Re: January meeting

[Damion Yates <nospam [at] rd.bbc.co.uk>]

On Fri, 7 Jan 2000, Craig Andrews wrote:

> how about this for a small topic for discussion... How useful can Linux be,
> compared with Windoze, in an Office environment?

> I say this for a great many reasons...
>
> 1) Availability of software. Recently I was required to look for some sort
> of accounting package for my Linux box. I only found one of any use, but
> which I run in X-Term. Sure, you may pay a fortune for Windows stuff, but
> the company I work for paid £15.95 to buy me a ruler?!?

There is little or no good free s/w for Windows. There is so much free s/w
for UNIX that if I won the lottery tomorrow and retired (I'm 25 as of the
7th Jan) I am safe in the knowledge that I could d/l and install and play
with my system buying new HD's where needed until the day I die.

You found a tool you can use remotely, or from a psion/phone / nokia9110
communicator and you're complaining about what ?

I've recently paid for just about every available commercial game for Linux
available today. I still don't feel I've made up for the countless high
quality free games I've been able to play over the years on UNIX systems.

Plus Wine is running a great many Windows s/w these days.

> 2) Ease of use. Many people who I work with still only know as much as is
> absolutely necessary to run their PC's. To do something other than use a
> pre-configured spreadsheet or database, or type up anything other than the
> simplest document, they're stuck. Let's face it, EVERYONE who uses IT knows
> how to use Word, at least as far as to type a memo.

This is an odd point to be trying to make. Windows PC's scare people, I've
had to be called out to go and click on a persons scroll bar in progman.exe
because all her work icons had disappeared. Mac's are often a better option,
but both are new to an absolute beginner. I _Seriously_ doubt that a
pre-setup work machine running StarOffice would be any different to a
beginner with Office2000. I'm not in a situation where we get completely new
to computer people joining and needing to sit down for the first time to use
a computer, but I'd feel confedent (these days) with the latest desktop
environments, sure ISDN/Video/audio stuff can be hard, things are getting
easier, but please remember that they are not easy in Windows either and if
not setup initally on a fresh PC then can be so much hastle external help is
needed to sort them out. And I'm always around for my Dad and friends as
'external' help for free Linux support.

My Mum is in a situation where she deals with children just starting school
(5/6) who are about to have their first look at computers. They used to have
RiscOS boxes, but now The goverment has just signed a deal that should keep
imperial interference away once and for al.... oops got carried away (watched
The Empire Strikes Back last night) Now my taxes go to MS as our children
are infected by this sick invasion in to our lifestyle, removing the
knowledge that PC's have a choice of OS, leaving people thinking windows is
like the BIOS. Soon there won't be people left who don't know anything about
computers and so can pick and choose a system (be it OS/2, BeOS, NeXTSTEP,
MacOS, RiscOS, Windows, Unix/X, AmigaDOS) everyone will be windows literate
at our own expense I'm feeling sick about this as I write it.

> 3) Ease of maintenance. A great many people I know in the IT industry see
> PC's as one thing, and one thing only. An Intel Pentium based system (486,
> whats that?) running Windows 95 or 98. Anything else is alien. If a whole
> factory of people had to learn a new operating system's methods, my job
> would be absolute murder (not least due to only two other people in the
> company, to my knowledge, even having a working knowledge of Un*x.)

I don't understand, you wouldn't have to get out of your seat, all admin
could be done remotely with and with scripts to aid multiple problems etc.

Many companies have switched from dos/win3.1 to Win95 (winfile.exe displayed
Y2K as ;0 or some such other bug) for Y2 reasons. Switching to Linux would
not require huge h/w upgrade and would also not be any more difficult to
use.

> 4) Speed of deployment. Put simply, build a PC, install Win95, and be on
> the network with Office97 and full network printer support in 3 hours.
> However, teaching a co-worker the most basic of commands (ls,cd,mkdir and
> the like) took more time than I'd like. Although this is not that far
> removed from MS-DOS commands, the fear factor prevents many people seeing
> how elegantly simply the whole thing fits together.

Huh?! It only takes a few minutes to install almost all of the new dists.
Corel and Caldera took me about 30 mins and was system ready once finished.
Win98, which I infested my system for for the first time ever took hours
including having to repeatidly reboot and let it ask for manufacturers cd's
for stuff like the gfx card drivers.

> I don't know if anyone read the article about the airlines, (I can't
> remember where I saw it), it certainly applies in the office!!! (If you
> would like to read it, I could send you a paraphrase).

I don't know about this, but the article Sam suggests:
http://www.samag.com/linux/articles/v08/i06/a3.shtml on a followup post is
well worth the read as was said.

Damion

--
Damion Yates - Senior Internet Operations Engineer - Internet Services
email: Damion.Yates [at] bbc.co.uk - phone: +44 1737 839510

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