KDE Success in the Enterprise

Arandir writes "Is UNIX ready for the desktop? Display Works Inc. thinks it is! They adopted KDE as their official desktop environment over a year ago, and KDE::Enterprise is running an interview with IT manager Tim Brodie over their experiences. This is a very good interview that covers why KDE was chosen, user migration, and wish lists for KDE. Quote: "I now see KDE taking the lead in polish and professionalism on the desktop"."

Comments

Re:Better than windows

[Osty]

[KDE] Windows respond to mouse overs after the time I specified, right number of desktops with the correct visibility of other apps, themability also a big plus. Don't know if XP has themability or to what degree but I don't consider it a major function.

All of that is available in Windows. Get TweakUI from the Power Toys page and you can enable X-Mouse if you like focus-follows-mouse functionality (personally, I don't like it, but to each his own). You can also theme XP with StyleXP from TGTSoft (or if you don't want to pay, you can find the uxtheme.dll hack on google -- search for "uxtheme.dll SP1", no quotes). Tons of themes are available.

However I do prefer the KMenus method for listing large numbers of programs as a heirarchy, when Windows tries to list 3 full columns at once it's much too slow especially since you probably already know the location of the item you're looking for.

That's just organization. There's nothing stopping you from organizing your Program Files menu on the Start Menu in Windows. KDE has a nice organization because it comes with a lot of apps to begin with. Windows on the other hand tends to rely on separate software, and each installer wants to have its own top-level menu. Don't let it. Some apps play nice, like all of Microsoft Games Studio's games -- they all install under "Microsoft Games" rather than having one menu for each game. So, organize the menu if you don't like the default.

Also KDE gets points for multiple desktops, yes I know that you can get programs for Windows to mimic that but it doesn't work as well, most notably it simply hide apps so that cycling through apps in one desktop gives you apps for all desktops. The file manager for windows is generally nicer but the combination of file manager and CLI built in for KDE should give it the advantage there but I'll call it a tie.

Try the Virtual Desktop Manager, again from Power Toys. It does multiple desktops correctly, though it does have some other issues. Also, I guess I'm not familiar with KDE's file manager/CLI (I assume you mean Konqueror?), but remember that the Konqueror design is essentially Explorer/Internet Explorer's design -- it's really little more than a container for other objects. There's a Power Toy to open a command prompt from a folder, or you could try something like this instead, a command prompt explorer bar to put a CLI directly in the explorer window. Is that what you mean KDE does?

Sure, right out of the box KDE is more configurable and has a little more functionality (virtual desktops, mostly). But with a little work and using only that which is built into Windows or Power Toys provided by Microsoft directly (ie, not replacing your shell with something like LiteStep, or paying for something like StarDock's WindowBlinds) you can make Windows (XP) do everything that made you choose KDE over Windows. The only thing Windows can't do is run on top of Linux :).

Desktop Ready on Enterprise Level is REAL!

[westyvw]

After reading comments that there should be more examples, and a larger amount of clients would add credibility, I would say there is:

How about 450 thin clients running KDE with 800 users? All running from one Linux server box. Now that sounds good!

Articles:

http://techupdate.zdnet.com/techupdate/stories/m ai n/0,14179,2860180-1,00.html

and the follow up:

http://newsforge.com/newsforge/02/12/04/2346215. sh tml?tid=19