Linux Thin Clients - "Office-Worker Linux: It's Here and It Works"

[Warren Togami]

More information on the city of Largo, Florida, and their 400 thin client setup running Red Hat Linux 7.1 and KDE.  This is a very similar system that I aim to deploy in Hawaii private and public schools.  For more information regarding this system, please contact me at warren at togami.com


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------


http://www.newsforge.com/article.pl?sid=01/08/10/1441239
      Secretaries use Linux, taxpayers save millions 
      Monday August 13, 10:03 AM EDT    [ GNU/Linux ] 
      - by Robin "Roblimo" Miller - 
      Walk into the Largo, Florida, city hall and look at the two computer screens behind the reception desk. Instead of the typical Windows "Start" button in the lower left-hand corner, they have a KDE "Gear" logo, as do almost all of the 400-plus monitors on Largo employees' desks. Receptionists, administrative assistants, and division fire chiefs here all use Linux instead of Windows, and most of them don't really notice one way or the other. But the elected officials who are responsible for Largo's IT budget certainly know about and notice Linux, because using Linux instead of Windows is saving the city a lot of money.  
      One of the great anti-Linux screeds we hear is, "The secretaries will never be able to figure it out." If that is so, then Largo employee Judy Judt must be one of the world's smartest office workers. She is sitting at her desk, happily accessing an online city directory that lists all employees, vendors, and other important contacts, using a simple Rolodex-like program that is running on top of an attractively-themed KDE 2.1.1 desktop. Then Judy moves to WordPerfect to check a document she's been working on -- by unshading an already-opened program window. "I like to keep them shaded like this," she says. "I know it's just habit, that it's really the same as keeping them in, what do you call it, the little bar at the bottom of the screen, but I like to do it this way on my computer." 
      Sysadmin Dave Richards, who is standing next to me as I watch Judy work, is quick to correct the nomenclature: Judy does not technically have a computer of her own, he says. She is using an NCD thin client that accesses a hefty server running Red Hat 7.1. Judy can move to any other desk, use her logon name and password on that desk's terminal, and Voila! That desktop suddenly becomes "her computer," right down to her favorite KDE theme and beach-photo wallpaper. 

      But to Judy, what happens behind the screen doesn't matter. All she knows is that she clicks a program open and uses it for her work, keeping dozens of programs open at a time. She uses Windows at home, but says, "I spend more time on the computer at work than at home, so I guess I'm really more comfortable with this system than with Windows now." 
     

(...continued in article)

http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=01/08/13/1248233&mode=thread
      Office-Worker Linux: It's Here and It Works 

 Posted by timothy on 09:28 AM August 13th, 2001
from the fud-for-thought dept.
A few weeks ago, dot.kde.org featured a great why-should-this-be-amazing story about Linux being used as the day-to-day desktop operating system for city employees in Largo, Florida. Roblimo got a chance to see the system in action to find out how ordinary office workers are proving that the old "Linux is tough to use" shibboleth is nothing but FUD, and how a medium-sized city is saving buckets of money by minimizing the tax dollars spent on licenses and hardware. Oh, and they've also pre-empted the kind of costs (in hassle and money) that can face any organization that Microsoft suspects may have some licenses out of order. This is the kind of thing every elected official should have politely waved in his or her face by concerned taxpayers. The Largo system uses KDE on Red Hat, but since both KDE and Gnome are paying much attention to user interface, similar systems could easily be running on various combinations of hardware / distribution / desktop system. 
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.freesoftwarehawaii.org/pipermail/luau-freesoftwarehawaii.org/attachments/20010813/7a563ad6/attachment-0001.htm>
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: not available
Type: image/gif
Size: 139 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <http://lists.freesoftwarehawaii.org/pipermail/luau-freesoftwarehawaii.org/attachments/20010813/7a563ad6/attachment-0002.gif>
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: not available
Type: image/gif
Size: 1988 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <http://lists.freesoftwarehawaii.org/pipermail/luau-freesoftwarehawaii.org/attachments/20010813/7a563ad6/attachment-0003.gif>