[Gllug] OMG

[Jake Jellinek]

Hi,

--On Monday, December 03, 2001 09:18:52 -0500 SteveC <steve at fractalus.com> 
wrote:

> OMG I convinced my boss to move to mandrake/evolution/openoffice after
> the  perils of Win2k NIMDA virii struck yet again.
>

Pretty much the same combination I've gone for. I would have preferred 
Progeny I think, but there we go.

> Not knowing a lot about waffly graphical interfaces - Will kfm/nautilus go
> through samba and browse the windows network like windows? This would be
> good.
>

I've had limited success with konqueror and URL's like smb://machinename/
Tends to get a bit freezy though... I'd like to know a better way to do it, 
a nice graphical folder-like FTP client perhaps and run a windows FTP 
server on the machine with files you need to share...

> I think thats the only issue...
>

It won't be the only issue, so you should be careful about over singing 
Linux's praises for the desktop use or as a windows replacement too much I 
think. (Can backfire as people start to see things differently). 
Unfortunately it's something that takes a little time to get used to 
switching from Windows to Linux. People will get frustrated by small things 
(as well as perhaps larger ones like printing issues). It's important to 
admit that there are these issues, and that there are always ways of 
working around them, and improvements on the way....naturally the benefits 
like stability, virus-free, license etc. do outweigh the smaller 
operational issues.

I'm doing a similar thing here for people in the office, and for new staff 
who get a Linux box to begin with there are far less complaints than for 
those who have used windows for years and now have to get used to a whole 
different way of doing things, and a whole range of new niggles and work 
arounds to find.

Oh, and although I hate it and find it less user friendly in the long run, 
people tend to get more excited by the lovely smooth look of Gnome on their 
desktops, so for those that still need persuasion sometimes this helps.

> I guess the stability of OpenOffice and evolution might get me killed
> though...
>

I've found both to be reasonably stable so far, certainly in comparison to 
most windows products. Latest versions always though of course, upgrade to 
the cooker version of Evolution if you're doing it that way.

> Any other gotchas I should think about for a Windows-only person going to
> KDE?
>

Of course, don't give anyone root password for their machine. It's amazing 
how quickly you can bugger up a Mandrake installation with rpmdrake and a 
little over eagerness or carelessness.

BTW, I'd love to know of a Visio-like program for Linux, anyone got a 
suggestion?

Only other thing I can think of at the moment as a general observation...
Put in plenty of RAM and a decent graphics card too, it seems that often 
Linux on the desktop needs a more powerful machine than Windows does to do 
it justice. Something to do with not directly accessing the hardware so 
much I think (improves security and stability, sometimes reduces speed). 
(Someone else can flame me for saying that, but this is more from practical 
experience than theory and based on very little understanding).

Cheers,

Jake.


-- 
Gllug mailing list  -  Gllug at linux.co.uk
http://list.ftech.net/mailman/listinfo/gllug