“There’s a strong argument to be made that all the pieces needed for an effective Linux desktop system for the enterprise now exist. Less clear, however, is whether a Linux vendor can collect and package those elements into something that’s ready—right out of the box—for the mainstream corporate desktop. This is what SuSE Linux Inc. set out to do with its SuSE Linux Office Desktop.” Read the article at eWeek.
Revisions Extend Linux’s Reach
About The Author
Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
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There’s a strong argument to be made that all the pieces needed for an effective Linux desktop system for the enterprise now exist.
The real question is, how much compatability does any particular enterprise need with Windows? Are they running a ‘Windows-only’ typ of ‘specialized’ app for which Linux has no equivalent for yet? (This is probably a much bigger possibility than on home desktops.) And if so, will it run under Wine? If not, then they could have a problem, especially if the app was an in-house custom written one, in which switching to Linux means it would have to be rewritten from the ground up.
I’ve been using Suse 8.1 at home now for about 3 weeks, and I have to say, I’ve been very, very impressed. The only hiccup I had was upgrading to Kde 3.1 (konqueror did not work if file manager mode. Let that be a leason: Ensure that the arts packages installed correctly!), but after a little reading in the mailing list, I fixed it. But that’s me. Normal, home, users are not going to go digging through a 200 message-a-day mailing list. I enjoy that kind of thing, my mother-in-law would not. Corparate desktops are a different ball of wax.
An article ( http://www.linux-mag.com/2002-11/kde_01.html ) that I read a few days ago really got me thinking: It may make more sence for buisnesses (some, not all. I don’t like to make blanket statements) to move to Linux than they think. The above article mentions some techniques to ease corporate desktop management using KDE. By setting up a file server and an admin box, you could control the look, feel, and behaviour of all you client PCs throughout a company. Change a setting on the admin box, and the changes casscade down to the client PCs.
It would be great to extend the authours ideas a bit further, by placing the users home dirs on the file server, and by syncing the users on all the client machines. That way, I could be built into the corporate desktop, log into any machine, and have my desktop look the same, and have access to all my files. I realize there may be more elegant solutions to this, but this is the idea that I had. I also realize the slow down that working over a network (especially over long distances) would have, but generalize with me, here.
I beileve that the authour of the article in question here provided a very fair review of Suse 8.1. It is by no means perfect. But no operating system is. His points about emulating Windows are valide. If your business absolutly needs a Windows program, either keep Windows around for that program, and use Linux for everything else (but that would be rather silly), or just don’t switch to Windows.
My wife works for a county court. They would be a perfect canadite for moving to Linux. Alot of thier sw is web-based (intranet), and what native sw they use has very good equivilants on Linux (OpenOffice…). My work, on the other hand, uses a custom CAD software (which I develop) that is based on Microstation. No Linux equivilant there… See, its a case by case deal, here.
“Along the same lines, SuSE could stand to clean up its application menus, which by default contain many items, most of which are not clearly named and some of which are repetitious in functions.”
True, but I think this writer is thinking like a home, or power user. From my experience, corporate users use very few programs, and typically, those are kept on the desktop. And by using sometype of advanced manangment technique, problems with the menus could be averted easily.
Just some random thoughts…