[NCLUG] Call for Participation: Next NCLUG meeting: Your desktop habits.

[DJ Eshelman]

Perhaps I'm just used to a strict basic user audience.

It's funny- a few years ago I was hired to do Linux and Citrix stuff for 
my company.  Demand has shifted to the degree that I probably only spend 
about 1% of my time working with Linux at all (depressing, I know).  
With Citrix and VMWare both pushing the VDI (Virtual Desktop 
Infrastructure) concept- the term "desktop" has become an even more 
fluid concept.  Or, take for example, the fact that at one of my 
clients, I publish at least 5 'desktops' thru Citrix, each taylored for 
specific needs but all basically Windows.
As we struggled to find terminology that worked for your average user, 
and the best we'd come up with so far is to say "Company Desktop" or 
"Accounting Desktop", etc.
So, with VDI already hitting it big in the corporate world as far as 
managing Windows desktops, I guess I was just curious what other people 
mean by 'desktop habits' as well.  I'd pretty much given up on using 
Linux on the desktop entirely because frankly the demands of my clients 
have been winning out and I don't have time to try and make the 
millionth freakin .net management app (don't get me started) to run with 
WINE.

That said- I appreciate Chad's definition.

I recently turned my roommate onto Xubuntu for his church- they're 
loving it because it runs on some pretty old hardware and they can run 
it legally.  So, I haven't given up on it 100% :)  Ironically, however, 
the one issue they're having is getting it to run a projector for their 
morning services.

I've been having the same kind of issues with LinuxMCE- trying to run 
that 'desktop' in 1080p makes the fonts impossibly small to read...

I hope I can be there, actually- as this conversation has gone along 
I've been really curious to see what the brighter minds in the group 
(that is, brighter than mine) are doing as well.

-DJ

Chad Perrin wrote:
> On Mon, Jun 23, 2008 at 01:53:28PM -0600, DJ Eshelman wrote:
>   
>> So, I'd be curious as well to hear what people think of when they hear 
>> 'Desktop':
>>
>> Do you mean desktop computer (ie, PC/Mac) for personal daily use?
>> Do you mean server desktop interface (using X instead of SSH, for example)?
>> Do you mean terminal sessions?
>> Do you mean Virtual Desktops from Xen or VMWare?
>> Or, now that Wine is finally actually released (1.0), do you mean you 
>> use a Linux Desktop and run Windows apps that way?
>>     
>
> In terms of what's being presented, I think of a preferred general
> working environment for both professional and leisure pursuits -- the
> environment in which I run my browser, my text editors, et cetera.  I
> don't tend to think of a "server desktop interface", in part because
> (other than application servers) I don't tend to install X on a server at
> all.  I think of terminal sessions as being part of the overall "desktop"
> because I tend to have several running at any given time.
>
> I think of Xen and VMWare as "virtual machines", not "virtual desktops".
> In fact -- and I probably have this in common with most users of open
> source Unix-like OSes -- I think of "virtual desktops" as something else
> entirely:
>
>   http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtual_desktop
>
> Wine is just something I may or may not use within the context of my
> "desktop" environment, if I have need of running some MS Windows based
> application that won't run on my machine any other way (such as World of
> Warcraft).
>
> I guess that means that I refer to your first listed option, a "desktop
> computer", where that also includes laptops (what some people confusingly
> call "notebooks", even though people like me often use actual notebooks
> as well as laptops).
>
>
>   
>> However, odds are good that I may not be able to be there- can someone 
>> video and then YouTube (or whatever method you like, share the video) of 
>> the meeting just in case I can't be there?
>>     
>
> I'm afraid I won't be recording any video of the event, but maybe someone
> else has a video camera.
>
>   
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