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GCN Home > 02/21/05 issue

Ready for a Windows-free desktop?

By Carlos A. Soto, GCN Staff

As alternative operating systems mature, one stands out as the best of the bunch

Earlier this month, Red Hat Inc. gathered government users, partners and the press together to launch its federal sales division. Though the emphasis was on enterprise server deployments, questions inevitably came around to Linux on the desktop.

One government user was interested in exploring desktop operating system alternatives but worried whether his agency would be able to use the programs its users have grown accustomed to. It’s an important question and one not easily answered. But citing the maturity and functionality of open-source productivity applications such as OpenOffice, former General Services Administration CIO Don Heffernan, who was sitting on a panel at the Red Hat event, said Linux was “this close” to being ready for widespread desktop deployment.

Like the vast majority of government users, we in the GCN Lab do our daily work in Microsoft Windows, specifically Windows XP Professional. But also like many of you, we’re always on the lookout for a better client OS. It may be unfair to fault Microsoft for being the No. 1 target of hackers and worm authors, but that’s what a near-monopoly brings.

Better security and lower cost of ownership are the primary reasons that companies not named Microsoft tout alternative operating systems. As high-profile options continue to mature, we thought it fitting to test what’s out there. Ultimately, we decided we weren’t ready for the long, uphill struggle that migrating to a new desktop OS would entail. But we agree with Heffernan that desktop Linux is getting closer to prime time—just not the desktop Linux version he might have suspected.

What we did

For three weeks, the GCN Lab put four alternative OSes through their paces: Mac OS X Version 10.3.7, Novell Linux Desktop 9, Red Hat Desktop 4 and Xandros Desktop OS 3. (Red Hat Desktop 4 was a release candidate version when we tested it.)

We invited Sun Microsystems to submit the latest version of its Linux-based Java Desktop System, but the company declined. Sun is in the process of upgrading the product and will release it in the coming months. The GCN Lab has evaluated Sun JDS in the past [www.gcn.com, Quickfind 370] and been impressed, especially by its Gnome interface and ability to work well on many different computers. In light of the problems we had in this review getting Linux products to load on various PCs, Sun JDS stands a good chance of being a top OS when the new version comes out.

More news on related topics: IT in Action, New Products / Technology



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