Some people would rather build a heathkit tv so they can be “free of vendor lock-in” by the likes of the evil magnavox empire.
1. You will no longer be bothered by vendor software upgrades since they will not be compatible with your computer, since most vendor software is written to run in Windows.
2. Your hand writing and mathematics skills will improve greatly since you will now be communicating the old fashion way.
3. By embracing the opinion of an English major, writing for a tech publication, but who would rather be writing for a mainstream media operation, you will be viewed as someone no one will want to do business with.
Using Linux for business makes no sense at all, unless you do not plan on having customers.
There’s one pretty compelling reason to go for Linux on the desktop even in the corporate environment, and that’s Desktop Virtualisation or Application Virtualisation.
I recently saw a Quest vWorkspace VDI (virtual desktop infrastructure) implementation. It blew my socks off.
The administrators no longer have to worry if a computer has got the right OS, or the right patches, drivers, antivirus, a certain amount of memory, doesn’t have App X installed on it because that breaks App Y, and so on.
They’ve got stripped-down PCs that don’t have anything except the VDI software installed, and are using proximity badges and the builtin cameras on the monitors, to identify the user at the keyboard.
Sit at a machine and tap the proximity reader - boom there’s your applications. Get out of the chair, within ten seconds the screen locks because the camera saw you walk away. Sit at another machine at another desk, tap the reader, and there’s your applications from the first machine.
Say you get halfway into writing a Word document up and go to browse for a picture to add, and realise the file is sitting on your iPad. Simple. Log into your iPad. The screen locks on the desktop PC, and Word appears on your iPad, with your document still open and Word still waiting for you to browse for that picture. Only now you can grab the file from the iPad. Need to put it on a Linux PC? Log into it. There’s your Word session, again. File, Save As. Job done.
This is sexy stuff (if you’re a nerd) but a bean-counter will wet himself because of the implications.
You can make a Linux image with the VDI client software included, that’ll run on any machine that’s not quite powerful enough to cope with Windows 7.
Bingo - no “we’re short on Windows 7 licenses”, no “the machines in Marketing need bigger hard disks”, no more “OurApp v8 needs a RAM upgrade”. And if the usable life expectancy of old computers can easily be doubled overnight - even tripled - without any expenditure on them, then Linux allows the IT department to make significant cuts in spending without any detrimental impact on the service.
To prove the point, my customer took an old Pentium III with 512MB of RAM and a measly 8GB hard drive out of a cupboard, wiped it with the same Linux disk he uses on new thin client PCs, kickstarted the setup, and walked away.
An hour later I went back to that machine, and it was sat on the login screen. I logged into the virtual desktop and fired up Word 2010 - the entire process from hitting “Log In” to being able to type into a new document, took about eight seconds.