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Reducing The Negative Impact of Laptops
Mark Brunelli wrote to mention a SearchEnterpriseLinux column about reducing the negative impact laptops can have on a network's security. From the article: "Portable computers often become an extension of the person using them. It is no surprise that laptop users are inclined to be rather autonomously minded. Many users don't realize that the power they have to install software and change settings is risk prone. Fortunately, larger corporations that install Microsoft Windows XP Professional usually don't grant the laptop user full administrative rights. The same cannot be said of smaller businesses, many of which simply purchase laptops from the local store -- laptops pre-installed with Windows XP Home Edition. "
fp for great justice!
I'm running Suse 9.3 and have experienced so many bugs and problems. Flash doesn't work at all within Konqueror. Sound doesn't work with Flash within Firefox or Mozilla. Things crash. Even Vim crashes when I try to use it with SVN. There are performance problems. It ships with a beta version of OpenOffice.org which is not stable. This is all with a stock installation of 9.3. I've been using Suse since version 9.0 and 9.3 is the least stable I have ever used. Anyone who tries this out is going to be disappointed.
I have just now downloaded OpenSuse 10. I'll install it and hope to see some improvements.
If Novell / Suse wants to get real desktop adoption, these are the things they need to do:
1. The system needs to be more stable. Take a deep breath, slow down on the new features, and make it stable.
2. THERE SHOULD BE ONLY ONE APPLICATION FOR EVERY TASK! This is so obvious and people have been saying it for years. On my Suse 9.3, if I want to control the volume, I go to Multimedia -> Volume control and I see NINE DIFFERENT VOLUME CONTROL APPLICATIONS, all of which work or don't work to varying degrees, and none of which are simple and easy to use and understand. That's crazy. That's on drugs. That's lame. Say whatever you want about how great Linux is but if my desktop has NINE DIFFERENT VOLUME CONTROL APPLICATIONS that is horrific. I bring up volume control, but the same problem exists in all the other application categories, but volume control is by far the worst offender. If users want to go crazy and install a dozen different word processors, fine, let them do it, but the default installation should have ONE and exactly ONE application in every category.
3. There needs to be a good media player that is well-integrated and WORKS. I should be able to pop in a DVD which I got from Blockbuster and play it, with GUI controls, subtitles, everything, with no messing around. I should be able to go to CNN.com and look at video, with no messing around.
The first two items are not rocket science. They're not technology problems. They are management problems. Someone who is a technical manager high up in Novell should lay down the law on these two issues and make them happen. Say to the dev team, "If you think that such-and-such should be the ONE application for such-and-such task, make your case, and we'll have a decision process and at the end we'll pick one, and go with it."
The media player part is more difficult because it's wrapped up in all kinds of legal licensing problems. They need to solve these problems. They are solvable with money, lawyers and time. Guess what, time to do it Novell!
The last time I tried to install debian the install went reletivly quicly, but afterwards it took me 2 hours to get X work with my video card, and I still can't get the sound working. I'm sure an expert would have been able to do this much faster, and maybe even get my sound working, but most computer users aren't expererts, and believe it or not, most don't even know linux experts. Linux is just not a viable desktop option for the vast majority of the users out there, and I'm not sure it ever will be.
"It is not how things are in the world that is mystical, but that it exists." -Ludwig Wittgenstein
my understanding is that xp home sucks when it comes to networking. i used it for a short while and it locked up every single time i tried to access another machine via lan.