Linux & the Business Desktop

Ulwarth writes: "Desktop Linux is running a feature documenting a mid-sized company switching to Linux on the desktop, like the City of Largo but this time in a corporate environment. Proof that it can be done - at least for businesses which need only the 'standard' office apps."

Comments

I hope these stories end soon...

[_DMan_]

We'll know that Linux is truly ready for the desktop when these stories no longer appear.

As long as "Linux on the Desktop" is newsworthy, then linux has not really gained acceptance.

Re:I hope these stories end soon...

[JabberWokky]

As long as "Linux on the Desktop" is newsworthy, then linux has not really gained acceptance.

There were recently several stories (not on /.) about various companies and their experiences in switching over to Windows XP. Does this mean that Windows has not really gained acceptance?

This *is* the beginning of Linux as a desktop, and is has not (and probably will never) gained total, 100% acceptance. Such stories are good to have as signposts of acceptance, and the stories of their sucess tend to cause other businesses to go out on a limb with the minority desktop. When it *really* gets accepted, you'll see stories all over the place still, but then you'll see hundreds of books in your local bookstore "Migrating from Windows to Linux" - literally hundreds, like the DOS -> Windows conversion, the Novell -> NT conversion, and so on. It will get *more* visible, not less as the switchover occurs.

And I was going to couch all statement with "if it occurs" statements. And, not being a fortuneteller, I cannot predict the future with absolute certainty. But I really do think that Linux *will* be the desktop of the future, probably for corporate users at first, and then down to the home users. Not because it's better either - just because it's easier and cheaper.

--
Evan

Take a page from apple

[NiftyNews]

Linux should take a page from Apple. They put out a little ad booklet in Time (and elsewhere) and devoted 2 pages to dispelling myths. They didn't use cyberspeak either. They just gave some very real questions ("Everyone uses Windows" for example) and answered them. It was a great piece of PR. Linux could learn something from it...

Anything new? Didn't think so.

[Tenebrious1]

I'm not against Linux on the desktop in a corporate environment. I'd love to switch our users here, just so I could post to the /. community that a major corporation with $$B has made the switch. But I can't, and won't for any forseeable future.

None of these "Linux on the Desktop" articles has pointed to any company that used more than standard desktop and backend server apps. Find me a story where a company that has a $100M invested into their custom accounting/billing solution has decided to throw it out and spend another $100M to rewrite the software for Linux. When that happens, let me know; then I'll say Linux is making inroads onto the corporate desktop.

Re:Anything new? Didn't think so.

[Mike Connell]

I'd love to switch our users here
If you read the article you'd know that they didn't switch any users: they started new users on Linux instead of on Windows.

Find me a story where a company that has a $100M invested into their custom accounting/billing solution has decided to throw it out and spend another $100M to rewrite the software for Linux.
In the same way that you wouldnt necessarily retrain users who are already doing their job perfectly well, why would you rewrite something already working? What's more akin to the article is "would a company investing $100M into a custom accounting/billing solution now consider doing it with Linux?"

That seems far more likely.

OS first, apps later

[Cardinal Biggles]

From the article:

let's face it -- ridding ourselves of proprietary operating systems is probably a higher priority right now than proprietary apps.

Yes! This is a great point to make. Of course non-free apps are not where the world should be headed, but we should start with the OS. That's far and the away the most important thing. Once that's done, the apps will follow. At least until then, non-free apps for free OS'es are a Good Thing.

Re:Linux has a ways to go before it catches fire

[sphealey]

In the end, the Linux kernel is maintained by a group of hobbyists. As with the applications, these hobbyists put a large amount of time into programming glitz and glamour features into the kernel, and neglect important functions such as scalable SMP support, efficient VM managment, clean TCP/IP communications, and such. These important functions end up being "fixed" by other hobbyist programmers whose fixes usually end up making systems less stable.

First, please note that I am not flaming you - your point of view is one the needs to be considered very thoroughly in this discussion.

That said, speaking as a longtime TOPS-20 and 4.2 BSD user, Novell sysadmin, sufferer through MS-LanManager 1.0, and WordPerfect user, I have a question for you: your description differs from Microsoft's history and business practices exactly how?

Did you ever have the pleasure of converting a 500 user Novell 2.2 network to MS-Lanman because "Microsoft is a serious business partner", then have to convert it back to Novell 18 months later because it wouldn't stay up for more than a day (and we expended about 40,000 engineering manhours trying to make it work)? Sure, today Windows 2000 is reasonably stable (about 70% of what Novell 3.11 was anyway). Why did Microsoft get those 10 free years of shipping unstable products to improve themselves?

sPh

The obviously most pressing issue

[cavemanf16]

The Linux desktop has one major hurdle left to overcome the dominance of MS. It was massively evident from the last page of the article where different apps were evaluated. Notice that the author, in almost every case, mentioned this: "Unfortunately, I couldn't get it to install..." or some derivative there-of.

I find so many Linux and KDE apps to be so much more configurable and useful than Windows programs, personally. But just like the article's author, getting them up and running is the biggest pain in the ass ever in most cases! It shouldn't take me an hour just to get Gnucash installed and running. Configuring it to my liking can take all day for all I care, but just getting it running so I can begin to replace my use of Quicken is an extraordinarily lengthy task. This is just one example of the difficult install process in linux desktop apps.

The lack of interoperability or fancy features in Linux desktop apps is not the problem. Who uses the 'web publishing' wizards in MS Word anyways??? The problem is the ease of install. I don't need MS style wizards to walk me through the install per say, but I would at least like a working product when I'm done installing, not yet another message that a certain library is missing on my system. RPM's work just fine (when they work), but if a library is missing, for God's sake, TELL ME WHERE I CAN DOWNLOAD IT or better yet, go find it and download it for me! Get easy installation of apps on the Linux desktop, and you'll get MS desktop business users migrating to Linux en masse.

Note, however, that gaming on Linux is not even close to complete yet since installation of desktop apps is still such a pain. Henceforth, the home Linux user has two hurdles to get past before using Linux at home on a consistent basis.

Yes, I like linux, and yes, I use it at home, and YES I don't mind doing some work to find the libraries, drivers, and programs I need to get linux apps working like I want them too. But the simple fact of the matter is that most business people don't have that kind of time to waste on just installing a simple program.