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Constructing a Windows-Less Office
joewakeup writes "This article at CRN analyses why today is the best time to consider building a pure Linux information system, from servers to... desktop. Among all the arguments, one of the arguments is the low cost of Linux offerings compared to Windows based-solutions. Worth a read."
it's about twice as slow as Win2K/XP on the same hardware.
That really depends on what you're running.
I'll probably never hear the end of it if I say this, but I'm going to say it anyway: The most popular window managers for the XWS are also the most bloated.
Have you ever used Nautilus? It is a very pretty interface, but it is slow as all hell on a machine of reasonable specs. (PIII 500 / 256MB) Now take Gnome and Nautilus, plop it on to a system, and yeah... it's not going to perform as well as it should. Granted, the XWS isn't the best performing GUI out there, but the 4.x rewrites are solving a lot of those problems.
I've used Gnome/Nautilus as an example above, because I know less about the newer KDE releases with regard to frendliness, performance, and bloat. If someone would be kind enough to fill me in on how KDE is in these respects, I'd appreciate it.
Anyway. Gnome is a pretty hefty download, and tries to shove all of the crap they think you'll need into the package.
If you set your users up with something like AfterStep (which, by the way, can fit on a floppy), ditch the desktop pager, show them how to use Wharf and the Winlist, and install the apps they will need. Configure Wharf to make it easy to get the apps, then smack everything onto a kickstart server or something. Then whenever a new box enters the office, just kickstart the image on to the box and there you go. No configuring, and it would make administration much easier. (You could probably also hack in some cronjobs on the server and the workstations to automatically keep all packages up to date, but that's beyond the scope of this comment.)
This way, they have a fast, clean window environment, the apps they need, and the benefits of Linux.
-- Give him Head? Be a Beacon? :P)
(If you can't figure out how to E-Mail me, Don't.
Sure, but that's the Catch-22 Fucky Badger (now there's a nick I wasn't expecting to see with a +5) was talking about. My 1200 MHz Athlon flies with WindowMaker and gcc running in a wterm. But that's giving up what's making Linux an alternative to Windows in the eyes of writers like these.
I've used Gnome/Nautilus as an example above, because I know less about the newer KDE releases with regard to frendliness, performance, and bloat. If someone would be kind enough to fill me in on how KDE is in these respects, I'd appreciate it.
The newer releases are definitely getting faster but you still need pretty recent hardware to get snappy performance. And it seems like because of the kdeinit hack, starting apps is considerably slower if you're not using the KDE desktop than if you are. Still, the load KDE imposes comes from the KDE 2.0 architecture. There's no major source of additional bloat in the near future and it's pretty clear how to make everything faster -- drastically improve the way a GNU system loads C++ apps.
At any rate, the best way to get Linux going faster is to buy new RAM. I understand why people don't run and out for new processors or hard drives but RAM is so cheap now $20-30 will liberate you from the misery of hitting your swap.
What I'm listening to now on Pandora...
Both OpenOffice Impress and kpresenter are stable mature applications that can do most things a rational person would ever expect in a presentation.
So if you write
" There's no open-source software replacement for PowerPoint."
you are right. There is not one, there are TWO GPL apps to replace powerpoint.
Now if I look at the fact that SVG is a vector format (not a presentation format) and the fact that openoffice641 opens all ridiculous powerpoint stuff I get mailed by people, I think you should look harder before you propoese new projects to other people.
See http://www.openoffice.org and http://www.koffice.org for the apps.
Moritz
I work in an electronic music studio. I'd love to use Linux, but the apps just aren't there.
The fact that there's almost no development community addressing this potentially enormous market amazes me to no end.
On the linux-audio-dev mailing list, many things are discussed and software developed such as Ardour, digital audio workstation software for Linux, JACK (JACK Audio Connection Kit), a low-latency infrastructure for connecting audio applications, and several wave editors. Dave Phillips maintains a list of Linux sound applications--many are not that advanced but some are.
Work in this area is progressing, and many smart people are involved. In particular, Paul Barton-Davis, author of Ardour and the main force behind JACK, seems to be pursuing commercial possibilities of selling linux-based sound workstations under a company named Linux Audio Systems. You can read Paul's slashdot comments to see some of his opinions on the situation of Linux audio.