Linux as an office desktop

On Sun, 26 Oct 2003 22:56:28 GMT,
a?n?g?e?l@lovergirl.lrigrevol.moc.com (The little lost angel) wrote:

 >On Sun, 26 Oct 2003 15:33:45 GMT, "Yousuf Khan"
 ><removethisspam.bjsk90.removethispam DeleteThis @hotmail.com> wrote:
  >>If this could be done two years ago, it can still be done now. It's just a
  >>matter of IT managers getting enlightened. And IT staff getting over their
  >>fear of new things.
 >
 ><penguin killer mode>
 >An a matter of the darn thing working out of the box with the plethora
 >of USB ADSL modems as the norm device... and a matter of the thing
 >working out of the box supporting the most common onboard IDE RAID
 >solutions that is a basic requirement for corporate data nowadays
 >(given the declining HDD reliability)...
 ></penguin killer mode>
 >
 >If anybody asks, I've been trying to make a working Debian desktop...
 >I'm still using W2K.

some shitty equipment you are using huh?
IDE RAID is only good for boosting sequential transfers, a laugh at
best and not something that benefits data integrety as IDE almost
certainly means RAID level 0.
And USB ADSL modems? really?

I'd say you could get this thing going if you used a router and a real
RAID solulion = scsi that is...
but probably you don't even need RAID right?

and debian working out of the box??? get a grip buddy! debian will not
work out of the box that's the point with it, as it is with slackware.<!-- ~MESSAGE_AFTER~ -->
 >> Stay informed about: Linux as an office desktop 

On Sun, 26 Oct 2003 15:33:45 GMT, "Yousuf Khan"
<removethisspam.bjsk90.removethispam DeleteThis @hotmail.com> wrote:
 >Here's an article from two years ago:
 >
 >http://www.newsforge.com/article.pl?sid=01/08/10/1441239
 >
 >Notice that they are talking about secretaries running KDE and not caring.
 >One secretary is already more familiar with it than she is with Windows at
 >home.
 >
 >If this could be done two years ago, it can still be done now. It's just a
 >matter of IT managers getting enlightened. And IT staff getting over their
 >fear of new things.

I hate to say it, but I think that a lot of it is IT staff getting
over their rather condescending attitude that most end users are
complete morons. I've worked in a number of different IT departments
and dealt with others, and often you get the same sort of story, that
users will simply never be able to figure anything out without a
ridiculous amount of hand holding. This sort of turns into an almost
self-fulfilling prophesy, where the IT staff never tries to teach
users anything because they don't think users will learn, and as such,
users never learn anything and never try to pick up new things on
their own.

Personally I found that when doing desktop support, if you try to give
even just a simple and slightly dumbed-down explanation to what was
going on (ideally referencing it to something the users already
understand), nearly everyone can pick up new things with little
trouble at all.

I firmly believe that 95%+ of desktop users could switch to Linux at
work with little to no real interruption at all. Sure, it might take
them a few minutes to figure out where things have moved to, but most
things in Linux (particularly in KDE) these days are sufficiently
close that they could figure it out without any hand holding.

-------------
Tony Hill
hilla <underscore> 20 <at> yahoo <dot> ca<!-- ~MESSAGE_AFTER~ -->
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"Tony Hill" <hilla_nospam_20.RemoveThis@yahoo.ca> wrote in message
news:715cc000a4eaf21e431a968a58f02ea5@news.1usenet.com...
  > >If this could be done two years ago, it can still be done now. It's just
a
  > >matter of IT managers getting enlightened. And IT staff getting over
their
  > >fear of new things.
 >
 > I hate to say it, but I think that a lot of it is IT staff getting
 > over their rather condescending attitude that most end users are
 > complete morons. I've worked in a number of different IT departments
 > and dealt with others, and often you get the same sort of story, that
 > users will simply never be able to figure anything out without a
 > ridiculous amount of hand holding. This sort of turns into an almost
 > self-fulfilling prophesy, where the IT staff never tries to teach
 > users anything because they don't think users will learn, and as such,
 > users never learn anything and never try to pick up new things on
 > their own.

That's exactly what I think too. Having been in desktop support at several
points in my career too, I can understand this fear of the end-users being
morons, but it mustn't completely overrule progress. Otherwise you'll remain
bogged down in your old ways wishing there was a better way of doing things.
I mean if you never take a chance with something new, the exact solution you
were seeking all of this time may have been sitting right there under your
nose and you never knew about it.

 > Personally I found that when doing desktop support, if you try to give
 > even just a simple and slightly dumbed-down explanation to what was
 > going on (ideally referencing it to something the users already
 > understand), nearly everyone can pick up new things with little
 > trouble at all.

Confusion can be avoided within end-users by refraining from using advanced
technical terms that they don't understand. But not avoiding all technical
terms because they'll usually understand commonly known technical terms such
as RAM, CPU, network card, etc.

One of my most interesting education projects involved me taking a 40 year
old former auto mechanic and turning him into a Solaris Unix system
administrator! It took a few months but it was accomplished successfully,
he's pretty good now. Training users on desktop systems shouldn't be nearly
so difficult.

 > I firmly believe that 95%+ of desktop users could switch to Linux at
 > work with little to no real interruption at all. Sure, it might take
 > them a few minutes to figure out where things have moved to, but most
 > things in Linux (particularly in KDE) these days are sufficiently
 > close that they could figure it out without any hand holding.

I mean if users could switch from the Windows 95 desktop to the Windows 98,
and then to the Windows 2000, and now to the Windows XP, where they changed
a lot of locations of things, they can learn KDE or Gnome.

Yousuf Khan<!-- ~MESSAGE_AFTER~ -->
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"The little lost angel" <a?n?g?e?l@lovergirl.lrigrevol.moc.com> wrote in
message news:3f9c5085.7962449@news.pacific.net.sg...
 > On Sun, 26 Oct 2003 15:33:45 GMT, "Yousuf Khan"
 > <removethisspam.bjsk90.removethispam.TakeThisOut@hotmail.com> wrote:
  > >If this could be done two years ago, it can still be done now. It's just
a
  > >matter of IT managers getting enlightened. And IT staff getting over
their
  > >fear of new things.
 >
 > <penguin killer mode>
 > An a matter of the darn thing working out of the box with the plethora
 > of USB ADSL modems as the norm device...

Since when corpporations use ADSL connections for each desktop???

 > and a matter of the thing
 > working out of the box supporting the most common onboard IDE RAID
 > solutions that is a basic requirement for corporate data nowadays
 > (given the declining HDD reliability)...
 > </penguin killer mode>
 >

Poor anti-penguin arguments, I'd say...

 > If anybody asks, I've been trying to make a working Debian desktop...
 > I'm still using W2K.

Try something easier to setup. And use recent version. HDD raid works. With
regard of USB ADSL modems i stronly prefer ethernet ones -- connect one to
some HD-less old 486 with just one floppy, download floppyfw from
<a style='text-decoration: underline;' href="http://www.zelow.no/floppyfw/" target="_blank">http://www.zelow.no/floppyfw/</a> (it's Linux, too) and go.

rgds
Sebastian

--
Sebastian Kaliszewski
--
"Never underestimate the power of human stupidity" - from Notebooks of L.L.<!-- ~MESSAGE_AFTER~ -->
 >> Stay informed about: Linux as an office desktop 

The little lost angel wrote:

 > On Sun, 26 Oct 2003 15:33:45 GMT, "Yousuf Khan"
 > <removethisspam.bjsk90.removethispam.DeleteThis@hotmail.com> wrote:
  >>If this could be done two years ago, it can still be done now. It's just a
  >>matter of IT managers getting enlightened. And IT staff getting over their
  >>fear of new things.
 >
 > <penguin killer mode>
 > An a matter of the darn thing working out of the box with the plethora
 > of USB ADSL modems as the norm device...

What office uses these on each system?


 > and a matter of the thing
 > working out of the box supporting the most common onboard IDE RAID
 > solutions that is a basic requirement for corporate data nowadays
 > (given the declining HDD reliability)...

What distro are you using?


 >
 > If anybody asks, I've been trying to make a working Debian desktop...
 > I'm still using W2K.
 >

Why use Debian as a newbie? I've been using linux for years and still use
Mandrake as I'm not THAT into configuring an OS myself.

--

Stacey, who setup a box as a desktop machine in an afternoon with
Mandrake.<!-- ~MESSAGE_AFTER~ -->
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Tony Hill wrote:

 > and never try to pick up new things on
 > their own.
 >


I think the problem is 99% of people are just plain lazy. I sold my boss a
system (he's computer illiterate) and he's too lazy to even figure out how
to use the "favorites" folder but bitches about surfing taking forever to
get "back" to where he was last time and wants me to "fix it"!
--

Stacey<!-- ~MESSAGE_AFTER~ -->
 >> Stay informed about: Linux as an office desktop 

On Mon, 27 Oct 2003 07:33:38 +0100, Loke <[baijxz at mailme dot
dk]ignore@this.com> wrote:

 >some shitty equipment you are using huh?
 >IDE RAID is only good for boosting sequential transfers, a laugh at
 >best and not something that benefits data integrety as IDE almost
 >certainly means RAID level 0.

Running RAID 0 on IDE is pretty much suicidal in my opinion. No thank
you, my IDE RAID 1 has saved me at least once already.

 >And USB ADSL modems? really?

Ok ok, so it's not really THAT applicable in the corporate world, but
it's still a PITA.

 >I'd say you could get this thing going if you used a router and a real
 >RAID solulion = scsi that is...
 >but probably you don't even need RAID right?

I'm NOT going back to a non-RAID IDE config as far as I can help it.
And standalone Raid 0/1 cards are still more expensive than just
buying a board with the integrated IDE RAID controller.

I did get a router just to solve this problem... except Debian will
lose internet connectivity, some inability to resolve DNS every so
often while a W2K system connected to the same network/router would
still happily hum along. Yes, I did put the NS IP into
/etc/resolve.conf

But it's still a pain (though lesser) to use since I can't run X on
anything except VESA drivers, the new nVidia ones won't compile
despite my downloading of the 2.4.18 kernel source just for it.

Of course it can't extract binary versions from the nvidia server due
to the strange internet behaviour. At 60Hz refresh, it's making me
feel nauseous within a few minutes.

 >and debian working out of the box??? get a grip buddy! debian will not
 >work out of the box that's the point with it, as it is with slackware.

Heh, I know, but neither did Mandrake (didn't work with the RAID
controller or USB ADSL).

--
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If you need basic to med complexity webpages at affordable rates, email me
Standard HTML, SHTML, MySQL + PHP or ASP, Javascript.
If you really want, FrontPage & DreamWeaver too.
But keep in mind you pay extra bandwidth for their bloated code<!-- ~MESSAGE_AFTER~ -->
 >> Stay informed about: Linux as an office desktop 

On Mon, 27 Oct 2003 20:32:03 -0500, stacey <fotocord.RemoveThis@yahoo.com> wrote:

 >Why use Debian as a newbie? I've been using linux for years and still use
 >Mandrake as I'm not THAT into configuring an OS myself.

Well, probably because I'm trying a new career path admining a
webserver so either Debian or BSD was the choice (not solely my
decision). For that sole purpose it would had been fine,
apache/mysql/exim and all was easy. Even the IDE Raid could be hacked
together by figuring out the DMA(?) addresses of the 2 drives and
manually sticking it to lilo append for the kernel.

The problem came when I decided I should be using the OS on a regular
basis at home. Since I ought to get more familiar with it and I do
honestly want to get off Gate's wagon. Of course at home means I need
X, and I need ADSL.

--
L.Angel: I'm looking for web design work.
If you need basic to med complexity webpages at affordable rates, email me
Standard HTML, SHTML, MySQL + PHP or ASP, Javascript.
If you really want, FrontPage & DreamWeaver too.
But keep in mind you pay extra bandwidth for their bloated code<!-- ~MESSAGE_AFTER~ -->
 >> Stay informed about: Linux as an office desktop 

The little lost angel wrote:

 >
 > The problem came when I decided I should be using the OS on a regular
 > basis at home. Since I ought to get more familiar with it and I do
 > honestly want to get off Gate's wagon. Of course at home means I need
 > X, and I need ADSL.
 >

Mandrake 9.1 (9.2 is on the way!) and get a alcatel speed touch home
ethernet modem. Serious, I started out with a blank drive and had
=EVERYTHING= configured in an afternoon, incluing all my fav newsgroups,
desktop shortcuts etc. My digicams, scanner (scsi) printers ect
autoconfiged..

When you try to use "win-hardware", that some of the tasks normally done in
hardware are passed to windows for cost savings, are never a good idea
anyway!

--

Stacey<!-- ~MESSAGE_AFTER~ -->
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On Mon, 27 Oct 2003 18:37:45 +0100, "Sebastian Kaliszewski"
<sk.RemoveThis@bez.spamu.z.pl> wrote:

 >Poor anti-penguin arguments, I'd say...

Probably, but I don't remember the last time I had so much problem
getting an OS to work... ok actually I do, it was with Win95 on brand
new hardware... but even then, what didn't work was minor compared to
this.

 >Try something easier to setup. And use recent version. HDD raid works. With
The RAID does work, but I had to dig up some manual instructions on
how to obtain the addresses of the raided IDE drives and pass them to
the kernel on boot.

 >regard of USB ADSL modems i stronly prefer ethernet ones -- connect one to
 >some HD-less old 486 with just one floppy, download floppyfw from
 >http://www.zelow.no/floppyfw/ (it's Linux, too) and go.

Unfortunately, I don't have a spare 486 to spare. I have to keep my
spare system on Windows for the family to use (at least until I figure
out how to get X on THAT working). Plus I'm now trying to figure out
how to configure Linux to work with this old router/modem I've got my
hands on... the dns resolution keeps failing on and off.

--
L.Angel: I'm looking for web design work.
If you need basic to med complexity webpages at affordable rates, email me
Standard HTML, SHTML, MySQL + PHP or ASP, Javascript.
If you really want, FrontPage & DreamWeaver too.
But keep in mind you pay extra bandwidth for their bloated code<!-- ~MESSAGE_AFTER~ -->
 >> Stay informed about: Linux as an office desktop 

In comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.chips The little lost angel <a?n?g?e?l@lovergirl.lrigrevol.moc.com> wrote:
 > I did get a router just to solve this problem... except Debian will
 > lose internet connectivity, some inability to resolve DNS every so
 > often while a W2K system connected to the same network/router would
 > still happily hum along. Yes, I did put the NS IP into
 > /etc/resolve.conf

I don't know much about Debian. I run Slackware and have
never had a connectivity/DNS problem with my [Seimens] router.
I just run `dhcpcd` and it takes care of `ifconfig`, `route`
and DNS. /etc/resolve.conf points at the router.

The router hangs occasionally, and will get bounced and
reconnect weekly, often with a new IP, gateway and DNS servers
via DHCP from the telco [DSL].

 > But it's still a pain (though lesser) to use since I can't run X on
 > anything except VESA drivers, the new nVidia ones won't compile
 > despite my downloading of the 2.4.18 kernel source just for it.

Haven't tried the latest nVidia drivers, but never had any trouble
installing them. Two packages, you have to do in the right order.
Just the usual tar & make.

 > Of course it can't extract binary versions from the nvidia server due
 > to the strange internet behaviour. At 60Hz refresh, it's making me
 > feel nauseous within a few minutes.

Binary versions? I just grab the tar.gz's. The packages
probably only work with pre-packaged kernels and I never
use them. Sympathies on the 60 Hz, but it shouldn't be so
bad for you since AFAIK fluorescents are 50 Hz where you are.

 > controller or USB ADSL).

You _know_ better than to use poxy hardware.

-- Robert

 ><!-- ~MESSAGE_AFTER~ -->
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On Tue, 28 Oct 2003 05:33:54 GMT, Robert Redelmeier
<redelm.DeleteThis@ev1.net.invalid> wrote:

 >I don't know much about Debian. I run Slackware and have
 >never had a connectivity/DNS problem with my [Seimens] router.
 >I just run `dhcpcd` and it takes care of `ifconfig`, `route`
 >and DNS. /etc/resolve.conf points at the router.

Hmm, I'll try looking for this dhcpcd thingy and see if it works for
me.

 >Haven't tried the latest nVidia drivers, but never had any trouble
 >installing them. Two packages, you have to do in the right order.
 >Just the usual tar & make.

The older one are in two packages, the newest one I got off nvidia.com
says it has replaced them with a single package instead. It runs some
kind of sh script and tries to install the correct default binary, but
if it doesn't find a prepackaged one, then it attempts to ftp from
nvidia (ADSL problem so no use), when that fails, it attempts to
compile a binary based on the the system... naturally the compilation
also failed on mine.

 >use them. Sympathies on the 60 Hz, but it shouldn't be so
 >bad for you since AFAIK fluorescents are 50 Hz where you are.

Heehe, I don't stare at the flourescent tubes!

 >You _know_ better than to use poxy hardware.

I know they aren't as good but tell it to my ISP about the USB modem.
They KNOW people use Ethernet modems for sharing so they won't sell
you a package with Ethernet ones... unless you pay about 3x the price
for a "corporate" package upon which they give you a router/modem.

As for the IDE raid, it's really the most cost effective way to get
RAID 1. Even cheap RAID 1 standalone cards aren't that cheap... about
the price of a basic board. Most mid level boards are starting to come
with S-ATA/P-ATA raid as a standard feature, so I honestly think "out
of the box" support for onboard IDE raid controllers are pretty much a
necessity.

--
L.Angel: I'm looking for web design work.
If you need basic to med complexity webpages at affordable rates, email me
Standard HTML, SHTML, MySQL + PHP or ASP, Javascript.
If you really want, FrontPage & DreamWeaver too.
But keep in mind you pay extra bandwidth for their bloated code<!-- ~MESSAGE_AFTER~ -->
 >> Stay informed about: Linux as an office desktop 

On Tue, 28 Oct 2003 03:22:13 +0000, The little lost angel wrote:

 > Running RAID 0 on IDE is pretty much suicidal in my opinion. No thank you,
 > my IDE RAID 1 has saved me at least once already.

I would think that most office desktops would subscribe to the 'all the
data on the server, and reimage/replace the desktop HD at the slightest
sign of trouble' philosophy rather than bother with IDE RAID and 2 disks
in each machine.

You've still got to 'fix' a machine when a disk dies, but using mirroring
has doubled the chances of any machine needing to be 'fixed' - even
without considering the extra drives heat. You are only improving the
urgency of the fix.

IDE RAID does sound worthwhile for small businesses though. ie a small
number of non standardised PCs and very little tech support on hand.

While I think Debian is great, it wouldn't be my first choice for desktops
with slightly exotic hardware.

Cheers
Anton<!-- ~MESSAGE_AFTER~ -->
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