On Tuesday 18 December 2001 09:16 pm, Scott wrote: > Hi everyone- > > I really respect the opinions of those on the list, so I will ask the > million dollar question. Do you think Mandrake is ready for the > Enterprise? I work for a large company in the US that is considering > Linux for not only the servers, but the desktop in the future. They have > been experimenting with Red Hat mostly and our experience with Mandrake is > it is great first time around, but when we go to customize the machine we > run into problems. > > Being the one who influences this decision, I want to hear from other > Mandrake users in the corporate world. Are you using it on an enterprise > level? > > thanks in advance....... > > -Scott
Scott: My (long-winded) two cents: If the definition of "desktop" is restricted to ordinary office usage -- word processing, spreadsheets, e-mail, accessing mainframe applications, stuff like that -- then Linux is ready today, as evidenced by the many recent stories about various organizations that have de-fenestrated themselves. I personally have a lot of problems with the so-called experts in the tech media (ZDNet comes to mind) who keep saying that if it isn't exactly like MicroSoft Office, nobody's going to be able to use it. Nonsense! Any fairly bright person who is accustomed to MS Office should be able to use StarOffice with very little effort. (And if they aren't bright enough to do it, then perhaps they aren't bright enough to remain on the payroll.) Sure, some of the geegaws have different names, or they look different, or the pop-ups are organized differently, but the real differences are really very small -- certainly no greater than making the transition from WordPerfect and Lotus to Word and Excel, and yet lots of us did just that during the great Microsoft putsch of the late 90's. However, if the definition of desktop is expanded to include all of the various computer-based activities that actually go on in an office, the answer depends on exactly whose desktop we're talking about: Not everyone in the office is doing the same thing. Case in point: Prior to retirement last spring, I was a product design engineer and, along with two other guys, spent most of the day using AutoCad and Pro Engineer. There were also four or five manufacturing engineers who used AutoCad LT in their work. Problem: There are no Linux versions of these products, nor do they work under wine or win4lin. (OK, that's not entirely true. I understand that win4lin will run AutoCad LT.) And, although I'd like to be proven wrong on this, I haven't found any suitable Linux equivalents to either of these programs. Meantime, over in the the HR area, they were running a specialized application program (mandated by corporate) that was also windows-specific. And then there's the MSDS database that was on everyone's desktop -- again, windows only. And so it goes... the problem isn't with the office suites, it's the specialized apps that are going to give you troubles. It's always easier to identify the obstacles than find the solution, of course, and I hope you'll be able to pull it off -- it's a worthy goal -- but there are some big obstacles out there. I promise to back you up until your nose bleeds. Best regards, Carroll
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