| Desktop Options -- The Alternatives to Microsoft Windows |
by Michael C. Barnes
Desktop Options -- The Alternatives to Microsoft Windows
I have used versions of Unix for over fifteen years. I never thought that Unix would ever emerge as a viable desktop alternative. It is hard to imagine a less friendly environment than the command line of a Unix system in its early days.
The people who supported Linux would constantly remind me that while Unix could indeed be complex, it was its flexibility and configurability that made it superior. I used to keep a cheat sheet for all things Unix. I had my vi cheat sheet. I had my command line cheat sheets and my enscript cheat sheets.
Many years ago, some of my customers contacted me about this new windowing system called X Windows. At that time, there was a project called Athena that had ported a network-based windowing system onto a DEC/VAX. The user interface was something called DEC Windows. I was completely unimpressed by the demo. I remember that the windowing system worked with mostly text, and windows would open up to allow you to make a selection.
Some of the other demos looked very crude. In time, X Windows became the dominant windowing system for the Unix world. Two standards emerged. One was Sun Microsystems' Open Look. The rest of the world went with a licensed standard called Motif. For two years, I was on the Sun side while we raged war with the rest of the Unix community over whose toolkit was better and whose user interface was better.
I remember that Open Look had a push pin as part of its window. The window would remain on the desktop until the push pin was removed. Motif had a 3-D look, so it appeared to be more modern. Many customers insisted on Motif running on Sun. This was not a technical problem, but the cost to put Motif on Sun was quite expensive. X Windows could support either one.
At some point, the argument was settled as all Unix parties got together and agreed to use something called CDE (Common Desktop Environment). Sun claimed victory as did everyone else involved. CDE became the graphics interface for all Unix systems for quite a while.
Anyone who has worked on a Sun Workstation will recognize this desktop.
To be kind, CDE was as technically advanced as any environment one would find in the early 1990's. I worked for Sun Microsystems until 2001; and I believe that CDE was looking a bit out-dated compared to Windows XP and Windows 2000. To me, CDE simply didn't seem to match the power that was under the hood.
Sun has announced that they will support the Gnome desktop at some point. At the time of this writing, Gnome is still an unsupported option.
While I worked for Sun Microsystems, I had the option of receiving an employee discount on their workstations. The entire time I worked there, I had always wanted to buy a Sun workstation but I never got around to it.
The one thing that I always appreciated about working at Sun was the stability of our environment. The entire time I worked for Sun, I cannot remember a single crash. We never had to worry about administering our own desktops. While the front-end graphics was nothing special, the Solaris (Unix) software was rock-solid. I think that most people who worked at Sun Microsystems felt they had the advantage because the company really did understand how to support a large enterprise. After 13 years in the company, I never heard one person complain they could not get something done because their computer was down.
Until Sun acquired StarOffice, we had to make-do with inadequate tools. None-theless, we were more productive because of the stability of the network and the systems. I would rather write a book on vi than to try to write one on a computer that would crash and lose my work.
In 1997, I started a company to produce audio equipment. I did this to help out some friends and I never intended it to make money for me. Therefore, any time I spent working on the project was volunteer work.
I tried to set the company up on Windows 98, then Windows 2000 and finally Windows XP. I would spend hours setting up the network to make it the most efficient system I could. Every week, I would get a call that something was not working. Only I could fix these problems and more and more of my time got sucked into system administration.
The worst thing that happened was the computers always seemed to get viruses. The company did e-commerce. Many of the viruses were passed in e-mail and some were passed in files that customers would send.
I tried to set policies on how we handled mail and I tried antivirus software. No matter what I did, I just could not obtain the level of stability I required.
In my home, my wife and daughter use Microsoft Windows XP. They are connected to a network and their systems never have problems. For some reason, the systems we used for the audio company were always having problems.
I decided to switch to GNU/Linux. The marketing director had dozens of reasons why she needed to stick with Microsoft. I told her that I would continue to run Windows XP, but if she got one more virus, I was going to replace her system and every other system with Linux.
A week later, her system was down again. Her system was infected with another virus. I took the drive with her data and made it drive two. All of the files and information remained on the drive. I then installed Red Hat Linux.
At first I heard a lot of complaining. I would get called down because our marketing director wanted to show me how something didn't work. Generally speaking, it was operator error.
I worked with her to make sure she had all the functionality she wanted. It turns out that she spent a lot of time downloading MP3s off the network and listening to them while she worked. She also kept two or three messengers up. While these had nothing to do with her job, it did have a lot to do with her personal satisfaction. She spent many evenings and weekends working overtime so it is fair that she have a comfortable working environment.
It took a long time, and some experimenting to make her completely happy with her environment. I will describe what we did for her as we move on.
The other workers had no problems adjusting to Linux. Most of the workers appreciated the speed and stability. One of the workers said she noticed how there was no delay when she printed so that she could continue working while she was printing out documents.
Screenshot from one of our Linux systems. We have configured Mandrake 8.2 to look very similar to Microsoft XP including giving it the ability to run Microsoft's Internet Explorer.
While it might sound like an exaggeration, the truth is that we have achieved 100% user satisfaction. We have reduced administration down to nearly zero. We have had no viruses and no crashes for nearly a year. The system is more productive and our hardware remains adequate despite being a few generations old.
We do all the things that normal offices do. We support a wired and wireless network. We have scanners and printers. We sync with PDAs. We do invoicing and inventory. What is unusual is that we do it with Open Source software.
In 2001, I started a computer company. I set up a lab of 12 computers and the staff spent several months testing over thirty distributions of Open Source software. We tested each distribution to see its advantages and disadvantages. My goal was to single out the very best distributions and to rank different distributions based on their strengths and weaknesses. I also wanted to find out which of the many thousands of Open Source packages were worth the disk space and how many of them are simply fillers.
What We Learned Through This Process
Over the past five years, I have tested different versions of GNU/Linux. I have gone back and forth between versions that I like and do not like, but one GNU/Linux distribution has always been a superior distribution. The distribution that I have always liked the best is Mandrake. Mandrake remains one of my favorites, but I have found two very strong challengers that might be better choices.
The first Linux distribution I ever tried was Slackware 3.1. Slackware 3.1 came with a book that I bought from Walnut Creek. I remember getting it to work to the point of the command line. I was so excited because for the first time, I had a Unix box in my home. At Sun, I never had root privileges. There was a lot that I could not do with Unix because I never had permission. For the first time in my life I had root privileges and I was pleased.
The only problem at that time was that once I had root privileges, there wasn't much else to do. I don't remember if the version I had provided X Windows or not. I do know that I booted it up to the command line and that was about as far as I got.
A little while later, I got Red Hat up and running. This version of Red Hat came with a copy of CDE provided. I brought up CDE and was absolutely pleased that I could recreate the same look and feel that I used at Sun. I was also pleased when I got X Windows to work over the modem and I could run my local tools on my Linux system at home. I remember thinking that life does not get much better than this.
The next version of Red Hat did not have a copy of CDE. They wrote in their documentation that the implementation was buggy and they would no longer support it. At some point, I tried my first version of Mandrake. Mandrake was based on Red Hat but they focused on the KDE windowing environment. I remember trying version 1.0 of KDE and believing that this was really one of the best windowing systems I had ever seen.
Red Hat wrote on their website why they preferred Gnome over KDE. They wrote how the Qt toolkit that was used to construct KDE had some licensing issues that meant it was free to use but not Open Source.
I personally didn't care about these issues. I have always like KDE better than the other windowing systems and continue to prefer it to this day. I figure for the $39.95 or so I paid for my Red Hat, they could give some money to Qt if necessary.
While I have generally favored Mandrake over the years, I have continued to test other possible alternatives. I have used and liked Win2000. I liked Caldera. I liked Libranet and many other distributions. One of the distributions I tried to like was SuSE. SuSE is a very stable and very secure version of GNU/Linux. I have purchased at least three different versions. SuSE always has a very complete install with lots of features. SuSE is quite popular in Europe and Asia.
For some reason I cannot explain, SuSE seems to have a mind of its own. I can do two or three installs on the same hardware and wind up with different results. While research projects can be a lot of fun, I do not want to turn every installation into a research project. I can highly recommend the end results when talking about SuSE. I simply can't say that I enjoy the process.
Now let me focus on a few distributions instead of rambling on. I had several goals in mind. I wanted to identify the most complete GNU/Linux distribution. This would be the package that offered the most applications that were useable and functional. I wanted to find a GNU/Linux installation that was stable and fast. I wanted to identify a GNU/Linux distribution that allowed easy installation of additional software. I wanted a GNU/Linux distribution that would be easy to integrate into an existing Microsoft environment. I wanted a GNU/Linux that was easily manageable.
At any given point in time, GNU/Linux distributions can be out of step with one another because of the kernel version, what tools and which version of the windowing system they offer. I had to take this into consideration when looking at the various distributions and ensure that I was comparing the distribution against another distribution and not comparing KDE 2.2 against KDE 3.0.
Before we look at the entire playing field, I will focus on the major distributions. Of the major distributions, I have already expressed my long term preference for Mandrake. I believe that Mandrake has done the best job creating tools to manage the GNU/Linux environment.
I have almost always had success with Mandrake. The installs are simple and fast. Mandrake is based on Red Hat. This can be a big plus in trying to install software as Red Hat is by far the most popular distribution.
Mandrake is stable, fast, well-organized, and complete. The latest version that I purchased was Mandrake 8.1. I upgraded to Mandrake 8.2 using a downloaded version. On the version I purchased, StarOffice 5.2 was part of the distribution. If there is anything critical to say about Mandrake, it is that the color scheme they picked is very drab looking and I think they overdo it with the penguins.
Of the major distributions, SuSE would be my next choice. SuSE is a very complete implementation of GNU/Linux. Those who are in the know, tell me it is one of the most secure versions. SuSE has two tools to manage the environment. One is YaST and the other is SaX. SaX controls the video and YaST controls just about everything else. These are pretty easy to use.
One of the things that bugs me about most GNU/Linux distributions is that they do not set up the browsers with plugins and make everything work first. The complete packages contain Java, Real Audio and even FLASH, but you have to install them yourself. In the case of Java, this is one of those things that can turn into a research project.
While I prefer Mandrake to SuSE, I prefer SuSE to Red Hat. Red Hat is the giant of the GNU/Linux distributions. The good news here is that Red Hat is very stable and it might even run a little faster. Red Hat is very easy to install. I have almost never had a bad install using Red Hat.
The Red Hat install is quite easy and intuitive. The resulting installation is attractive, stable and works very well. The issue with Red Hat, for a desktop, is that the resulting installation is not nearly as well-organized or complete as SuSE or Mandrake. Red Hat scores very high on ease of installation, speed, and stability.
Red Hat is considered by many to be the best Linux server environment. You do not often hear about people running large servers using Mandrake. I cannot see any reason why that might not be done, but you will usually hear that these larger systems are using Red Hat.
Red Hat has a minimalist approach to the desktop. When the install is complete, there is little software that is easy to find on the desktop. If one cares to hunt down the missing applications, they can usually be found in /usr/bin/ or other places. It is a matter of typing whereis and then creating an ICON for the errant application.
I believe that using Red Hat for the desktop can become one of those research projects I try to avoid. Ironically, I did install Red Hat on our marketing director's computer. I learned much of what I now know configuring her system. I probably spent at least sixty hours configuring her system. While these were hours well spent, and her system is very stable and very fast, a lot of time could have been saved by choosing a distribution that is more tailored for the desktop.
Red Hat has announced that they are working on a dedicated desktop version. I am sure that given Red Hat's superior stability and speed, future Red Hat offerings will be a significant improvement.
I would therefore purchase Red Hat and keep it aside for server applications. For the desktop, there are easier distributions to use.
Sixty hours of work and we have all the functionality with Red Hat Linux as we have with Microsoft Windows XP. While I am quite proud of the results, this was too much a research project to be practical.
Looking at the three major distributions, Mandrake 8.2 got my highest marks as a desktop. I would give it an eight out of ten and would rank it just under Windows XP, but higher than Windows 98SE. My perception is that anyone moving from Windows 98 or less will regard the environment and tools available to them as an upgrade. I believe that both SuSE and Red Hat would fall inside this range but the effort to get there is more than with Mandrake.
One of the potential advantages of Mandrake is the ease of selecting alternate desktops. KDE and Gnome are targeted to systems with 64 Mb to 128 Mb RAM. Other desktops can operate with far less RAM.
Mandrake 8.2
Mandrake 8.2 takes about 45 minutes to completely install. When the installation is finished, you have all the tools you need to start work. If you want to dress up Mandrake, you can go to the website www.kde-look.org and start downloading fonts, ICONS and themes.
Normally, Mandrake's desktop is drab and boring. A trip to www.kde-look.org can help really brighten things up.
While the desktop above might look cute, it represents one of our core workstations. We have worn out two printers with this system. In fact, we have had to replace two keyboards on this system. It is a real workhorse.
Having selected Mandrake 8.2 out of the top three distributions, our next step was to search the more obscure distributions and see if we could find something better.
Peanut Linux
The next GNU/Linux distribution we looked at was Peanut Linux. Peanut Linux is absolutely free. Peanut Linux only requires a 220 Mb to download. Peanut Linux is the fastest install I have ever seen. Once you can figure out how to partition the drive and understand the process, you can do a complete install in fifteen minutes.
Peanut Linux is a great way to introduce yourself to GNU/Linux. The install is surprisingly complete for such a small distribution. The Peanut Linux website lists 5,000 packages that you can download and run using Peanut Linux.
Peanut Linux is fast and stable. It installs with useable applications that are logically laid out. There probably is no more painless way to obtain and install GNU/Linux than Peanut Linux. Once you have downloaded the distribution, you can be up and running in less than half an hour. The small size is ideal for laptops or older machines. I would say that the minimum configuration would be any Pentium processor and 64 Mb of RAM.
I would score Peanut, 7.5 points out of 10. This would mean that someone using Windows 98 would find this an upgrade but Peanut does not set its target at displacing Windows XP nor does it challenge a more complete distribution such as Mandrake.
There is much to like with Peanut and I believe that the designers of this distribution have done an outstanding job defining their niche. Peanut is the quickest way to get Linux up on your machine and it leaves a lot of room for customization and additions.
I would actually like to rate Peanut 9.3 higher than Red Hat or SuSE, but that is probably not fair. I never tried to do as much with Peanut as I pushed SuSE and Red Hat to do. I think it is possible Peanut would have broken before I could have made it go as far. However, if what you need to do is get something up that is simple, small and functional, Peanut Linux 9.3 should be considered.
Slackware 8.1
The nerd in me loves this distribution. Here is a complete distribution that is 100% free. It has all the latest drivers and latest versions of software. The base distribution is on a single disk.
Two members of our team have adopted Slackware for their very own. Slackware is complete, stable, fast, free and up-to-date. Slackware is the ideal platform for an organization that will roll-out their own GNU/Linux distributions.
Slackware has a reputation for being outdated and difficult to setup . I do not believe that this is the case at all. Slackware is the perfect GNU/Linux for anyone wanting to use Linux. This is pure GNU/Linux, but it is also Linux at its best.
Slackware does not provide an install that offers a complete desktop solution like Mandrake, but it will provide you with the latest and greatest versions and there are no restrictions on using Slackware.
As a Linux, I would give Slackware a 9 or 10 out of 10. As a desktop solution, I would give it a 7.5 or 8. Even if it is not the desktop solution of choice, no organization should be without Slackware.
We tamed Slackware to look a lot like Windows XP.
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Story navigation:
 About the author: Michael C. Barnes is currently president of NorhTec. Mr. Barnes has over 20 years experience with computers and another 10 years experience with more primitive networks, to include paper tape and morse code. Mr. Barnes has 18 years of experience with various Unix systems and spent 13 years with Sun Microsystems.
Mr. Barnes became fascinated with GNU/Linux turned the common PC into a Unix like workstation. By 1998, GNU/Linux surpassed the desktop environments offered on traditional Unix workstations.
When GNU/Linux is combined with low-cost x86 platforms, organizations now have the power to create enterprise computing for the small organization.
Mr. Barnes, born in Kentucky, now lives in Bangkok, Thailand with his wife, Linda Kubota-Barnes and his daughter Karen Barnes.
Copyright © 2002 by Michael C. Barnes. Reproduced by DesktopLinux.com with permission.
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