On Fri, 17 Feb 2006 at 11:09 -0700, Bryan Sant wrote: > My department at work is moving to Linux (SUSE 10) on the desktop. > All of our laptops are being upgraded, and the new ones are coming > with SUSE 10 installed. I'd say that only about 10% of the engineers > here were running Linux on their old laptop, but everyone will be > running Linux now.
That's exciting news. > 1) This is the first real first-hand case of an organization adopting > and pushing desktop Linux that I've experienced. I am very proud that > we are not adopting for > religious/political/counter-culture/I'm-a-way-31337-H4X04 purposes, > but because it is genuinely better for our needs. I'm glad that we're > switching for "capitalistic" reasons instead of "socialistic" reasons. Heh. Me too - although I'd just like to point out for completeness that not all non-capitalistic reasons are socialistic. I'm-a-way31337-H4X04, for example, is simply pride and has nothing to do with socialism. > 2) I find myself about as resistant to a forced distro of Linux as I > am to forcing the use of Windows. I've been running the pre-installed > SUSE 10 on my new laptop, but I don't like it that much. I used to > like KDE -- then I ran Ubuntu with the later releases of Gnome -- now > I don't like KDE. SUSE has the Novell Desktop (Gnome) but GTK/Gnome > is an afterthought in the SUSE world. Anyway, I'll be rebuilding my > system with breezy soon. All of the former Windows people seem to > really Like SUSE/KDE though, so I'm an exception. I know that I'm > out-of-line here. It makes perfect business sense to standardize on a > single distro/vendor to reduce support costs and increase the overall > knowledge-base with that flavor of Linux. I support the approach... > But I think it's great for *everyone else*... Just not me :-) I know the feeling. It's good to hear you can go your own way, or that you're brave enough to do it anyway. ;-) > 3) I'm one of the biggest Linux proponents here, but I still find it > unsettling that we are FORCING the engineers here to run Linux even if > they don't want to. Some (a surprising minority) would rather run > Windows because that's what they are most effective with. Frankly I > agree that they should have a choice. Am I a freak for not stoning > those who don't want to run Linux? Yes, but a good freak. That's the stance I take too - life is so much better when you're not trying to force people to use something they don't want to. But it's not uncommon to force people to use Windows either, so it's not like this is anything new. > All of these guys and gals moving over are engineers (read technical), > but I was surprised at how trivial the transition was for most (and I > work with some SERIOUS Windows-weenies). But even the biggest > Microsofties, were able to adapt in just about no time. A friend of mine had gotten sick of windows running so slow on his old pc and so many viruses and so on, and I had mentioned linux in the past so he had me slap it on. I put on ubuntu, and I did have to bring out the guru sword for their linmodem, but got them all set up in between my regular tasks in one day. They've had it 2 or 3 weeks now and they have had no copmlaints at all and only one question: is there an easier way to get offline (modem - it dials up automatically but they have to go into some preference pane to disconnect). Not too shabby. Neither of them are computer people _at all_, and I was frankly expecting a little bit of disappointment or at least difficulty and questions, but no. -- Hans Fugal ; http://hans.fugal.net There's nothing remarkable about it. All one has to do is hit the right keys at the right time and the instrument plays itself. -- Johann Sebastian Bach
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