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.

Comments

Re:total cost of X-Windows

[ameoba]

This is not a victory for Linux. This is a victory for one old variant of Windows: yes, X-Windows.

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.

I'm afraid it is you who are FUDding now...

[imipak]

" 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."

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...