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

[Charles Marcus]

> From: rhiannen <rhia at atlantacon.org>
> Sent: Wednesday, August 21, 2002 1:36 PM
>
> 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.

I've done a bit of this as well, so am not totally clueless, although
admittedly I've never been involved in a large-scale change as this would
be.

> 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.

This goes without saying.  I submit that the changes we are discussing can
hardly be placed in this class.  All we are talking about, really, is
forcing Users to click in a different place to launch programs, and to
adjust to a slightly different way of doing things.  No one is going to ever
be able to convince me that forcing someone to use OpenOffice.org instead of
M$O (normal users, not Power Secretaries who use Excel like qa Database,
with tons of macros, etc) is gonna cause the kind of problems you are
talking about.

> 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."

Well, sorry, but I wouldn't someone who thinks like that working for me.

Realistically - yes, there will always be people like this, especially at
big companies.  And we are not talking about *my* company, we are talking
about discussing these kinds of changes with many different companies, so
yes, this should all be taken into consideration when designing 'the pitch',
and a good, well-thought out plan of attack should be designed for the
propaganda to the employees as to *why* the changes are being made (hey,
guys, would you rather we laid off a bunch of you, or made some simple
software changes and let you all keep your jobs?), and even type up some
good cheat sheets on the differences in the systems, and even have some
short (1 hour, 2 hour) classes.

> 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.

Which is basically what you'd have to deal with when switching to
OpenOffice.org (again, Power/Steroid Users excepted).

> While I personally prefer CLI for most admini-
> strative tasks and fully understand the intelli-
> gence of having a centrally maintained no frills
> technical environment, I must respectfully disagree
> that it directly translates to the most productive
> human work force.

Huh?  Who is talking about moving to a CLI environment??

I agre that having a centrally maintained no frills technical environment
does not automatically/directly translate to the most productive human work
force - it all depends on the implementation.

> 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.

I think you are being a bit pessimistic here.  If these people truly are
working when they are supposed to be working, what will they care that they
can't d/l and install games on their computers or spend hours deciding on a
desktop background, etc etc ad nauseum.  I just don't see an issue here.
Will some/lots of them be irritated at first that they can no longer tweak
their box?  Sure.  Will it cause them to all quit en masse, or go on strike,
or even lose sleep?  I highly doubt it.

> 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*.

Perceptions can be changed, sometimes very quickly - especially when a job
depends on it.

> 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.

Of course, the roadmap would require that it be done in stages.  First, the
techies, so they can help train the rest around them.  Second, the general
purpose workers (non-specialty jobs, who make light use of M$O etc).  Third,
each Management Dept would have to be done individually, and have their
hands held the whole time so that Company Business is minimally impacted.

The CEO may never get switched.  Who cares?  It isn't the cost of 1 or 3
licenses that is a problem, it is the cost of hundreds or thousands.

It can be done.  Maybe not without any pain at all, but the pain does not
have to be fatal.

Charles


---
This message has been sent through the ALE general discussion list.
See http://www.ale.org/mailing-lists.shtml for more info. Problems should be 
sent to listmaster at ale dot org.