Linux desktops easier to install than expected
LAST WEEK, IBM released research which showed that Linux desktops were easier to implement than IT staff expected
That said, however, techies had to target the "right groups" of users, such as those who have moderate and predictable use of e-mail and office tools
From the detail of the report entitled, Linux on the Desktop: Lessons from Mainstream Business Adoption, conducted by Freeform Dynamics, data was gathered through an online survey of 1,275 I.T. professionals from the U.K., U.S., Canada, Australia, New Zealand and "a spread of other countries across Western Europe and the Nordics," we might presume the respondents were mainly white.
Those with experience of such migrations said that Linux on the desktop was best achieved when it was first targeted to groups of non-technical users.
"Some users care a great deal about their desktop computing environment and may be emotionally or practically wedded to Windows," said Dale Vile, research director, Freeform Dynamics. "The trick is to avoid getting distracted by these, and focus on the users for whom the PC on their desk is simply a tool to get their job done. Migrating a general professional user who only needs to access a couple of central systems, an email inbox and light word processing is pretty straightforward."
A summary of the findings can be found in this pdf. µ
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...only thing wrong with Linux is installing apps and stuff - yes, it may have a central add/remove software area, but most people nowadays just expect to go to a website, download an installer and double click it. Soon as this is implented and we don't have to go the demented terminal route, the better...
I won't even go into the inherent insecurity and problems of that approach, all I will say is: "Users in an enterprise have no business installing random apps on their computers willy-nilly."
Also, the method is implemented with most major distros, but few people use it because the package management GUI (yea, there is a gui nowadays) gets the job done faster, easier, safer.
"Soon as this is implented and we don't have to go the demented terminal route, the better..."
@red
Have you used any modern Linux distro? There's no need at all to go to command line for program installs except for some rare cases. And I'm sure those cases don't concern non-technical persons at all.
That central application install area makes it also possible to update those programs automatically, so people don't have to go to a website and check if there's new version available, download and click the install file. Those updates are available for all the installed programs - not just the OS components like in one of the other popular OS.
Red, I hope you realise that installing software from websites is inferior in all aspects to repositories. It is just an old habit of windows users, and will die out after a while.
Did IBM bother to try installing Linux on laptops? Let them try with ASUS and see how "easy" is to install modems and wi-fi...
It is no harder than install Windows.
IMHO it is easier since most complicated thing you'll do, is to install WiFi driver using NDIS wrapper (which comes with very intuitive nice GUI). You'll be done in less time than with installing ANY version of Windows.
On the other hand, you don't have to, as notebooks with preinstalled Linux available from big OEMs such Dell, HP and Lenovo.
In last decade of working in IT, i never seen Asus/Acer/Others business notebook in use.
With Windows you first have to go to bit-torrent and try to find non-malware copy (remember when you could actually trust pirated software?) Then hope that the basic version enables you to get to the interwebs to do gazillion security updates, that is, if the protection has been circumvented. Then you need to dig through your old DVDs for that pirated copy of Office and Photoshop, unzip them, and try to remember what special selection you needed to do to install them. In the unlikely case where you actually bought software, you need to dig out the license code from bottom of the junk drawer or old archived emails.
I swear, the only reason I run XP is because I got it on DVD from school for few bucks many years ago. Next time, I'm going with Linux.
You miss the point since we talking about businesses and they usually have good legal versions and large ones not using CD/DVD for installation.
I actually installed Mandriva on my Acer laptop and it went smoother than the equivalent Vista installation. If I can find a decent accounting programme to replace Quickbooks, I plan to move everything over to Linux exclusively.
Run Quickbooks in XP or (shudder) Vista in a virtual machine like virtualbox for instance. Easy Peasy. Then wait for some enterprising company to come up with a compatible Linux version.
As Roger mentioned you could use virtualbox to run a windows vm guest but you could also try using Wine which has decent success at running windows apps.
There are a couple of Linux alternatives that I found on Ubuntu which are "Gnome Office" (Has word processor, spreadsheets, diagram editor, database, image editor, vector drawing, financial accounting and project management tools).
There is also "Equonomize!" and from the description it says it is a personal account software.
Oh BTW I found this out by using the add/remove software and typed "accounting" ... heck of a lot quicker then using google and sifting through the pages of crap before I find what I want.
PS: Doesn't really matter what linux you use since most mature distributions (Red Hat, SuSe, Ubuntu, Mandrake, Debian, ...) will have these packages.
It isn't quickbooks for sure, but this does pretty good for at least some things/basic use.
http://www.gnucash.org/features.phtml
There needs to be a better one though.
I am sure you realize that websites like http://www.getdeb.net/ exist and that the centralized manager is more powerful anyway.
That said, the Windows way of doing things is a mess.
I installed Linux Mint 6 on my ASUS laptop (U5F series) within 10 minutes including Wifi and Flash support out of the box. So you have either bad luck on are not using the right Linux Distribution (which is a big deal).
It also becomes trivial when you buy stuff pre-installed from system76 or zareason IMO.