[Gllug] Cost of RedHat vs Ubuntu desktop support

[Nix]

On 10 Jul 2009, tethys at gmail.com stated:

> On Fri, Jul 10, 2009 at 9:20 AM, JLMS<jjllmmss at googlemail.com> wrote:
>
>> In my opinion one should agree to a base system with the geeks which
>> they are happy with, and then lock it down.
>
> "The geeks" isn't particularly helpful. We're not a homogeneous lump.
> A system that most of my co-worker would be happy with would be hell
> for me, and probably vice versa.

Quite so. At one point work tried to lock the development systems down
(bloody hard, given that it was Unix: how do you stop someone installing
things in their home directory?) and also banned installation of
anything at all on our own machines.

After two weeks of nothing much getting done and seething resentment
from almost everyone, they rescinded the policy. Even the non-techies
were annoyed because some things they relied on were not in the
'standard software list'. A lot of becoming-standard stuff which hadn't
yet migrated from being 'one geek's pet project that everyone happens to
use' was broken too, causing massive disruption.

> I agree with the principle wholeheartedly. I just disagree with your
> threshold. I'd say once you get above 25 or so employees, you need
> to start considering locked down desktop.

This very much depends on the organization. Lock down geeks and you get
frustration and irritation. Lock down testers' *test* machines, yes:
lock down the phone monkeys' machines, sure. But developers? Only if you
want them to not be able to do anything useful.
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