Hello all,
until the Open Source community come up with something that at
least "looks" like Lookout or Express Lookout, a lot of people will stay
with the devil they know. Human beings are... human beings, and until they
get such an equivalent from the Linux (Unix) world, they will stay with what
they have.
That is the only reason that is stopping me setting the format God on my XP
partition.
That, boy and girls, was my 0.15 (euro) cents worth.
John Cassidy Dipl.-Ing (Informatique)
S390 & zSeries Systems Engineering
Schleswigstr. 7
D-51065 Cologne
EU
Tel: +49 (0) 221 61 60 777 . GSM: +49 (0) 177 799 58 56
E-Mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
HTTP : www.jdcassidy.net
-----Original Message-----
From: Linux on 390 Port [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of
Richard Troth
Sent: 12 November 2003 18:58
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: Re: Linux ready for the desktop: IBM
IFF what you need is a Unix desktop, then Linux is ready.
When I started with BMC in late Spring of 1995,
the resources available to me were a bit limitted:
I had a 31xx series (IBM, coax) terminal. But while that was fine
for my VM tasks, it didn't facilitate my Unix responsibilities.
Next I got an HP X terminal. This was ... usable. I wanted a Sun.
Never got one. For the Unix desktop, Sun was king at that time,
with AIX and HP fighting it out for second place.
Eventually, I got a shiney new HP Vectra (PC), which came with
Windows installed, if I recall. Having used Linux for some time
in previous work, I straight away installed it in a dual-boot config,
but wound up using it more than Windows. Linux was faster and more
stable than Windows. [preaching to the choir, I know] But I was,
and still am, in the most techno part of the company.
Since that time, Linux has served as my Unix desktop host system,
though I try to maintain an agnostic stance. For many things,
it really doesn't matter whether the host is Linux, AIX, Solaris,
IRIX, or HP-UX. My preferred WM would be FVWM just out of principle,
and it is available, but I wind up on KDE as a matter of practicality.
VNC adds disconn/reconn flexibility. (Try THAT with Windows.)
I have a clean, robust, and well featured Windows 2000 image
available via multi-boot. I rarely use it.
This is not perfect. (Linux is not ready?) I am looking for a
better e-mail program. I *like* MS Outlook. Would be using Outlook
if I could get the native Win/2K partition (SCSI) attached to a VMware
guest. (SCSI issues with physical partitions and VMware. Long story.)
For MS Word, MS Excel, and MS PowerPoint, the functionality of
OpenOffice is sufficient. Acrobat is Acrobat: Works well on Linux
(on any Unix?) though is less pretty around the edges.
The real-time interoperability of applications is the killer.
(Linux is not ready?) Expecting certain drag-n-drop operations
has led to new infrastructure (dcopserver, klauncher, and others).
These are the instability point for the Linux desktop, along with Java.
We are losing some of the mix-n-match aspect of X windows.
Personally, I would rather lose the drag-n-drop.
ALL of the traditional X apps work NOW. Linux is ready.
IFF what you need is a Unix desktop,
then Linux HAS BEEN ready for quite some time.
Just one more testimonial, for what it's worth.
-- R;
