Red Hat touts desktop Linux for enterprise users (Register) [LWN.net]

This Register article looks at Red Hat's plans to build out a growing portfolio of enterprise products with a desktop Linux offering targeted at business users. "Red Hat's desktop offering is expected next year and the company is considering subscription-based pricing. News of the launch comes after Red Hat launched Advanced Server, Content and Collaboration Management, and Database products for corporates and small and medium sized businesses (SMBs)."

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Red Hat touts desktop Linux for enterprise users (Register)

Posted Aug 30, 2002 21:31 UTC (Fri) by rjamestaylor (guest, #339) [Link]

This is not the right place for this, but I am extremely disappointed with Linux on the desktop for enterprise users right now. All I wanted to do was to be able to browse the network for shared drives in a way that novice users could do so and do the equivelent of "mapping" the drives to to their system. We have Linux file servers (running samba), Linux firewall/email/webmail, Linux application servers on the Internet but I can't bring Linux to the desktop until I can easily share files on the network. I tried doing this with RH 7.3 running KDE. Using protocol 'lan:/' doesn't work, but 'rlan:/' entered into Konquereror shows me the "network neighborhood". Then I switcht to 'smb:/' to browse the shares.

Sorry, but there is no way a sales person, customer service person or company exec will even try to remember 'rlan:/' then 'smb:/' ...

Linux is in our enterprise, just not visibly, yet. (I'm open to solutions, though).

Exploring the Lan through Konqueror

Posted Aug 31, 2002 1:57 UTC (Sat) by ecureuil (subscriber, #3507) [Link]

I don't know which version of KDE you use but with KDE 3.0.3, you can enable the supplementary toolbar in Konqueror and get an extra viewer with an option to browse the lan (so no more need to type lan:/). If you want to make the things even easier for users you can put on their desktop an icon which open a tailored view of the remote computer with the appropriate directory (it is quite easy with dcop, the scripting engine of KDE).
For a small lan, the kio fish is very nice, you can access another computer through ssh and drag and drop files between views of Konqueror (no need to configure smb or ntfs or to remember the syntax of scp). That's what I use and I find it very practical.
There is also a very nice utility in KDE 3.0.3 called kpf to share files over the internet that you should try.
So I agree that KDE is by certain ways not ready for the corporate desktop but for Lan, the desktop is quite ready.
I do agree with you that the ui for these features is far from perfect and could be more intuitive. There is also a lack of documentation. But these technologies are quite new in the KDE project so they can certainly evolve to be more easy to use for the average user and better documented. The KDE project is always looking for new people ready to work on the ui or the documentation, so if you want to give a hand you'll be certainly most welcome.
Ecureuil

Red Hat touts desktop Linux for enterprise users (Register)

Posted Aug 31, 2002 10:53 UTC (Sat) by Peter (guest, #1127) [Link]

I can't bring Linux to the desktop until I can easily share files on the network.

You've got smarter users than I do. Verrrrrry few of my users have the ability to browse the network neighborhood. They just call up and complain that "I can't see the N drive." Then one of us goes and maps the N drive for them.

There are many things that limit the extent to which I can roll out Linux on the desktop here, but the lack of a GUI NetBIOS browse client ain't one of them. (: