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Linux in the Workplace
Linux has failed to catch on among ordinary users because PC manufacturers have been prevented from offering dual-boot systems. Not only is partitioning and dual booting a little tricky, the OS CD that comes with a new PC is usually just a system restore, making it difficult to configure a dual-boot environment without messing up factory settings and file systems. Learning Linux has become an all-or-nothing proposition; in many cases the new user has to wipe Windows off his system for good or rely on a second machine just to get started.
The irony is that Linux has never been more user friendly, and the latest KDE desktop on my gentoo box is slicker, faster and easier to use than XP. It is becoming easier to be productive on Linux, and while university students have already discovered this, corporate IT departments who support a large number of Windows-only commercial applications tend to view open source solutions as a time burden (these are the same IT departments whose days are consumed with applying Windows patches or verifying license compliance).
The book Linux in the Workplace shows the ordinary user who has never laid eyes on Linux how to perform everyday office tasks. The book assumes that the user has a machine with Linux already installed and successfully configured. This book (which is more of an introduction to the KDE desktop than Linux itself) is easy and fun to read, and has lots of screenshots. Slashdotters might find this book a bit too basic, but it's the kind of book that a technophobe spouse or child or parent might love (and could very well appear under Christmas trees right beside the new Linux PC).
This book devotes a chapter each to talking about Open Office, Gimp, Konqueror, personal information managers, and various KDE office and email applications. Most of them are part of the KDE window manager or installed by default. This book walks a thin line between being too superficial for daily use and dwelling too much on the technical details. There are better books on The GIMP or OpenOffice, for example, but still it is nice to have introductory chapters in a single book. I found a few useful tidbits on controlling file associations, xscanimage, screen capturing and ark archiver. The book is not without a sense of humor. In a useful section on creating a GPG key, the book says "your passphrase should be rude or embarrassing ... using a naughty passphrase will remind you not to type it where others can see."
This book began with the mission to bring a simplified approach to Linux. By definition, it must exclude certain topics, either by design or because an application was not yet mature when the book was being written. The book scrupulously avoids a discussion of server applications like apache (which makes a certain sense), but it would have been nice to have a section on Evolution or mplayer (yes, a media player is an indispensable application for the bored employee) or ssh, cd burning programs, browser plugins, mozilla, crossover, irc or ftp clients.
Surprisingly, the book contains almost nothing about printing or how to install or upgrade applications. Because the book is intended for a newbie user, not a sys admin, it recommends talking to your network administrator about that. Cop out? Perhaps. But even the unskilled non-root user will have to install apps once in a while; the book would have been much better with a section on rpm managers and compiling programs from scratch.
From a sys admin's point of view, I would have liked to see a case study of an office that had actually made the switch. What problems did it encounter? How did the switch change business processes? What applications required the most time and energy for support? How did a Linux-only office manage domain authentication or interoperability? What system management tools made administration easier in a heterogenous environment?
The book raises an epistemological question about the best way to learn a new technology. Will a user who has never really performed tasks as root be able to leverage the freedom and power offered by open source? Will a user truly be comfortable with an operating system without first having experienced the agony of a bad install or frantically scouring the newsgroups for help ? This book presumes that a learner needs to be able to use normal applications before being ready to handle the admin stuff. The problem with that approach is that it depends on IT staff being near and ready to do some hand-holding. But Linux may emerge in the workplace not as a result of IT's enthusiasm but because of ordinary workers' exasperation with uniform proprietary solutions imposed by these IT departments.
In summary: A useful and friendly KDE-centric introduction to Linux for nongeeks. The lack of system administration material makes it probably too basic for slashdotters.
Also recommended:
RUTE Users' Tutorial and Exposition
A Practical Guide to Red Hat Linux 8 by Mark G. Sobell (not yet published)
Robert Nagle is a technical writer, trainer and Linux aficionado in Houston, Texas. You can purchase Linux in the Workplace from bn.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.
We definitely need a whole lot more books like this to encourage office users to adopt Linux. We don't need those complicated details. But I expect Star Office or other office-related things be explained in greater depth. At least on par with those MSOffice ones.
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Printing can be a huge problem in the unix world. I would certainly call the exclusion of that part a cop-out. Otherwise it sounds like a very interesting book. However, saying that KDE is easier to use and faster than Windows XP very subjective. I usually try a new version of a linux distro or two every 6 months. Sure, everything has gradually gotten nicer, and there was even a time when I thought KDE had an advantage over Windows (when it was alpha and before windows 98 came out). But time and time again, I find myself drawn back to the Windows interface. The ease of use just isn't quite on the same level as Microsoft and Apple.
Mainstreamers want to know as little as possible about their OS and their apps. They simply want to reap the benefits of having a computer--doing homework, burning CD's, surfing the web, sending and receiving e-mail, playing games, etc.
Until the Linux programmers understand at the DNA level just how much mainstreamers hate being forced to learn all this technical crap that most people on /. love, and until they make serious progress in removing that learning curve for Linux, people will continue to use Windows. It's not that mainstreamers like Windows; I've talked with many dozens of them who detest Windows, but they still see it as their best alternative, since it's the only thing available that will do what they want to do.
Linus himself had something to say on the very subject in a recording of an interview I have, I think from Cebit 2001:
(I've put the whole interview up if you wanna hear the rest.)
Hilary Rosen's speech was about her love of money and her desire to roll around naked in a pile of money.
If people are professionally trained on a particular tool, the benefit in paying the extra few hundred is that they will be more productive. Could they LEARN to be as productive on something else? Maybe. That'd take time. If a company is willing to invest in workers like that - essentially acting as both employer and training center - and can live with lower productivity for a certain period of time, great. Force people to use unfamiliar tools. If not, then give them what they claim they need. They are professionals, and probably have a better idea of what they *need* than you do.
creation science book
However, I can't recommed Linux as a solution to a small to medium sized company or to individuals, except in very limited circumstances.
DESKTOP: For desktop use, it lacks support for hardware and software and I certainly am not going to support my less technical friends and clients over the phone when they need to update their kernel or install true type fonts. Also, when it comes to software, if an application exists, it probably exists for Windows. You can't say that about Linux, which requires emulators and the like. Fine for me, but not for my mother. As for hardware, I personally would like to upgrade my laptop, but there's no driver for my wireless network card. A commercial operating system is cheaper than a new card....
SERVERS: For server use, I can't recommend it for small companies, since there would be no local expert able to add a user or other simple task without my intervention. Your average joe can pick up a Windows book and do regular maintenance or add printers, etc. That can't be said for Linux.
Things that have nothing to do with it:
1. COST. Only in large companies does the TCO issues begin to play, and then, it's still not clear. As for the desktop, most computers come OEM with Windows (the cost being hidden) and users either already own Windows applications or expect to buy them with the new computer.
2. RELIGION/POLITICS. Most people don't hate Microsoft -- they're ambivalent. It's like the number of people who boycotted Exxon after the Valdez disaster in Alaska. Most aren't going to put up much fight, especially when it involves an inconvenience. Driving across town to a gas station is MUCH easier than learning the command line or a new GUI. They're unlikely to do either.
3. RELIABILITY. Windows XP on the desktop is reliable. Period. If yours is crashing regularly, you've done something wrong or installed some 3rd party application incorrectly. I get the impression from reading here and my Linux certification materials that most Linux users are mostly familiar with the godawful Windows 9.x operating systems. Things have changed in the last few years (Windows 2000 and XP).
4. SECURITY. Windows XP/2000 is known to have security issues. I recommend installing a personal firewall and not using IE (I like Opera). This solves most security problems. Most people don't really care about these issues and will spend the $30 to add software to fix the problems. The Linux way seems to be security through obscurity. If there were a dominant Linux mail client, like Ximian, then there would be viruses written to attack it. Outlook is a big target.
I know this because I ran a small shop where people brought in machines for repair, surfed the internet, etc. The house machines were all Linux (Mandrake), except for one dual-boot machine. When they were finished I asked them "How was it", and they said "Whatdya mean?" You were using Linux, I replied. "What's that?" My point? They didn't care or even realize they were using Linux, but when we started to compare Linux v. Microsoft, they almost always went home and installed it. Sure, they came back with lots of questions, but they were the same questions Windows users ask me, typically "Where do I change the colors/screen resolution/is that the left mouse button or the right, which side of the CD goes in, etc."
I believe the reason Linux is not caught on more yet has nothing to do with the features/software or useability, it's due to Microsoft.
An old IT manager summed it up in 3 words. After sales support. MS has loads of it and Linux has well, not much. Red Hats model for after sales support is a joke since I would estimate that 80% of the software is downloaded(no support). Until a solid support system is in place people are not going to jump into that pool.
How many "average" people would purchase a brand new TV with no after sales support?
sed awk grep cron sort ftp smb etc.
I can make a shell script in about 10 minutes that will do, in a matter of seconds, something that a human would take hours to do with their favorite GUI app. I rarely run Linux X apps. I do run X apps exported off unix servers on occasion, but the real power of Linux is what I mentioned above. Plus, I don't need to worry about, or even have, an X display driver. We have New Fangled windows-based systems that simply have no way of doing these rudimentary, STANDARD functions (outside of purchasing $$$ or building $$$ specialized apps).
"Would it kill you to put down the toilet seat?" -- Maya Angelou
...that we Windows network admins have already caved in and poured hideously large amounts of money into purchasing Windows 2000 Server and the requisite CAL licenses. For example, my employer already invested a huge amount of money in the 1998-1999 timeframe to install a large NT4 network. Once we finally got all this working and stabilized, all of a sudden MS releases W2K and does the forced premature obsolescence thing and because we are a small govt organization who purchased our MS licenses under a certain "select" contract, we are not allowed to "upgrade".... we can only buy it all over again from scratch or get roped into a "lease/rent the licenses" deal. Management absolutely refuses to "buy it all over again" even if we could afford to do so, and our organization's charter, policies and local law prohibit us from leasing IT infrastructure.
Linux is looking even better and better for us, and I wish we could migrate completely off of MS and go to Linux, starting yesterday, but the cold hard reality is that we have too many mission critical apps that are Win32-only.
Simply be enthusiastic about Linux. Show people it. When you discover some "cool shit" that you can do, show people. Don't bash Microsoft. People already curse Windows, but they carry on because they don't think Linux is ready. Someone I knew didn't know that all their hardware would work straight off a RH8 install. "But with Windows, I need loads of additional drivers" he said.
Don't laugh when their machine bluescreens - try and help them work out why. Use Linux on your desktop, even if it's slightly more hassle. Make sure that when you've installed a lovely theme, or window manager, you enthuse about it, and get people to see it.
Make sure people know you can play music under Linux. Another common misconception is that it does't have sound support.95% of users simply check email, browse the web, and play games.
Most people that use Windows know it's annoying, and shit, but they don't think there is an alternative.
Just don't bleat on about how crap it is - instead, enthuse about how good Linux is. Show them that you can open PPT files in Open Office fine. Show them that you can connect to Windows terminal servers using RDesktop. Show them a diskless workstation in action.
Motto? Enthuse about Linux. Other people get curious, and try it out.
P.S If I don't get some good mod points for this heartfelt outpouring, I'll feel very hard done by!
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Listen,
There's a good reason Linux is still not going to go mainstream or be liked by the everyday user or gamer. This has to do with the argument over open drivers.
You see, I just installed Mandrake 9.0 and it has taken me over a week to get it to work. The big problem is that Mandrake won't put in recent NVidia drivers because they aren't "free" or opensource I guess. They are free, but they refuse to add them.
Thus, the average user (who probably has some variant of GeForce) has to download new drivers and go through the agonizing process of installing them. This took me days of frustration.
Next, was my Lucent Winmodem. Mandrake seemed to say that I couldn't use it. After some investigation on the net, I found drivers to use it. These weren't in Mandrake. It was yet another frustrating step.
I also had to add some decryption packages or something to use my DVD player... Windows is stomping all over Mandrake in multimedia.
Linux distros and the community have to get over this phobia of non-free, as they put it, drivers. People don't want to spend hours configuring their setup if they are non-geeks.
As much as everyone brags about how easy to install, setup and use stuff like KDE is, there is at least an equal or greater amount of trouble people will have to go through to use Linux that will likely cause a great deal to delete their Linux partition and go back to Windows.
I think the best way to proselytize is to give a non-geek friend a copy of a CD with some open-source Windows apps on it:
- The Open CD
- GNUWin
Advocating open-source apps also has the advantage that it might really damage MS. Linux has failed to take away more than 0.5% of MS's desktop OS market, which means it's not even really a factor for MS to consider. OTOH, MS makes a lot of money from apps, and they're really vulnerable to competition. A lot of home users are not happy with paying $300 for a whole computer, and then having MS expect them to pay another $300 for apps.Find free books.
The Zaurus is actually a perfect example of why linux has been having such terrible trouble getting to the desktop.
I've got a Zaurus. I like the fact that I can write custom mobile GUI applications in Python. I'm not saying it doesn't have it's uses for extremely niche applications. I've found the thing useful, so I'm not completely biased.
But unfortunately, the Zaurus UI is VERY badly designed. It's not just lack of "polish", it's stuff that any decent UI person would tell you you *never* do, especially on a mobile device with a ridiculously tiny screen.
Why is the Zaurus so very unusable?
Linux's success, which is success on the server, has come about because linux developers/users had cultural beliefs and abilities that lent themselves well to the creation of things like Apache and the Linux Kernel. Unfortunately, they had cultural beliefs (HCI is BS, RTFM, text better than graphical) that were detrimental to the making of usable software. You have to have a developer culture that values ease-of-use in order to make usable software. They were also lacking in many of the necessary skills (thinking graphically instead of textually, user-interaction design etc.) needed to do this, as well.
Let's look at the Palm as a case study. The Palm user interaction was designed before the code for the OS was ever written and before the first injection mold tool was cast. The creator of the Palm, Jeff Hawkins, could often be seen walking around the company with a wooden mockup of the device, taking it with him to meetings and taking down imaginary notes with the stylus he had created (whittled down from a chopstick!). He thought long and hard about how to minimize the number of taps to do things (which the TrollTech has not). In short, he did what was needed to be done to have a successful, usable product.
If Jeff Hawkins was a linux developer, he would have said "I'll just tack on the GUI once I've finished all the technical stuff. Modularity and all". If someone with any UI design experience would try to save the day and tell him he needed to design the UI before anything else, he'd tell them they were being ridiculous. If someone complained that things were too hard to do, he would tell them to stop whining about what they're getting for free. He would then release the stuff he created to many of the geeky linux folks as early adopters, believing that usage would start with them and proceed to trickle down to normal folks. All the while refusing to understand that linux geeks tend to have very high tolerances for badly designed and inefficient user interfaces and will yell "Stop spreading Microsoft FUD about linux being hard to use!" at the first person who points out an ususable Open Source UI.Assuming that the Alternate Linux Universe Jeff Hawkins was receptive to user feedback regarding the bad design, he wouldn't be getting any because the majority of users would be telling him that it was the greatest thing since sliced bread.The poster in an earlier thread who in jest pointed out that the guy who said KDE was easy enough for anyone to use was actually running it on Gentoo couldn't have been more right.
Palm was successful because they did things the right way, not because they were familiar to windows users. WinCE did things the wrong way because it was familiar to windows users (some Palm executives once said that competing with PocketPC "was like shooting fish in a barrel").
Linux getting to the desktop will require both the linux developer community and current user community to put down their Neale Stephenson essays and change their attitudes and the way they do things. Until this happens, the greatest roadblock to Linux on the desktop will be the linux community itself.
Ergonomica Auctorita Illico!