Bridging Unix and Windows At NASA

slashdotess writes "Information Week reports: "About a year ago, Patrick McCartney, a Johnson Center project manager, created a Linux desktop environment that could also run government-mandated Microsoft apps. This let his team of 30 engineers continue to program in a Unixlike environment and create Word documents and Outlook E-mail all on the same PC. This mixed-use scenario is slowly taking hold, encouraged by a growing number of applications for running Linux on PC desktops." Score another one for Linux on the Desktop."

Comments

Re:They kept the worst demons...

[ender81b]

and I have yet to meet someone that genuinely *NEEDS* anything that Word has

Well the asinine installation program that for some god unknown reason needs to 'configure' itself everytime you look at it the wrong way or some other user logs onto the computer helps keep me employed... =) (yes, blah we just made a custom .msi installation script that 'installs on first run' or whatever the point is you shouldn't fscking have to). of course it also makes me want to gouge out my eyes with a plastic spoon the minute somebody mentions MS Office.

FOR GODS SAKE WHY WHY WHY DOES MSOFFICE NEED TO FSCKING CONFIGURE ITSELF? WHY CAN"T IT JUST BE INSTALLED LIKE EVERY OTHER FSCKING APPLICATION? WHY GOD WHY IN THE NAME OF ALL THAT IS GOOD AND HOLY WHY?

Sorry. See what I mean?

Re:OS X...

[transiit]

Why should they get a Mac? What would the greater cost of hardware + software get them?

Better multimedia performance?
A simpler GUI?
Proprietary crap masquerading as open source?

This is NASA. These are scientists and mathematicians and people that are smarter than the average visual basic programmer that think that the success of the computer is by slapping on as much meaningless cruft as possible! People that have been using mainframes for years. Scientists.

What does the average mac advocate usually present as the case for the mac since the release of OS X? "It's Unix! Really! We think so! We never use the terminal because we've got crap like iTunes and iMovie and iChat and iBlow! These are innovative apps that aren't at all like winamp, xmms, windows media player, gqmpeg, the numerous windows apps that get bundled with hardware (ulead), broadcast 2k, or any of the players like mplayer, xine, videolan, etc. These are innovative! They've got skins! Just like all those others, but it's got Quartz and displaypdf. We don't know what it does, but damn, does it sound cool! Don't you want to be cool? I've got a TiBook. I'm cool. Some teenage girl on allergy meds says I'm cool. Isn't that what computing is about?"

Ok, so I've gone way overboard into the land of flamebait. But still, why are all the people that claimed any technical merit a year or so ago now collectively creaming their jeans over eyecandy and pretending it to be the greatest contribution to the advancement of technology ever?

My problem with OS X is that it presents so little to the core while trying to slap on a pretty facade. They failed on both accounts. I find aqua to be pretty darn ugly, and beneath the whitewash, nothing that would make me shell out the money to move away from LinuxPPC on the same hardware.

-transiit

Hybrids are good for linux.

[Kjella]

Don't expect every program people might need to exist or get ported to linux. I know of at least one business that went from win98 to VMware/win98. Of course this means they'll replace what they can with native linux apps as time goes by, but those things take time, money, and nagging many software producers. Plus a gradual changeover is much better for the users and support, which get things slowly instead of a *completely* new system. All the menus/buttons being in different places can be enough of a problem for some. Having a fall-back solution is always good.

Kjella

Re:Use Linux-only

[reallocate]

Seems to me the geek community constantly overestimates the rest of the world's interest in and skills at using computers. Abruptly replacing Windows and Windows apps with Linux and a batch of Windows-wannabe apps would, from where I sit, produce three certain results in any typical office environment: An immediate and precipitous drop in productivity; flooding of tech support and management with questions and demands for training; and simmering discontent as users ask "If it's supposed to be just like Windows, why didn't we keep Windows in the first place?"

Remember, most users are no more interested in their computers than they are in their televisions. They just want them to do what they want them to do in the way they're used to doing that.