Linux Stuff

The Economist has an interesting article up on Linux

Eric G. Harrison — Fri, 16 Apr 2004 08:19:00 GMT

The article is here.

One of the points that I consider very valid is the idea of Linux 'going after' the transactional worker. For example, in my prior life I was at a company called American Backhaulers (acquired by CH Robinson Worldwide). We had over 500 users at ABH, all of which were running some version of Windows and Office. As I think about it, we spent a *lot* of money on Microsoft licenses that would have been completely avoided with Linux (although perhaps at a higher support cost?). The reason I think it would have worked is that 90% of those people used the home-grown line of business application and email. That was it. If the app had been written to run on Linux the users would have been just fine with that - because they didn't care. They wanted to broker, not to use Windows.

Before I left CH Robinson, I had started to discuss Linux and see if there was interest within the IT department. I got a pretty good response, but since I left shortly afterwords, I don't know if anything ever happened on that front.

The next 10 years are going to be very interesting for Microsoft, and for us business users who depend on their systems, but are keeping an eye on Linux's incredible rate of maturation.

Linux Rocks! Linux Sucks!

Eric G. Harrison — Mon, 29 Mar 2004 00:33:00 GMT

I spent a ton of time earlier today installing SuSe 9.0 Linux inside MS Virtual PC on my home system. From start to finish it took probably 4 hours. Granted, most of that was spent doing other stuff, keeping the focus away from the VPC session (thus making it run in the background), but it was still quite a long time.

Immediately after installation, I logged in using Gnome to see what it is like these days - I've been using KDE in the system at the office. It was okay, but the screen resolution wasn't ideal, and I couldn't find an easy way to change it, so I decided that when I logged back in later, I would use KDE. Later is finally here, and of course, nothing works. In the (graphical) login screen, I choose KDE, and I just end up at a blank screen! I press CTRL-ALT-Backspace to kill X, and the first time it puts me back the graphical login (try it again and the same error occurs), and the second time, it returns me to a login prompt (text) that doesn't do anything. <sigh>

So, I've now killed the VPC session and I'm hoping that it will work this time. If not, maybe I'll use Gnome for a bit - after all, who doesn't like icons the size of your mouse (the one on your desk!)?

This is the sort of thing that Microsoft has down pat. I can't remember the last time I started a Windows based system and couldn't get to a login or change the resolution of the display. Of course, familiarity counts for a tremendous amount, but still...

Each time I mess around with Linux I am impressed at the progress that is being made, but I always run into something really ugly that makes me go running back to Windows. Let's hope I can figure this out easily.

I'll keep the world posted...

Setting up a network based PDF printer under Linux...

Eric G. Harrison — Sun, 28 Mar 2004 09:42:00 GMT

As I learn more about Linux, this is the sort of thing that gets me all hot and bothered. Under Windows, you'd have to pony up quite a bit of money for Adobe's Distiller product to do something like this...

http://www.linuxgazette.com/issue72/bright.html

Of course, under Windows, it would only take a simple installation of the program from Adobe, and under Linux it takes quite a bit more work!