Re: tlug: MSNBC: MS watching Linux

[Jonathan Byrne - 3Web <jq@example.com>]

On Thu, 3 Sep 1998, Howard Abbey wrote:


>Linux needs to do so.  So, to all you sysadmin's out there, why is a 
>"standard" GUI so important?  To be more exact, why is one required
>fairly 
>configurable window manager (Win95 taskbar, desktop & explorer) better
>than
>multiple highly configurable window managers?

I read that article a while back, and if I remember correctly, they were
talking about fighting NT on the desktop more than in the server market.
In the server market, a familiar GUI is of course much less important (but 
let's keep in mind that one source of NT Server inroads is the boost it gets
from managers who think it would be a good idea to have the same GUI
everywhere, so the desktop does have a perverse influence on the server room)

Against that background, then, a standard window manager is better because:

1) As was hinted, compatibility can be an issue, but more importantly . . 
2) It's about supporting it and having people find the same thing on every
desktop.  Consider this example:

You've been placed in charge of outfitting 2,000 PCs in company A with
Linux.  The people who will be using them are mostly (or completely) end users
in various business-related parts of the company.  Few or none of these people
are engineers or programmers (they've already slipped Linux in the back door
and have it now :-)   ).  You need to consider:

*Ease of maintenance.  Not only do no two window managers look alike or work
exactly alike, no two window managers have compatible configuration files.
Configuration files can even be incompatible between different versions of the
same wm.

*Ease of support: If your users have a half-dozen window managers to choose
from and they go around changing them, your help desk is going to have a lot
more trouble dealing with this, and will likely need more staff.

*Ease of use: some people will at least sometimes be using different computers
in different parts of the company or the building.  If the machines were
running MacOS, Windows, or OS/2, they'd all look the same everywhere you went.
No learning curve, nothing special to do, no problem. Everything works the
same way.  On UNIX, change the window manager and you change that.

*Ease of upgrading apps. When you have to upgrade or install desktop apps on a
couple thousand machines and there are half a dozen window managers with half
a dozen config files, your IS people have a lot more work cut out for them and
the process takes a lot longer.

All of this contributes to something Microsoft likes to talk a lot about:
Total Cost of Ownership.   MS may be better at convincing management that they
lower TCO than they are at actually lowering TCO, but they understand very
well the importance of TCO, and of having - or appearing to have - lower TCO.

The bottom line, if you'll forgive the pun: when I outfit company A with
its 2,000 Linux machines running ApplixWare or WordPerfect for Linux, I would
also outfit them with one, and only one, window manager.  You can change your
wall paper, you can drag icons around on your desktop, you can change your
menus if you really feel like it and learn how to do it.  You can't change
your window manager.

One way or another, you will be assimilated ;-)

Cheers,

Jonathan Byrne
Media and Content Section
3Web - Your Internet Solution! <URL:http://www.threeweb.ad.jp/index.en.html>
3Web Channel <URL: http://www.3web.co.jp/>

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