[NCLUG] gdm funkiness

Mike Loseke mike at verinet.com
Mon Dec 17 09:07:50 MST 2001


Thus spake Kirk Rheinlander:
> 
> Mike wrote:
> >
> >  Yet another reason no linux distro should be loosed upon a users
> >desktop yet...
> 
> And I suppose Mickeysnot Windoze has never taken a dump????? I routinely 
> reformat and reinstall Windows once a quarter, just to keep it running 
> right - and am about to reformat again, only this time, making LINUX the 
> primary install, and Win4Lin for those moments when I need to digress.

 I don't know, I don't use windows. I don't multi-boot either, unless you
count booting different kernel revisions.

 No, what I mean when I say that Linux isn't ready for the desktop is that
it's still not a clean user interface solution which is consistent with
it's peers. To this you may say "who cares?" - well I do - I have to support
hundreds of desktops and users on a daily basis - and not normal users
mind you but engineers - you know who you are. :-) Both Sun Solaris and
HP-UX have a common interface/environment by default (CDE) which is very
close to identical across machines. CDE takes less than 1% of our support
time because of this. These vendors, and more, worked together several
years ago to make that a reality as some here may recall.

 On Linux (RedHat 7.1 is what I'm currently using), the default setup is
now nice and purty for a single user desktop but to use it in a
heterogeneous environment takes lots of modifications (yes, I *would* like
the ability to login remotely) - and then, it seems, users aren't even
allowed to login through the default gdm interface. Thanks alot.

 Granted, there exists a commercial CDE product for Linux distributions -
we haven't tried it as we're running these penguins in a "development"
mode which means we can't really spend any money on it. If it were to work
as one would hope then there's less of a problem - in fact the only problem
would be that we'd be buying an integral part of the distribution from
another vendor instead of from the guys packaging the OS. Moot point, yes,
but when you are subject to the finger-pointing game multi-vendor solutions
play on you it's a large one.

 So, to elucidate on my point - No Linux distribution is ready for trivial
adoption into any heterogeneous desktop environment. In short, it ain't
ready.  Given time and money within the environment it can be borgified
(and it mostly is here) but of all the OS's in use (all of which do require
some modifications) it requires the most. I'm a big proponent of it in the
back room (I hate all those pesky peripherals like sound cards and
monitors) and I put it in place where I'm able to, but putting it on the
desktop is not a viable solution.

 Of course, that's just my opinion - I could be wrong.

-- 
   Mike Loseke    | Press to test. (click)
 mike at verinet.com | Release to detonate.



More information about the NCLUG mailing list