Slashdot Mirror
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."
2001: Most Linuxes have a very friendly desktop, with lots of productivity apps, but I swear to Linus, it's about twice as slow as Win2K/XP on the same hardware.
I'd love to have Linux running everywhere if it didn't require massive hardware to run smoothly.
The article failed to mention the cost of support to Linux platforms. Heck, I'd like to see windows replaced in the work place myself. But the fact remains--windows based sysadmins are a dime a dozen, and most of the sharp linux/unix admins don't want to be resetting passwords for morons.
It would be hard to find enough linux admins willing to do this kind of work.
-- yawn. --
low cost of Linux offerings compared to Windows based-solutions
Linux is cheaper? Really?
I wish that writers would make other points. This one is blatantly obvious, and every linux user knows it. How about some other points that most IT Managers don't know?
Good quote, too many chars. Seriously, the slashdot 120 char limit sucks!
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.
But, until then, I'll use Windows. Not because it's great, but because it has the apps I need.
Windows cause sun glare in everyone's monitor, hence decreasing productivity.
"Linux is only cheaper than windows if you don't value your time" - I don't know who said it, but it is true!
As reported in Slashdot this morning, Evolution 1.0 Released and ThinkFree Office an MS 2000/XP Office compatible suite that works in Linux. Combine these with the TransGaming's WineX software, there is no longer any reason to use MS on the desktop.
"I'm The Bounty Bear. I will find him anywhere. I'm searching."
I think we're still beating the dead horse on this one - Linux needs consumer oriented apps that work the same as the microsoft ones. There's not going to be a Windowless office until consumers adopt linux, which means consumer oriented software, not just stuff for geeks. Why don't people use StarOffice on Solaris - because is too bloody hard to use.
At least they have the sense to run a proper networking OS for the LAN. Don't "dis" Netware -- Windows is only getting near the kind of stability and usability Novell has offered for years.
-- clvrmnky
Ease of use is important because time is a limited resource and different people have different priorities, asshole. DUH!
Then don't waste your time on it.
But don't expect me to waste my time on working on *your* problems (natural gas exploration, nuclear waste management).
After all, using your logic, only simple things should be useful.
Somehow I doubt the average office worker would have higher productivity if they used a Linux solution instead of a Windows one? I think not.
Is it fun arguing with yourself.
I've never advocated EVERYONE moving on to Linux.
But that is hardly the issue, is it?
Posting as an anonymous coward means never having to defend your assertions.
"Rocky Rococo, at your cervix!"
This is OK for a small office, but what about a larger company? Many companies have deployed MS Exchange server partly because of the integrated global address list and the fact that you can store the email in a central database instead of downloading it to the PC like a POP3 server. Is there a Linux based mail server with these features?
Plus, for user management and the ability to set granular rights, Novell is far ahead of Linux. Try setting linux to give the following permissions to the file myreport.doc
managers can read, filescan and change but not delete
secretaries can read and filescan
bob can read, filescan, change, and delete
john can read, filescan, change, delete and assign ownership of the file
jane can filescan
filescan is the ability to see the file if you do a dir or ls. Sometimes useful. And yes, you can change a file so that it is empty, but that is different than deleting.
Plus, got to love novell's salvage utility.
Sorry, just trying to plug a good nos.
"The single biggest problem at the enterprise level is politics," said Leon Brooks
Amen. I think Plato said it best (I think it was Plato) "those that do not engage in politics will be done in by it".
Use it, or lose it + do unto others before it's done to you.
Many things were done on 'nix workstations before the move to NT. It used to be full support for 'nix os's, min for NT, now the roles are reversed..sigh.
Even the machine operators clamor for the 'nix days from time to time.
But of course, I am prolly one of the few that think StarOffice 6 not being put out on the mac was a big mistake. I'd have chosen SO6 beta whatever over office v.X for os X out of principle and sanity reasons...but alas, twas not to be.
Funny, that you get the same title with Mac OS X and if SO6 was here it would still be a "Window less Office".
Huh...I'll be darned...who'd of thunk it?
Cheers,
Moose.
Have you read the moderator guidelines? Well, have you, PUNK? (and I want a Karma: Gnarly option)
All but one of the servers they were using ran Linux (the remaining two were running Solaris and NT for software requirements). I worked under the network admin, and during the whole time I was there we never even had a glitch with the network.
All of the engineers were using Linux on their desktops and it worked beautifully. The remaining desktops were running Win98 for the HR, marketing and finance groups because the software they were using required it.
It's not quite the Windows-less office that the article was discussing, but it was pretty close. I've seen the wonders of the Linux-based network and I like it.
There is no escape from The Muffin.
My office is now 100% Window-less as of about 6 months ago, but we're instead 100% Mac OS X (currently 10.1). It's great. I don't miss Windows at all, and the myth that you "can't get applications for the Mac" is such a load of cr@p.
In fact, the new Office for Mac OS X is, in my opinion, much BETTER than the Windows version.
Networking has been faster, too, and that's important to us. You'd never believe it, but it's cheaper too. No more calling for technical support or having someone on duty to fix problems with our systems. You just don't need it with a Mac because the hardware and software is so well integrated.
The machines themselves have been CHEAPER for us. $1199 iMacs as clients and G4s to handle some of the heavier loads. It's worked great.
And by the way... that 22" Apple flat screen is not only beautiful for working with, but it impresses customers too. I know it seems like a detail, but people have gotten the impression we're an upscale successful business because they see those screens and comment on them.
I know I seem like a troll ranting about this or that, but I just want to get the word out, because I'm a very pleased Apple customer... and I'm laughing at myself for ever having used Windows for so long.
The next comment I write will be ready soon, but subscribers can beat the rush and see it early!
One important component I still find missing is a free desktop database a la Access. This is a very important tool for every company, and it will be missing from Open Office 6.0 (not sure about Star Office 6.0). There's a commercial contender called Rekall from theKompany (and a port of Paradox 9), but only a couple free beta apps. This should not be that hard to write, though, since scripting languages, database backends and form designers already exist in free versions.
For mail you can setup Exchange as an IMAP server and a linux desktop as an IMAP client. You will lose the address book feature so it's worthless except for while travelling.
That runs fast enough for me on moderate hardware (a standard 500 MHz sort of box). If Mozilla runs too slow for you, run Opera. FVWM may not have the nice desktop graphics of KDE or Gnome, but it doesn't have the overhead either. And learning to tweak out your .fvwm2rc file is half the fun!
"Now gluttony and exploitation serves eight!" - TV's Frank
Why is everyone trying to shoehorn Linux into something it's bad at? I use Red Hat Linux exclusivly for my web servers. It scales well, I'm happy with it's security and it simply works helluva well? in that capacity.
However, I use exclusivly Win32 on the desktop. I have a digital studio box that uses Me, and will soon be upgrading that to XP. A couple dev boxen with 2000, and an older box with 98se. For my needs Win32 works helluva well? on the desktop. (Not to mention that I like to play games).
Now, *I* use win32, because I have a choice and I pick win32. But that's not why I think this is a bad (and stupid) idea.
Show of hands, how many of you have parents and grandparents could go to work tomorrow and use *nix without a hitch instead of Win32?
Business want their workers to be *productive*. And yes, I know you can argue that many of the powerful features found in *nix desktops make a user *more* productive. But only the top 5% or so that will ever figure them out. I'd venture to guess that 99% of *windows* users never figure out *it's* features.
Right clickable context menus are something that the average secretary or insurance broker or customer service rep has probably never heard of.
The file structure on win32 is a mystery to these workers. If their copy of word somehow winds up pointing to a diffrent working directory than C:/My Documents/ then half of them will have no prayer of navigating back to where it was and will declare their files "lost". Until someone comes along and fixes it for them.
It all boils down to this: If I gave my mother a Porche 911 Twin Turbo tomorrow, I know that she would drive it to work every day exactly the same as she drives her Subaru Outback station wagon. It's only certain people that will take advantage of the extra power. This analogy isn't less applicable to computers, it's MORE applicable.
The point? Win32 is easier than *nix. And Win32 is STILL TOO HARD for the masses. Yes, I am well aware of the fact that your average geek can use it. Your average IT guy can use it, but they're not 99% of officeworkers world wide. So why would you want to take a step backwards and make these poor saps use somethign that will make them hate computers even more?
It seems a lot like cutting off your own nose to spite Microsoft's Face to me.
Touch everywhere, even when inappropriate.
*mail: set up an auto-forward of all mail sent to your Exchange account. send all mail from a non-Exchange account. eventually wean people off the exchange address.
:)
*office documents: demand that people send you the data as XML or HTML or RTF or TXT or any of the other zillions of formats available. if they will not: pout.
*web browsing: the only place Linux falls down is on terribly designed web pages and Flash. those sites are not worth viewing anyway. consider yourself rescued from bad web pages.
*games: you kids today and your fancy 3D rendering. in my day, games had 256 colors if they were lucky... some games were drawn in mono as vector graphics, other games relied solely on that faculty known as the imagination-- and presented the entire experience using only the written word. In fact, the more I play the new games, the more I like the older games. Once in a while I even use these analog games that rely on having people in the room with me. It's kind of fun!
As you can see, either you have an employment-related restriction and you can either try and find a new job (I know the desire to not use Windows at work makes me think about this once in a while, but on the whole it's unrealistic-- and they're paying for MS stuff, not me) or you have a comfort level that you seem to think you need. If you fall into this latter camp, all I can say is that comfort is relative, you have to weigh the comfort of interoperability/etc with the comfort of Free Software.
I do not have a signature
I'm all for fully Unix/*BSD/Linux systems, including the desktop (although I still think MS Office, as much as I hate it is more user/idiot friendly than most offerings like StarOffice or KOffice).
A business running all *Nix actually not to hard to achieve now, provided that your business is the type that isn't heavily reliant on users who must use Office like their lives depend on it.
Unfortunately, most of the struggle is getting Linux/*BSD/Unix systems integrated with existing networks and programs - especially those which have been touched by Microsoft's embrace and extend philosophy, or run on a closed protocol, or use closed file formats.
Many businesses are not going to start from scratch with Linux/*BSD - and are more likely to want to move piecemeal away from Windows if they decide to do so.
As much as we'd all love Microsoft to open up their "standards" they know exactly what they're doing, and the anti-trust case doesn't look like it's going to help all that much.
It's a bit of a Catch 22 situation, and one with shifting goal posts - but easier integration with existing systems - with projects such as SAMBA and Ximians Vapourware Exchange plugin for Evolution might are the sort of thing to persuade PHB that moving to Linux/UNIX/*BSD is easier.
This post seems to be yet another anti-Microsoft rant - but in most cases these are the sorts of things that make life hard for people to shift their IT intrastructures - vendor lock-ins.
But yes, moving to Linux (or other free *Nixes) has probably never been easier.
It's been done.
Most geeks work in offices without windows. The window offices are usually reserved for upper level execs.
To bad i still have to use Windoze at school. The administration doesnt know a good OS when they see it. Thats why they run mostly Win95 on a Novell network.
Sigh. These kinds of comments from know-it-all kiddies are _really_ annoying.
The single biggest obstacle to Linux everywhere is specific Windows applications with no direct portable equivalent, like AutoCAD or MS-Publisher.
These are only tip of the iceburg for linux
..because I've lived it.
A year ago I was working at a smallish startup. Cheap was king, so linux was the desktop of choice.. except for a couple PHB's who wanted their Outlook and were running NT.
It was a hassle, day in and day out. In the interests of brevity I'll leave out details, but suffice to say that linux is NOT the best choice. This isn't to suggest that there's a "best" choice out there, I'm just saying linux is still too unstable and too quirky to make life easy for a desktop support guy.
What you save in software costs ends up in costing support staff more in terms of headaches. "Cost" is not always defined by how hard something hits the pocketbook..
sPh
My "boss" (read:wife) won't consider switching to linux unless I can show her something she can use that is equivalent to Macromedia Dreamweaver. Netscape Composer didn't impress her.
Any other options I can look into?
Software Wars
It seems like every year I get infected with the pro-linux bias of slashdot and rip Windows off my machine.
I ripped Windows off at about the same last year and installed Linux. I wasn't impressed. The desktop managers seemed slow (I was running a P3-800) and the web-browser sucked and generally, the applications weren't as good as their Windows counterparts. Not to mention that I managed to crash the system and have ext2 throw away some files.
So, this weekend I tried it again. I ripped off Windows 2000 and installed RedHat 7.2. In one year, Linux (and Gnome / KDE) has improved ten-fold. The KDE browser rocks, KMail is very good and the ext3fs filesystem is much better. However, it still took me hours to get ADSL PPPOE and a VPN client up and running and the soundcard (VIA 8233) and tv-card (Brooktree) still don't work. Apparently, the concept of writing a device driver without patching the kernel is still impossible even though Windows/Mac have been doing it for many years. And the system (now an Tbird-1.33) is still slower than Windows 2K (ex., the mouse gets jerky when my apps thrash the disk).
I'm a developer, so I'm thinking of writing support for some of these things (such as an easy VPN installer). Or, maybe a universal driver installer that would automagically patch the kernel and say 'You must reboot now', ala Windows. But the thought of having to support different distributions and versions makes me cringe.
Alot of the problems in Windows can be attributed to Microsoft trying to be backwards-compatible. But with Linux, the kernel and major libraries (ie. glibc) are always changing underneath your feet. This is a major design flaw that I not sure can ever be rectified.
Jason.
One day, Linux will have ACLs. Until then, forget it.
Napster-to-go says "Fill and refill your compatible MP3 player", which is a lie. It's not MP3. It's WMA with DRM.
windows clients, i can live with it. however, samba has evolved to the point where it's a better domain master than NT, so NT is gone. all of the other misc servers (mail, a few databases, web) are linux. everyone can use the databases from windows with the simple ODBC drivers and our custom VB (ack) programs. everyone is happy. i am happy.
"Linux is only cheaper than windows if you don't value your time"
Wrong. Both in the quote, and in your assertion that it's true.
The quote is actually something like "Linux is only free if you don't value your time."
Windows costs much, much more, both in initial purchase price, and in administration costs. (Downtime, fixing problems that shouldn't be there in the first place, etc.)
this is getting old. how many times are we going to go over this?
- the people reading slashdot are not the ones who need convincing, this audience is well aware of the capabilities of linux.
- if you need articles like this to convince your boss, you don't know enough about linux and wouldn't be able to implement this type of solution.
thank you, good night.
is getting it to work with all the hardware. by the time i got all my stuff configured on my own systems, my head was swimming. hunting down drivers on google and editing config files by hand was very educational, but not particularly speedy. when i imagine doing the same for every machine in even a small organization, my head wants to explode.
of course you could just buy a machine with linux pre-installed, but then you get the choice of a dell latitude model X, or dell latitude model X. and installing linux on a machine that came with windows on it rather mitigates the lower cost argument, since you've already paid for the windows license. or you could buy individual components that have linux support and form a santa's workshop to assemble machines. again, not particularly cheap or speedy.
so, it's not the lack of windows app alternatives that's holding linux back in the workplace, because staroffice, gimp, etc., cover 99% of what your average user would need to do. it's also not the vaunted inertia that everyone makes a big deal out of, because the interfaces for open source alternatives almost completely mimic their windows cousins. believe me, the learning curve is no higher for telling people how to use the OSS version of a spreadsheet program than the windows version itself.
imho, once it's as easy to get linux running on a given machine as it is windows, the major obstacle to moving your business platform from windows to linux will be gone. until then, all the security, stability, and financial arguments in the world are not going to outweigh the perceived headache of having all your tech staff running around for years trying to get the workstations config'd properly.
MailOne is a descendent of MailWORKS from DEC. Not only does it do what you want, it also has POP and IMAP servers and will talk Exchange/Outlook via MAPI. The only thing missing (which you don't mention you are looking for) is calendaring.
www.openone.com
324006
It's a good open source project. The initial version doesn't have to support animation, but design in the hooks, and it will probably be added by others. Perl code to read and write Flash exists, so there's something to look at. A good student programming project.
I think in general, Linux is more efficient and faster. X however is a different story, and it has nothing to do with the fact that it runs over a network.
X windows sends a refresh event every freaking time a damaged window is revealed. this doesn't make sense, and it means that switching windows and creating menus looks sluggish and cumbersome no matter how fast the hardware.
other window systems like plan9 simply store the overlapping layers and let the server (read the display) do the work rather than sending a refresh event.
now, there is work being done to resolve some of this. Keith Packard is implementing this in X as we speak, but it takes time, X is filled with a lot of cruft from years of being pulled in many directions.
unfortunately, for now - X is just not the best example of Linux's effeciency. so anything that runs on top of it is going to be slow and big, at least compared to windows. then again, the killer feature that windows simply , can't do, and it shops should drool over is the fact that you can run it over a network! so all in all, I think it is a fair trade off, though there could be a better solution, granted.
The main problem is financial capital. First off, most companies lease their offices, and I'd expect, can't afford not to. Larger companies that own their campuses are less likely to try something so radical, unless there's a specific purpose to doing so (testing light sensitive products or something-- but why in an office setting?).
If the money is there, simply give your contractors that are either modifying or building your office building instructions not to include any windows.
More economically, you could try putting tin foil over the windows. If you put the foil on the inner panel on the inside and the foil on the outer panel on the outside, you can even open the window if you wish. If that defeats your purpose, put bars on the windows.
If I'm wrong, PLEASE let me know. I'd love to get rid of my f*&#ing Wintel box...
Mr. Ska
Our small initiative started out using systems that could no longer support the corporate desktop. Our workstations run Linux, as does the main server (uptime of 132 days BTW). Our Firewall, VPN Concentrator, and IDSs are FreeBSD. Our lone, non-opensource system is a sparc/solaris DB server. We still keep dual boot laptops around for PowerPoint (StarOffice still doesn't render PPT well), although I cannot remember the last time I had to boot into Windows. Linux and FreeBSD have migrated to the local corporate side of the house too, recently replacing the mail server, web server, name servers, and BDC. It seems the biggest obstacle facing our admins in getting Linux to the local corporate desktop is a true standards based document exchange.
www.sguil.net
The Analyst Console for NSM
I have a corner office and found that thick canvas curtains provide a decent substitute for a windowless office.
Riiight...
When will you stuck up geeks realize that 90% of "REAL" office workers (those that work in education, state agencies, insurance offices, etc.) are still confused by e-mail.
My god, just the other day it took me 45 minutes to explain the difference between Outlook and Eudora to a guy.
Most people barely understand the concept of a left-click and a right-click. Calling Linux or ANY of its desktops user-friendly is complete bs.
Do us all a favor and keep Linux on servers where it belongs.
The article mentions lower total operating costs, but then goes on to say that they installed win4lin / vmware to get windows compatiblity.
Think about that for a moment.
How can windows + linux be cheaper than just windows?
Prevent linux based DDOS's!
http://linux.denialofservice.org/
I can't say that disappoints me really, I personally hate AutoCAD. Granted, it's as easy as anything else once you've learned it, but it's the most difficult software to learn that I've ever worked with, and I've never been able to get the alleged 3-D design tools to work. All in all, I can't say no AutoCAD is a bad thing. I know AutoCAD has it's place, but for what I do (mechanical design) it's only the tool of choice for Engineers who are too old to learn a new software package. I do like the option of a CLI, but that's the only positive point I can think of.
I recall, though, that AutoCAD used to be available for Unix, and many of the CLI commands are named after standard *nix commands. Is this not still the case?
I haven't used it since R14, so my info may be a bit out of date...
Under capitalism man exploits man. Under communism it's the other way around.
I think that the major hurdle to overcome in the transition to an all Linux office environment is the office worker who does not want to learn.
I have actually heard people say that they "can't use Macintosh, because I only have experience with Windoze".
Equating lack of knowledge with lack of ability is a fallacy that many users allow themselves to fall into.
Managers are aware that their is a learning curve, and a lack of desire to learn, so they will often avoid making changes that may cause the lowest common denominator (office drone) to stress.
I moved from using a Windows machine to run productivity software and graphics and using a Linux system as a programming workstation and web server to being almost all Mac. MacOS X let me perform both functions with a single machine, and when I feel like developing outside of my home, I can run all my favourite Unix applications on my PowerBook G4.
I'm delighted with my Macs, especially since they have vanquished X-Windows irritations (ugly screens, hideous fonts). I know you can at least somewhat relieve those problems, but it's difficult, time consuming, and I don't get the impression the result is that great.
D
Once you have two people editing the same file you're probably in trouble, no matter how good your permission system is.
If you use CVS you can restore previous versions easily, too.
Things "get into" the office environment when they make business sense to do so. Which happens when the benefits exceed the costs, the reward exceeds the risk, and when these are exceeded by an amount greater than the next best alternative.
In the case of office platforms, the big "corporate IT" issue re this analysis in representing the complete true costs - Total Cost of Ownership - which includes the relative expense of good Unix sysadmins or the cost of retraining Win admins (clue injection), the cost of managing the environments, the cost of supporting moronic end users, the costs of reduced application availability (sure you can have a nice GUI, but where's the Linux industrial-strength Accounts Payable system?), or of building interfaces to whatever the rest of the world uses (eg., the cost of reverse engineering .doc format for word processing). The actual cost of the OS (free beer) is almost irrelevant.
On the risk side, corporate IT departments value stability of the infrastructure above all. So, the corporate IT folks are herd-following conformists. No one will move to Linux office until everyone else does. And there will have to be a huge TCO advantage before that inertia gets overcome.
It's actually a rational position, but not very cool or fun. Sticking with the herd, and moving en masse with the herd has advanatges. The herd is big enough that it gets what it wants: robust techinical support, business applications developed for the platform of their choice, peer groups and conferences in Boca Raton, whatever.
Of course, you lose out on the advanatges of doing something different/better than competitors. It all depends on what you value more.
(PHB off)
Just kidding of course. This was posted from a Linux system hiding in a 50,000 person company.
I'm surprised the article does not even try to address the basic issue of file compatibility. Fact is, a normal office would have tons of documents in MS Word or Excel files. Excel is a complex and powerful piece of software: people write applications in it complete with menus and buttons. I know document conversion programs exist, but they never do a good job even with simple documents, let alone mega-apps-in-Excel and such. In addition, your business partners, suppliers and clients will want to collaborate with you using Word/Excel/PowerPoint files, and you are not in a position to dictate what they use. This is the reality of business. Even if you want to switch, and even if suitable Linux apps are available, you may not be able to.
Besides, StarOffice is a bloated monster.
It's so XP Office compatible it even requires a subscription (~$50/y IIRC) to use it. Now that's what I'd call full compatibility.
-- MarkusQ
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
Please do not argue that Microsoft will never be supplanted because people do not like to switch operating systems.
In order for people to use Microsoft, they had to switch operating systems (waaaaay back when).
The "trick" is to aggressively market a superior operating system which promises to improve productivity while reducing costs. That's what Microsoft did in order to arrive where it is today(although one can argue that the promise was a lie). That's what Linux, Macintosh, and any other Operating System vendors need to do.
It's not impossible, just difficult.
It only works for them because you're there to administrate it for them. Have they every tried to add a printer? An external hard drive? A sound card?
If it's all setup for you ahead of time, Linux is about the same as Windows for a user that just wants to surf or word process. But you're assuming that someone 'manages' that computer for them - 95% of people DON'T have a sysadmin to take care of Linux hardware and software installs for them, they have to do it themselves!
Can you imagine mom reading the man pages and recompiling the kernel to get her USB external hard drive working? I can't. I can, however, imagine her following the Windows instructions: "plug it in, and a drive letter will appear". See? Linux COULD be that easy, but certain people have acted to make sure that it ISN'T.
Also, it's a sealed environment, so you don't have to have OS-level user accounts for mail users -- a security bonus.
90% of the population? You do realize that when you buy almost any Intel PC, other thana clone, you have bough an MS uni-license. I'd say fewer than 30% of the copies of the various Windows flavors running out there are actually pirated.
Do not fold, spindle or mutilate.
We need some kind of super light window manager. For example take a window manager, like PWM my current wm, running on DirectFB. No bloated Xserver in the background and no bloated window manager just a simple frame buffer and a 2meg window manager.
With DirectFB though no old Xwindows dependant apps could run, but if you're using Gtk or some similar widget set for your gui then porting the widget set to DirectFB should be all that is needed to use your applications on DirectFB.
With that little overhead companies can use virtually any hardware to run their office applications. Beat that windows!
Outdoor digital photography, mostly in New Engl
Windows is only esay to use because people don't know any thing else exists. I been using linux for 2 years, and now even my mom and my little sister use Linux(Gnome) with no problems at all.
Can they run all the games that are released each year, even low-tech stuff like Roller Coaster Tycoon? Can they run all the kids' software available at Toys 'R Us? Can they shop at Internet Explorer-specific web sites? Can they run Photoshop and Premiere, if they needed to?
The bottom line is and always has been this: People want to be able to run the software that's out there. That's it. That's all. I've been a Mac user in the past, and it is frustrating any time you have to do something where all users are assumed to be running Windows. It's not worth being idealistic about it.
Of course, anyone who's ever worked in a company with computers knows that's a load of crap. It doesn't matter what type of computers you run, you're going to have to hire people to take care of them. Your IT department deals with OS installs, hardware failures, virus eradication and miscellaneous end-user issues.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
...because office space regulations state that anyone has to have a clear view of the sky (aka windows) at his desk.
SCR
+++ath0
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.
>"What is the intrinsic value of "easy to learn"?"
that which is not more difficult than a certain percentage within a standard distribution
That is a definition of ease of use, not a description of intrinsic value.
>"If that were true, why would people work on their own cars, or modify them to make them perform better?"
work on cars dosn't really fit within that area I don't think
The point I was trying to make is that 'ease of use' should not be the all-defining criteria for doing everything in life.
If ease of use were the sole basis for living, people wouldn't hang off of Zodiac on 165' ropes. They would take the nature trail up the back of El Capitan.
"Rocky Rococo, at your cervix!"
My second one was a 486/66 with 16MB of RAM. It ran X and netscape and a few X games (Netrek heh heh heh) pretty well. The libc->glibc conversion was pretty painful though. I reinstalled for that. They introduced these newfangled kernel modules about that time. I still don't trust those things, though folks tell me they work pretty well.
My third Linux computer was a Pentium 166 with 64 MB of RAM and a diamond monster 3D card (With the pass-through.) It played GL Quake nicely, ran X quite well, ran Netscape quite well. They did some cool things with those newfangled kernel modules -- now you could have the system automatically monitor devices and insert the right kernel module when you chose to access one. After you stopped using the device, the kernel module would go away after a couple of minutes, freeing up a little memory. Taligent was supposed to do that. Taligent was supposed to do a lot of things.
My current Linux computer, which is getting a bit old now, is an Athlon 700 with 390MB of RAM. It's pretty snappy for everything except Tribes2 and Mozilla. I'm looking at upgrading to a dual one with 2 GB of RAM in the next few months.
I've been Microsoft free at home for about 7 years now. I finally managed to persuade my room mate to stop asking me Windows questions too, so I don't have to spend 5 hours cursing windows and trying to reinstall !#%! video drivers every time she installs a new game.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
I finally have a job where I can use Linux on my desktop, it's quite nice but ironicly, my cube is on the inside of the building and I have no windows.
I used to run Windows but I have converted my desktop over to Linux. What users need to understand is that with Linux, they need to use different tools for different types of jobs; the diversity of software for Linux discourages a "one-size-fits-all" solution like the Office/IE duopoly and encourages specialization. For instance:
Mozilla and Konqueror are both excellent browsers. But I use Mozilla for fast rendering of W3C compliant pages (and avoiding KDE library overhead), and Konqueror for better IE compatibility on pages that break standards. Instead of picking a favorite, users should learn both and use each when appropriate.
Koffice and StarOffice are both good at certain things. StarOffice is much better at handling Word DOCs than Koffice, and Koffice is much better at handling PPT slides.
This is not unique to Linux. Windows systems have MS Word, Notepad, and Wordpad preloaded. Users learn that Notepad is good for text files, Wordpad is pretty useless, and Word is good for word processing.
If you know your software's abilities and learn to use the right tool for the job, you can use Linux in just about any office setting without incident.
-sting3r
The umount thing was a bug in 2.4.15.
Fascism starts when the efficiency of the government becomes more important than the rights of the people.
why is it that every time someone posts something saying that they have NT/2K/XP running smoothly and that linux didn't work for them, they get attacked by people saying that they obviously know nothing about linux and they should learn to configure correctly before they criticize? isn't this a sign that linux needs to be made easier to configure, when trained sysadmins screw it up regularly?
Weird... I have *really* cheap (almost 4 year old crappy k6-2) with 128 megs, and it runs Linux 2.4+GNOME/enlightenment(primary)+KDE(some apps)+netscape6(ugh!)+staroffice 5.2, all at the same, and pretty decently.
It surely runs 98/nt pretty well too. But forget about win2k. Too much bloat for the old k6. Tried once, no luck.
``If a program can't rewrite its own code, what good is it?'' - Mel
I didn't say you should switch to Linux today. I was only providing evidence to show that there IS an active audio development community.
There's nothing negative about the terms "in development" or "plan to release soon." I think the same things could be said of the Linux kernel, but people use it in production every day. In particular, the snd editor "snd" is very powerful and mature, and Ardour is very capable right now. The latter isn't ready for casual users yet, but that doesn't mean it's vaporware--very substantial functionality is already in place, if anything it's the difficulty of the build process that keeps it from being useful to the general public.
Again: you don't have to switch to Linux if you don't want to. But don't claim that there's no development community or no useful software available, because that simply isn't true.
I work in a small business environment, and, much as I like Linux as a server, I'm not going to be putting it on desktops anytime soon. Win4Lin isn't going to work for me - if I have to buy a licenced copy of Windows anyway, I'm just going to run that. Yeah, 98 sucks, but 2K is fine - I can leave my 2k desktop running all week with no crashing. Most small businesses I've dealt with don't use just Office & e-mail, there's often an industry specific app that they're wedded to, & it's usually for Windows only. It just doesn't make sense to jump through too many hoops to get away from that.
> *mail: set up an auto-forward of all mail sent to your Exchange account. send all mail from a non-Exchange account. eventually wean people off the exchange address.
:)
And watch as people complain because they can no longer send meetings through mail and check for scheduling conflicts.
> *office documents: demand that people send you the data as XML or HTML or RTF or TXT or any of the other zillions of formats available. if they will not: pout.
I don't think I really need to correct you here, because anyone in possession of two brain cells to rub together who wants to keep his job is not going to go demanding that customers reformat their data to suit your inability to read it (rtf generated from word2k is still useless in wordpad if it contains tables). God forbid pout. You can suggest, but in the end, you are in no position to demand.
> * web browsing: the only place Linux falls down is on terribly designed web pages and Flash. those sites are not worth viewing anyway. consider yourself rescued from bad web pages.
I'll chase you from the left here: Flash works just dandy on Linux. Flash is tiny both in filesize and the size of the library, the runtime is cross-platform (and the development side has traditionally been mac-friendly), and it's a hell of a lot smaller and faster than java for eye candy. You can harrumph all you want about eye candy, but there's these places called museums that will demonstrate that such nonfunctional useless decoration has been with us for thousands of years. Some people are even in the business of selling it.
I've finally had it: until slashdot gets article moderation, I am not coming back.
Congratulations Sir,
You are the exact kind of person that Linux needs in the Desktop.
A non-Ubergeek who uses Linux for everything they'd otherwise do on a MAC or Windows machine.
Your statements are exactly what more people need to hear, and what the uneducated need to know.
Thank you for posting. No doubt Bill Gates will send the re-education squad to your home to beat you into submission for daring to say Linux is easy to use.
"Live Free or Die." Don't like it? Then keep out of the USA
Much to the chagrin of Linux zealots everywhere, many companies choose Windows and will continue to do so because support by third-party companies is much more plentiful and cheaper than support for Unix- or Linux-based solutions. Our head of IS was an MCSE for the sole reason that there is no major, recognized certification for the Unix or Linux platforms, Brainbench and other small, web-based or obscure ones aside. Perhaps one of the greatest drawbacks to Linux is what many people consider one of its most endearing qualities: lack of centralization. However, if it is ever to become a major force, progress will have to be made on this front.
Vilk, from the ranks of the freaks
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Comment removed based on user account deletion
Well, ask yourself: why aren't you developing the open source software you want? That will probably tell you why others in your community aren't working on it either. Most open source software comes about because end users with a specific problem can't find a good/affordable commercial solution and write their own. Then, they share the results with the community.
If the Windows software you are using is cheap enough, good enough, and extensible enough, then there is no need for open source software and you'd be foolish to switch. If, on the other hand, it leaves something to be desired, well, get going and write something better yourself and share it.
Linux has had dynamically loadable kernel modules since before MacOS even had a kernel. Your standard distribution comes with lots of them; use "modprobe" to insert them. Even third party device drivers almost never require "patching" the kernel, but merely are compiled separately and then dynamically loaded. Device drivers can be compiled and loaded/unloaded on a running system.
I'm a developer, so I'm thinking of writing support for some of these things (such as an easy VPN installer). Or, maybe a universal driver installer that would automagically patch the kernel and say 'You must reboot now', ala Windows.
Please don't. It's pretty clear that you don't know all that much about Linux. You can bet that most of the "problems" you think are there already have perfectly good solutions. Like any other system, it takes a while to figure them out.
Alot of the problems in Windows can be attributed to Microsoft trying to be backwards-compatible. But with Linux, the kernel and major libraries (ie. glibc) are always changing underneath your feet.
You've got to be kidding. Linux has had a stable, fully documented system API since its beginning, an API that is compatible with numerous other UNIX implementations. I can run code from 10 or 20 years ago on my Linux machine with no problems, taking full advantage of the more powerful processors and memory.
Long-term stability of APIs is one of the big advantages of Linux over Windows.
I'm a linux bigot, for sure. But one hurdle that has to be overcome before anyone who's not insane sells this idea to their boss is the utter lack of secure filesharing for a multi-user office. Usernames and passwords, in plain text, in an automount config file is not an option. Experimental filesystems are not an option. NFS is not an option (got root on the client (install cd) you've got access to anything.). OpenAFS maybe, but not exactly a widely discussed or supported system.
NFS4 sounds like the ticket, but the two available open implementations (umich and samba team) are in their infancy.
Until this problem is solved, this whole discussion is moot, as far as I'm concerned.
--Lawrence Lessig for Congress!
I work at a large, international corporation. Our office has no windows at all. It's really quite depressing at times. I miss seeing the light of day.
it is clunky, inelegant and unsophisticated. secretaries will like it even less than windows.
Ximian Gnome is a nicer GUI than Windows. The problem isn't with the GUIs, however, the problem is with the rest of the OS - loading and unloading drivers, compiling things, etc.
As an example, please briefly explain how to add an external USB hard drive to a Linux system. Your answer will likely involve some command line work to load and unload modules, then an explanation of the 'mount' command. You'll also need to do some digging to find out where the USB device 'lives'. (dev/sda1 or whatever). Under Windows, you would simply say "plug it in and watch for a drive letter". Those kinds of problems are much more serious than an ugly gui.
The other thing to remember is, I don't know an applicable term, but fourth party stuff. The guiding rule is 'figure out what you need, then use the tools so required.' Well, if the suits want a Customer Relationship Management system that drops things into exchange mailboxes, there you go. Or an Avaya style phone system, that will read you your email or email you your voice mail...Exchange. Exchange itself is pretty solid, if you know what you're doing. Add an Anti-Virus solution, one that lets you block attachments by extention, or just write an event sink and do it yourself. To make full use of exchange, outlook. Outlook, windows or mac. Other cool windows stuff, like SMS to allow for package distribution and imaged desktops, windows. And there you are.
Vintage computer games and RPG books available. Email me if you're interested.
I thought it was ironic too.
From the server headers:
Server: Microsoft-IIS/4.0
Set-Cookie: ASPSESSIONIDGGQGGQDS=IBPCOIMCAGJLEOMDGOFPMCIJ; path=/
Couple that with the godawful CSS code in the source... I dunno. Scary stuff. Like this:
Man, guys. If you're going to use CSS, use it how it was meant to be used. Get a CSS file editor.
It could be worse. At least they haven't gone to 2K.
my old sig used to be funny, but then slashcode ate it and now it's not funny anymore
OK, Linux is more secure. Linux is more stable. Linux is easier to use. Linux is easier to maintain. Linux is easier to modify. Linux avoids the data loss propriatory applications cause by changing their formats and interfaces. Linux programs can easily share data. Linux has much better and more flexible foundations.
The article did well to consider a single aspect. Don't we all know that each of the above statements is blantantly obvious? The points must be made one at a time to overcome the billions of dollars M$ has put into adverts and FUD. PHBs will nod in agreement as they consider the world around them, but they lack a basis for compairison. Articles like this build up that basis, while mentioning the other points. Throw them in your PHB's face at once is not polite. No one likes feeling like a sucker.
Reference Neiven's Protector: At some point you wake up and think, "I've been stupid".
DMCA, Hollings, Palladium. What might have sounded like paranoia is now common sense.
I graduated from college in 1997; I learned Java in 1996. Back then I heard all sorts of fun things about Java being the multiplatform language of the future. "Write once, run anywhere!" That was five years ago. People still hold onto to the Java Fantasy? The Java Lie?
I get more stable, portable code in C++ than in Java any day.
The middle mind speaks!
frankly, with linux/unix, while everything is far from perfect, most things are designed better to begin with. reset passwords? write a quick shell script, or just set them to expire. it's really not that big a deal, and neither is anything else you will think of.
Rather easier to reset passwords in unix systems all you need to do is type one (possibly two) commands. With NT you need to bring up the user manager, then find the username, then click on it, then click on the appropriare section, fill the new password in, then click ok.
Let me ask you a serious question. As a new user, how does knowing that "Devfs supports automatic device registration" help me at all?
Maybe you just don't know what's out there, because you're so convinced that it doesn't exist, you don't bother to look.
That's exactly my point! The user will NEVER look. For a new user, it either works out of the box or it doesn't. It's not reasonable to expect them to download, compile, and install components just to give the computer basic functionality.
You have got it all backwards. It's never been selfish.
What can be less selfish than sharing your source code, without cost, so that anyone can can use, modify and redistribute it as they please?
What can be more cooperative than making everything work together?
Why do you assume that people's egos are so big that they will be hurt if no one else uses their work? Sorry bud, I'm going to continue to advocate free software for what's there and for how awful the alternatives are. If people want to be abused by the likes of M$, that's their problem. I'll advise them not to just like I'll advise you not to go riding while drunk. Don't get confused about the motives, some people simply have everyone's best interest at heart. I've got what I want, I'd like you to get what you want too.
Then, the linux community can say "We support Linux better than any MS Support service! And our support is $0.00 per hour."
What support is lacking? It's not nice to call people "clueless newbies". With man pages, and online info even the most bone-headed engineer like me can become profficient. Sure, it was all free but a few reference books. M$ has never been as easy, and most of the real info is hidden.
Having given all that, why should people give their time up as well? Lawers, doctors, engineers and others charge for their insight on publically available information. Would you deny computer consultants a living? I suppose you would have them all work to help M$ maintain it's vanishing monopoly. Blah, I'm never going to write another line of Win32 code again and I'll never recomend M$ to anyone. The whole mindset is screwed up, and the products are all worst in their class. I'm not getting paid and I'll write what ever I feel like. I'll give it away when I feel like it. I offer advice when I feel like it, and I give away hardware to my frinds. If you want me to do what you want, you can do something I want, like pay me.
DMCA, Hollings, Palladium. What might have sounded like paranoia is now common sense.
$200 per seat for an M$ desktop? You are dreaming, or you think that their crummy OS alone is a useful tool. Those things cost as much as mainframes did, and the prices get jacked every year. Unix admins make more because they are currently deployed on higher dollar work. They are deployed on higher dollar work because people spending money want results and *nix delivers where M$ fails. The work is not that much harder, in fact it's easier. Digging ditches is harder than drafting and pays worse too. Go figure, some people dig ditches. Study after study continue to prove Linux is cheaper and better. The only people still recomending M$ are salesmen, PHBs and marketdroids.
My mom chucked out two $1000 machines because the software quit working. Yep, M$ was the only thing wrong with them. Parts of them form my gateway and a mail server "Lusers" is what M$ considers their customers. Her loss bothered me a little. Fraud bothers me. Bitter? Nah, I'm going to bundle them up and sell them to physics students cheap, then take her to dinner with the money. Blame the luser just won't cut it anymore. People expect things to work and keep working. The M$ upgrade train is derailed.
DMCA, Hollings, Palladium. What might have sounded like paranoia is now common sense.
It all depends on how you define your "time". I've been using the same /home filesystem on my Linux box for about 3 years. Across two motherboard updates, and 3 hard drives.
/home partition (with all my data) remains after installation.
I still have files that were there 3 years ago - so data loss is (kinda) a joke.
I've never had to spend 2 days copying and re-installing applications after my system crashed - it's never crashed, and even if it did, my
THAT's time saving.
Time saving is when you set up a mission-critical server in a remote location, and never step foot in the place for over a year (while under support contract) and every month or two spend an hour and apply security updates. Perfect uptime the whole time.
THAT'S time saving.
Time saving is when I have a desktop loaded with windows and applications, and a customer calls about something out of left field, and I can simply choose another desktop, take care of the customer's needs, and then resume on the first desktop with nothing disturbed.
THAT's time saving.
Compare that to my buddy Windows user - every so often, his DSL modem software crashes his computer, corrupting the registry. He's gone to great lengths to make his system easily reloaded, since he has to do it so very often - particularly after loading any new software.
The time, nightmares and hassles he goes through for data recovery, crash prevention and moderation simply astound me.
But, you say that's easier?!?!
I have no problem with your religion until you decide it's reason to deprive others of the truth.
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My wife works at Micro$oft and is expected to load her own software and do other tasks that in my office are done by the admin, yet even they still have admins. If Micro$oft needs admins for their Windoze boxes, what makes you think tato22's mom and little sister don't?
If all this should have a reason, we would be the last to know.
Would someone mod the parent up? christopher is making sense.
My Greasemonkey scripts for Digg &
Bottom line, Windows has an ungodly more amount of software out there. That fact was used against them in their lawsuit. Take a look at download.com's Windows > Audio > Music Creation category, 182 downloads. Then check out the Linux > Multimedia & Design, note the 2 broad categories mixed, 94 downloads. Download.com isn't very open source orientated, but check out freshmeat's Multimedia
> Sound/Audio > Sound Synthesis category, 37 projects. More than half of those 37 are below version 1.
Theoretically, no. Practically, yes: the vast majority of sites running ASP are running IIS, and most of them are programmed in VBScript, a most bletcherous language.
In this particular case, they're running IIS 4: see my other post.
my old sig used to be funny, but then slashcode ate it and now it's not funny anymore