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

[F. Grant Robertson]

You know, on this subject..  Why now, like 6 years after I first installed
RedHat 4, and many more years since the birth of Xfree, the kernel and all
this other fabulous stuff was created.. Why do we still not have something
universaly transparent like DDE or OLE in X that can traverse window
managers?  K has it's thing, gnome has it's thing...  why is there not
something at a lower level that handles this?  I can use the same font
server across desktops, and even across variants of X but, I can't drag and
drop..  Couldn't GPM handle this somehow?  X? Some other little doohickey
like Xfs?

I'd love to hear some programmers that have more experience with the deeper
workings of unix, X and window management than I do give a good explination
of why not, and what would be involved to actually make this happen.

-G

-----Original Message-----
From: Bill Sirinek [mailto:sirinek at enteract.com]
To: ale at ale.org
Sent: Wednesday, August 21, 2002 11:30 AM
To: Charles Marcus
Cc: Ale (E-mail)
Subject: RE: [ale] Best Desktop Env or Distro for Windows users?



Charles,

You have valid points about productivity and eye candy and all that, but
one thing I didnt touch on with KDE and its application suite is that
basic things like drag and drop and cut and paste work like they
should. If you use KDE & Koffice, and other KDE apps, this all works
pretty seamlessly. I'd loev to see if that were the case if one were to,
say, run IceWM/Mozilla/StarOffice/Evolution. Can I drag URLs from Mozilla
to Evolution? Can I drag my staroffice document onto the IceWM
desktop? Can I use Mozilla's copy command to paste something into
StarOffice (and I mean using the menu copy/paste, not the X11 2nd/1st
button copy/paste)

I agree it doesnt really matter what the users think about the choice the
IT management made, but if you are going to switch from Windows to Linux
and you dont want productivity to take a huge hit, you want to give them
something that will work almost exactly like Windows.

Bill




On Wed, 21 Aug 2002, Charles Marcus wrote:

> > From: Irv Mullins [mailto:irvm at ellijay.com]
> > Sent: Wednesday, August 21, 2002 9:43 AM
> >
> > On Wednesday 21 August 2002 08:37 am, you wrote:
> >
> >> 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.
>
> > Agreed. Any of the 'lightweight' window managers are
> > going to be an immediate and final turnoff for people
> > who are used to Windows. They will refuse to use them,
> > your cause is lost.
>
> Uh.  If the Company President, or Office Manager, or whover is in charge
of
> these decisions, mandates that this is the new corporate Desktop, the
Users
> will have no say-so about it.  They *can't* refuse to use it - all they
can
> do is complain amopngst themselves, and worst-case, quit and go work
> somewhere else.
>
> Managements *only* concern should be that they have the tools they need to
> do their job well.
>
> > You can use this as a selling point. Users will be
> > impressed with their ability to customize things.
> > The only other thing they will care about is that
> > Linux may crash less often than Windows.  Anything
> > else, no mater how real, will be unimportant.
>
> Who *cares* what the Users think, ultimately?
>
> No, I'm not really the cold-hearted bastard I may sound like, but really -
> is Management providing these people computers so they can play with them,
> or so they can do their work?  People used to get by with pen, paper and a
> typewriter, so do *not* tell me they* have* to have KDE eye-candy to be
able
> to write a letter, send a fax, or create a Proposal, send email or browse
> the web.
>
> Charles
>
>
> ---
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