[Lias] Linux on the desktop - NO?

[Craig Ringer]

> The GOOD:
> Use legacy machines
> Takes only 5 minutes to setup a new workstation
> Plenty of applications
> License costs are almost non-existent

Great, isn't it. Dirt cheap terminals. I'm running an LTSP setup at 
work, connected to a Dual Xeon with a couple of gigs of RAM and a lot of 
disk storage. We needed the storage anyway, one way or another, and the 
high performace machine didn't cost that much compared to the SATA RAID 
arrays. The boss has been increasingly unhappy with the costs of 
software licensing, which he sees (quite accurately) as throwing away 
money, so he was quite interested in trialling LTSP. The results were 
good enough that we decided to deploy it to replace our ageing (!!) 486s 
in the sales department. The users are delighted despite a couple of 
lingering niggles - fast computers that can handle big images, PDFs, 
word documents, etc are just what they were after.

> Seems impossible to create and maintain a standard desktop for users a la Windows
> Profiles

I've never tried this under GNOME/KDE, and wouldn't be surprised if that 
were the case. We're using XFCE4 to provide a nice, simple, easily 
standardised login environment for the staff here, and it's going well.

> I get many web browser crashes (java related I think - especially with Galeon) that
> lock the session and persist beyond a logoff and login. The only solution I have
> found is to delete and re-create the user directory, which is not very satisfactory!

I've never had Mozilla lock up since Macromedia fixed the flash5 SHM 
bug. Flash 6 is /required/ for network transparent X, and flash 5 will 
crash your browser. Other than that, it's been rock-solid.

> Difficult, if not impossible, to 'map' drives so that users can get data from a
> range of sources.

The best solution I've found is to have a system-wide automount in 
/smb/$HOSTNAME, giving users access to public/shared directories. I 
posted in more detail about this on the perth linux user group list 
(archives at http://www.cantech.net.au/plug/ ). Here's one I posted a 
while ago:

http://www.cantech.net.au/plug/2003-07/msg01007.html

I'm also using LDAP authentication instead of Winbind, but that 
shouldn't matter.

> I feel at the moment that the 'Bad' outweigh the 'Good'. Any opinions? Feel free to
> tell ma I am an idiot and all the listed 'Bad' things are just my ignorance! :-)

My own experiences with our LTSP deployment have been positive, though I 
had a very long trial running to iron out kinks. The only significant 
issue I have is with Mozilla Mail, which has a couple of _really_ 
_annoying_ bugs. The gtk2 version seems to crash  out occasionally when 
connected to a server that doesn't support RENDER - worked around by 
going to XFree86 4.3 (with s3 trio support). Mozilla also has layout 
issues with messages that contain long From, To, and Subject lines, 
and/or long attachments. There are a couple of others, too. See bugs:

http://bugzilla.mozilla.org/votes.cgi?action=show_bug&bug_id=135695
http://bugzilla.mozilla.org/votes.cgi?action=show_bug&bug_id=144388
http://bugzilla.mozilla.org/votes.cgi?action=show_bug&bug_id=144625
http://bugzilla.mozilla.org/votes.cgi?action=show_bug&bug_id=131733

Other than with Mozilla, everything has been going very well. We use 
XFCE 4 with Rox-Filer 2.0, OpenOffice.org1.1rc3 (more stable, faster, 
better), Mozilla 1.4 for browser & mail, and an Xterm over remote X11 
from an old UNIX host for our main accounts & bookings system.

Both Mozilla and openoffice need to be easier to create central 
configurations for in /etc. It's possible to set Mozilla defaults by 
editing the defaults/prefs/*.js files, but these get overwritten with 
each upgrade. I haven't found anything even that useful for OpenOffice.

Additionally, OpenOffice doesn't handle /very/ complex word documents 
very well - at least, not ones that use absolutely positioned boxes. As 
I deal with people who think that Word is a desktop publishing package, 
this becomes annoying, but shouldn't affect normal users much.

Basically, it needs a fair bit of work to be really nice to work with, 
but the software set we're working with is already good enough to be 
well worth using. It does the job, usually does it very well, and is 
/very/ affordable.

Craig Ringer