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So why not put Linux on your business desktops?

Peter Judge ZDNet.co.uk

Published: 28 Nov 2005 15:45 GMT

...which was the best Linux distribution in our test, had the least-friendly installer.

But so long as the installer works, the bells and whistles on it should not be a final decider of which Linux to use; there will be a lot more user-hours than installer-hours spent on any given machine after all.

Tuning the desktop to your company's needs starts with choosing a non-brown look to Ubuntu, and goes on to setting up specific hardware at install time.

The installer prompts the administrator to choose a desktop environment — a user interface comparable with Windows. Gnome and KDE are the main choices here. It may also ask to select which applications will be available, and other details, such as which default file format to use in OpenOffice.

The installer also has to set up the security of the operating system. It will prompt the administrator to provide a root password, for the superuser, and to create at least one user, who will have fewer privileges.

YaST2 keeps an eye on this, prompting us to make our passwords sufficiently strong. Ubuntu's installer effectively throws the superuser away, giving it a random password and forgetting it, then giving the first user the ability do admin tasks — thus recreating the somewhat laxer environment that Windows users will be familiar with.

The tools
In most cases, the product ships with all these things in place. If any are missing, it should be straightforward to download and install them. However, it's a significant saving in time and effort if the tools are there, and well integrated — particularly if there is an update service which will install patches and upgrades to the different applications in the package.

Here are the main elements we looked for.

GNOME user interface
This is similar to Windows — but perhaps a bit more like the Mac in that it feels less cluttered. In a trial in Birmingham, where users were given two days with each, Les Timms found that users preferred GNOME to the similar KDE environment. Anyone used to opening, closing and minimising windows in a Microsoft environment can go straight into GNOME and get busy.

OpenOffice productivity suite
This is the leading prpductivity suite for Linux. It can be made to store documents in Word format or as RTF files. Users familiar with Microsoft Office can pick it up instantly. Some distributions go to the extent of setting up menu options in OpenOffice to mimic those in Word, with sometimes surprising results: "Some of our people using OpenOffice are unaware that it is a different application," says Timms.

Evolution email/calendar/contacts.
This looks so much like Microsoft Outlook that, again, no re-training is required and it is easy to forget which program you are using. If users have a pre-existing base of contacts, these can be exported from Outlook as vCards, or as a comma-separated variable file, and imported to Evolution. For most users, this should be done by the IT staff, or at least with some hand-holding by them.

A number of the tech team at ZDNet UK's parent company CNET Networks UK have been using various Linux versions for their main desktop for some time, and have plenty of experience in handling Exchange email and calendaring through Evolution. The only things that occasionally fail, they say...

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Its the applications and device drivers that run on windows that cement its dominance. How many people would fork out hundreds of pounds for Vista if Linux ran all the software and kit they wanted to use.