Cisco IT Manager Targeting 70% Linux

RMX writes "LinuxWorld Australia has an interesting article discussing Linux Desktop adoption in Cisco. Cisco "already converted more than 2,000 of its engineers to Linux desktops...plans to move many laptop users to the platform over the next few years...the driver for Linux on the desktop is not cost savings, but easier support. Manning estimates that it takes a company approximately one desktop administrator to support 40 Windows PCs, while one administrator can support between 200 and 400 Linux desktops.'"

Comments

Re:Handling Firefox

[illtud]

Am I missing something? What is there to manage for a browser besides installation?

In the corporate environment (ie when the PC isn't yours and the company doesn't want to spend ages fixing messes you've made 'personalizing' your PC) you need to lock down some preferences (eg proxy settings, security settings, mail account details if you're using thunderbird/moz suite). This used to be really easy under the old Netscape suite (there was a GUI tool), and although there's some support still left in firefox/mozilla (you can lock down prefs manually in the .js files) it's not half as good as it used to be. Other stuff is rollout support with pre-populated profiles etc.

Check out the Mozilla Enterprise project for more details and how some of us have hacked together lockdown and other 'enterprise' requirements.