Linux as an office desktop

Here's an article from two years ago:

http://www.newsforge.com/article.pl?.../08/10/1441239

Notice that they are talking about secretaries running KDE and not caring.
One secretary is already more familiar with it than she is with Windows at
home.

If this could be done two years ago, it can still be done now. It's just a
matter of IT managers getting enlightened. And IT staff getting over their
fear of new things.

Yousuf Khan

On Sun, 26 Oct 2003 15:33:45 GMT, "Yousuf Khan"
wrote:
If this could be done two years ago, it can still be done now. It's just a
matter of IT managers getting enlightened. And IT staff getting over their
fear of new things.

penguin killer mode
An a matter of the darn thing working out of the box with the plethora
of USB ADSL modems as the norm device... and a matter of the thing
working out of the box supporting the most common onboard IDE RAID
solutions that is a basic requirement for corporate data nowadays
(given the declining HDD reliability)...
/penguin killer mode

If anybody asks, I've been trying to make a working Debian desktop...
I'm still using W2K.

--
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On Sun, 26 Oct 2003 22:56:28 GMT,
(The little lost angel) wrote:

On Sun, 26 Oct 2003 15:33:45 GMT, "Yousuf Khan"
m wrote:
If this could be done two years ago, it can still be done now. It's just a
matter of IT managers getting enlightened. And IT staff getting over their
fear of new things.

penguin killer mode
An a matter of the darn thing working out of the box with the plethora
of USB ADSL modems as the norm device... and a matter of the thing
working out of the box supporting the most common onboard IDE RAID
solutions that is a basic requirement for corporate data nowadays
(given the declining HDD reliability)...
/penguin killer mode

If anybody asks, I've been trying to make a working Debian desktop...
I'm still using W2K.

some ****ty equipment you are using huh?
IDE RAID is only good for boosting sequential transfers, a laugh at
best and not something that benefits data integrety as IDE almost
certainly means RAID level 0.
And USB ADSL modems? really?

I'd say you could get this thing going if you used a router and a real
RAID solulion = scsi that is...
but probably you don't even need RAID right?

and debian working out of the box??? get a grip buddy! debian will not
work out of the box that's the point with it, as it is with slackware.

On Sun, 26 Oct 2003 15:33:45 GMT, "Yousuf Khan"
wrote:
Here's an article from two years ago:

http://www.newsforge.com/article.pl?.../08/10/1441239

Notice that they are talking about secretaries running KDE and not caring.
One secretary is already more familiar with it than she is with Windows at
home.

If this could be done two years ago, it can still be done now. It's just a
matter of IT managers getting enlightened. And IT staff getting over their
fear of new things.

I hate to say it, but I think that a lot of it is IT staff getting
over their rather condescending attitude that most end users are
complete morons. I've worked in a number of different IT departments
and dealt with others, and often you get the same sort of story, that
users will simply never be able to figure anything out without a
ridiculous amount of hand holding. This sort of turns into an almost
self-fulfilling prophesy, where the IT staff never tries to teach
users anything because they don't think users will learn, and as such,
users never learn anything and never try to pick up new things on
their own.

Personally I found that when doing desktop support, if you try to give
even just a simple and slightly dumbed-down explanation to what was
going on (ideally referencing it to something the users already
understand), nearly everyone can pick up new things with little
trouble at all.

I firmly believe that 95%+ of desktop users could switch to Linux at
work with little to no real interruption at all. Sure, it might take
them a few minutes to figure out where things have moved to, but most
things in Linux (particularly in KDE) these days are sufficiently
close that they could figure it out without any hand holding.

-------------
Tony Hill
hilla underscore 20 at yahoo dot ca

"Tony Hill" wrote in message
.com...
If this could be done two years ago, it can still be done now. It's just
a
matter of IT managers getting enlightened. And IT staff getting over
their
fear of new things.

I hate to say it, but I think that a lot of it is IT staff getting
over their rather condescending attitude that most end users are
complete morons. I've worked in a number of different IT departments
and dealt with others, and often you get the same sort of story, that
users will simply never be able to figure anything out without a
ridiculous amount of hand holding. This sort of turns into an almost
self-fulfilling prophesy, where the IT staff never tries to teach
users anything because they don't think users will learn, and as such,
users never learn anything and never try to pick up new things on
their own.

That's exactly what I think too. Having been in desktop support at several
points in my career too, I can understand this fear of the end-users being
morons, but it mustn't completely overrule progress. Otherwise you'll remain
bogged down in your old ways wishing there was a better way of doing things.
I mean if you never take a chance with something new, the exact solution you
were seeking all of this time may have been sitting right there under your
nose and you never knew about it.

Personally I found that when doing desktop support, if you try to give
even just a simple and slightly dumbed-down explanation to what was
going on (ideally referencing it to something the users already
understand), nearly everyone can pick up new things with little
trouble at all.

Confusion can be avoided within end-users by refraining from using advanced
technical terms that they don't understand. But not avoiding all technical
terms because they'll usually understand commonly known technical terms such
as RAM, CPU, network card, etc.

One of my most interesting education projects involved me taking a 40 year
old former auto mechanic and turning him into a Solaris Unix system
administrator! It took a few months but it was accomplished successfully,
he's pretty good now. Training users on desktop systems shouldn't be nearly
so difficult.

I firmly believe that 95%+ of desktop users could switch to Linux at
work with little to no real interruption at all. Sure, it might take
them a few minutes to figure out where things have moved to, but most
things in Linux (particularly in KDE) these days are sufficiently
close that they could figure it out without any hand holding.

I mean if users could switch from the Windows 95 desktop to the Windows 98,
and then to the Windows 2000, and now to the Windows XP, where they changed
a lot of locations of things, they can learn KDE or Gnome.

Yousuf Khan

"The little lost angel" wrote in
message ...
On Sun, 26 Oct 2003 15:33:45 GMT, "Yousuf Khan"
wrote:
If this could be done two years ago, it can still be done now. It's just
a
matter of IT managers getting enlightened. And IT staff getting over
their
fear of new things.

penguin killer mode
An a matter of the darn thing working out of the box with the plethora
of USB ADSL modems as the norm device...

Since when corpporations use ADSL connections for each desktop???

and a matter of the thing
working out of the box supporting the most common onboard IDE RAID
solutions that is a basic requirement for corporate data nowadays
(given the declining HDD reliability)...
/penguin killer mode


Poor anti-penguin arguments, I'd say...

If anybody asks, I've been trying to make a working Debian desktop...
I'm still using W2K.

Try something easier to setup. And use recent version. HDD raid works. With
regard of USB ADSL modems i stronly prefer ethernet ones -- connect one to
some HD-less old 486 with just one floppy, download floppyfw from
http://www.zelow.no/floppyfw/ (it's Linux, too) and go.

rgds
Sebastian

--
Sebastian Kaliszewski
--
"Never underestimate the power of human stupidity" - from Notebooks of L.L.

The little lost angel wrote:

On Sun, 26 Oct 2003 15:33:45 GMT, "Yousuf Khan"
wrote:
If this could be done two years ago, it can still be done now. It's just a
matter of IT managers getting enlightened. And IT staff getting over their
fear of new things.

penguin killer mode
An a matter of the darn thing working out of the box with the plethora
of USB ADSL modems as the norm device...

What office uses these on each system?


and a matter of the thing
working out of the box supporting the most common onboard IDE RAID
solutions that is a basic requirement for corporate data nowadays
(given the declining HDD reliability)...

What distro are you using?



If anybody asks, I've been trying to make a working Debian desktop...
I'm still using W2K.


Why use Debian as a newbie? I've been using linux for years and still use
Mandrake as I'm not THAT into configuring an OS myself.

--

Stacey, who setup a box as a desktop machine in an afternoon with
Mandrake.

Tony Hill wrote:

and never try to pick up new things on
their own.



I think the problem is 99% of people are just plain lazy. I sold my boss a
system (he's computer illiterate) and he's too lazy to even figure out how
to use the "favorites" folder but bitches about surfing taking forever to
get "back" to where he was last time and wants me to "fix it"!
--

Stacey

On Mon, 27 Oct 2003 07:33:38 +0100, Loke [baijxz at mailme dot
wrote:

some ****ty equipment you are using huh?
IDE RAID is only good for boosting sequential transfers, a laugh at
best and not something that benefits data integrety as IDE almost
certainly means RAID level 0.

Running RAID 0 on IDE is pretty much suicidal in my opinion. No thank
you, my IDE RAID 1 has saved me at least once already.

And USB ADSL modems? really?

Ok ok, so it's not really THAT applicable in the corporate world, but
it's still a PITA.

I'd say you could get this thing going if you used a router and a real
RAID solulion = scsi that is...
but probably you don't even need RAID right?

I'm NOT going back to a non-RAID IDE config as far as I can help it.
And standalone Raid 0/1 cards are still more expensive than just
buying a board with the integrated IDE RAID controller.

I did get a router just to solve this problem... except Debian will
lose internet connectivity, some inability to resolve DNS every so
often while a W2K system connected to the same network/router would
still happily hum along. Yes, I did put the NS IP into
/etc/resolve.conf

But it's still a pain (though lesser) to use since I can't run X on
anything except VESA drivers, the new nVidia ones won't compile
despite my downloading of the 2.4.18 kernel source just for it.

Of course it can't extract binary versions from the nvidia server due
to the strange internet behaviour. At 60Hz refresh, it's making me
feel nauseous within a few minutes.

and debian working out of the box??? get a grip buddy! debian will not
work out of the box that's the point with it, as it is with slackware.

Heh, I know, but neither did Mandrake (didn't work with the RAID
controller or USB ADSL).

--
L.Angel: I'm looking for web design work.
If you need basic to med complexity webpages at affordable rates, email me
Standard HTML, SHTML, MySQL + PHP or ASP, Javascript.
If you really want, FrontPage & DreamWeaver too.
But keep in mind you pay extra bandwidth for their bloated code

On Mon, 27 Oct 2003 20:32:03 -0500, stacey wrote:

Why use Debian as a newbie? I've been using linux for years and still use
Mandrake as I'm not THAT into configuring an OS myself.

Well, probably because I'm trying a new career path admining a
webserver so either Debian or BSD was the choice (not solely my
decision). For that sole purpose it would had been fine,
apache/mysql/exim and all was easy. Even the IDE Raid could be hacked
together by figuring out the DMA(?) addresses of the 2 drives and
manually sticking it to lilo append for the kernel.

The problem came when I decided I should be using the OS on a regular
basis at home. Since I ought to get more familiar with it and I do
honestly want to get off Gate's wagon. Of course at home means I need
X, and I need ADSL.

--
L.Angel: I'm looking for web design work.
If you need basic to med complexity webpages at affordable rates, email me
Standard HTML, SHTML, MySQL + PHP or ASP, Javascript.
If you really want, FrontPage & DreamWeaver too.
But keep in mind you pay extra bandwidth for their bloated code