Linux as a client desktop
 

Hi

I'm just wondering, is someone using Linux as a productive client desktop for a normal office user in your company?

I look after a small office. They have 3 workstations running Ubuntu.

I worked at an oil company that had Red Hat on many servers and a bunch of RH desktops - they planned to move the desktops to virtual RH desktops.

I worked at a company not long ago that used Debian on their servers and Ubuntu on their desktops, besides two Windows machines that were necessary for a proprietary software. Some of the Ubuntu desktops got there OS from an Ubuntu LTSP server.

I worked for a hospital a few years ago and the IS dept. had a couple of Fedora desktops for test purposes. I don't think they ever rolled it out to other depts.

One of the guys in my LUG has been running a hospital on Mandrake/Mandriva with a thin client architecture for years.

There is a separate Mandriva network for patients and visitors to use (I've used it at LUG meetings), also running on Mandriva. They are able to use it quite happily, even though most of them have no idea that it's not a Windows backbone.

He's getting ready to switch to RHEL because of Mandriva's problems and the desire to have reliable support.

Which Desktop Environment or Window Manager and which Management Software are you using to manage Linux Desktops?

Whatever was the default as far as I know.

Gnome 2.x

I and all others developers (about 20) where I work use ubuntu desktops and laptops for everything, as do some others.

Which management software are you using to manage Linux Desktops, for example to update software from a management server?

Whatever comes with a distro. Not much choice here - apt-get and yum are probably the most common ones. Then you've got slackpkg, pacman, etc.

I manage a bunch of Linux machines that run SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop and FWIW, here's a brief outline of how I handle software on them.

Novell provide a tool that allows you to mirror all the updates locally so I run a SLES box which handles that and all the desktops look at that for. This also allows me to prevent machines getting updates until I've had chance to review/test them. The machines are set up so that they check for updates daily and download but not install them. Then when the machine is turned off any outstanding updates are installed. (My feeling is that you don't want to be installing updates whist someone is using the machine as you don't know what effect that may have on what they're doing.) The scripts on the clients which download/install updates just invoke zypper (the default package manager) with the desired arguments.

I also build my own rpms for various things so I put them in a repo on the same server that gets updates from Novell and the machines check that for updates as well.

I have a special package which doesn't provide anything other than a files that contains a list of packages that should be removed. If I want to remove a package from the machines I add it to that list and increment the package version so it gets installed as an update. At shutdown a script checks that list and removes anything on it. If I want to put a new package on the machines I add it as a dependency on that package and increment the package version.