[ale] Best Desktop Env or Distro for Windows users?

[Bill Sirinek]

Unless people are running Pentium 150s or something I'd recommend a real
desktop ENVIRONMENT like GNOME or (my preference) KDE instead of just a
window manager like IceWM. These are windows users who are going to want
things like a control panel, a menu panel, icons on the desktop, things
they are used to.

The reason I prefer KDE over GNOME is because it feels a lot more
finished. I can go to ONE place in KDE and change everything a _user_
would want to change like fonts, background, sounds, screensaver and other
more advanced things.

With GNOME its a pain because you can change some of these things in the
configuration tool for GNOME, some in Nautilus, and some of the same
things in Sawfish (or whatever WM you are using) and it gets very
confusing very fast. For example, dont change your GNOME background or
font preferences when Nautilus has taken over! It feels too
patched-together for me, just imagine what a newbie will think. I thought
GNOME2 would be an improvement, but its only worse.

And as for maintaining 53 unix workstations, if you dont give the users
root and you build a standard install CD, its not going to be THAT bad to
have them run everything locally as opposed to turning everyone's computer
into an X terminal.. Handholding (hey how do I do *this*) is going to be
the same either way. I know this because I used to be a sysadmin for 300
desktop unix stations (this was in the mid 90s before we had neat open
source windowing environments and lots of good application software.)

Bill



On Wed, 21 Aug 2002, Charles Marcus wrote:

> > From: John Wells [mailto:jb at sourceillustrated.com]
> > Sent: Wednesday, August 21, 2002 9:18 AM
> >
> > As I mentioned in a previous email, I've talked my site manager into
> > exploring Linux for site-wide desktop deployment.
> >
> > As most (53 of 55) users here are strictly Windows users, I'd
> > like hear
> > some opinions on what the best desktop env./distro is for *complete*
> > Linux/Unix newbies.  What's the most stable?  Easiest to use?  Most
> > intuitive?
> 
> Depends:
> 
> If you are the sysadmin, I would use Gentoo.  The installation,
> configuration and setup are not nearly as 'easy' as the other mainstream
> distros, but once its up and running, its more stable and far easier to
> maintain.
> 
> Also, again, I *highly* recommend setting up a little pilot LTSP setup, and
> show him how fast the workstations are, and then explain to him how much
> easier it will be to maintain one or two servers, as opposed to 53
> individual workstations.
> 
> As for the Desktop environment, again in my opinion, simpler is better - I
> really like IceWM.  It is extraordinarily fast, very stable, simple to
> configure, and *very* easy on the resources.  Running IceWM instead of KDE,
> you'd have no problem with running all 53 workstations off of one server.
> 
> The *only* problem here is there is no ebuild for LTSP yet, so you'd have to
> do some fiddling to make it work.
> 
> Just my opinion...
> 
> Charles
> 
> 
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