A few thoughts on this...
I love articles like this, it effectively says "Linux is good, but it's not quite ready yet...".
Personally I think that linux is more than ready for the commercial and business desktop, if I didn't I wouldn't have taken a job selling it to companies (and before you start, I've used MS since DOS 6.2 - not as long as some, but I have used and supported windows including Vista. I'm not a Linux fan-boy, I appreciate that some people _need_ windows).
The comments always make me smile on these articles and I often think that they are written or syndicated on ElReg just so that the editor can have a good laugh at the flame war that always erupts. The comments do raise a few points however:
Q) Isn't Linux is harder to use than Windows or OSX (i.e. is not so user friendly)?
A) Not really, no. I recently gave an Ubuntu CD to a person who was so far beyond being "non-technical", it wasn't even funny. She installed it without a hitch, connected it to the internet and setup her email and everything else without any issues, she even commented on how fast it was and how well it ran,
Q) I've used Microsoft Office for years, doesn't that mean I can't use any of my spreadsheets that have macros in them?
A) Again, not really. Open Office now supports 99.9% of Microsoft Office documents. The only documents that I've had issues with are Office 2007 (although Microsoft Office 2003 can't open them natively either) and a few PowerPoint presentations that have custom animations built into them. I've never had an issue with Excel Spreadsheets regardless if whether they have macros or not (If someone has got a spreadsheet that has lots of macros that they use, I'm happy to try and open it and take a screen shot to prove this if it works!)
Q) The groupware offerings for Linux are lame.
A) Some of them, yes. I'm currently involved in a project at work where we are analysing the Exchange alternatives and I am yet to find one that works completely to my satisfaction, the best ones (i.e. the ones that offer the most functionality) seem to require that you run their own LDAP server - If you've already got an LDAP server on your network, this could prove a bit of an issue. There is huge potential here however and Zimbra is currently looking good!
Q) But Linux looks horrible - Vista Aero has loads of cool eye-candy!
A) http://youtube.com/watch?v=E4Fbk52Mk1w <- I rest my case.
Anyways, at the end of the day, most of my customers just care about saving money. We can setup a 20-workstation environment with built in high availability using existing computers as clients for about GBP13k. This gives them the operating system, office suite and much much more included in the price - that's something that Windows can't do.
Windows has it's place in the corporate environment. I understand that and many many companies have bespoke apps that will only run on windows. What I'm finding is that some people are willing to run those apps under wine or recompile them with Mono in order to make the change.
If anyone hasn't played with Linux already, I really suggest that you download a copy from the Ubuntu website and have a play. It's a live CD, so you can run it without touching your windows data, so you can't loose (as long as you don't run the installer when you don't want to!).
Cheers,
Matt.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
