RE: [OS:N:] OSN - what are the best desktop systems foreducational use?

["Brian E. Adams" <briana jeffneddie com>]

Can you clarify 'linux is far superior to Windows' for me?

 

 
-----Original Message-----
From: open-source-now-list-admin redhat com
[mailto:open-source-now-list-admin redhat com] On Behalf Of Jeremy Hogan
Sent: Wednesday, November 05, 2003 12:44 PM
To: open-source-now-list redhat com
Subject: Re: [OS:N:] OSN - what are the best desktop systems foreducational
use?

I would consider the classroom and lab environment a controlled setting,
with staffing for support (in many cases). You can set policy as to how
and where to get bits, have content filtering and firewalling.

The desktop != workstation in our strategy. The article you are likely
referring to chose the quotes the author thought made for sexy press.
And he was right, what was lost is the inferred "ready for Red Hat to
commit support and life cycle resources and service agreements" and also
lost the context of our roadmap which puts our desktop offering 12
months out.

Technically, of course, Linux is far superior to windows. But having
suffered through rolling 3000 people from Windows 95 to 98,  The
majority of which use computers because they have to. It's no picnic
when things look and feel and operate mostly the same, but in the case
of a corporate workstation the user has to adapt to what the IT folks
say to run, and for the IT folks having it hard for the user to double
click an attachment that grinds the e-mail system to a halt is a bonus. 
As for home users, they are a nice combination of very fickle and
stubborn. They want to and will install whatever they can et their hands
on. They want the option of sticking with exactly that if they wish, and
won't even go for clones that are functionally equivalent.

So for many many people, if you grant that the desktop market is a MS
market, Linux is not ready. It's not dumb enough on the top, despite
being smarter underneath. Too much hardware doesn't work out of the box,
mime types act differently for different programs, there's not enough
standards compliance within many distributions, let alone between them.

The last thing I'll mention, before it starts to sound like RH doesn't
think it will ever happen, is installation. No matter how easy it gets,
it will never be seen as "easy" as a Windows install b/c no one installs
Windows. It comes on the machine. 

For Linux to be the all singing all dancing desktop it needs OEMs, IHVs,
ISVs, and developers all looking at that user. 

--jeremy

On Wed, 2003-11-05 at 12:07, charles macdonald hrdc-drhc gc ca wrote:
> I heard a quote the other day that indicated that someone from redhat did
not think that his product was the best desktop for consumer use, I am
wondering where it (and the fedora system which is apparently to be the
successor)  would fit in in an educational setting.
> 
> 
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