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

Good Article

[4of12]

I like the way that they describe the practical side of the transition - i.e., moving new users over instead of people comfortable to sit on the top of the learning curve that they've already scaled.

My outfit is looking at Linux desktops in a more scientific and engineering environment.

But we share a similar need to deal with the ubiquitous .doc, .xls and .ppt files that are endemic in the corporate world.

I like their setup with KDE, but I've thought that using Evolution would be a nicer MUA.

It's great they can do so well with StarOffice 5.2 that has its share of glitches and user interface problems.

If only StarOffice 6 would finally come out!

I believe that single product, SO 6, with updated filters for the aforementioned "standard" file formats and non-monolithic user interface, will do more to unleash a flood of Linux desktop migration than any other single product (unless AOL 9.0 includes Linux).

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.

Re:Anything new? Didn't think so.

[psocccer]

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.

Where I work, custom software is the norm. We purchase almost nothing in terms of off the shelf packages and the main system just does it all. The code has been around for about 20 years or so, ported from platform to platform. Currently we're on the NT platform, but after a few bullying letter from MS stating that since we haven't purchased anything in the last year or two from them that we must be pirating software.

Well, that was it, we started looking for a way to move off the NT platform. Our codebase is roughly 4.5 million lines of COBOL code, and the data is archived back many years as well. So we had 2 problems, there was no COBOL compiler for Linux, and anything resembling one was not data-compatible. Until about 4-5 months ago that is, now MicroFocus has spun off from Merant and become a single entity (again). So now there is a source and data compatible compiler for our backend apps. Just change around some directory separators and it just works. No export/import/etc.

I guess my point here is that I've found most anything can be targeted for the Linux platform, especially those systems that are character-based, as many that I've seen are. The GUI interfaces are relative newcomers to the field. And with borland porting toolchains to linux, I'm sure it will just get easier to retarget -> recompile and have shiny new binaries. Even better when the toolchain is just a port by the tool vender, then most likely your data will be fine too. The only exceptions I see that will probably never change are the MS toolchains, MSVC++, VB, VFP, etc. And if you're starting MS, then you probably don't have much choice of platform, though I have seen a gnome project somewhere trying to build up to source-level compatibility with VB.

And I don't want to here any whining about "what if you don't have the source," all I have to say is, if you payed $100M for some software and didn't even license the source, you've got bigger problems than blue screens and crashed desktops. We are a medium sized company, and our code didn't cost that much. And we get to keep it to if the developers go under, plus add anything we want to the source. Now that I'm somewhere that has done that, it makes no sense to buy software for XX thousands or millions of dollars and not get the source... That is a huge risk.

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.

I've done sort of the same thing here...

[elefantstn]

Our company has been hit by the recession relatively heavily -- our main product is a "luxury" item for most businesses -- so when we decided to finally put our salesman on computers and enter the 21st century, I suggested Linux desktops. I was met with some quizzical looks, but once I demoed my desktop and mentioned the key word "free," I was given the go-ahead.

The idea is that there is only a steep learning curve for Linux if you're switching from another OS; if you've never used anything, there's no adjustment. Unlike the article's writer, though, we went with Gnome, for one huge reason: Evolution. Just like Outlook is key for businessmen who run Windows, Evolution makes keeping track of contacts, appointments, etc. a breeze for our salesmen. They do basic word processing with Abiword, look at some spreadsheets with Gnumeric, and browse the web with Galeon.

I think what it comes down to is Linux's main strength is choice. My users do lots of planning, organizing, etc., so I centered their desktops around Evolution. TrustCommerce's people for the most part do very basic email, but a lot more document work, so their desktops are based around OpenOffice.

Two more things: The killer app is gtcd. I cannot convey in words how amazed new users are when they put a cd in and the cd player looks up the tracklisting. (Yes, I realize many Windows cd players do this. Yes, I realize the new version of MP that comes with ME & above do this.) The other thing is that using Debian makes it all worthwhile. I mirror sid (the distribution we use) on the file server, which updates every night, and then when I upgrade workstations it goes over our 100Mb network. I cannot begin to describe how much easier my job is doing ssh workstation; apt-get update ; apt-get upgrade than walking around to desks and doing Windows Update.