Desktop Relevance

[jkinz-+hffLmS/kj4 at public.gmane.org]

On Thu, Mar 26, 2009 at 12:37:37PM -0700, KyleL wrote:
> > Linux can seem somewhat of a daunting task to learn
> > There's so much documentation and a large and friendly community
> > learning about Linux won't be difficult at all for you.
> 
> I agree but look at a peice of software like MS Office.  At my school they
> just upgraded everyone from 03 to 07 and all I hear from faculty and staff
> is how horrible it is.  That may be true but I have had no problems with the
> upgrade.  People just hate to learn new stuff.  Imagine training everyone at
> an office to use Linux.  It would be great work but a lot of time/money and
> aggrivated workers
> 
Nope.
My team installed 10 Linux thin clients in a public library in
Connecticut quite a while ago. (oh, and a server :-) )

These units were direct replacements for public use windows
machines, used for browsing the internet and word processing

We installed icewm for the wm, locked the desktop down. And gave
them firefox and OpenOffice as browser and word processor
replacements.

Public just kept using the machines.  Not even a hiccup.

No training needed. 

OO is sufficiently like Word/office  That most people never gave
it a thought.  We did set the default save format as ".doc" so
they wouldn't have problems when they went elsewhere with there
files. 


Icewm was configured to be similar to the Win desktop, just less
choices. 

Jeff Kinz