IT Job creations... IT job losses?

[CLIFFORD ILKAY]

At 10:49 01/11/2003 -0500, JoeHill wrote:
>On Sat, 1 Nov 2003 14:08:53 +0200 (IST)
>"Peter L. Peres" <plp-ysDPMY98cNQDDBjDh4tngg at public.gmane.org> uttered:
>
> > The one irk I have is the phrase 'linux is not ready for the desktop'.
>
>Absolutement. This is the FUD I deal with every time I tell someone
>about installing Linux on their desktop. They are so brainwashed, they
>simply cannot believe that most distros out there will boot into a
>*complete* and *useable* GUI, with many choices of mail, web, office,
>chat, and amusement software already installed. No hassles with
>immediately having to go to Windows Update for the 2 hour patch process,
>no downloading of anti-everything software, no running to the
>software shop for Orifice or other productivity apps, *it just works*.
>
>Then when you try and explain that you don't even have just one choice
>for your "GUI", there are literally *dozens*, many of them, like XFCE,
>very user-friendly even for newbs, they are shocked beyond belief. And
>*then* when you tell them that their "ancient" P3 450 will run like a
>wild animal, unlike that bloated XP "upgrade"...well, you've all seen
>the facial expression...;-)

The average user that I encounter is impressed more by eye candy than 
technical details. I think KDE has the best eye candy of all the desktop 
managers but it is quite resource intensive. Someone using KDE on a P3/450 
is not going to notice much, if any, improvement over Windows XP on the 
same hardware. That is not to say that they would not like using it but 
rather that we have to moderate our hyperbole somewhat. Claiming that a 
P3/450 is going to run Linux like a "wild animal" is a dubious strategy 
since it will set up unrealistic expectations. Trying to sell them on XFCE 
I think is a lost cause. CDE and all those other user interfaces never 
gained wide acceptance for a good reason. They were, and still are, ugly 
user interfaces that only geeks and zealots could love. Trying to sell 
users that I deal with on XFCE over Windows XP would be like getting them 
to stop using MS Word in favour of LyX or stop using Eudora for the 
"elegance" of Mutt.

OpenOffice is functional but it is not yet up to the standards of usability 
of MS Office. MS Office is more polished and so it should be given the vast 
sums of money MS has poured into it. A fussy user may not like OO because 
it seems to take an eon to launch, it does not offer the ability to do 
things like changing the range of a sum function by dragging the box that 
covers the range, etc. Granted, Microsoft plays tricks to make Office more 
responsive by pre loading many of the DLLs that Office uses when Windows is 
started so that when a user launches Excel, it just appears as opposed to 
grinding away for 22 seconds (I timed it) before the user sees a 
spreadsheet. Koffice looks promising because it is tightly integrated with 
KDE and it does not seem to suffer the same performance problems as OO but, 
up to version 1.2.1 is not ready for prime time yet. It lacks many features 
and has too many bugs to be usable. I use OO and MS Office on a regular 
basis and both have their strengths and weaknesses. For the moment, I think 
MS Office still has an edge but OO is catching up rapidly.

So, is Linux ready for the desktop? My answer is "It depends." For the 
average user who just types letters, uses e-mail, uses a browser, and maybe 
uses spreadsheets, using decent hardware, sure. We have replaced green 
screen terminals, and Windows and Mac OS desktops with Linux desktops and 
no one has gone back but, we have been careful to not oversell Linux.

Regards,

Clifford Ilkay
Dinamis Corporation
3266 Yonge Street, Suite 1419
Toronto, Ontario
Canada M4N 3P6

Tel: 416-410-3326 

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