Linux for an association I work for.

[Moshe Brace using Yahoo]

Shavuah Tov,
I'm a beginner what they call a Newbe. I too came to some of the conclusions below. However, I look at the problem from a different angle as a newbe. I recently upgraded under the recommendation of Mandriva 2009.0 from 2008.1 v Spring, I can't for love or money other that in Cheese and Ekiga the Webcamera to work. With regards to other programmes yes they are not perfect and far from it. Something of the Linux uniqueness makes me use it. I have Wine on my computer which plays games when trying to use it for certain Windows Programmes. But - I fight with myself not to add too many Windows programmes for the obvious reason - if I wanted to use Windows based programmes I don't need a dual boot machine. When do we reach this line? If we cross it then you are 100% right. A young lad by the name Linus thought that programmes are too expensive for Mr average. He was right! 

With regards to Mac: I have owned a Mac Classic and before that an Apple //C two wonderful easy to use computers. I have yet to see anything in Windows get to Mac standards; they are several years ahead of PC. I do not want to sound like an advert for Apple. As I found that several programmes on the Mac crashed. The Resume button appeared, presumeably the guy who wrote the programme that crashed had to send out his Resume when looking for a new job.
Moshe

--- On Sat, 28/2/09, Yotam Rubin <yotamrubin at gmail.com> wrote:
From: Yotam Rubin <yotamrubin at gmail.com>
Subject: Re: Linux for an association I work for.
To: "David Harel" <hareldvd at gmail.com>
Cc: linux-il at cs.huji.ac.il
Date: Saturday, 28 February, 2009, 5:45 PM

Not to take the wind out of your sails, I would probably advise against switching to Linux for anyone who's not a Linux expert. While it took me some years to reach this conclusion, I now believe that Linux is not a viable choice for anyone who's not an advanced user. My reasons follow:

 1. Mainstream desktop environments (KDE, GNOME) have gotten slower and buggier over the years. As I bought faster hardware, KDE and GNOME seemed slower and crashed more often. 
 2. Linux distributions don't work. Even Ubuntu and other mainstream distributions simply do not work. Package testing is poor, and various programs do not integrate with one another. I often find myself having to fix things manually, usually by digging deep into various scripts/configuration files. Additionally, at least with Ubuntu, upgrades tend to break horribly, requiring a clean reinstallation.

 3. Usability as a whole is becoming less viable. Applications (at least with my recent Ubuntu distrubutions) tend to crash often, work more slowly and have less features.

Windows suffers from the same problems, only it's not as slow as Linux. On the other hand, I've been using OS X lately, and the thing works. The UI is simple, relatively powerful and does not randomly crash. I'm guessing OS X is not a valid choice for you, due to the prohibitive cost of Mac hardware..


Anyway, that's what I think.

Good luck, though.

Yotam Rubin

2009/2/28 David Harel <hareldvd at gmail.com>






Greetings,



I need your help
regarding convincing the vice president of an association to shift from
MS XP to Linux. What I did till now was install Ubuntu on two machines
that were phasing out and failed to run MS. We got all services we
needed including connectivity to external resources.
Currently the objection
to my initiation is in three items:

  Make Linux connect to IPVPN (thought it is straight forward).

  
  Maintenance cost.
  Getting his approval for my test (seems like a small man).

I need information to try to overturn his stubbornness.




-- 
Regards.

David Harel,

==================================

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Email:      hareldvd at ergolight-sw.com





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