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

[rhiannen]

My work experience has been mostly in desktop, i.e. user support, not
system administration, and I've had numerous discussions and
confrontations with sysadmins specifically because of the difference in
viewpoints.  Systems administrators do just that  - administer systems. 
Support personnel do just that - support personnel.  As much as we
support people would like to believe we support the lovely systems,
bottom line is we support the users accessing our precious hardware and
systems.  

Now that I've established my viewpoint, let me put in my observations
that changes that will make a computer system more efficient do not
automatically correlate to make the users of the system more efficient,
and, in fact, can actually so severely decrease their efficiency as to
negate any increase on the computer side.  I've seen it happen where a
much touted system "improvement" actually had to be rolled back due to
the heavy loss of human productivity.   

>From my experience, *any* change noticeable in/to the user environment

constitutes headaches, retraining, hand-holding, and just an overall
increase in calls to the support desk.  From a new version of an old
application to a new/upgraded OS to new hardware, the user attitude is
that "any change from the company is evil."  <Of course, in an ideal
world, they'd instead see their personal changes (screensavers,
sound-effects, p2p software, etc.) as the true evil we all know it to
be. ;) >

That said, there is a direct correlation between the *amount* of change
and the costs involved in handling it.  Updating from Office 97 to
Office2k had a liberal sprinkling of "where's my <whatever>" calls and
typical complaints.  Simply updating from Win9x to NT/W2k/XP basically
shutdown the works (maintenance, hardware, image building, field
testing, etc.) during the migration and made the support team defacto
trainers.  The easiest transitions were the engineers (geeks/techs) and
the people who had just bought a home computer that was running the win
flavor of the update.  Very Important Note:  a tremendous amount of help
came from those two user groups as people could pop their head over the
cube wall and ask Mary or Joe simple usage question thus saving yet
another call to the support desk.  Not nearly as many office people will
have Linux on their new home system to let them act as surrogate
trainers.   

While I personally prefer CLI for most administrative tasks and fully
understand the intelligence of having a centrally maintained no frills
technical environment, I must respectfully disagree that it directly
translates to the most productive human work force.  Having had the
dubious pleasure, numerous times, of retraining regular Joe and Mary end
users, many of whom "have a (Win*) computer at home" (shudder, shudder,
twitch, twitch) it is simply an administrator's pipe dream that today's
office endusers will ever be happily productive moving back to such a
tightly maintained environment.  Pandora's box has been opened and all
the Peoria farm children have already seen the lights of St. Louis. 

OTOH, for tasks that are still being handled by old DOS based systems or
thin clients (POS, factory lines, many shipping/receiving tasks,
warehouse inventory, etc.) the streamlined no-frills eye-candyless Linux
replacement is a brilliant and excellent update/replacement.  Office use
of computers for email, documents, spreadsheets, etc. corresponds very
closely to home use of computers. Factory/warehouse use of computers
does not resemble home use.

Migrating an existing Win9x/NT/2K userbase to Linux most definitely
would have to include the GUI eyecandy, as *that is how they perceive
office computers to be used and useful*.   Ignoring the human factor in
that could very well bring the company to a screeching halt until
*everyone* was retrained.  Everyone includes the all-too-busy CEO and
upper management as well as Sales, HR, Marketing, Billing, PAYROLL..... 
that would Not a pretty picture. 

---- 
rhia
knowledge is power - arm yourself



Thompson Freeman wrote:
> 
> On 2002.08.21 10:43 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?
> 
> Anybody who wants the Users to accomplish something positive. While
> I will agree that the loss of eye candy and other sources of bloat
> will improve the utilization of the hardware, it isn't going to help
> sell the majority of people I know on the value of ditching a legacy
> environment, MANAGEMENT included.
> 
> Unhappy users expect hand holding, will sabotage equipment, insult
> customers,
> and generally cost way way more in the long run. OK. I'll admit this
> last
> is an assertion that I can not document/prove. It does fit with my
> experience
> tho.
> 
> >
> > 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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