| |||||||||||||
Remote desktop vs. remote displayRemote desktop vs. remote displayPosted Feb 18, 2013 16:45 UTC (Mon) by Cyberax (✭ supporter ✭, #52523)In reply to: Remote desktop vs. remote display by anselm Parent article: LCA: The ways of Wayland
>I have a friend who owns a small residential seminar centre about 150 km from where I live. Her PC, which I set up for her more than five years ago, is used for the usual office-type tasks and is running Linux.
How about QuickBooks or TurboTax or something like it? Or maybe a couple of games?
> Please explain why it is impossible to get a modern Linux install to a point where »it won't be perfect, but it'll be good enough«.
In my experience EACH company has at least a couple pieces of infrastructure that are not supported under Linux. From softphones with T.38 fax sending to high-end printers with Windows-only configuration utilities. Or maybe that nice order-tracking system with WinCE-based wireless scanners. Or maybe that small Access database that tracks lab samples. Etc.
Seriously, start a company and try to offer migration services. You'll quickly see that the RealWorld(tm) is quite a bit different from "just use OpenOffice instead of MS Office".
What can be done? First, you need to start from a "known good" situation. Chromebooks offer a nice opportunity here - they work just fine, have a nice management infrastructure and are explicitly designed NOT to replicate all desktop tasks. So using Chromebooks to augment existing Windows-based infrastructure should be quite easy (we haven't tried it yet, to be honest). Then this platform might become attractive to third-party developers, so it can be slowly expanded into more general 'desktop' usage.
(Log in to post comments)
Remote desktop vs. remote display Posted Feb 18, 2013 17:38 UTC (Mon) by anselm (subscriber, #2796) [Link] How about QuickBooks or TurboTax or something like it? My friend's (external) accountant takes care of that. Or maybe a couple of games? We're talking »office PC«, remember? Here in Germany, you get to deduct the cost of your office PC from the taxes you pay for your company, but if you do so the tax office doesn't like you to play games on such a computer. Hence, no games. (My friend is not a computer-game person, anyway.) A lot of software is simply not available on Linux, a lot of hardware STILL doesn't work completely. A lot of that software is software you may not really need (as dskoll has aptly demonstrated) if you're willing to think outside the box. And for most categories of hardware there are specimens that are well-supported by Linux. Hence the problem reduces to one of getting the right hardware to begin with. Of course if you buy the el-cheapo-stuff-of-the-week and then expect it to work perfectly with Linux you may be in for a surprise every so often. And on the other hand, it isn't as if every piece of hardware worked perfectly with Windows all of the time, either. Seriously, start a company and try to offer migration services. It's funny, but the guys in the office next to ours (our sister company) are doing exactly that, among other things. AFAIK they're doing fine and I don't hear them complaining more than one would expect. I guess it helps if you're competent …
|
|||||||||||||