[Gllug] Linux on Desktop

Fri Feb 2 23:58:30 UTC 2007

On Fri, 2 Feb 2007, Jason Johns wrote:

> I reckon it's fair to say that organisations operate a variety of
> policies and some of these polices contain grey areas.

I've always (got away with) running Linux(/UNIX) based systems at
work:

(ICL hardly exist now and nobody cares, I've obscured the other
company names to protect them)

Uni - SunOS m68k and SPARC mainly, some PCs where I used boot and root
floppies for cmdline goodness or eXceed in single window mode with
OpenLook window manager lovelyness.

 - Allowed/expected

ICL (Supporting the Civil Service) - c1996.  I showed off the aliens
theme in Enlightenment.  I was already a proficient UNIX admin and
demonstrated mounting Windows for Workgroups shares with early smbfs
support, also mounting netware drives with ncpmount, then exporting it
all as NCP over IPX with MarsNWE (netware emulator) and symbolically
linking them together and linking to ~username/ based apache served
webspaces.  Something impossible with almost any other OS at the time.
My enlightenment sessions had to be on a shared Pentium machine, my
own desktop was a 486dx25 with 4meg of ram and a very poorly supported
gfx card.  X was fine, but cmdline was significantly faster.  I was a
DOS/Netware/Windows3.1 support engineer but did all my work at a UNIX
shell ;)

- The boss knew but as I was Uber-efficient they "didn't know" so
  couldn't dob me in.  I get the feeling it was only vaguely
  discouraged company wide.

XXX - Internet Operations.  This used to be a complete Sun shop.
There were some Linux based boxes around but desktops were SPARC
Solaris.  As the years went on, there were relocations and other
divisions took over or merged it was like we turned in to Asterix's
village, the last stronghold in a Roman^WWindows empire.

 - Initially expected that you ran X on UNIX.  Later they expected you must
   have switched to Windows as they'd introduced so many Windows based
   systems.  They were mistaken and hadn't take away our desktops.
   generally an open policy.

XieXXns - ex XXX Technology.  SXXmeXX are a MS shop to a _SHOCKING_
degree!  I was amazed whenever I met somebody who had even heard of a
Mac let alone UNIX in any form.  Presumably some departments in this
large company had UNIX, but this was the hardest time I'd had running
a UNIX desktop and interoperating.  Smbmount, Wine, OOo, OWA,
rdesktop, IE (for SPARC solaris) and ultimately ignoring stupid
directives to use Windows only, got me through it.  When I left,
everyone was mainly using Debian desktops and sshing to Sun boxes, but
there were laptops on desks running Windows and rdesktop session use
was increasing...  sad times.

 - They made it so difficult to not run Windows I expect they just
   assumed you had to be!  The techies I spoke to didn't care.  I got
   no resistance officially.

The XXXXXXXX Internet Company.  If you're caught not running a Linux
based OS on your desk you're in trouble!  :)

 - Expected.  Although you spot the directors emailing with user
   agents giving away their Mac/Windows use at home, very
   disappointing.

> When I decided to dualboot my work laptop, the company we use for
> our techie stuff reported me. They claimed that it was a security
> risk :-) The complaint didn't get far though!

One technique is just to not tell anyone.  If you're several times
more efficient, your immediate line management (the only ones likely
to notice your screen) are unlikely to mention it either.

A while back my wife used a Linux box and they knew it, they
sheepishly brought it up once, but knew fine well how efficient her
work was.

> I'd actually like to switch to Ubuntu entirely but haven't quite
> been able to get either of my two escape plans (1 - running
> powerpoint on wine and, 2 - running a VM off my current Windows
> partitions) to work.

I would honestly love to spend time and effort helping you with this!
I feel it is a just cause.  Sadly new babies etc. mean I have almost 0
spare time.

I've used Wine almost from when it was first written.  It's always
kept up with MSOffice releases quite well, Word6.0 for windows was
very reliable at the time.  I find OOo okay for ppt and I believe
Koffice can play them too.  Consider Crossover office (cxoffice), it's
very cheap and the company that sell it are very good at returning
their code back in to the main Wine project over time, actually I
think they hire the main Wine project leader.  This very reliably runs
MSOffice software, they actually provide support if it goes wrong.  It
also has very nice GUI installers, trust me when I tell you it's rare
for me to complement a GUI :)

I've got VMWare (now free as in beer) working against an existing
partition.  This truely was difficult, mainly because I don't use
Windows.  I did it with a non persistant VMWare snapshot against the
disk so as not to disturb the company install.  Unfortunately this
means I lost all the work once we had to reboot.  My wife's laptop had
the only copy in the house and we thought it might be necessary for
her oncall support using Remedy.  VNC to her office computer is
significantly more convenient though if she ever needs to run Remedy
which is very rare, she's an xterm+screen person like me.

> Juergen demonstrates an interesting point though. Most people's
> bosses are pro-windows because it's the 'safe' option. if something
> goes wrong or if the job doesn't get done then nobody will be blamed
> for not Windows.

I found the same over the years and I'm shocked as it's completely
unjustifiable.  I for one am extremely comfortable under several X
Window managers and command line shells, I love the select and middle
click c+p speed.  I have also been able to prove without a doubt that
my system was more reliable and that I was significantly more
productive.  Normally this was enough for my line manager to at least
not dob me in if they suspected it was against policy.

Every time there was a domain controller crash, network failure, email
spamage, virus outbreak and many other things; everyone on Windows
would get up and chat around the water cooler discussing how they
couldn't get any work done that day.  All the while the UNIX people
just carried on writing scripts to ultimately replace themselves.

> I generally avoid OO anyway because it's so resource hungry

It's not the best, cxoffice runs the free MS office viewers much
faster.  I tend to do everything in vi and then slurp in to OOo for a
bit of formatting before saving, I do this even on pretty hefty
hardware.  Actually I did that for my 3rd year thesis in 1995ish it's
always been a good idea.

> AbiWord and that spreadsheet package whose name escapes me

Gnumetric?

> are a lot faster - shame there's no alternative office suite :-(

Um, well there is Koffice for a start, then a further 14 or so here:
http://www.yolinux.com/TUTORIALS/LinuxTutorialOfficeSuites.html
Not to mention Web2.0 based ones.

cxoffice may suite you very well though.

In summary:

If you don't know exactly what you're doing you could be a danger to
the company network and to Linux desktop use in general.  If you
know your company has a strict policy about standard desktop, don't
take the piss.

If you know _exactly_ what you're doing and you're making yourself
significantly more comfortable at work, do it.  See if your boss can
even tell.  If you suddenly can't read meeting notifications for
example you fit in to my previous category.

Read the policy, IME it rarely mentions an entire alternate OS, let
alone an Ubuntu/Knoppix RAM only bootCD (which I used when I had
meetings in White City).  The policy exists to protect them from
lamers installing malware which will upload company documents, idiots
from breaking their PC and needing hours of costly tech support and
vaguely tech savvy people causing the company to have pirate software
getting them in trouble.  

You might find there is a company standard build for UNIX (yes okay
it's for servers, but does it say that ? ;)).

Anyway, sorry this is so verbose.

In general I'm now very disappointed at this group.  So many Windows
using quitters.  I'm not about to write a further 1000 word essay on
this, but suggesting Cygwin just to pick one example, makes me cry.

I've tried this as an experiment on a Win2k box, I wanted single
window mode with my window manager of choice, xterm.exe and
(open)ssh.exe, so basically a mirror of my normal working environment,
with the vague added "advantage" of Word or IE being an Alt-Tab away
(obviously this switches away from the entire X environment).

I ended up with something which was 200ukp more expensive, half the
speed and a fraction of the reliability (it DID crash often for me, my
Sun had years of uptime), this coupled with crap little annoyances
like tab completing commands added a .exe at the end, many things
failed to compile cleanly and hostnames were all CAPS!

Linux on the desktop was superior up to 1996 possibly a little beyond
that, UNIX desktop use in general was commonplace.  The number of
people using computers has increase by several orders of magnitude,
the number of people using Linux based systems has ... well, increased
a bit.  I don't have any statistics but in my _long_ experience with
this and working in certain peer groups, I've seen nothing but a
decrease in proportional use.  I'm completely fed up with the noobs (I
mean anyone who has used a UNIX like system for less than 8 years)
constantly saying things like:

"I love Open Source, oh yes I'm a Linux user ... well I would be but
it hasn't caught up on the desktop yet, because I can't [insert random
excuse here]".

Now stop being lame and help me fight the fight! :)

Damion

-- 
Damion Yates - current no signature ... well except this one.
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