[GRLUG] Perceptions: Is Linux a suitable desktop platform?

[Michael Mol]

On Sun, Oct 5, 2008 at 1:20 PM, Adam Tauno Williams
<awilliam at whitemice.org> wrote:
> On Sat, 2008-10-04 at 17:38 -0400, Tim Schmidt wrote:
>> On Sat, Oct 4, 2008 at 1:33 PM, David Pembrook <david at pembrook.net> wrote:
>> > An interesting article on perceptions about Linux. The author polled
>> > both pro-Linux and pro-Microsoft people and compared their arguments
>> > http://www.desktoplinux.com/articles/AT9186091276.html
>> I've never found these articles relevant.  Linux has been in use as a
>> 'suitable desktop platform' since Linus started hacking on it in 1991.
>>  If some people don't think it's 'ready', that's their loss.  The rest
>> of us have been, and will continue to innovate, improve, and have fun.
>
> It is nice to see one of these articles from a credible source;  there
> are an entire sea of these articles by miscellaneous nobodies.
> Terpstra certainly has made real contributions to FOSS, so his opinion
> has weight.   The real flaw in all these articles is what being a
> "suitable desktop platform" means.  Being a suitable home desktop, a
> suitable SOHO desktop, or a suitable desktop in a publicly traded
> fortune 100 enterprise - these are really different kinds of things.
> This article picks the "business desktop" which narrows it down nicely.
>
> I've been using LINUX as by primary desktop since the release of Word
> Perfect for Linux (fall 94?).  I used it only for e-mail and development
> before that,  a stable word processor was the last hurdle.
>
> The articles does float to the surface some good points that usually
> don't appear in similar articles:
>
> * "Also, it seems obvious to me that with Win4Lin and VMWare one has to
> pay for this software as well as pay for the MS Windows license – so why
> not just run MS Windows on the users' PC? Why does this fact escape the
> Pro-Linux opinions?"
>
> So true, this is the most bogus card in the LINUX advocacy playbook.

VMWare Server and VMWare Player are free for commercial use.  While I
haven't looked into it recently, I hear that qemu has virtualization
support now, too. (As opposed to strictly emulation.)

> * "One can use VNC to support BOTH Linux and MS Windows network clients
> Linux software is easier to keep up to date"
>
> Has anyone managed to get VNC to run as a service in Vista?  The
> performance of a VNC vs. RDP over a WAN is also beyond any comparison;
> RDP runs circles around VNC.

You *can't* run VNC as a service on Vista; Vista's security model
disallows services that interact with the desktop.  The solution is to
run the VNC server as part of the user's session.

I'll give you that RDP is faster per quality, but it has its
limitations, too.  I got hamstrung when RDP wouldn't run at 24 bpp,
which I needed when I had to work from home. (Can't tell you why
without brushing against my NDA.)

>
> As for updates;  Win32 is much easier to manager.  Install the [free]
> WSUS service on a server.  It automatically downloads updates and lets
> you approve or decline specific updates,  report on machines that
> haven't updated, etc...  There is no equivalent AFAIK for LINUX for any
> distribution.

That surprises me.  It's conceptually trivial to design something like
that around Apt, perhaps a bit more difficult around dpkg.  I would be
surprised if nobody's done it already.

-- 
:wq