[wplug] Corporate Desktops

[Chris]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: wplug-bounces+vze2f6h6=verizon.net at wplug.org 
> [mailto:wplug-bounces+vze2f6h6=verizon.net at wplug.org] On 
> Behalf Of Vanco, Don
> Sent: Thursday, June 03, 2004 9:28 AM
> To: General user list
> Subject: RE: [wplug] Corporate Desktops
> wplug-bounces+don.vanco=agilysys.com at wplug.org wrote:
> > Sometime in June Vanco, Don assaulted the keyboard and produced:
> > 
> > 
> > I've mucked around with this for a while. Since the EOL of 
> Redhat 9, 
> > I've been trying to come up with a solution to replace our Redhat 9 
> > boxes. Our needs are a little different. We're an academic research 
> > group and our needs primarily involve numerical simulations and 
> > optimization (Matlab, C, CPLEX, GAMS, Mathematica, etc.). 
> Of course, 
> > we also need the standard stuff (web browser, LaTeX, editors, 
> > compilers, etc).
> > 
> 	The availability of an upgrade doesn't necessarily mean 
> you have to use it.  Honestly, the customers that I deal with 
> that match your profile usually "set it and forget it" when 
> it comes to the distro they use (as opposed to following a 
> frequent update schedule)
> 
> > Also, try as I may, I havnt
> > found a very good way to make Debian user friendly,
> Knoppix?
> 
> > and I
> > don't want to monkey around with each individual computer to
> > get the video, sound, automount, and all the other happiness
> > working. Fedora does a good job of detecting all of this stuff.
> 

Well, my basic needs are:

1. Ability to open/save/modify MS Office Docs.
2. Interact with our MS Exchange server
3. Basic we surfing
4. Easy Install/setup (auto install big plus, ie Kickstart type)
5. Remote management/maintenance
6. Good hardware detection
7. Network Printing
8. Win2k domain browsing/sharing
9. Clean default GUI
10. Ability to edit/create/view PDFs
11. Good performance

Now I know that a number of these aren't really distro specific and can
be achieved with software like OpenOffice for 1.  However, I am looking
more at default installs.  I don't want to have to install additional
packages on every machine.  I know that can be scripted and all that,
but I am going to look at it from an ease of installation and someone
relatively new to Linux.