[Gllug] Which Linux Desktop to go for?

[John Winters]

On Thu, 2004-11-11 at 12:23, Vic Lilley wrote:
> The reason I am thinking of going with Sun, was because my
> institute IMIS
> mentioned in an article the following distributors; Red Hat, Sun,
> 
> Mandrake, IBM and Debian. I tried ringing all of them and the
> only one I could through to was Sun. I had browser problems
> with the Red Hats web site and I couldn't find a phone number
> on Mandrake.

It's possible IBM was out.  It's just a one-man-plus-mobile phone
enterprise.  Best to call him between 6 and 7 in the evening, before he
goes to the pub.   :-)

> The only problem with Sun, was that when I mentioned the
> potential problem with dual partition of Windows overwriting
> Linux, that a friend had warned me about, the dealer said he
> hadn't come across that before.

In this case, you should pay more attention to the dealer than to your
friend.  I've seen an awful lot of dual boot installations and have
never heard of Windows over-writing Linux.  The only problem you're
likely to encounter is with Windows installers, which have a nasty habit
of telling you porkies about "other software" they find on your system. 
"The Windows installer has detected a nasty piece of non-Microsoft
software on your system.  Would you like me to erase it for your health
and protection?"  Simply answer "No" to such queries and you'll be fine.

It's generally best to install Windows first because the Windows
installers are less sophisticated than the Linux installers and don't
cater specifically for multi-boot installations.  Make sure Windows
doesn't use the whole hard disc for its partition, but only the amount
you want it to use.  Then install your Linux distribution and it will
take care of setting up dual boot.

> 
> Gllugadmin wrote that Sun Java Desktop was  $50 a year and a
> non-typical configuration and suggested  the standard big
> distributors, Suse, Mandrake or Fedora(Red Hat) and more
> precisely the latest Mandrake 10.1    or the latest SUSE 9.2.

Sounds like good advice.  You might also want to consider Debian. 
Although it still has a text-mode installer it is very easy to install
and the ongoing maintenance and update process is much easier with
Debian.

> It seems to me that Linux was basically a server operating system
> and lacked a desktop like Windows.

Not quite.  Linux (or GNU/Linux, depending on what you're talking about)
is a true operating system and separates operating system functionality
from peripheral items like GUIs and application programs.  If you don't
want a GUI on your box then you don't have to have one.

It's never lacked for desktops though.  The two big players currently
are KDE and Gnome, although there are plenty of others to choose from. 
If you want a GUI desktop then they're there aplenty.

>  Now there are a number of
> competing contenders with a proprietary desktop operating system
> grafted on to Linux.

Not "desktop operating system"s, nor proprietary.  AFAIK, Sun's offering
is the only one with even slightly propietary tendencies.

The desktop isn't really part of the operating system (although certain
competing operating systems muddle the two together and like to pretend
they can't be separated).  The desktop is just a suite of applications
running on top of the operating system.  Because on Linux the desktop is
properly separated from the operating system you can pick and choose
what you want, even taking components from different desktop packages
and running them together.

As I said before, the main desktop packages are KDE and Gnome.  Pretty
much any mainstream Linux distribution will come complete with both of
these so you can install either.  You can even install both and choose
which one to run each time you log onto the machine.  Two users of the
same box can be using different desktops.  I'm typing this on a diskless
workstation with an 800 MHz Mini-ITX board inside and 512M of RAM.  It
often has two and sometimes even three desktop users logged into it at
the same time.

> So all other things being equal it seems
> better to go for the most open options, which seems to rule out
> Sun with its supposed very non-typical operation.

I would.  I suspect Sun's offering is intended more for the sort of
customer who wants to buy a licence for 10,000 copies.

Get hold of copies of a few Linux distributions (e.g. Mandrake, SuSE,
Debian) and give them a go.  Make sure you get a copy of Knoppix, which
allows you to run a complete Linux desktop from the CD - no installation
required.

Am I allowed to plug The Linux Emporium -
http://www.linuxemporium.co.uk/ - now I'm not connected with it?

HTH
John

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