"More than five years ago the launch of Microsoft Windows XP - and its considerably improved features and reliability compared with Windows 98 and 2000 - made a comprehensive desktop rollout a no-brainer for companies. The other options were all far from desirable. Now, as the world gears up for the launch of Windows Vista, the conclusion may not be so cut and dry. Certainly, Vista is set to be feature-packed and reliable, and many companies will move to the new platform as a matter of course. However, Linux has come a long way in five years, with the concerted effort of hobbyists around the world supplemented by the resources of tech heavyweights to push its desktop features to near-parity with Windows XP."
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Member since:2005-10-12
"One can install software that is not in the distro pack in Linux in just five clicks of the mouse by using Synaptic (for example)."
Yes and no. Try installing OO 2.0 into an off the shelf 2006 Mandriva. Or Wine for that matter. Or iScan for Epsons. Its not hard, but there are lots of people out there it will defeat.
Now, why have they not got Debian? It would make this a lot easier. Because experience shows the Mandrake or Suse control center is much easier for them to relate to.
I'm most enthusiastic about Linux on the right end user desktops, but, there are one or two issues. Not showstoppers, no worse than the issues with other OSs. but they are real, and we shouldn't ignore them.
Edited to add: Yes, do agree with you about PCL by the way. Best of both worlds.
Edited 2006-01-10 14:48
Member since:2006-01-10
I don't really believe this would "default" that many people in the enterprise. My rationale being: users don't (or shouldn't) have install rights, and any sysadmin is going to be smart enough to type "urpmi wine" (for that Mandriva system you mentioned), or add the necessary urpmi source to an organization-wide list of sources. And OO 2.0 provides RPMs, so who exactly is going to be defeated by an rpm?
Member since:2005-11-14
Yes and no. Try installing OO 2.0 into an off the shelf 2006 Mandriva. Or Wine for that matter
Huh ? Mandriva 2006 provides Mandriva OOo 2.0 packages for their members (which you are for a limited time if you bought the distro like a novice end users should do). And OOo provides RPMs that work out of the box (though they download some packages on a download edition). Wine is included in Mandriva too. So all of these points are moot.
Or iScan for Epsons. Its not hard, but there are lots of people out there it will defeat
BS again. Mandriva provides standard Linux tools to do that already (through SANE and KDE standard apps), and Epson provides Mandriva rpms for the printers that need iScan. Perhaps Mandriva even provides its own RPM for this driver in the 2006 release. but I can't check, because you go out of your way to find things hard to install on Linux, and I don't have the hardware that needs these driver.
I'm most enthusiastic about Linux on the right end user desktops, but, there are one or two issues. Not showstoppers, no worse than the issues with other OSs. but they are real, and we shouldn't ignore them
No we don't ignore them. But people like you always try to imply we ignore them. These issues are being worked on thanks. I use Linux exclusively since 2001 (well, not too exclusively lately, as I try to at least finish these games I bought for Windows years ago, like BG2, which works on Wine BTW), and I know what the rough edges are. I can do anything on Linux, but as soon as I have to tweak source code or patch things or sth is not streamlined or there are lots of crashes, I say "an end user can't do this", and I check the "rough edge" point. I try to contribute too, when necessary.
Right now, one of the biggest rough edges I have, is that some apps that my wife use (like digikam) have their doc not translated in my language.
Member since:
2005-11-11
"installing software not in the distro pack is quite hard".
Sorry, but that is just not true. Not a bit of it.
One can install software that is not in the distro pack in Linux in just five clicks of the mouse by using Synaptic (for example).
PCLinuxOS comes with about 1080 packages installed from the distro, and an additional 3,600 packages available to install in just a few clicks.
A Debian-based distro has about 16,000 packages available to install with just a few clicks.