make damn well sure that Microsoft has any and all interface specs they need to ensure that the API's that Microsoft develops work with their hardware. So if/when the OEMs decide that Linux is worth some action the driver issue will evaporate. Just like it did for Windows. Also as it said here, most of the things that you mention a Windows user being able to do are undesirable (at least on my network).
Please be patient, I'm a work in progress! --Alan Jackson
We are not talking about a change in businessmodel, we are talking about giving things away for free here.
Show me any working company that gives it work away for free who don't go bankrypsy.
On the one hand, its absolutely kewl that this is working. But on the other hand...
They never had to set Linux up. Plus, they will never have to compile that new, sexy app that only seasoned veterans can.
So while I think it's great that Linux has gotten this far, and I applaud you for the story, how much of this is simply a "special case" of Linux Deployment?
I've been thinking (off and on in my spare time) about what it would take to convert my office to something like this. I'm the IT guy for a town even smaller than the one in the article, but I'm still f'ing sick of Windows and the headaches it gives me. We have a Unix server, thankfully, and it never gives me problems. We're bringing in another one soon -- had a choice between NT and SCO. Went for SCO.
I'm only seeing two problems, really. One is office programs. We need to read from and probably write to MS format documents. I suppose that could be solved at least partially with WINE, but that's not a real solution.
The other is the database software that runs the financial side of the town. It wasn't a problem until recently, as it used to be run as a console app off the server, through telnet, a modem connection, or a dumb terminal. They've got some weird GUI client for it now, though. To be honest, it looks like one of the Unix widget sets or maybe an X server ported to Windows, but I'm not sure. I'd have to talk with them about it. Anybody know anything about Four J's? They're the ones who made it.
If I can get around those two things, I'm almost positive I could do a slow migration over to linux. Well, if I can get X configured to use these POS SiS on-board video cards.
--
"I personal[ly] think Unix is "superior" because on LSD it tastes like Blue." -- jbarnett
My room mate would have more problems, as she gets games on a regular basis. But that's why God made the Playstation 2, right?
;-) And don't bring up the technical superiority of the PS2 - I still play Starcraft & UT and don't need the latest & greatest GeForce 500000000 card.
Salesman: "You'll save $100 if you don't have Winderz(tm) installed on this computer. But to play the newest games, you'll have to go buy that $299.95 Playstation 2." Great argument folks. Glad to see the gene pool in the Unix world is getting better
And the users? Who cares. They're being paid to do their jobs, training is prvided to them, so they'd better learn to do it the way the company wants them to, since this particular way has been deemed the most efficient. They can have all the eye-candy disguised as ease of use they want on their home computers.
It sounds like Linux may very well suit your company's needs. It also sounds like your attitude doesn'tt. A large part of any IS job is dealing with users. If the above statement is really how you feel, rather than just the way you post on Slashdot, then I sure wouldn't want you working for me. There are a lot of good technical people out there that can deal with both people and computers. Lose the attitude, it does you a discredit.
Huh? I have a copy of Quake III for Linux at home.
This reminds me of a story that ran last year. One of the east coast states started using Linux and StarOffice to reduce the operating costs assoicated with software licenses.
Ever since I started using Linux in '96, people debated if Linux was too difficult to use. The hard answer...it depends what you started with. I started with DOS and then moved into Solaris. I like the command line and when my wife bought a Mac, it was too hard for me to use. She can't use my machine with FreeBSD because she started with Windows 95 and then moved into the Mac world. She hates command lines.
It's sad to see this come up constantly as an issue with Linux. It just starts flamewars.
In the open source model you have a lot of software for all common tasks - after learning German, you can handle most translation tasks. But when you want to do something you can't with the current software (most probably because your skills aren't quite enough), you pay someone to write software to do it. Likewise, if you can't handle some important German, you pay a translator to do it.
To me this seems like natural development of the software industry, not like a move towards communism.
My sister, who has to choose between my step-father's laptop running win98SE on a 19" monitor and my Mandrake box running BlackBox and konq(xchat never closes[/server irc.openprojects.net/#mandrake]) on a 17" monitor, she inevitably chooses mine, because she know's it's always on, i've asured her that there is no way she can break it, and it has everything she ever needs... :)
Not only that, she has everything she WANTS!
I now have QuickTime(tm) running with the sorenson codec plus Real Player. http://www.geocities.com/bobbyfuesz/qtime1.jpg
http://www.geocities.com/bobbyfuesz/qtime2.jpg
She prefers linux, and is moving out... she wants me to build her a PC and it will not be running M$, right now Freq3 is slotted for install, unless they can get through the debug and come out with an RC1...
But i digress
put the what in the where?
ask yourself this question: would installing Citrix in the Largo example from the story above both work and save the city of Largo money, and especially support costs? no, it wouldn't. It would be epensive, it would be an unusual configuration with all the attendent support problems, and it would place all sorts of restrictions on what apps users could or could not run simultaneously on the server.
... and, if history is any example, Citrix will break when future version of Windows roll out because Microsoft always crushes its partners.
Dear Mayor's Office,
I am a citizen of Oakland and a computer professional. I've worked for Apple, for Paul Allen (of Microsoft), and on my own as a consultant. I've found myself moving my computers to Open Source OS's because it's just too much of a hassle to comply with increasingly bizarre licensing schemes and increasingly Draconian punishments for accidently violating them (viz. Sklyarov). And, there's the reliability issues. I was very happy not to even worry that my BSD servers would be affected by the latest round of internet worms.
I'm not certain this is the case, but statistically I'd guess Oakland tends to use Windows systems and if it's true, it would seem to me as a taxpayer as an inappropriate use of my funds given that the result is, in comparison to what can be done with Linux and Open Source, an unreliable, complex, resource hungry, insecure computer system that costs an obscene amount of money.
Microsoft has been promulgating lies to FUD companies and municipalities into eschewing better technology and continue to pay for their lavish Redmond lifestyle. We who understand the technology find these accusations laughable lies, but it's hard to overcome momentum without, at least, a good counter-example.
Fortunately, the good citizens of the forward thinking city of Largo, FL have risen to the challenge and proven that it is possible to run a city on Linux and in so doing improve reliability, performance, and security all the while saving great boatloads of tax money.
An informative article is at:
http://www.newsforge.com/article.pl?sid=01/08/10/1 441239
Oakland should do the same.
Thank You,
> ...but what about going to some more powerfuly software
> such as video editing, digital video production or audio editing
> and production - which is what i'm into myself.
If you've got high-end hardware and high-end video editing needs, and no Linux native applications fit the need, you might want to give Wine or VMWare a look. They are both very good at running Windows apps under Linux, and Wine at least is free.
Virg
One of the biggest problems Dave and Mike have run into when teaching new employees, most of whom are accustomed to Windows PCs, to use Largo's Linux-based network has nothing to do with the operating system: It is weaning them away from floppies. "How can we take work home without floppies?" is a frequent question they hear. Answer: "Email the file to yourself."
These people seem to sort of be the poster children for why linux can be used on the desktop.
This next bit was just downright funny:
There is also the problem of teaching new employees not to worry about backups . Many are so used to system crashes and network failures in Windows environments that they have trouble realizing, at first, that all their files are stored on reliable servers -- with backups -- instead of on a desktop PC where a crash can wipe out hours or days of work. But these doubts are typically overcome after an employee has used Largo's network for a little while. "I was skeptical at first," one receptionist confides, "because [the place I worked before] had a Windows network that was always having problems. Now I'm comfortable with the network here. It's very easy to use once you get used to it."
The only problem they seem to have is with OpenOffice still being in its early beta stages. Any suggestions for them?
I'm guessing that you've never used X Windows? Understandable if you are not a unix guy, but if you had experienced X Windows you would understand what I'm talking about and would not argue this.
of course, Windows can potentially do anything, as can unix: they're both "turing machines" so to speak. But just because something is theoretically possible and code is written to do it doesn't mean that it is practical or works well enough to satisfy a user of the other OS.
Citrix is a special case app, not part of the OS. as such it has to solve all sorts of problems This is because it is not part of the architecture of windows so every thing is a special case (how to handle the mouse? hmmm. ok now how to handle the clipboard... hmm... ok, now how to handle the ...) and it solves them pretty well. but it can't easily solve them all in any practical sense. Here's one example: in Windows you can grab mouse-over messages and make your app respond to them. Programmers thus write software that takes advantage of this and draw fancy little do-dads on-the-fly. But if the Citrix layer gets added on top of this, suddenly those mouse-over messages have to travel over a network link and are slower. So suddenly the zippy little doodad is slow as snot. (yes, the same timing issue exists in Unix, but apps are written to run that way: theoretically possible in Windows if all programmers wrote for Citrix, but they don't) Then, on top of this is the fact that NT/2000 was not designed to have more than one person logged in at the same time, so you have to solve all the problems asscociated with assumptions about where in the registry to grab configuration from, and how you can run two copies of Microsoft Word (or pick some harier app) at the same time for two different users and not have them fight with each other. And then, can you have the apps on one machine interact with apps running on another? only in rare cases have Windows apps been written this way. Not Citrix's fault, but not solvable by Citrix either.
Because X Windows running across a net is identical to X Windows running on one machine this stuff just works in unix. It means that across the network I can have the Start button be the identical Start button to the one on my other machine, because it is the indentical start button. And all my apps that are installed come along with it (and I don't need to get an administrator to give me permission) There is no sense of wonder as there is with Citrix ("how do they do this?!") Stuff just works.
You can run X Windows on top of Windows, by the way, and it works fantastic. (I'm doing it right now) But it only works fantastic with X Windows apps and there are very few of these in the Windows world. Citrix is cool, it works, and it brings a whole world of possibilities to Windows. But it doesn't bring all the possibilities that X Windows brings because it can't even bring all of the possibilities that Windows brings. When a unix person says "share my desktop" they mean a lot more than what PCAnywhere or Citrix does, and that difference in understanding is what leads you to object to my saying that.
peace.
I have been pushing linux on the desktop for a couple of years. Administration (For the experienced admin) is easy and the end users can not mess the system up. I have been running is at home for some time and my wife and daughter (Age 30 and age 8 respectively) find it easier to use. Both feel that the fact that they can not "Mess the system up." helps them to explore and try new things on the computer as they are not worried about breaking it. I have suggested that attorneys move to Linux with X11 as most of there work is done on Word Perfect. With that they can set up Xterms and a primary server and all upgrades, Data Storage, and backups are done in one location. There are many advantages to Linux as well as some disadvantages. I am not saying it is right for all tasks. I have yet to find a good voice mail system for linux and have kept all my voice mail functions on a windows system. There are other disadvantages but as time goes on those are slowly going away.