Remote desktop vs. remote display

Posted Feb 18, 2013 16:12 UTC (Mon) by anselm (subscriber, #2796)
In reply to: Remote desktop vs. remote display by Cyberax
Parent article: LCA: The ways of Wayland

The problem are not updates, but all kinds of small maintenance.

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. I see her once or twice a year, and among other things we usually spend an hour or so over coffee going over user questions and doing the type of »small maintenance« she can't do by herself. (She can, and does, install distribution security updates on her own.) Very occasionally I get a phone call if something goes wrong, but whatever it is is usually nothing to do with her computer – it is more likely to be an ISP outage of some sort or other.

There is no way whatsoever that this sort of arrangement would work with a Windows machine.

While with Windows you can get one of the MCSEs to setup something that almost works. It won't be perfect, but it'll be good enough.

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«. It is funny how many people are willing to cut Windows huge amounts of slack but will tolerate nothing short of absolute perfection when it comes to Linux.

Remote desktop vs. remote display

Posted Feb 18, 2013 16:45 UTC (Mon) by Cyberax (✭ supporter ✭, #52523) [Link] (1 responses)

>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«.
Because it is. A lot of software is simply not available on Linux, a lot of hardware STILL doesn't work completely.

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.

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 …