Where is Largest Linux Desktop Install?

jackb_guppy asks: "Talking with Managers about Linux Training for staff. One asked a simple question: 'Where is the largest installed base of Linux desktops?' My guess the question was asked prove that there is no market, and I am unable to find an answer. I am guessing the next question will be: 'Largest site using Linux to replace MS desktops?' Anyone have a suggestion?" Just for fun, if any of you have Linux Desktops deployed in your department, can you give us some numbers?

Comments

The city of Largo, FL has switched

[McVeigh]

Largo has switched about 800 desktops to linux using thin clients. They use balsa for e-mail and KDE for the desktop. links here and here

The hope lies in the prolls

[nakedjames]

Late late news!

Burlington Coat Factory will install Linux on 1,150 computers in its 250 stores over the next 12 to 18 months.

"Burlington will run Red Hat Software Inc.'s version of Linux on 1,250 Dell OptiPlex® PCs for office management, to administer its Baby Registry and to handle back-office functions such as shipping and receiving. Dell will factory-install Red Hat Linux software through its DellPlus service on the OptiPlex GX1 computers, giving Burlington the ease and efficiency of PCs that arrive ready to use."

Sited from: Linux in Business

Dumb question?

[Tin Weasil]

And what is the world's largest installed base of Windows computers? This isn't an easily answered question for any operating system.

Tell the manager that finding a definitive answer to his question is beyond the scope of your abilities. It's an unanswerable question because there aren't licensing issues with Linux, so tracking that number by per-seat licenses as is done with Windows and other non-free operating systems is not possible.

Then answer his question with some of the many sucessful linux conversions that HAVE taken place. Burlington coat factory, General Motors, City Governments, China.

Talk about the NSA developing security for Linux.

You aren't going to win a numbers game because the free availability of Linux means that it can be installed many times over without a distributor being able to track the numbers.

I can download my favorite Linux distro and install it to hundreds of PCs without anyone outside the company knowing those figures. With MS products, they can track the licensing down to every copy in use at any business. Therefore, MS will always win the numbers game.

Re:Dumb question?

[hey!]

It isn't that the question is dumb. The people who think this way have what I describe as a schooling instinct -- there's safety in numbers.

There's good reason for some folks to think this way, although some of them don't apply to open source. To them the idea that they can just pick up maintenance of a software project themselves is as meaningless as if you told them they could start maintaining jet aircraft if they needed to. It's strictly speaking true, but it's not the business they're in.

The numbers question is more of a proxy for questions like the following: (1) Are new applications being developed for this platform? (2) Will support for this platform and products on this platform be withdrawn? (3) Will I be able to hire people who can work in this platform? (4) Will future hardware be supported on this platform?

The answers to these are all favorable under Windows. I think the answers are becoming more favorable for Linux, but they aren't on par with Windows from the standpoint of people making desktop acquisition decisions.

I think desktop Linux is ready for those who might want to take a chance. These will be people on a restricted budget (like schools), and startups with minimal legacy stuff installed (nobody likes supporting multiple platforms). But for your typical MIS shop, even the enormous projected increases in MS licensing costs is not going to dissuade them until Linux has established a number of unassailable beacheads on the desktop front. They'd rather tell management to pay MS up front than have to go back a year from now with their tail between their legs and an even larger bill to pay.

This isn't a question of good or evil, its just the way things are in MIS-land. Conservatism and safety rule. Linux will not take the desktop by storm the way it has taken the server market as much as I or you might wish it to. The Largos of thw world are exceptions, although strategically important ones. At best Linux going to advance slowly until it reaches a critical mass. The earliest I see this happening is several years out -- say 2004 -- provided there's steady growth in users and maturity, and that promising early indications are not seriously set back. If and when it does reach critical mass it will crush the opposition with unbeatable pricing, but that may never happen. It also is very possible that destop Linux will never take off in a big way, and remains a server OS and hobbyist desktop.

I'm basically optimistic, but I think that it will be several years before you can satisfy the kind of viewpoint that needs the answer to the numbers question.

Mexico?

[update()]

This is a great question.

We keep hearing these stories of massive deployments of Gnome desktops by the Mexican government.

• "Scholar Net, has decided to install GNU/Linux workstations with GNOME sofware. The software should be installed in every elementary and mid-level school in Mexico, he says. This means about 140,000 centers in the next five years."
• "ABCNews.com reports that the Mexican government chose Red Hat Linux to power their elementary and middle school computers.
• It's an interview with the Technical coordinator of the Distrito Federal goverment (Mexico's capital of the country) where they say why choose Linux over MSWindows and make the change of all their systems in a period of 2 years to Linux. All the money saved from the MSWindows licenses will be reallocated to programs for fighting poverty.

Has any of this ever actually happened? I've started to regard any story with "Linux" and "Mexico" in it the way I do Loch Ness Monster sightings.

Home Depot

[worldwideweber]

Home Depot is using Red Hat Linux for a huge in-store system that its employees will use for tasks such as receiving, ordering, and inventory management. As many as 90,000 cash registers (etc) are running Linux there. Check out this article for details.

Reality

[sting3r]

I work for a small firm that offers UNIX (including Linux) based software to integrate the newer UNIX servers with old mainframe applications (like CICS and such). We have 110 employees, 95 of whom are "technical" (coders, sysadmins, etc.). A few months ago we tried to move the 15 non-technical employees (receptionists, accounting, etc.) to a Linux desktop, to save ourselves from spiraling Microsoft upgrade costs. We tried several combinations of KDE, Gnome, and traditional window managers; we also tried both Koffice and StarOffice for word processing and spreadsheets. (For text editing, vim was out of the question; emacs was bordering on insanity.) The result? They hated it, and productivity went down fast. The IS folks' workload tripled overnight as the Linux newbies got stuck trying to figure out why the KDE/Gnome desktops were so illogical. We couldn't find a non-IE browser that would work with our bank's site, so bookkeeping needed a Windows PC regardless (which they tended to fight over, since nobody liked Linux). People would hit the reset button when X died or crashed, and the resulting fsck would take half their filesystem with it. It was a nightmare.

Today our non-techies run Windows and our coders mostly run Linux, just as before. And it works (relatively) well. There are crashes and annoyances on the Windows side but at least it's usable. Linux simply isn't up to the task yet - and with funding for open source projects going down the toilet as LNUX, SGI, CALD, and RHAT slowly die off, things aren't going to change anytime soon.

-sting3r

How about the UK police force.

[Organism]

They apparantly saved over £250,000 (~$350k) by switching to Linux and Star Office. This was during the uproar about MS licensing.

--ALex
My Poor Sig.

Re:IBM

[GrEp]

Thanks for the offtopic mod ;)

Here is a link to some Case Studies that IBM has done on using Linux that I should have posted above.

Re:Korean Air?

[tenman]

Please note that the above artical doesn't apply to this thread. The Korean Air deployment was from a IBM-Zserver. That would be one box capable of 50,000 simultaious, completly seperate linux images. All of which can, but none of which are running a 'desktop'.

All user interfaces are done on IBM netTerminals that have a thier own firmware to handle user interactions. Linux on the Zserver is limited right now to around 90 really really powerful linux server images, and no direct client connections. The IBM netTerminal's internal application only makes TCP calls to the server. Clients do not use shell accounts, and no GUI login exist for them on the server. Hope I didn't burt your bubble, but trust me on this one...

Who are your target users?

[Junta]

As much as many of us love Linux, a lot of people are so used to Windows, or even so fond of it that they may not do well in a Linux enviornment. Imagine if someone came up to you running a Linux desktop, not even doing very hard work, at least nothin beyond the capabilities of Windows, and told you you were moving to windows, and you would at least have to try it. You would make such a fuss, and even in cases when you *know* you could do something and how you would do it, you will tend to say that the task is as feasible under Windows, even when you know this fact may not be true. Same is true of Windows users. Most don't want to learn anything else. And technical users that prefer Windows can be as fanatical as most of the Slashdot community is about Unix. You have to make sure that the costs do not exceed the benefits..

City of Turku, Finland considers Linux

[nvainio]

City of Turku in Finland considers switching to GNU/Linux systems because of Microsoft's new licencing policy. According to a newspaper article (in Finnish), this would mean 3000 users.

Linux thin clients

[night-shade]

The school I am network manager for has a deployment of 250 linux based thin clients running citrix desktop software off 6 NT servers.

The linux client software is a heavierly customised RedHat 6.2 with an ext3 root fs (which is great not a single ext3 related fault on any of them and no fsck's) that basically boots an X session with a full screen citrix client on them.

All the full clients that we have (50 or so) have a dual boot option to a full RedHat 7.1 + Ximian 1.4 desktop that is used by some pupils and also the art department for Gimp and Blender work.

While these aren't true linux "desktops" they run run linux and sit on desks :).

All the back end servers are linux baring the 6 NT desktop servers. All filestore, mail, web, dns, auth, etc is run on linux.

Some Linux

[totallygeek]

I have some instances of companies I work with using Linux over Windows:

• One bank uses 3 Linux workstations for document scanning, using Tummy Software xvscan. The images are set in a PostgreSQL database, and retreivable bia a web browser. They purchased this system with the custom software saving over $15,000 compared to the cheapest Windows solution they could find.
• I know of a bank that uses Star Office on Linux for Microsoft Office training machines. Having Linux on the computers keeps the trainees from loading software, and the two office suites are similar enough for basic training. There are ten training workstations.
• A law firm that uses two Linux workstation, a Mac, and Appletalk/Samba on Linux for a server. They also have custom database applications for billing and client records.
• A financial planner that has a Linux Internet gateway that later turned into a PostgreSQL database for stock tracking and analysis. He still uses Windows for his workstation, but in addition has a Linux computer using the quote program to get stock quotes.
• A pet store using Linux exclusively for point-of-sale and server. He replaced an old SCO system, and did not buy a monitor for his server, so he connects with his vt320 terminal.
• An outdoor advertising company has replaced two Windows computers with Linux, and are loving them. They don't know anything about Linux, but like the stability of their applications, and they saved a bundle.

My company has been working on custom Linux applications to replace Windows. I hope there are many chances in the future to suggest Linux.