Slashdot Mirror
Linux on the Desktop
Dhar writes: "Rob Valliere has posted a Windows vs. Linux review: "This review focused on Linux Red Hat 7.1 from a business user's view and attempted to answer my client's question "Can Linux be used as a replacement for Windows 2000". After an intensive hands-on Linux project lasting several months, I was able to provide my client with a pertinent answer to this question." I like the answer. ;-)" It's good that he covers the pitfalls he encountered; opportunities for improvement.
Is this an astroturf attempt or just flat out flamebait?
Do I really have to explain to you that the equivalent document from Red Hat would have no more validity?
Honestly, I'd rather be modding you down, but I don't have moderator access today...
/Brian
You will be stunned by the bang for the buck that Linux bundled free "open source" software offers.
Since Linux is free, wouldn't any amount of "bang" mean that the ratio of "bang" to "buck" is infinite? Q.E.D. Better than Windows!!! (not trolling.... well.... maybe a little bit... )
:)
I don't think people understand when you say replacement for MS Access..
I'm sorry but a webserver mysql and php solution ins't a replacement and it is far superior because it isn't remotely near what MS Access offers.
Once there is a program that can integrate Apache, PHP and MySQL into a seamless package and provides an interface for building forms, queries and reports with a nice gui front end hiding all the administration work and user processes from the end user, then you can say you have something comparable to MS Access or even better..
Yup, i'll agree with you, this is just all for geeks right now..
The fact is that the guy was very in-depth about it. I'd have liked to see his MSAccess replacement linked to, but oh well.
The problem with desktop applications these days is that they're gigantic for no obvious reason. I still want to see someone write a full-featured office suite that takes up a grand total of no more than a megabyte for the source tarball -- I would be inclined to think that a fairly nice word processor could be put together with nothing more than Perl and Tk, using standard command line tools like ispell for the more specialized services and (I've heard suggested) HTML4+CSS as the file format.
Nobody seems to have tried, though...
/Brian
*Cough* This is a great example of someone writing an article to match what they "already know".
Did he actually do an analysis of what his office needs for word processing? I don't see a list of required features. The alternatives are feature-poor, so we simply don't know.
Although he says that StarOffice is "fully compatible with Word/2000", other experience has shown otherwise. Did he test with some complex documents?
What about printing? Did he test with all the printer types in his office? If he is 100% Postscript that he has some chance, but if there are any low-end Epson color printers, his users could be in for a big surprise.
And on and on...
It's pretty obvious this guy has never done a feasibilty study in his life. I give it a D-.
Sometimes it's best to just let stupid people be stupid.
Nice cost savings, but it only works when you don't factor in lost productivity for retraining people to use the software.
The main problem is a lot of implementations try to look like windows, and that really only aggravates the issue.
So, if they saved 10k on licensing and hardware, how much did they lose in time devoted to people learning the new system? What costs are involved when hiring people? Using temp agencies?
The reason Linux is having a hard time moving into the mainstream office is not because of price, but simply the fact people would have to retrained to use it. Sometimes time is more than money
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
My roommate runs Windows 2000. He is one of those people that just can't stand the god damn thing.
/. is biased, yes we all know this, tough shit. It has been like this for years and it probably won't change. All news media is biased in one way or another (usually politically biased) if you don't believe me you are absolutely wrong.
His video card isn't supported well and the drivers he can use don't support GL and he can't play Quake (big problem).
Before he installed some patches his machine crashed about 10x a day. After patches, at least 2x. He said at least w/Win98 all of his hardware worked and it only crashed every two days or so.
I have suggested he run Linux but he is of the "I know I could learn it, I just don't want to" crew. Which is fine.
What makes me think that Linux is supperior is that his card is supported, it won't crash every 2 days (probably not every 2 months) and it has been getting better overall.
I do NOT believe for a second that Linux is a desktop operating system nor do I think it will be anytime soon. What I do believe is that Win2k is mediocre and needs to have some serious work done to improve it.
Yes
If you don't like the news here there are plenty of other sites you are more than welcome to visit.
While I don't believe that they should be biased I have to live w/the fact that they are. If some site was pro-MS (which most are) I probably wouldn't frequent them as much (and I don't). Go where you are comfortable.
Afterall, the entire article shows where and how Linux and Linux alternatives can be used to replace Windows 2k... as well as it should since that's the primary thrust of the article.
I would think that everyone here would agree that Linux can more than admirably replace a Win2k desktop.
But my question would be, should it?
The wrtier uses Star Office for his example. (While there are better out there, I'll use it since he did) He even points out that the suite is missing quite a few of the Office features, almost all of which you and I will probably never use. But what about the secretary for your group? Or that person that uses Word to create forms? You might be able to do a lot of the things that these people rely on in Star, but what sort of hoops to do it? And could a computer 'illiterate' really catch on to those hoops?
That brings me to his PDF creation solution. Print to PostScript, then use a 3rd party utility to convert to PDF. It's not very user friendly, "but it works." If you look through the article, you'll find that phrase quite a bit.
My whole point is that Linux can replace/supplant a desktop for those of us on Slashdot, and typically do a far better job than the desktop it replaced. However 99% of the office workers out there are not the typical bored geek that hangs out on here.
So yeah you can replace Win2k with Linux for a business user workstation, but I personally don't think that you should. At least not yet.
'Life is like a spoonful of Drain-O, it feels good on the way down but leaves you feeling hollow inside'
I also agree with upgrading sets of associated packages - like KDE - this is still not anywhere near the level of ease of use that could be automated fairly easily.
I guess the real issue is - who is going to tackle this work? These are big problems that require the attention of a group with enough clout and authority to push their solution into the linux mainstream. Red Hat, IBM, Ximian and the FSF are the only groups I can think of.
I dont really think this is the interresting issue to discuss. Whether Linux will be a good desktop environment/replacement for Windows2000 wont really rely on "Linux", but on all the apps that will run on linux.
What i'm saying is simply that the Linux kernel has been "desktop ready" for a long time, its just the easy task of networking, supporting some common hardware, and not crash.
What IS the issue is what programs are available. Why do people choose to use Windows 2000 on the desktop ? Because they want to run the Windows OS ?.. Dont think so. People are looking for the programs that runs on Windows, like MS Office, Internet Explorer, Visual Studio, Borland tools [add a long list here]. They simply look for a good platform to run their favorite software on.
The Open Source community has a little dilemma here, first they try to say "We can replace windows 2000" by providing products that can communicate with [major software company] products. Then they try to offer software that works just like those products they are trying to replace.. Why should someone want to use the copy when there's the original ? Of course you cannot provide an Office Suit for Linux that will always be 100 % compatible with MS Office, simply because even Microsoft cant
The core issue is, dont try to walk your way to the desktop by making [almost as good] replicas of existing desktop software. Instead, offer something better! Something like a uniform word processor that uses the XML standard. Maybe use the same XML for spreadsheats, email programs, etc etc etc.
As long as we try to copy/replicate leading software we will always be one step behind. Why dont we take the lead and provide new things instead ?
Probable impossibilities are to be preferred to improbable possibilities.
Aristotele
Hmm... I had Win2K running just fine on a 96Mb Acer Travelmate. Sure, it paged like a bastard on startup, but soon settled down (and I did go back to SuSE/KDE). Minor niggle though, otherwise a great article, well presented, and commendably objective. Cheers!
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
The Access killer you're looking for on Linux is called Kylix. http://www.borland.com/kylix/ It does everything Access does except it doesn't crash randomly and it doesn't corrupt flat-file databases. There is more of a learning curve for Kylix - but once you're past the "Make a Recipe Program For Grandma" stage, Kylix is more logical and more organized
Moneyed corporations, non-working 'poor' and criminal prisoners are turning productive citizens into tax-slaves.
He used StarOffice 5.2. The old StarOffice was incredibly annoying. Recent OpenOffice builds are much better. I know they're not officially released yet, but I think the development builds would have been a better choice.
Also, Evolution, Balsa, or Mozilla would have been better for e-mail. KDE probably has a native app that's better as well (KMail?).
He said he couldn't get the drives to automount on RedHat. Odd, that usually drives me mad until I remember to turn it off. Not sure what his difficulty was.
Trouble with dependancies for RPMs: use Debian or Ximian's Red Carpet if that matters. I think somebody told me Mandrake had apt-get for RPMs - that sounds interesting too. Ditto for the upgrade problem. RedCarpet and apt-get are miles ahead of Windows in this respect. On the plus side, once you get everything the way you like it it's really easy to set up painless network installs using RedHat.
On the whole a pretty positive piece, even if I don't agree with everything he did. You can probably chalk this up to his being a Windows administrator and not really knowing his way around the Linux world (I wouldn't do much better trying to fine-tune a Windows installation). It would be interesting to have one of these comparisons every six months or so just to see the progress. I bet it would be impressive. As far as I know most of the annoyances he mentioned in his article have already been addressed.
Funniest Quote: My customized KDE desktop is better than Windows 2000! He seems so surprized :-).
It is tempting, if the only tool you have is a hammer, to treat everything as if it were a nail. - Abraham Maslow
Really, I want to use this product. I prefer its stand-alone approach to that of StarOffice, but they have got to get the stability issues dealt with. I honestly think the 0.9x version they have applied to their current code is deceptive - they should move the decimal place and call it v0.09.
It's not so much how difficult that Linux is to install that makes it, to me, difficult to use. It's the community that feeds the perception that Linux is a geek's OS.
As long as the "more able", on-the-fence Windows users continue to get responses like, "Read the fookin esotericHOWTO, crypticHOWTO, and horriblyexcitingtoreadHOWTO, you idiot!" a la Jimmy Fallon on SNL as they take their first look at Linux and post newbie questions on usenet, the wall will never crack. Heck, when I first installed Linux I didn't even know where the HOWTOs were!
If I'm Joe Computer User and my "expert friend" says Linux is too complicated in no small part due to the "newbie flame" s/he got when trying to become part of the community, I'm not about to try out this new OS.
Ruffin Bailey
It's all 0s and 1s. Or it's not.
Try the venerable F-SECURE: workstation and firewall products.
Hi!
Anti-Virus Norton Anti-virus Not required with Linux, according to the experts.
Enuff said.
--- Metamoderating abusive downgraders since my 300th post.
As much as I'd love to ditch MS, the truth is that for the last X number of years, most all 3rd party apps.. specifically specialty apps writtten for specific industries, not just "Word", have been written for Windows.
I would love to get rid of MS in my work environment, but the apps I need to use simply don't exist under any operating system other than Windows, and it's extremely unlikely that the 3rd party vendors will blow millions of dollars to make a Linux version to please the small (albeit growing) percentage of computer users that despise MS.
You could make a wonderful office suite, a billion times better than MS Office, but it doesn't matter, because the office suite software is a minor set of utilities in many, many workplaces.
"Would it kill you to put down the toilet seat?" -- Maya Angelou
Virus protection software only protects against viruses it knows about. Since I have yet to hear about any Linux viruses (root exploits, worms, etc. aren't viruses) I doubt the application would do anything.
If you like I can write you a Linux anti-virus that protects against all known Linux viruses. Yours for only $249.00 + shipping and handling :-).
It is tempting, if the only tool you have is a hammer, to treat everything as if it were a nail. - Abraham Maslow
No.. it isn't ironic. No Linuxdistribution is even a monopoly in the Linux-market, let alone in the general market.
The problem isn't that Microsoft bundles software in itself.. it is that since Microsoft is a monopoly it can FORCE software on people who have to buy their operating system anyway, because they need to run generic desktop-software.
You can say that "IE is free, just use another browser", but I'll bet you that the reason Windows has increased in price for all the latest editions, is because you pay for the included software, that is, it is not free.
The whole point comes down to monopoly or not monopoly. If they are, then they have to be careful to not unfairly use their monopoly to leverage themselves into another market.
Your post contains the nr. 2 misunderstood MS-argument. The nr. 1 is that "should Ford not be allowed to bundle a car-stereo in their cars?", which is flawed because Ford is not a monopoly and is not in the position to force themselves into the gas-market by making sure that Fords only take their kind of gas.
The included software in Linux-distributions is almost always third party and/or open and free. Besides no Linux-distro could ever be a true monopoly. Since it is free software, there is no "hidden agenda" in bundling software, other than to provide value for the customer.
Your post shouldn't be modded down because it isn't anti-microsoft, it should be modded down because it has no value, and is a blatent troll.
Instead of KDE, a less complicated and easier to use and understand environment is Windowmaker + ROX-Filer.
:)
Instead of the apps he chose, here are my personal favorites:
Database: MySQL and Ksql for end-users, embedded perl for web-based company-wide databases.
PIM with Email: a web-based app tailored to the company's business processes for scheduling, and Pronto for mail.
Browser: Mozilla
Image Viewer: GQView
PDF Viewer: ghostview (gv) & Acrobat for stuff gv can't handle
Umm...what does a mp3 player have to do with business?
From the article:
And here lies one of the biggest challenges in the Linux world. The Red Hat installation is outstanding - you basically push a button and 500 or so rpms are installed and configured correctly. But upgrading individual applications, especially for a large package like KDE, is far from pushing a button. Upgrades in Linux have a long way before they will be as easy as upgrading Windows applications.
This guy re-installed Redhat because he couldn't manage to install new KDE 2.2 packages. And he takes it out on "Linux," when he should of course take it out on Redhat. I know I updated KDE with a few commands involving urpmi on my Mandrake install, and it should be even simpler to do on Debian -- certainly much simpler than upgrading something equivalent on MS Windows.
"Oppression and harassment is a small price to pay to live in the land of the free." -- Montgomery Burns.
So it can be done but why should I do it? I'm not for Win specifically, but I see no reason to change. What are the advantages to changing to Linux?
-Valiss
And along with the other poster's response, it's about far more than purchasing more ram. Bigger footprint, with little data in memory, means more code is in memory. That's more code running. That's a slower workstation. Just the simple use of more ram means slightly slower processing speeds. Bloated apps = less efficient apps = slower apps and slower workstation.
We have programmers at my company with your opinion... and they write the slowest software in this office. 2 weeks ago our VP yelled at them because of complaints of speed. I sure hope you're not a software developer.
Developers: We can use your help.
What about printing? Did he test with all the printer types in his office? If he is 100% Postscript that he has some chance, but if there are any low-end Epson color printers, his users could be in for a big surprise.
You chose utterly the wrong argument here. I have an Epson Stylus Photo 1290 and previously had an Epson Stylus Color 850, and the GIMP-Print drivers for these have totally blown me away - the output I get from them is simply stunning, and considerably better than the official Windows drivers. They also support every feature and resolution of my Stylus Photo, even doing colour matching using Postscript.
Also, they don't crash, unlike the Win2k drivers...
Better yet, I'm using these drivers with CUPS as the print spooler and the KDE2.2 print framework. Using this combination, it is just as easy to add, manage and remove printers as it is under Windows. In fact, for networked printers, it is even easier, as I can also configure CUPS through a web browser from anywhere. The print dialog in KDE apps is fully comprehensive, easily customizable by each app and supports things that Windows doesn't - for instance, post-processing of print data through arbitrary commands, which means every print driver has the capability to print multiple pages per sheet, and every app can print straight to a PDF file. Truly, it is a joy to use. I haven't seen a comparable print framework anywhere else.
For more information, check out the GIMP-Print, CUPS and KDE Print framework websites.
Printing under Linux has finally come of age - and it is better than Windows!
I don't know what desktop this guy was using, but KDE 2.2 has a system wide "Print to PDF" option integrated into all KDE apps, including KOffice. That seems pretty user friendly to me.
Windows is getting a lot of user level security tools now--easily configurable via a gui, not hard to use.
Linux Security is powerful, but is a morass of application and configuration issues.
Someone oughta make a GUI like gtp with tabs to logically split this stuff out and configure it, maybe even a tab for doing saint probes, nmaps, etc.
Treatment, not tyranny. End the drug war and free our American POWs.
See my user info for links.
You can use KSql, which has a nifty way of embedding forms. The only thing lacking is a way of showing and creating relationships graphically. Anyone who takes 5 minutes to learn how to create a table in MySQL, however, won't need this, and will, in fact, probably write a better database because *gasp* they'll actually understand what it is they are doing! I can't count the number of times as a tech support person I've gone to an end user with a 'database' where they basically use access as a spreadsheet...250 databases...all with the same data structure. "I need to put the data in for this month now...I'll just copy/paste the database again!"
Any end user who 'can' write scripts would be fully comfortable writing them WITH WHATEVER LANGUAGE THEY CHOOSE, instead of being forced to use that "march through the recordset" crap that you have to do with MS-Access's Basic.
I've grown fond of Linux over the years, but for a long time I had a hard time taking it seriously. The was mainly due to my first experience installing it, many years ago. The basic OS installation wasn't too hard (though not for the computer newbie), but I couldn't believe how much time I spent on silly little configuration issues. Bad design, inconsistent design, undocumented design. It was actually worse than Windows 3.1! It took me an entire day to figure out why Netscape always mapped Backspace/Delete backwards from other applications. That's the sort of thing that drives up cost of ownership. My first response to Linux was, "OK, it's free, but can anybody afford it?"
Well, Linux has gotten easier to administer (thought it's still too complicated, and there's too much undocumented stuff) and Windows has gotten much much harder. But the total cost of ownership issue is still hard to answer. One big item is retraining everybody to use the Linux equivalents of MS Office. That's assuming you can persuade people to make such a basic change!
Yea, I used to work for a software company, these guys wrote the most bloated code I have ever seen, when clients complained about speed, they told them to go buy more RAM cause it was cheap! What a bunch of Morons.
When copying files under Linux, original timestamps are replaced with the current date. So the "date last modified" file attribute becomes "date last copied". This becomes a nightmare for anyone dealing with many files - how can you keep track of when a file was last modified. You can force the original timestamps using cp -p., but this means not using the GUI file manager. Very poor Linux design feature!
Please somebody buy this guy "CVS Pocket Reference" !!! :)
:wq
Heh.
My old room mate ran win2k on a P200 with 32 megs. It took forever to start and paged constantly when loading an application, but it ran ok once a program was started, so long as you didn't try to switch tasks.
We did try linux on the machine (fvwm + mozilla), but it was unusably slow with the ten thousand ton monster running. xterms were fine, but really, a terminal program on windows provided all the needed functionality (as in it was faster to run programs remotely over a cable modem).
As of three months ago, the unpageable kernel of windows 2000 was smaller than the unpageable kernel of linux, and Internet explorer had a smaller memory footprint than mozilla. Using an embedded configuration may change the first, and the mozilla team is constantly working on the second, but my guess is that both of those will continue to hold in the forseeable future for a desktop configuration.
I'd really have to recommend windows 2000 as the environment for memory constrained computing if a graphical environment is necessary. Linux is really an option in this situation only if you can ditch the web browser and office programs.
Even Slashdot wants to hide some things
This article does a good job of pointing out many of the flaws in using Linux software on the desktop. Linux developers would be well advised to read it and take the author's complaints in mind.
One thing the author pointed out repeatedly was the problems involved in installing and configuring XFree86. People have been saying this for a long time. I know that just about every time I have installed Linux, one of the first things I have to do is rerun xf86config and then manually edit the files to get things working right. If the Linux companies out there really want Linux to take over, the most important thing they could possibly do would be creating an entirely new configuration tool for X that is easy to use, configures scroll wheels, and has a better interface for less technical people.
Another sore point was StarOffice all being integrated together. I know that big changes are planned for OpenOffice 6, but we really need the Linux vendors to rally behind Koffice and Star/Openoffice for speed, ease of use, and file portability, as well as better Microsoft Office compatibility.
Of course, what I saw above all that really stood out was the fact that Linux is being compared to Windows, as if Windows needs to be as good or better than Windows at what Windows does. Linux will never be better at being Windows than Windows. Linux desktop developers need to stop cramming every little tool that might be able to fill a Windows-like function onto Linux desktops and start doing something special and innovative. Microsoft has spent years ripping off Apple's ideas, and all we get are good knockoffs of a knockoff - which is never going to put Linux up front where it needs to be.
If only NT would work at all! "But it works" is the sloppy catch phrase that MS folks used to throw out as they smashed down their crappy software on cluefull users. I work for a large company, with many databases THAT WILL NEVER TALK TO EACH OTHER, mail that gets stored in a propriatory format, and documents that never print the same twice. All of this is because of propriatory "standards" that never stand still. I'd love something that acutally worked around here freaking ever.
But my question would be, should it?
Of course companies should put Linux on the desktop and soon. Just reverse the question and see how obvious it is. Imagine your company was using FREE software and data formats. Try asking your boss, "Should we move to propriatory software that we have less control of, costs us more, is less secure, and does not work as well?"
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
#! /bin/bash
/dev/null 2> /dev/null
# Let user know we've started
echo "Scanning system for viruses"
# Make him think we're actually doing something!
find / -type f >>
# Report the results
echo "No viruses found"
I have no problem with your religion until you decide it's reason to deprive others of the truth.
Yes, the same one I use for windows. Common Sense. Viruses spread because of end-user idiocy. It is an education issue, and nothing more. All anti-virus software I have ever seen causes as much harm as the viruses themselves, wasting resources, mucking with files as you open and save them, causing corruption, etc. No thanks.
If you don't like the topics here, you can download the slash codebase and buy a new domain name for about $15. /. has never claimed to be unbiased--they post what they are interested in. And the founders are linux people who were in on it from the beginning. C'est la vie.
Somebody mod this up! I posted, so can't :(
Not a word about employees who actually used the new software afterwords. What was the cost in lost productivity getting used to a new system suite? What about training costs?
Training cost is $0, you might loose a little productivity for a day or two while everyone adapts. Anyone who can use MS Office can use StarOffice. Anyone who is either too set in thier ways or is too stupid to make the jump, probably needs to be put on the list for the next round of layoffs anyway.
"Our products just aren't engineered for security,"
-Brian Valentine,VP in charge of MS Windows Development
Hmm. I stand corrected. On the other hand, these don't seem too dangerous and obviously never spread very far. Do you know of any recent ones?
I wonder how these viruses actually spread, given that Linux users don't often pass around binaries. I know some people who used to work for F-Secure, I might just bug them for some more info.
It is tempting, if the only tool you have is a hammer, to treat everything as if it were a nail. - Abraham Maslow
Red Hat 7.1's good printing was a pleasant supprise. I gave it a try after the MS printing died on my wife's K6-2. Configuration was easy, and the output was just as good as MS ever was. Images from GIMP, documents from KDE are outstanding. Considering that the legacy alternative does not work at all, the ouput is infinitely better.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
He mentions Outlook as an e-mail client for windows and that there is Linux alternatives. Sure, mail and pine are great alternatives for MAIL. What about the OTHER functions of Outlook/Exchange? Tasks, Calender, Folder sharing, Centralized Contact database, Journal, notes.... Okay *some* of these things can be fixed by implementing an Imap server and ldap (folder sharing and contact database respectively), but what about everything else? Granted, this can all be done in OTHER programs but the fact that outlook has all of these features in 1 program makes it superior to anything currently on Linux!
/etc/passwd on the server... or by using the db file you can specify in smb.conf... or maybe, if you're a real hacker and AGAIN want to spend hundreds of man hours, you can implement an ACL system based on the same LDAP implementation you used for contact information....
Not to mention, how easy is it to setup sendmail, an imap daeemon, an Ldap server? You need REAL TECHNICAL ABILITY. For an IT firm this is fine, but for the general business use it will not work. Most corporations will not be willing to spend hundreds of man hours setting something up and then now have a support contract to fall back on.
Now... what about domain logins? Sure, this can be done under Linux... but it's not a turnkey solution like under Windows 2000. In Windows 2000, start the configuration wizard, make the machine a domain controller and log the other machines onto it. Under linux... uhm kerberos? Sure, now figure out how to use kerberos... modify those config files! Or NIS? NIS+? Even worse... sure, possible, but not a turn key solution!
Now we go to Samba... why use samba? Because it's GREAT! But the original intent of Samba was to allow filesharing between Windows and UNIX (not just Linux). It's great for that and has expanded, but what about access controls? You can control access via samba using
Windows 2000 + Exchange = 8 hours w/ all M$ patches they have released WITH implementation!
Now we go to the firewall on the desktop. First, why would one want such a thing in a corporate environment. And even if we had one, anything under Windows is better than ipchains or iptables. Maybe ipchains and iptables is BETTER but it's also HARDER and more COMPLEX... this is a big difference. It requires a higher level of skill from the end user to configure their firewall for everyday use. Now, I do work in an IT environment and even though I work with some smart people, they still fudge up their ipchains rules at home and ask for help! What about the corporate end user? Yeah, I'd be getting calls all day AND night with a nice queue that grows exponentially.
What about version management? Sure, redhat has it.. but does it come w/ something like SMS where you can rollout patches and programs to every RedHat box on the network with a click of the mouse?
One thing Mr. Valliere didn't mention in all his pricing was the amount of time required to set all these systems up. The number of man hours MUST be included in the cost of setting this up. Even the most skilled IT person with years of Linux experience in all the products I mentioned would take a good 2 to 3 weeks to implement w/ all the hacking and testing. At the same time, admittingly having NEVER really worked with Exchange or Windows 2000 server, I could guarentee a Windows 2000 network with Exchange and Office on the same number of desktops in less than 1 week!
My point being, although I will be mod'd down for trolling, is that although M$ isn't the BEST solution for everyone, it's the BEST solution for most corporate environments because it's 1) easy to implement 2) is designed for the corporation )file sharing, task sharing, calender sharing, etc) and 3) they can get support contracts in case ANYTHING goes wrong!
He's right. That GNOME or KDE are any more difficult for the average user to work has got to be the #1 troll of the year. If anything, the interfaces to GNOME and KDE or any other window manager are easier because they do not suffer needless market droid type changes. Also, user customizations are much easier to save out and move from machine to machine. MS will never catch up.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
... is the computer litteracy gap. I know that I'm going to get flamed for saying this, but it's true. The average secretary or marketing person for that matter probably would have problems with Linux applications just because they aren't developed for complete idiots like MS apps are.
Your're going to get flamed for saying that because you're wrong. Knowing how to use a poorly designed application is not the same as "computer literacy." You're one notch away from having everyone write their own applications in C++ because everyone else is a moron.
If the form is going to be used by more than 1 person, it needs to be designed by geeks anyway. And then, the person can usually do just fine with a spreadsheet anyway. I've seen users try to make their own database. Then they want the techy people to 'web-enable' it. They think they've done the hard part by making the database. What they have usually made is a maintenance nightmare.
Engineering and the Ultimate
/.
Somebody was asking about the cost of training. In most businesses today there is no end-user training for office apps. So that issue is usually a washout regardless of other factors; the few places that do train will do so on whatever software is in use.
Somebody else said "Why use an open-source clone of a M$ application? Why not use the real thing?"
Here's why: Four years ago my employer was paying over $800,000 US per year for software licensing costs. Today, that figure is less than $50,000 yearly. Linux, samba, rsync, and OpenSSH are the reasons why.
What's being done with all the money available from the avoided costs? Well, some of it is in my wallet right now. The M$-addicted IT directors out there don't control your paycheck nearly as much as the penny-pinching Smiling Men. And the accountants like to see those recurring costs dropping.....
Another thing I'm doing with that money is killing off Solaris, NT, and SCO-unix (and of course that dreaded train-wreck of a unix, HP-UX). This results in easier maintenance, and thus more time to work on the holy grail of a totally free desktop. I honestly don't care if it's linux as long as it's open source and doesn't require constant re-purchase.
--Charlie
Nobody uses a computer in order to use an operating system. An operating system enables people to write other software, and that's the software that is important. Focusing on the OS above all else is a distraction.
The trouble with attempting to clone the Windows environment is that we're getting 80% of the way there in almost all cases. Star Office is 80% of Microsoft Office. KDE is 80% of the Windows desktop. Mozilla is 80% of Internet Explorer. The total result is that Linux environments feel unfinished and shabby compared to Windows.
Cloning, by definition, is doomed to fail because it is a game of catch-up. A better approach is to think "What exactly do people _need_ to do?" as opposed to providing big and bloated toolsets which do all sorts of irrelevant things (for example, people don't want or need to be able to design a custom GUI for each application). As the risk of being considered a troll (and I guess light criticism is always considered trolling at Slashdot), I think that many people developing for Linux are not looking to "scratch as itch," as ESR likes to say. Rather they're gung-ho about putting Microsoft out of business by attempting to reproduce a popular Windows application.
dude you missed the point, I was just saying that Linux doesn't cater to idiots like MS does
Again, you are wrong. How do Windows Explorer or Microsoft Word cater to idiots as opposed to KDE or Star Office? They're both shooting for exactly the same markets. And if you want to be a Windows haxOr, then you can write Perl and Python scripts and be happy.
According to the table he charged about $2500 for the SQL conversion, documentation, and network setup. This is included in the approx. $5k quote for Linux. He also needed to charge nearly $2k for the four machines that kept Win2k and Office2k. This compared to $15k for the complete Win2k solution.
He doesn't really say how much he charged for the research, but it sounds like he might have eaten it as a "learning experience."
Waltz, nymph, for quick jigs vex Bud.
you all are hitting that poor windows/asp server and it is giving "Server to busy"... gee if people only knew how to scale ...
Only 'flamers' flame!
It's quite simple. 2 apps containing the exact same functionality. One has twice as much code as the other. Assuming all code is used for all functionality, the one with more code will execute more code to do the same procedures, and will therefore be slower. What CS (Common Sense) school did you come out of?
Developers: We can use your help.
Take a look at gnome-db... It's still fairly immature, but it provides much of what you're asking for here.
The backend library (libgda) provides a nice abstraction layer for accessing disparate data sources, including LDAP, ODBC, and specific database drivers (Postgresql, Interbase, MySQL, Oracle, Primebase, Sybase, etc).
One really nice benefit is embedding libsqllite so that it can write out flatfiles that don't require the user to have an SQL server running.
The gnome-db package provides generic widgets for database access, as well as a front end program for managing data sources, building forms and reports, etc.
And finally, it is being bonoboized, so it can be used as a component in other applications. One example would be the gda support in Gnumeric, which allows you to import data into your spreadsheets.
Matt
Obviously, you have never programmed with Visual Basic or Access. Otherwise you'd know that Access uses Visual Basic as it's programming language.
Delphi/Kylix are wonderful environments, not only due to their language, but also due to the included libraries, and the well-written visual IDE.
The strengths of Access (easy GUI design and report design) are the strengths of Delphi/Kylix. The weakness of Access (mediocre language, poorly written libraries) are gone in Delphi/Kylix.
To say Kylix is an Access replacement is truly misleading. Kylix is a version of Delphi for Linux.
You are correct, Kylix is not an Access replacement - it's a bridge out of the whole entire Microsoft lock-in. With Kylix and VNC, I can access a Kylix app with Mac OS 7 - X, Windows 3.1 , Windows 9x, Windows NT, Solaris, *BSD, BeOS, Epoc. Hell, even a $199 ThincNIC can use the app. When you access a Kylix app though VNC - your flaky Windows box can crash, you can reboot, and your application will be where you left it. Hell, you can shut down your Windows box, fire up *BSD and you application will be where you left it.
I've made a lot of money thought the years making Access applications for small companies - they been flaky, but usefull. I've been really enjoying the last 9 months - I can give my customers not only usefull solutions but high-quality solutions with Kylix.
Moneyed corporations, non-working 'poor' and criminal prisoners are turning productive citizens into tax-slaves.
What are you on about? Kylix is just Delphi for Linux, and, speaking as somebody who uses both Kylix and Python/Qt in their day to day work, I'll add that it sucks. Oh, sure, the form designer's nice and the debugger's nice but alas under all that you have to code in Pascal, which compared to python is just laughable. Memory leaks here we come!
http://www.gimbo.org.uk/
Just about every major antivirus maker has Linux versions - you're just going to have to pay for a lot of them for the time being.
However, Trend Micro does have FileScan available, I believe for free, on their FTP site (note, the link is missing on their site, and wrong on the amavis site).
ftp://ftp.antivirus.com/products/freetools/
You want "filescanlinux.tar". Works alright, although you may want to disable the webadmin page.
This is interesting. I've never seen a linux review (bias or not) get such a slamming from the community.
This is a current fad for "being cool". For years I have heard accusations that Linux/BSD/Unix/whatever users use and/or praise their systems and criticize Microsoft just because they want to look different from the rest of the world and oppose the popular opinion. Now finally so many people use Linux, it became "mainstream" in a simplistic view of modern uneducated person, so Microsoft praising turned from mindless exercise of repeating Microsoft propaganda or being a devil advocate into something that actually is different from enough people to look "cool".
Also this is a perfect way for a person too stupid to install an OS on his computer to feel good about himself -- praise the only thing you are capable of using, and you are suddently a great, smart rebellious person.
The fact is, Linux, XF86, GNOME, KDE, StarOffice and even Gimp already managed to fix all significant problems where they were noticeably worse than Windows software -- it's just the people who can't get their asses out of their chairs to install recent distributions feel more comfortable repeating ages-old complaints.
XFree86 installer, once in your life, asks you what is the goddamn mouse type you have, and may require you to download a driver? This is a problem? This is what can have even a minor influence on your decision, what OS you are going to use?
You need to download TrueType fonts to get scalable fonts support? This is a great problem? They are even on your favorite company's web site, for @%$# sake, and XF86 understands them perfectly.
You need an easy procedure to install and update things? How many times have you heard of Ximian? Have you ever tried to look at their installer tool, and how it internally handles dependencies, and works the same way on Debian (with debian packages), redhat/mandrake/... (with rpm) and even Solaris (with rpm because solaris packages suck, and even Sun knows it)? People went to a great length implementing all this, and it will be a great idea to get off their backs and let them spend their time doing something that actualy will be useful instead of trying to make installers more moron-friendly in a hope that one day morons that never even seen those things will stop complaining about them.
StarOffice doesn't support some shitty feature of Office files? Do you really need that at all? Did the lack of it ever stop someone from doing something useful? In my book, the only excuse for Office files existence is stupidity -- all useful information can be perfectly handled in text, HTML and, in a very, very extreme cases of printing books, in TeX. StarOffice allows to use files that MS Office users send to everyone, and as long as people can reasonably deal with that, it's fine. No one ever on this board complained about embedded objects in Office not being supported by the same Office on another box that doesn't have the same libraries, and I am certain, this happend way, way more often than StarOffice user receiving a MS Office file so mangled, StarOffice can't show it in a readable manner.
Oh, and, of course, Gimp. Gimp does not include colors handling for professional publishing support!!! You can't print magazines with it!!! Waa!!! Boo hoo!!! How many people actually can do professional publishing? What percentage of assholes that repeated all this colors-handling bullshit actually ever made a professional-quality page? In any software?
So, my point is, most of Unix/Linux software is actually fine for a real-world use, was fine for quite a while, and yes, reasonably educated person who cares about the results of his work, will get better ones with Linux than with any Microsoft OS.
If some software was only written for Windows, it may be the reason to use Windows instead, but it's dumb to blame Linux developers for it -- blame Windows software developers and their companies that continue writing windows-only stuff. Yes, I know that they see some dumbass "reasons" to make their software windows-only, but I am a user, therefore I can blame them, and I am a developer therefore I know how simple it is to port things if they are written in a half-decent way. Still, at this point most of software that actually is useful to do some work, exists for Unix/Linux/..., and it's usually only requires a quick look at Freshmeat and some minimal mental effort to find something that accomplishes some particular task in a manner, more easier and efficient than in Windows.
What we, Unix/BSD/Linux users, need most, is things we always were working on -- software that has nothing to do with Windows "equivalents", things that work in a way, completely unrelated to anything Redmond lamers are capable of thinking of. Desktops, installers, etc. are our defense from Microsoft that attacks our good software with their marketing, using their ridiculously high market share on the desktop, and if Microsoft didn't attack us we probably would just leave "office suites", GUI file managers and other similar stuff entirely to them. But since Microsoft is encroaching into our areas, we have to go to their ones, and so far we are doing fine. We may need more marketing to support this, but dumbass demands to make our "desktop" things more and more polished, way beyond "good enough" or even "reasonable for an educated user" levels, are absolutely unproductive.
Contrary to the popular belief, there indeed is no God.
Not really true. Even if the total market share were only 1% that would still be quite a lot in absolute terms. Plus Linux users tend to converse with other Linux users, so a virus should have no trouble moving within the community if it had an effective means of speading.
Sounds more like a worm to me. In that case anti-virus software won't help much, but keeping up-to-date on your security patches will make a big difference. Of course, that's true of any operating system, but the original poster was critical of the idea that you don't need an anti-virus for Linux.
It is tempting, if the only tool you have is a hammer, to treat everything as if it were a nail. - Abraham Maslow
> the unpageable kernel of windows 2000 was smaller than the unpageable kernel of linux,
Using what configuration options of Linux? How big are we talking about here?
The real pitfall of Linux is it isn't very user friendly. In this I don't mean it's complex or clunky that is more or less incorrect.
Linux needs a considerable amount of computer skills to install configure and use. That is what makes it not friendly. But once you have those skills Linux runs as smooth as silk.
That is what makes it not suted for the desktop. A desktop should run smooth as silk with limited office skills. Not computer trainned computer experts but the high school or collage interns. The avrage low end office population.
So the best solution is Windows?
I think not..
As of late Microsoft has favored 'skilled end user' solutions to problems in Windows over real solutions. In part becouse some of those problems can not be fixed with out removing a significant feature.
The results are an office worker shutting things down for a few days.
The reality is you train your office workers. You have no choice. With this in mind the whole 'user friendly' advantage is a fantacy.
The defects in Windows really eats into productivity.
Finnally when you update the hardware get Mac hardware not more PCs. You don't have to train your users and they work hand in hand with Linux systems. Both are Unix like so you can run most of the same code on both platforms. Throw in BSDs and Solarus boxes and everything works perfictly. Just drop the right box on the appropreate desk. Not everyone need run the same system when they all work together.
I don't actually exist.
Windows 9x, not W2K or NT. MS should advertise "Full porn security!" for W2K- sales would go through the roof.
"Seven Deadly Sins? I thought it was a to-do list!"
I agree completely.
I think KDE and Gnome are excellent desktops for even the typical business users, so that's one box checked. But there are a couple more critical items IMHO.
I'm not ready to stake my reputation on a transition to Linux until several more key items are a little further along than now:
- Evolution (or equivalent email/PIM organizer)
- Mozilla 0.9.9 (something fast, standard, that doesn't crash much (or Galeon, Konqueror, Kameleon)
- StarOffice 6.0 (something with less integration that 5.2, with standard XML file formats and better compatibility with MS Office formats; maybe KOffice) Something with better Excel compatibility.
For now, a Linux desktop is a great way for a SOHO to save some bucks if they have someone with some technical expertise and some time and not a lot of cash. Maybe that's why I got the impression this review was for a client in Thailand where you can get more people per dollar than in the industrialized world.For the general corporate desktop in the U.S., I think about 6-8 months from now should provide the point at which Linux is really a great option for the majority that don't want to be too close to the bleeding edge. Until then, for many users the transition from Windows is more uncomfortable than the dollar savings alone can justify.
"Provided by the management for your protection."
Typical. The main "flaw" is the difficulty of CUTTING AND PASTING IMAGES, and the programs mentioned are a bunch of unprofessional WYSIWYG "web design" tools that shouldn't exist in the first place, leave alone being used by anyone who cares about the result of his work.
Contrary to the popular belief, there indeed is no God.
As for roaming profiles, Unix has been doing that for years. In fact, Linux does it much better than Windows because all of a users information is going to be found in their home directory, not spread all over the hard drive (and the registry) like in Windows.
In Unix all you need to do is NFS mount your home directory from your NFS server and you are home free.
Or better yet, release the power of X Windows (like they did in Key Largo, Florida), and simply have one Linux server and a whole pile of X terminals. In the Key Largo installation they have 300 users hung off of one commodity Intel based server. So not only do you save in client licenses (and future upgrades), but you cut down on support costs as well (only one machine to configure). Fire all of your useless Windows desk jockeys and replace them with a single Linux administrator.
The application problem, OTOH, is a tough nut to crack. There are still a lot of Windows applications that don't have Linux equivalents. For those applications you could set up a Citrix server and access them via X Windows, I suppose. But there certainly are still issues. Linux has office suites that are credible replacements for MS Office, but it can't replace everything.
Resource management is also a little tricky. PAM + LDAP would probably get you where you want to go, but the GUI certainly isn't as fancy. However, it is easier to script Linux this sort of stuff in Linux. Get a good Linux admin (pay him extra from the money that you were paying to maintain desktops) and resource management won't be a problem.
Cool - I diden't know Palm had a VNC viewer!
things to ponder:
VNC on Windows is cool - but VNC served from a computer with X-Windows is absolutly amazing. Microsoft is kina tight-lipped about the inerworking of Windows, and VNC sometimes has trouble detecting when the screen has changed, so it has to resort to polling the screen. This introduces a bit of lag in the equasion - with any X-Widnwos (Linux, *BSD, Solaris) VNC gets notified when thing change, and accessing an Xsession over VNC over a LAN is just like being there.
Moneyed corporations, non-working 'poor' and criminal prisoners are turning productive citizens into tax-slaves.
Linux's memory footprint is a lot larger because of several things. First, Linux can't page out kernel memory. On my Win2K machine, of the 36MB of kernel memory, only 8MB is unpagable. Since most of the OS's features aren't being used all the time, this can lower the memory footprint of a running machine. Also, Linux can't page out the page tables, while Windows 2000 can. This becomes a larger problem in something like XCOM (used in Mozilla) where lots of sizable files are mapped in at the same time, but not necessarily used all the time.
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
I know this horse has been beat down to the ground, but it still bugs me. How can Linux get anywhere on the desktop without good performance? Win2K runs great on my relatively old 300MHz machine, but Linux/KDE seems much less responsive. It just seems to me that the Linux desktop is too much of a compromise. You can have cool features with KDE2, but you abandon performance. You can have a super-fast desktop with E17, but you have to put up with a tiny software base that actually uses E17's features natively. Win2K manages to get lots of features with good performance, so there is no reason to have to choose the lesser of several evils on the Linux desktop!
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
The most amusing aspect of this complaint is that the professionals already are using GIMP. The film industry has been using GIMP for all manner of things. Studios who worked on X-Men and The Fast And The Furious have been using GIMP.
Linux is attacking from multiple directions. It's infiltrating the CGI houses, although in hindsight this was obvious because of a similar interface to IRIX. It's starting to win friends in embedded markets including NAS equipment (I have seen more than 1 example of this, just in the past week). It's finding itself useful in scientific crunching where the OS is largely an irrelevant nuisance, and I've even helped setup some (minor) boxes in this area. And Linux has always been popular as a web/file/print server.
But "wah wah it doesn't have CMYK support" or "wah wah it doesn't support my WinModem" always seems to be used as "proof" that Linux won't succeed. The word on the street is that Linux has already succeeded.
Its right there whenever yo print.. just click the dropdown box where your printer name is and you'll see "Print to PDf", Print to PS" , "Send To Fax", as well as "Mail PDF". This is with KDE 2.2 of course.
"Booting with Lilo
Linux provides a very good and easy to use booting facility using Lilo. On the dual OS desktop unit that had an existing Windows 2000 installation, the desktop boots to Linux and a menu appears: I can select Linux (now my default) or Windows."
From personal experience getting NT/2000 and Linux to dualboot properly for many years, I have to say this statement is a bit of a misnomer. RedHat 7.1 clearly doesn't create a dualboot properly with NT (Disk Druid barely recognizes that the drive is NTFS!) The author comes off as making it sound easy to dual boot between the two completely different OS's, whereas doing anything close with 2000/XP today is a bitch and a half.
My best experience is to simply make a boot floppy for Linux and load as necessary. No muss, no fuss. Until one of these distros properly configures lilo, anyhow.
Why the heck would you want to page out the page tables? Wouldn't the performance be murdered?
Of course, Win2k is *far* more stable than Win98 (*spit*). That's certainly a reason to go for it than stay with the old Win9x stuff. It's more secure too and it doesn't feel any slower on my old desktop than Win98 did.
dave
Let me see. The Gnome Window Manager-- isn't that Sawfish?
And, after several years of using many different linux distros, I have never seen a the problems with the x configurator the author mentions.... Well, actually I have, but they were always caused by incorrect options selected in the X configurator, so I don't see what he is complaining about.
Now, this is the interesting part. The guy is very obviously a consultant who knows Windows far better than he knows Linux. Yet, they were able to make Linux work. I think that this is a very positive sign and makes for a good article...
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
Personally, I found it easier to write VBA apps for Access from Excel.
Speaking of Excel - is there a serious Linux alternative to it? Spreadsheet with programming language which can talk to other apps?
dave
Anti-virus software really is optional in many environments. However, I would like to say that there are some compelling reasons to run it regardless:
1: Prevention-- Anti-virus software helps people from doing stupid things, though here it is pretty ineffective (education is much better here).
2: Monitoring-- Anti-virus software can tell you whether you have been hit by a worm and not known about it. If oyu are and this is a secure server, time to consult that security and disaster recovery policy... Probably in for a reload. IMO, this is the real reason for running it on servers, though too many people see it as a crutch...
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
Aha, now I learn why I have a "No Score +1 Bonus" option when I'm posting: if I post at 2 and a moderator thinks it's over-rated, I lose karma. Makes sense.
http://www.gimbo.org.uk/
Okay, first, yes, I am accusing you of being a Microsoft flak, or at least pretending to be one. Flat out. Because if you aren't you're acting like one.
Second, the point is that anything in favor of a product with the manufacturer's name attached is automatically suspect because it's almost certainly marketing. If RedHat did do a similar page, then it would be just as suspect as Microsoft's Linux Myths page for exactly the same reasons. The report in the article is presumably valid (though for arcane reasons having to do with my views on religion I note that saying your bias is towards the side you're putting down is somewhat transparent as a rhetorical move); however, there is no way in the world that something direct from Redmond's mouth on the subject of a competitor can be taken at face value. (And that goes for anything paid for by a particular company as well; that's why people trust Consumer Reports more than they do other magazines for product reviews.)
/Brian
/Brian
Not necessarily. Say you mmap a 2GB database file. Each process that maps the file uses about 2MB of page tables to maintain the mapping (even more in FreeBSD). If only some parts of the file are accessed often (which could very well be possible in a case like this) then the page tables mapping the less-used regions would be sitting in memory doing nothing. Sure you could have all sorts of complex logic in the program that tries to only map parts of files at a time, etc, but it is cleaner just to mmap the whole thing and let the OS deal with it. Page tables should be treated no differently from regular pages. The swap-out daemon should make no distinction between types of pages (other than locked pages of course!) It should choose which pages to page out based on how often they are touched. If a page table doesn't get touched often, it should be paged out with the anonymous memory that doesn't get touched often.
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...