Experienced that on an old Yamaha RD350, you knew the timing was out when the exhaust started glowing.

Take a small to medium-sized business running Windows on all desktop clients.

1. Replace the Windows server by a Linux server.

2. Wait a few months until everyone appreciates the stability of the server.

3. Install one extra Linux desktop client, eventually in replacement of an existing Windows desktop client.

4. Choose one person among the employees and train him or her to use the Linux desktop. Don't choose the geek, go for the not-too-bright person that's always complaining that computers are not made for him/her.

5. Wait a few weeks until they call you back for a complete migration.

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I remember starting with Linux back in 2001 - I discovered the technical section of my local library and a book with a CD in it that was supposed for beginners who wanted to try it out. The CD was an installation disk of SuSe 7.1.

However, that didn't turn out well. I was still fairly young and unexperienced with computers and only knew Windows 95 back then (my parents weren't that firm either so they hadn't even bothered to make an upgrade). I fiddled for a day with the CD and even managed installing it onto my computer, but I couldn't get the graphical interface to start up.

So I gave up. I deleted it and continued to use Windows 95 for at least 2 years.

All the time I read a local computer magazine my parents bought regularly for me (it's called ComputerBild). That magazine still exists and is targeting absolute beginners, who are using Windows. That's right - the whole base of this magazine was articles about Windows. No word about UNIX, Linux, MacOS, OS/2 or all the other operating systems that existed back in the day.

I gotta say, it wasn't all that bad - I learned a lot of basics out of this thing. But when I look back nowadays, they were a real marketing machine for Microsoft. Every new edition of Windows was always the best, there were no negative words about it and every new feature was never criticized in any way. But one day, they made a mistake - they included a CD with Suse 9.0 into their magazine.

And this time, it worked. I could boot it up instantly after installing and that has been the beginning of a whole new and wonderful world for me - the world of Open Source.

I set up a dual boot with SuSe and as I recall, I used it for 2-3 years and gained more and more experience. It was a really rough start. I realized that Linux had a lot of features that had more thought put into them than their Microsoft counterpart, but also a lot of bugs I just couldn't fix with my limited knowledge at that time. Some things didn't quite work right, like watching movies, 3D acceleration and games.

One day I thought, that SuSe maybe wasn't the best of the best. The RPM package system always drove me crazy and I switched to Ubuntu 5.10 Breezy Badger. It was hell. It was slow, even more buggy than SuSe, couldn't get anything right and I didn't like the design. I guess, after some months it got wiped again.

Studying Ubuntu, I got the expression that they were just using Debian as a base and stealing packages from them to mess it up, so I tried out Debian. It was the sh*t. It was stable, good-looking, fast and it did nearly everything out of the box I wanted it to do.

So I think, SuSe was my playground for understanding Open Source and Debian was the system for really using it. One day I got to the point, where I didn't want to use Windows anymore and kept Debian as a single installation.

As the years passed by, I tried out various more distributions, because as good as Debian has been, it also had some minor flaws. I ended up trying new editions of Ubuntu, but they were still bad as hell and I hated it with all my guts until the present day. Then I stumbled upon the now defunct Yoper, that was just managed by one person. I liked it, but when the guy decided to switch to KDE 4.0, it was gone in a heartbeat. Then I came across Dreamlinux (which is also defunct now) - their approach was recreating the look and feel of MacOS. The design looked cool and they had some nice eyecandy, but all the packages didn't work well together. They used a customized version of XFCE, that had a lot of bugs - it just wasn't polished and applications didn't like all the customizations they put in there. That wasn't usable for me, so it had to go.

My last step before discovering Slackware was *drumroll*: VectorLinux. Yeah, they use Slackware as a base, so it's a good starting point I think. It's a cool system. I still recommend it to users who are not that firm with Linux, because it sets up itself without much hazzle and you don't have to build your own packages from source. It just worked out of the box, it wasn't bloated, there were no unneccessary customizations, I could just use it.

But how did I get to Slackware? One day I stumbled over a random post on a german news site where users were complaining about the oldest distribution still in existence and why it was way too complicated to set up and use - Slackware. I kept reading it and realized that I was using the Slackware base all the time. So I gave it a go and I fell in love with that. I put in the CD and got a text installer. No eyecandy! Awesome! Then I installed it and got the basic login prompt at boot. Awesome! Fiddling for myself! After finding out where to set the runlevel and actually starting up KDE, I got my next moment: No outdated packages, because I was forced to build my own! Even more awesome! That has happened some years ago with Slackware 13.1. Now I am using Slackware64 -current daily. I can do everything with that. Playing my games through Wine, using a good Office suite, using my favorite media player banshee without any problems and meeting really friendly and helpful people on the forums who always know the answer to any of my problems.

I think my long and tedious road has ended here. I finally found the right distribution. Thanks for all the good time that has been and is yet to come. There are a lot of good distributions, but only one I really fell in love with.

3 members found this post helpful.

Tricky. That's a specific case. People at job will kindly accept things that wouldn't at home.

If you, being a "Slacker", choose "bloated and easy to use" (KDE) over "reliable and stable", why they, being Windows users, would do the opposite?

By training the non geek employee I guess you mean to teach him to use KDE. That answers the second part of my question.

This is a screen shot of my oldest Slackware box (I no longer have the unit). It was a PII 266 MHz beige box that had 128 MB RAM and a 4 GB HD. It ran Slackware 10.2 very well indeed. I don't have any screenshots of Slackware 10.0.
Slackware forever!

Slackware 10.2, XFCE

I have to say that in light of numerous threads here lately it is simply unconscionable to still be referring to KDE as bloated and essentially a poor linux excuse to be windows. If you like some other less feature full WM/DE, fine. There is simply no call for denigrating others just because of your preference, especially when that negative junk is mistaken. I know some very serious *Nix SysAdmins who run servers headless from commandline but still prefer KDE, not just desktop jockeys. Most importantly it adds nothing constructive to this thread and makes you seem irresponsible, so kindly just stop already.

Don't feed the troll. And for the record, I'm using Xfce.

http://www.microlinux.fr/images/desktop/workstation.png

1 members found this post helpful.

I'm curious... do you use any KDE apps under Xfce?

As for "feeding trolls" that is a difficult judgment call and one that can devolve into dismissing anyone who doesn't agree, so I try to be careful to use that "old chestnut" sparingly and not always assume someone with something negative to say is "just a troll". Left unchecked, some such things gather inertia and become like Urban Myths - untrue, but widely accepted as fact.

Actually, teaching the non-geek employee is a Real Good Idea (been there, did that, don't wanna do it again, teaching a Power User any damn thing).

I once did a swap of Microsoft Office for OpenOffice (on WinXP), telling the user that it was a new edition of office software. Of course, all existing documents opened and worked just fine. Next step was install Slackware and dual-boot (so I could go back if necessary); copy all the user files (lots of those), set up graphic log in, install OpenOffice, and spend an hour "training." Oh, yeah, this will be just a little different from what you're used to, but I'd really appreciate it if you'd give it try. KDE (which, frankly, has become kind of bloated and the Evil Twins are a pain in the ass) and Oh, this is kind of nice. Coming from XP, of course it was nice and looked similar enough and worked similarly enough that the user picked right up on it.

Little bit of confusion with the terminal window and connecting to the server, but that got understood in about three minutes (the users had been using SSH and X-term windows with XP).

Never mentioned Linux, never mentioned faster, better, cleaner -- just stood by and watched and answered the rare question.

Guess what. All the pals wanted the same thing. Our Power User was the only one with problems (couldn't get past the geeky applications he know so well, couldn't manage to adapt to something new and a little different, a true Windows Weenie). Guy was a pain the butt no mater what and we wound up just letting him stew in his own bile. The community adapted to Firefox and Thunderbird (and web mail), loved it. Loved OpenOffice (I did get all the templates I could find that were worth a hoot and we did port some from Windows).

All you have to do is be kind, find the user that is open to experimenting, and offer support. Dropping folks into new and different without a little hand-holding really isn't a good way to do things. Decades ago, AT&T did time and motion studies (like in the 1920's, I think, and I've forgotten the name of the study) at a Western Electric facility; messed with lighting, messed with temperature, messed with everything they could think of and production kept gong up no matter what they did. Turns out, management paying attention to the employees was the key. Introducing new and better technology and paying attention makes for a successful transition. Don't try to sell it, just show it (or, better yet, get the one, maybe two, employee that everybody else will be impressed by and make that person a happy camper).

Hope this helps some.

4 members found this post helpful.

I would like to know what's the theme that you use to change the appearance of the superior panel. Thanks.

No, I don't.

This page contains a more or less complete list of all the applications I use with Xfce:

http://www.microlinux.fr/mled.php

1 members found this post helpful.

• GTK theme: Clearlooks Phenix
• Icon theme: Faenza
• Window Manager theme: Axe Rounded
• Mouse Cursor theme: Aero

If you're interested, I have packages for all these in my repo, in the xfce/ package section:

• http://www.microlinux.fr/slackware/M...lackware/xfce/
• http://www.microlinux.fr/slackware/M...ckware64/xfce/
• http://www.microlinux.fr/slackware/M...lackware/xfce/
• http://www.microlinux.fr/slackware/M...ckware64/xfce/

1 members found this post helpful.

i switched from KDE to xfce when install slack64 14.1, because xfce consume less resources ( especially ram), but very sadly, xfce compared to kde is very uncomfortable. especially it sadly, because that is mostly small things, who not made to work good -for example devices notifier and automount. in kde it is an almost ideal - automount mount devices under /media/LABEL
xfce mount under /run/UUID - it was supercrappy. UUID is very unhandly for humans. LABEL is good. things like "ext3_trnsf vs 0e3756359013f3"....
and keyboard switcher who is not in xfce install? and unintuitive keyboard layots, and so on. its small things, who is easy to made good, and all feeling of that DE from that grow immidiately, but looks like programmer command do not bother this. and that's very sadly, because in general it is very good DE...

Thanks, I installed here and it looks great.

I can understand you install KDE on your +50 year old non tech parents
computer, but to someone familiarized with Unix all that buggy bloated
interface should be more a pain than a help.

But let's jump to an interesting level of abstraction.

When people see someone making money with whatever instead of choosing an
alternative they start all selling the same till at some point they fuck each
other the business. Sadly if you choose an alternative you don't sell because
customers do exactly the same, they all consume what they see the others
consume. Envy moves the world.

That's why instead of improving the real stuff consolidating Linux like a solid
and reliable operating system, giving to the world a real alternative,
companies invest i.e. 17 million euros in nepomuk (while i.e. Theo de Raadt has
no money to pay the electricity bill).

Take a look to the init files and recognize how much lines of code live there
to give you that supposed intuitive and easier experience MS implanted in your
head. In distributions like Debian, that do not use the simpler BSD init
style, things are worse. Add that Debian - time ago criticized even by Linus
Torvalds for being difficult to use - now try to give an out of the box
experience (ala Winodoze) to their users with all the myriad of software they
offer (wrong at a myriad of levels). When they started to play with starting
daemons in parallel just because some geek cried "Hey Windows boot faster,
dude!" things started to get broken time to time.

The init system is not a isolated functionality, all is related in the OS. The
"not enough permissions" issue I've mentioned in my other post is one example.
Now, thanks to udev magic, after burning a dvd I must to remount it or even
reboot my machine to get the drive recognized again. If I have more than one
optical drive the system get confused after each boot. And Xfce still gives
errors when auto mounting a usb stick! Lose-lose.

How humans solve what they have spoiled? Spoiling it even more: systemd.

The point where most people is wrong about this whole game is they attribute
all the responsibility to big monkeys, when it's obvious that big monkeys exist
thanks to the overpopulation of consumers in the world that feed them. Remove
the food and the animal die or at least it will not become fat enough to not
let other species survive. You, defenders of the beloved Windows experience,
are an active half part of the problem. Again, assume that.

Have you caught the idea?


@kikinovak

Do you use Xfce, what's the difference?

Besides, you did troll me, because my question was rhetoric. And this is not
the first time you troll me with your no sense quotations just to defend your
wrong idea that you can have "milk and coffee at the same time", do you
remember that analogy you did? I do. The point you don't see is that some
times you cannot have both things, then you must assume the responsibility and
choose. If not you are part of the problem.

The point of my rhetoric question was that to convert people to Linux is just
to give them a new t-shirt. The challenge is convincing them to think and
choose.

2 members found this post helpful.