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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.
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!
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?
Out of the box, Linux and other Unixes work 100% as client server. Windows does not. Brag about Citrix all you want, but decide to implement it an you've got months of config ahead of you, coupled with various discoveries of what doesn't work and unsolved mysteries why some things never will. Because?: it's a kluge.
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
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.
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.
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.
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
Their decision has zero to do with Linux. More FUD from a scared little microsoftie.
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
That's twisting thet truth significantly. The major reasons cited in the Wired article for the failure of Linux adoption were:
Furthermore, it appears the ScholarNet initiative is not over yet. The current progress has not achieved the penetration desired, but future iterations hold more promise, as hardware compatibility improves and the "seeded" Linux knowledge from the successful installations trickles down.
Anyone interested in the attractions of Linux implementations in developing countries might want to have a look at a paper I wrote for a final year Engineering unit: postscript version. It has some mistakes in it I haven't corrected yet, but I'm open to revising it :)
That raises an interesting point, which I find is often overlooked - documentation.
I'm not talking about man pages/how-tos etc (which I personally find are usually of a much greater standard in terms of usability in an open source arena), but outlining:
* the exact steps taken to build the environment in the first place,
* maintenance steps (the where/why and how of upgrades, bugfixes, sec pathces etc)
* new user tasks - from both the admin and user perspectives
* general usability guidelines
If these tasks are done at the beginning, and tailored for whatever particular business environment you are in then I've found it is much easier to get it accepted by management and perhaps even spread to other departments.
One common stumbling block I've come across in trying to build these types of office environments is management fear that if I (or the admins with experience with open source setups) were to leave then they'd be stuck - after all it is much easier from a corporate view to find someone familiar with setting up/running a wintel / nt backend environ than linux.
Providing detailed outlines covering conception through to delivery/expansion really helps make a choice like this seem much less risky from the management view. After all if you are the only open source 'evangelist' in the company it is going to be a tough sell no matter how convincing your arguement.
When it is time to move on the steps you leave behind can help less experienced admins really get a grasp on not only the how, but the why of 'open offices'. Its how I really started, and I've now left many converts in my wake.
This is not a victory for Linux. This is a victory for one old variant of Windows: yes, X-Windows.
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.
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.
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.
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 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.
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ps -aux | grep mind