Bake-Off: 4 Linux Desktops Tackle The Enterprise
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| OKLinux www.oklinux.cn 2007-03-27 来源：www.crn.com 收藏本文 |
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The year 2007 might be remembered as the year when Linux corporate desktops stood up to Windows Vista. Hewlett-Packard recently announced it is making large deals with Linux desktops and that these orders might be a signal of an important shift in the market.
But despite the huge progress the Linux community is making every day, some of the old challenges are still limiting the operating system from posing a threat to Microsoft on the desktop. Companies looking for a complete IT infrastructure alternative to Windows face some intricate challenges.
Even though the driver ecosystem continues to gain momentum, one of the biggest challenges for Linux desktops is driver compatibility with small hardware vendors. Most manufacturers do not yet view Linux as an equal to Windows on the desktop, so Linux drivers are not prioritized or even developed. The open-source community is still one step behind many hardware innovations.
Windows is a platform that offers many configurations for workgroup setups and data centers and can run many specialized application servers. What's more, thousands of corporate applications are still written and supported by software vendors and developers that only work with Windows.
While Linux is chipping away at some of Microsoft's server market strongholds, the Linux desktops are still lacking many business productivity applications. Software vendors have to see that the opportunity for additional revenue streams through the desktop Linux market before producing Linux product lines—and this is happening at a slow pace.
Methodology
For this review, the CRN Test Center evaluated offerings from the four leading Linux enterprise desktop alternatives: Linspire Five-O, Novell SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop 10, the newly released Red Hat Enterprise Linux Desktop 5.0 and Xandros 4 Professional.
A word of caution: The Test Center initially tried to install the distributions using the dual-boot option on a new Vista-based PC with an Athlon 64X2 dual-core processor and Asus M2NBP-VM CSM Micro ATX motherboard. But three of the four distributions failed to load properly even without using dual-boot. Only Xandros booted up, but it did not include a driver for the motherboard's Nvidia MCP51 Ethernet controller. And when booting into Vista after Xandros installed, Vista failed to load. During a detailed boot of Vista, engineers noticed that it could not load the crcdisk.sys driver. Vista was paralyzed. We suspect the problem was the lack of drivers.
After various attempts, engineers used an older AMD ATX motherboard running Windows XP, and all the Linux desktops worked correctly. Engineers also tested the OSes on a newer Intel HP xw4400 workstation and the desktops installed.
Our advice—run a complete backup before installing Linux with dual booting on a PC system running Vista. Before committing to Linux OS installation jobs, solution providers also should develop hardware surveys or purchase hardware capture utilities that can help them build hardware asset lists.
In addition to running the OSes, engineers looked at the various applications and partner programs available to VARs. Here's what we found:
Linspire Five-O
Linspire recently said it will be using the Ubuntu Linux platform as a new base for all future versions of Linspire and its free version, Freespire Linux OS. But it intends to bundle the same proprietary software with Ubuntu as it does with its current version.
The company will also maintain the same Windows-like user experience by tweaking the desktop's look and feel.
Linspire's OpenOffice suite comes bundled with proprietary applications such as Windows Media and some hardware drivers. Like the Microsoft update site, Linspire also can push drivers down to desktops through OS updates. However, most new drivers come bundled on major releases. Right now, customers that purchase Linspire's digital desktop version will receive StarOffice 8 for free.
Linspire Five-O bundles a communication suite that comes standard with both desktop OSes. In addition to the standard software stack, Linspire arrives with media suites for photo editing, DVD/CD burning and playing. Linspire also comes with security tools such as VirusSafe and SurfSafe.
Setting up a printer with Linspire is simple. Linspire arrives with an intuitive wizard-driven menu for adding and configuring printers. Windows users will find the process easy.
Out of the box, Linspire can only open some Microsoft Windows and Office file types such as doc, ppt, xls and wmv. Unfortunately, Linspire provides a limited migration path from Windows to Linux. Aside from doing some file conversions, there is not much more VARs can do to migrate all Office files and macro objects into Linspire's OpenOffice. With the exception of SUSE, the other OSes in the review are in the same boat. However, Xandros takes a direct approach to running some Windows applications.
Savvy VARs can offer the StarOffice Enterprise product to expand the migration services of some Office applications. However, it is a lot easier for VARs to sell the Linspire desktop OS to customers that are using the basic features of Office and are not using third-party Windows applications that are critical to their businesses.共4页: 上一页 1 [2] [3] [4] 下一页
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