Deploying Linux on the Desktop [LWN.net]

From:		Paul Sheer <psheer@icon.co.za>
To:		letters@lwn.net, psheer@icon.co.za
Subject:		Deploying Linux on the Desktop
Date:		Sat, 19 Apr 2003 15:49:42 +0200

Deploying Linux on the Desktop
------------------------------

This is a discussion to try explain some of the deficiencies
in Linux desktops that make it difficult to deploy to mass end
users. It's intended for sysadmins who are trying to install
Linux for users familiar only with Windows, and for developers
who are designing user interfaces.

I recently had a dinner conversation with Jon "Maddog" Hall,
who insisted that it was feasible to deploy Linux in a typical
end user environment as a replacement to Windows. I think he
presents the opinion of most Linux enthusiasts: most such
people believe that performing such a deployment is feasible
and that it is really managers who are stalling the migration
process only out of dogma.

Now there is only one group of individuals that can say for
certain whether such a deployment is possible. This group are
the end user supporters that have actually tried to do such
deployments. We should look at their experiences for
understanding. On the other hand, thought experiments that use
software feature counts as input are theoretical and
inconclusive.

Small businesses (10-50 employees) are the target market here.
This is the bulk of most economies. Most such discussions
ought to clarify that the large cubical farms of Dilbert are
actually a rare minority and not worth consideration at this
time.

Here is a list of problems and experiences:

1. Manager: "I tried to buy a cinema ticket on this web site
with my credit card and it didn't work. My other Internet
purchases work fine, what's wrong with this site?" I
discovered that the problem was some incompatible JavaScript
that only IE could handle. I found that he could use Konqueror
on that site. He started using Konqueror, but certain sites
only worked with Mozilla, and the time fiddling trying to get
things working was starting to escalate. This irritated the
manager who then decided that Linux was not for him, and that
he would rather continue with Windows even if he had to reboot
twice a day, etc.

2. How do I save to my CD-Writer? On Windows, I believe this
is merely a drag and drop operation --- all writing is handled
transparently. On Linux we have several comprehensive
interfaces with an enormous range of options. Even if I could
get an average user to remember the sequence of steps needed
to create a working CDROM, they would be convinced that
something was wrong with "Linux" because of the large number
of steps necessary.

3. Word document formats. Word documents load perfectly under
OpenOffice. But that's theory talking again. In practice, if
someone emails me a complex 50 page document, a secretary
cannot load it with OpenOffice, make a few changes, save it
again in Word format, and email back and expect all formatting
to be preserved. Most users are impressed by OpenOffice's
ability to handle Word documents... until the day comes when
they have to spend hours fiddling with the paragraph spacing,
margins, and page breaks --- all to get a once perfect
document looking the way it already looked under Word.

4. "A:" Drives. It took the average Windows user weeks to get
used the the abstraction that an "A:" represents a floppy
drive and a "C:" represented an internal drive. From file
managers in Windows, it is universal and trivial to save a
file to floppy. Many secretaries (who should be using SMB or
email) still insist on exchanging files by floppy disk. On
Linux, there are those extra few clicks that frustrate such
users and make them think there is something wrong with Linux.
Even the fact that "A:" might be called a different thing
under Linux makes them think that there is something wrong
with Linux.

5. Excel spread sheets / PowerPoint presentations / Drawing
Programs. There are many file formats that are problematic.
Moreover, the Linux equivalents of such programs are never
easier to use than the Windows ones. Also, in each case there
is some additional complexity when trying to include one kind
of document inside another kind. The user can easily be shown
how to do it, but they will not remember it when they have to
do it again next week. This will frustrate them.

6. Scanning: see point 2. Windows has several idiot proof
single click scanning programs. Even if you totally botch it,
you still get a 30 Meg A4 TIFF file that you can email to your
granddaughter.

7. Hardware. Every office has at least one piece of hardware
that you are going to need to replace. Finding replacements is
time-consuming. Even to establish what software within that
Linux distribution is responsible for the deficiency, is a
massive problem for any small business.

On Linux, *almost* everything works fine. On Linux almost
*nothing* takes less clicks or is easier than Windows.

Users just want things to be the same as they are used to. Any
change is difficult for them to master and wastes precious
office hours.

Unless Linux dsitributions can come up with a desktop that is
click-for-click the same to operate as Windows, there is no
chance of migration.

Here are some axioms for developers and people who create
Linux distributions:

0. Any computer experience that is not *even* *easier* to use
than Windows will not be able to compete. All other reasons to
switch to Linux are precluded by other solutions that the vast
Windows development community is constantly inventing.

1. An extra configuration parameter is a poor excuse for not
thinking about what the default SHOULD be. Example:
application fonts being too small at 1280x1024. There should
be no setting to change the application font --- the most
readable font should be the default.

2. If a user EVER has to type any command at a shell prompt,
then the operating system is broken. Example: when do you have
to supply DOS commands under Windows or MACs?

3. If it takes one more click than on Windows, then you might
as well not have that feature because Windows users are not
going to remember the steps to carry out.

4. Desktops are confusing to users. The more lights and
buttons, the more difficult it is to remember what to click
on. 90% of buttons under KDE/Gnome will never get selected. If
you have more options than Windows, then users will get
confused.

5. End users of Windows are FAR less intelligent than you
might expect. It's EXTREMELY difficult for them to remember
even how to select bold fonts under a word processor. You will
probably have to train a person for two hours just to show
them how to do headings, bold, and italic under Word. A week
later they will have forgotten unless they are pressured with
constant repetition.

6. Most people are not interested in playing MP3 files.

7. Almost no people anywhere are interested in authoring their
own raster images.

8. A GUI that does not factor in the intelligence of the
end-user is useless. The intelligence of the developer is
vastly superior to that of the end-user. This gap has been
underestimated by all software vendors except Microsoft.

-paul

Postscript: I suspect that people are going to be offended by
my insistence that end-users are near-retarded. To be offended
by an undeniable fact is stupidity in of itself. Developers
tend to assume a tremendous amount --- just to be able to
understand the concept of abstracting a problem into a
sequence of steps requires tremendous genius (by comparison to
the average person). Such genius should be normal. In fact it
is rare --- there are very few software developers compared to
clerks, salesmen, and cleaners. The intelligence to view a
computer screen (that is essentially inoperative) and surmise
that its pictures are in fact control switches, requires a
leap of faith which an unintelligent person is going to
require much time and training to make. The average desktop
interface has thousands of lines and glyphs. Making sense of
them is extremely complex for most people. DO NOT assume that
because all-the-people-you-know are able to fiddle to get
something to work that the majority fit that same category. If
you really want to understand the end-user then go take a
training course that introduces first time users to MSWord.

(Log in to post comments)

Half of your objections are:

Posted Apr 24, 2003 17:16 UTC (Thu) by ericbr (guest, #5904) [Link]

One of the big reasons that Microsoft Word was able to capture so much marketshare from WordPerfect is that Microsoft Word could read, edit, and write WordPerfect documents without changing the formatting. In fact, Microsoft Word did a better job of reading WordPerfect 5.1 for DOS documents than WordPerfect 6.0 for Windows.

As one of the authors of that conversion program, I can assure you that it was not trivial, and required a number of changes in Microsoft Word.

I can also assure you that we had *lots* of complaints about bad conversion, and that businesses (especially lawyers) are NOT willing to put up with bad conversions. THEY WILL NOT DO IT. If you can't convert documents pixel-perfect, many businesses will not change over.

Get used to it. It's called the real world.

Now, if you can find a team of developers to spend the 2+ years that it takes to do pixel-perfect conversions, you can win big.

But you have to pay attention to your users, and not to your philosophy.

Half of your objections are:

Posted Apr 25, 2003 3:40 UTC (Fri) by Baylink (guest, #755) [Link]

So use Microsoft Office. Codeweavers will be happy to let you.

But that doesn't speak to the original poster's comments.

And I'd like to.

But my wrists won't let me. Tomorrow.

But floppies are obvious to use (:-)

Posted Apr 24, 2003 11:11 UTC (Thu) by ayeomans (subscriber, #1848) [Link]

In Word to save a file on the hard disk you click the floppy icon. To save to floppy you click File -> Save As.
Nice and obvious!

Deploying Linux on the Desktop

Posted Apr 24, 2003 7:50 UTC (Thu) by jmorris42 (subscriber, #2203) [Link]

Ok, I'm going to be an idiot and feed the troll. Think I'm being a little hard on this guy and I should respect differing opinions? I'd have agreed right up to here:

> Unless Linux distributions can come up with a desktop that is
> click-for-click the same to operate as Windows, there is no
> chance of migration.

Yea, right. By this pinheaded logic nobody would have ever migrated to Windows 95 from 3.1.... or from 9x to XP. Hell, nobody would have migrated to PCs from dumb terminals. Nothing would ever change anywhere.

Ok, with the central thesis demolished, I am going to take on the individual points.

> Small businesses (10-50 employees) are the target market here.
> This is the bulk of most economies. Most such discussions
> ought to clarify that the large cubical farms of Dilbert are
> actually a rare minority and not worth consideration at this
> time.

While there might be 50 mom & pops per cubefarm, those cubes represent a LOT of seats and they often represent the ideal workers to migrate. They often use a handful of specialized apps and a perhaps a few things like a email client, work processor and web browser. More importantly such sites are usually professionally admined and even if they run Windows it is so locked down as to be all but unrecognizable. And getting a few of those sites gains a lot of new people who will know what Linux is and perhaps not be afraid of it in the future. But forget them for now, lets take your bait and proceed, dealing with the smaller sites.

> 1. I tried to buy a cinema ticket on this web site
> with my credit card and it didn't work.

This one IS a problem, but it gets better every week as more sites get lizard friendly. If the user has a -business- reason to be dealing with a diverse set of websites they might not be a good candidate this year. But if they are bitchin about not being able to screw around, lart em!

> 2. How do I save to my CD-Writer?

I don't know about you, but I launch Gnome Toaster and drag & drop files.

> 3. Word document formats.

This may or may not be a problem. Once you move to OO you should only be dealing with legacy files and files from outside the organization. A large dataset in an unstable format like Word would be a real problem... but it is already a problem waiting to happen with the next version of Word. Someone who deals with complex Word documents from outside and needs to exchange them back and forth needs to remain on Word. Crossover Office or VMWare will allow them to retain compatibility with the outside world and still be full participants on the new inhouse net.

> 4. "A:" Drives.

Don't try to hammer Linux into the dead world of Windows/DOS. Take the damned floppies out of the end user workstations. Have them store everything on the network like they should be doing anyway. (Most of ours still have the floppy but nobody uses them anymore.)

> 5. Excel spread sheets / PowerPoint presentations / Drawing
> Programs.

I'm told that Excel has a few advantages with a few high end features over OO/Gnumeric. Not being a hardcore spreadsheet jock I am not going to put foot in mouth and say one way or the other. But I doubt many people in a 10-50 shop use those features. If your particular situation is an exception, perhaps a bunch of accounting weenies, see the note above about Word and Crossover Office.

> 6. Scanning

Yes, this can be a problem. There are some scanners that work very good though. Buy accordingly. And if you have a real art department, buy them Macs. Right tool for the job and all.

> 7. Hardware

And this is different from Windows how? Guess you have been lucky and never had to toss hardware that had support dropped between versions of Windows when either the vendor or MS decided it wasn't worth supporting. Watched a nice Orchid video card do in the junk bin when W95 came out and I delayed the upgrade for months until my tape controller was finally supported. I'm told the pattern continues but I don't do Windows anymore so I don't have any more recent war stories.

> Users just want things to be the same as they are used to. Any
> change is difficult for them to master and wastes precious
> office hours.

I sorta dealt with this defective thinking above, but it needs clarifying. Users will resist change, but will come around if there are BENEFITS to the change. OF course they will rightly resist if things are worse! But if after a month or two people notice that everything is actually working, nobody is having downtime and they find a few things they actually like better, the grumbling will die down and eventually they will admit that they like it.

I had a big advantage when I did my conversion. Everyone had been using SCO & dumb terminals except for a half dozen or so who had got some Windows 3.1 a year or so back when I got to launch a mass migration to RedHat 6.2 desktops. But people adapted and now like the single sign on model. They like that a workstation can fail and they can just go sit at another one until I get em swapped out and they won't lose anything. They know about viruses from their machines at home, but we have never had one here. Of course since most of their work is still done in a terminal emulator talking to the same SCO app running on iBCS probably helped the migration since they still basically work the same, only on a big monitor and a copy of Netscape/Moz on screen with it. :)

And finally, I can't forget those supposed axioms...

> 0. Any computer experience that is not *even* *easier* to use
> than Windows will not be able to compete.

That isn't exactly hard you do realize. A properly admined Linux site should have the tasks that people need to accomplish made simple. You do know that the admin can customize the default desktop and every other default option. The apps they need should be on the panel or desktop. Printers should be pre-configured. Etc. Everything should just WORK. And it does if you take the time to do it right.

> 1. An extra configuration parameter is a poor excuse for not
> thinking about what the default SHOULD be. Example:
> application fonts being too small at 1280x1024. There should
> be no setting to change the application font --- the most
> readable font should be the default.

You must not actually USE windows. We got some new laptops (sweet Thinkpads) preloaded (natch) with the W2K bug. For now I left Windows in a small partition to allow easy DVD playpack for their users. The IBM preload Windows didn't even default to the right fonts for the 1600x1200 LCD.

> 2. If a user EVER has to type any command at a shell prompt,
> then the operating system is broken.

Why? Admitted that lusers should be protected from bash, but many of our users have been known to use command line tools. But again, perhaps we are just wierd SCO expats because we still have diehard VI users outside the IT dept. And I guess you have never met a Windows user who knew about tracert and ping? Or still boots to DOS mode to play their collection of older games?

> 3, 4,5 & 8 all together they are just different restatings that users
> are dumber than turnips and therefore must use Windows.

I dunno about that, I always thought there was wisdom in "If he is an idiot, I send 'em to the Mac store" personally. But really, users aren't quite that dumb. Set it up so they can do their jobs quickly and they will adapt.

> 6. Most people are not interested in playing MP3 files.

You don't get out much do you. Everyone and their grandmother is downloading MP3 files these days. But that has nothing to do with a business unless you are in the music/multimedia field. You don't want people running P2P apps on the office LAN these days.

> 7. Almost no people anywhere are interested in authoring their
> own raster images.

Perhaps, it varies by the crowd you hang out with I guess. I just happen to know two Corel Draw fanatics who work at different places. One has a copy of Corel Draw for Linux, the other uses Win. Which points up a more general problem with your piece. It assumes that your small dataset can be generalized into sweeping statements about the world in general.

I'd never make the claim that ALL desktops in EVERY organization should convert to Linux, Mac or Windows. But running Windows by default, often because no thought was ever even given to the question was always daft and actually becoming dangerous to an organizations health, as Microsoft tries to drive their revenue numbers ever higher by mining the existing base harder now that they can no longer grow the market. (Because they are a monopoly in a market that is no longer adding new seats by leaps and bounds.)

Most business PCs are nothing like the home PCs you seem to confuse them with and SHOULD be even less like them.

So here is my advice, remember what free advice is worth. :)

PCs in the workplace pretty much divide into two groups. Task workstations and more "PC" like machines used by decision makers, some creative types, etc. The task machines (data entry, point of sale, secretaries, running the inhouse custom app, etc.) get judged by whether the needed apps are available and can be whipped into shape so that they work as well or better than what they are replacing. The more PC like folks who need to run a wild variety of software should probably get to pick their platform. But if the set of apps is smaller they might be candidates to join the Linux cluster, perhaps with Crossover Office or VMWare filling in a hole until the last app or two is replacable.

And finally, if you have made a rational business decision to migrate and you have a few malcontents you can just get blunt. Throw out a memo like this:

To :Staff
From :BOFH & the pointy haired boss
Subject : The Linux migration

It comes to our attention that there is some very vocal opposition to our proposed migration away from Microsoft Windows+Office. Be advised that due to the current economic climate we have to make some hard choices. We can do one of the following:

1. Postpone all hardware/software purchases for a year or so and reevaluate the situation/hope the economy recovers. This will require some minor budget cuts in most departments to fund the high TCO (mostly overtime for IT) of maintaining Windows, especially on our aging hardware and with Windows 98 becoming unsupported in a couple of months.

2. Migrate our existing hardware (with a few spot upgrades in RAM, processor, etc) to Linux. If successful, after some pain in the first year as we migrate, our IT budget should decline, which will mean funds for other departments.

3. Buy new software and the new hardware needed to run it. This will
require a major outlay of cash. Headcount will be affected.

Deploying Linux on the Desktop

Posted Apr 24, 2003 12:14 UTC (Thu) by paulsheer (guest, #3925) [Link]

jmorris42: I read your reply in detail. It would sound logical and would
seem to make a lot of sense... *if* you had never actually tried to do an
installation at a company. AFTER you have actually tried to migrate over
a Unix-ignorant company from Windows desktops to Linux THEN you can come
and talk to me. My guess is that your expertese would be far too expensive
for a small business to afford as you would spend hundreds of hours
training and tweaking. If I'm wrong, then why don't you try it as a
business model for yourself? I know of several people who have, and they
are now back working at programming jobs.

You make my own point better than I do: a theoretical argument can
proove anything. Linux pundits everywhere need to ACTUALLY supervise
a migration and then come talk when they have no hair left to pull out.

Deploying Linux on the Desktop

Posted Apr 25, 2003 1:28 UTC (Fri) by tom_verbeure (guest, #5665) [Link]

> Ok, I'm going to be an idiot and feed the troll. Think I'm being a
> little hard on this guy and I should respect differing opinions?

I'm afraid that posting your message was a little hard on yourself.

You see, Paul's message was an honest report about his own experience about a specific case: converting a small company with ordinary users from Windows to Linux. He obviously spent quite a lot of time to argue his points and shares them with the other readers.

You're welcome to agree or disagree, but by starting to insult him as being 'a troll', you immediately lower yourself to level of a Slashdot A.C. ...

> Yea, right. By this pinheaded logic nobody would have ever migrated to
> Windows 95 from 3.1.... or from 9x to XP. Hell, nobody would have
> migrated to PCs from dumb terminals. Nothing would ever change
> anywhere.

Yes, there was quite a big difference between Win 3.1 and Win 95. That was 8 years ago: in those days, Linux for the desktop was not really on the table, so users had no choice anyway.

Going from 95 to 98 to XP was and is almost trivial. Except for some minor changes, most buttons have remained at the same position and work the same.

I personally find the difference between KDE (which I use daily) and Windows 2000 way bigger than between the latter and, say, Win 98. I guess that makes me a pinhead too.

> Ok, with the central thesis demolished, I am going to take on the
> individual points.

Your way of demolishing arguments is most impressive.

> While there might be 50 mom & pops per cubefarm, those cubes
> represent a LOT of seats and they often represent the ideal workers
> to migrate. They often use a handful of specialized apps and a perhaps
> a few things like a email client, work processor and web browser. More
> importantly such sites are usually professionally admined and even if
> they run Windows it is so locked down as to be all but unrecognizable.
> And getting a few of those sites gains a lot of new people who will know
> what Linux is and perhaps not be afraid of it in the future. But forget
> them for now, lets take your bait and proceed, dealing with the smaller
> sites.

1. If these desktops are almost unrecognizable in such a way that the user doesn't notice that the underlying operating system is Windows, this would also be the case if they were using Linux. It's much more likely that he'll say "hey, my new screen is faster and doesn't crash as much" rather than "This Linux OS is so much better than Windows".

2. Specialized applications for non-engineers are even less likely to have a Linux equivalent than standard office applications.

3. As Paul pointed out, if the word processor for Linux isn't fully 100% compatible with MS Word, you can forget it. There's so much interaction with the outside world in Word format, that anything less is a liability for the company.

Virtually the only place where Linux has had massive success at replacing Windows terminals for non-technical users, is for those cases where only ONE in-house developped application was running 100% of the time. Eg. Point-of-Sale systems, call center software, etc. For the users of these installations, they just see a screen and a keyboard. Wether or not the system is running Linux or Windows is pretty much irrelevant.

> This one IS a problem, but it gets better every week as more sites get
> lizard friendly. If the user has a -business- reason to be dealing with
> a diverse set of websites they might not be a good candidate this year.
> But if they are bitchin about not being able to screw around, lart em!

A very mature remark indeed.

Let's face it: most administrative administrators, HR clerks or account clerks who are using Windows to run standard office applications, are going to want to go on-line once in a while to buy a plane ticket or order a book at Amazon.com. It's what most companies describe in their IT policy as 'acceptable occasional personal use of their Internet infrastructure'.
And if you are going treat your users like the BOFH that you seem to be, their opinion of Linux will certainly skyrocket.

> This may or may not be a problem. Once you move to OO you should only
> be dealing with legacy files and files from outside the organization.

Fortunately, very few companies have to deal with legacy files and files from outside organizations, right?

> A large dataset in an unstable format like Word would be a real
> problem... but it is already a problem waiting to happen with the next
> version of Word.

Why is this a problem? Millions of companies and public administrations don't seem to be bothered by it.

Newer version of MS Word are always able to read older version without a problem. Most companies switch to the latest version of Office quickly. But even that is not really necessary: the word format hasn't changed for the last 6 years (since Word '97).
Upgrading is expensive, of course, and that's why I *personally* use Abi Word. It *is* a shame that MS Word doesn't stick to an open format and that this allows them to squeeze money out of corporations, I'm not arguing that. But backward compatibility is simply not 'a problem' as you try us to believe.

> Someone who deals with complex Word documents from
> outside and needs to exchange them back and forth needs to remain on
> Word. Crossover Office or VMWare will allow them to retain compatibility
> with the outside world

VMWare will certainly make it easier for the ordinary user: instead of not having to know what a desktop actually is, now they'll have to deal with 2 different ones...

(Again, personally, I *love* VMWare. But does it make life easier for Aunt Tillie? Come on...)

I haven't used Crossover Office, so I can't really judge. Will it immediately work once a new version of MS Word is released?

> ... and still be full participants on the new inhouse net.

An ordinary user doesn't even know what an inhouse net is. All he wants to do is edit his texts, surf on the web and save his files. Wether or not that's on a network or on local disk is irrelevant for him.

How will the use of Linux make him more of a participant to the net? What will he be able to do that he can't do today?

> Don't try to hammer Linux into the dead world of Windows/DOS. Take the
> damned floppies out of the end user workstations. Have them store
> everything on the network like they should be doing anyway. (Most
> of ours still have the floppy but nobody uses them anymore.)

You're so blind.
The father of my friend used to print out individual words with MS Word and glue them on to a previously printed paper to correct spelling mistakes. He spoke 11 languages including Sanskrit and Ancient Greek. I'd be the last one to call him 'stupid'. But he was used to work with a typewriter and it suited him fine.
My sister has a masters degree in psychology. She's definitely not stupid, but still uses floppies even though they *have* a network at work.
Non-technical people couldn't care less about the most efficient way to do something. They are not interested, they just want to keep on doing what works for them.

> I'm told that Excel has a few advantages with a few high end features
> over OO/Gnumeric. Not being a hardcore spreadsheet jock I am not going
> to put foot in mouth and say one way or the other. But I doubt many
> people in a 10-50 shop use those features.

I use very simple features in Excel at work and use Gnumeric at home. Excel outshines Gnumeric in every possible way, even for simple features. It's in the small details: the flexibility in selecting cells, the ease of configuration a print preview etc.
Gnumeric *IS* getting better, but if even a seasoned computer user as me gets annoyed by the small differences (and works around it), it must be a major hurdle for our ordinary user.

For presentation software the situation is 10 times worse. Powerpoint simply blows all Linux equivalents out of the water.

Word-Excel-Powerpoint: no sales or marketing guy can do without it and no company can do without S&M guys. Don't even think about having them convert to lesser office tools.

> If your particular situation is an exception, perhaps a bunch of
> accounting weenies, see the note above about Word and Crossover Office.

Let's call them 'weenies': another mature way to go to improve the image of Linux.

> There are some scanners that work very good though. Buy accordingly.
> And if you have a real art department, buy them Macs. Right tool for the
> job and all.

'If you want to switch, you'll have to buy something new'. Cash strapped companies (the ones with the biggest incentive to switch) are going to love this argument.

> And this is different from Windows how?

The difference is that they are already using Windows.

> Watched a nice Orchid video card do in the junk bin when W95 came out
> and I delayed the upgrade for months until my tape controller was
> finally supported. I'm told the pattern continues but I don't do Windows
> anymore so I don't have any more recent war stories.

Interesting that you again have to go back 8 years ago for the 3.11 to 95 switch. The Windows drivers are rather stable these days and recent software keeps on working on Win98 (and probably Win95 too).

> I sorta dealt with this defective thinking above, but it needs
> clarifying. Users will resist change, but will come around if there
> are BENEFITS to the change. OF course they will rightly resist if
> things are worse! But if after a month or two people notice that
> everything is actually working, nobody is having downtime and they find
> a few things they actually like better, the grumbling will die down
> and eventually they will admit that they like it.

I'll choose Unix over Windows any day, because I love the power of the command line and a Perl or Python script to do things exactly the way I want. And I really like the stability of Linux or Solaris.

But as much as I was hoping the Windows 2000 would be an unstable disaster... that's just not the case. It crashes on me maybe once a month (and my PC is alwasy on.) That's worse than my Solaris machine, but it's not the end of the world and it won't make me give up MS Office. Downtime at work is much more related to server downtime (all running Solaris), due to upgrades, hardware failure etc.
It makes perfect sense to switch your whole server infrastructure to Linux, but that won't really change the desktop experience of an ordinary user.

> I had a big advantage when I did my conversion. Everyone had been
> using SCO & dumb terminals except for a half dozen or so who had got
> some Windows 3.1 a year or so back when I got to launch a mass
> migration to RedHat 6.2 desktops. But people adapted and now like the
> single sign on model. They like that a workstation can fail and they can
> just go sit at another one until I get em swapped out and they won't
> lose anything. They know about viruses from their machines at home, but
> we have never had one here. Of course since most of their work is still
> done in a terminal emulator talking to the same SCO app running on iBCS
> probably helped the migration since they still basically work the same,
> only on a big monitor and a copy of Netscape/Moz on screen with it. :)

You see, you have zilch experience with the situation that Paul was describing: those SCO terminals were running one particular application anyway (certainly not MS Word), so the users didn't care what the underlying system was.
And those W3.1 computers were probably to slow to run that latest Office applications anyway.

You've just proven the point that Paul made in his reply: you have no idea what he was talking about.

> Why? Admitted that lusers should be protected from bash, but many of our
> users have been known to use command line tools. But again, perhaps we
> are just wierd SCO expats because we still have diehard VI users outside
> the IT dept. And I guess you have never met a Windows user who knew
> about tracert and ping?

I have met some, yes. But it certainly wasn't my sister, secretary or Aunt Tillie. People running ping or tracert are without any doubt in the upper 5% percentile of the population when it comes to computer savvyness.

> Perhaps, it varies by the crowd you hang out with I guess. I just happen
> to know two Corel Draw fanatics who work at different places. One has a
> copy of Corel Draw for Linux, the other uses Win. Which points up a more
> general problem with your piece. It assumes that your small dataset can
> be generalized into sweeping statements about the world in general.

Paul was talking about a specific but very common case: an company with ordinary, non-technical users using the standard applications.

Now there's this guy working at a company that switched from SCO to Linux and talking about a friend using Corel Draw for Linux... blaming the other for using a small dataset. I find this rather amusing. :-)

Best Regards,
Tom