Living (and dying) with Linux in the workplace

The final piece of the puzzle

When it becomes available, I download the public beta of Lotus Notes 8 for Linux, unpack some files and run the client installation file. This is the last critical piece of the experiment -- the way our newsroom is set up, it would be tough to do my day-to-day job without running the same communications platform as my colleagues.

After I answer a couple of questions and move a copy of my Notes ID file, I'm set up with Notes in just a few minutes. I can send and receive e-mail, access my calendar, schedule meetings, and use several of our newsroom-wide Notes databases.

It is, however, painfully slow, since my hardware configuration falls somewhere between "minimum" (512MB RAM) and "recommended" (1GB). Don't expect Linux to give new life to your old hardware if you want to run the latest version of Notes. I put in a request to upgrade my Linux desktop.

The bottom line

I expected to be a poster child for the next wave of Linux desktop adopters. I wanted to be. I like the whole idea of a technically macho, open-source operating system -- one that doesn't assume we all must be protected from an operating system's inner workings. I don't fear command lines, and enjoy fiddling around with programming.

It turns out that an intermediate-level power user may not be the ideal next desktop Linux demographic.

It was possible for me to do most, but not all, of my work on a Linux system. There are some applications I'd miss if I were to make the switch permanently, but I believe I could adequately replace them after sufficient research and time rewriting scripts.

There are a few other applications I definitely need access to from time to time and that won't run on Linux. I could probably deal with these either by virtual-machine Windows or by a separate Windows machine shared by multiple users. (Don't laugh -- that's what our copy editors did for awhile, since they're all on Macs and some initially wanted access to an ActiveX-control feature in our content management system.)

Other business users -- workers in sales, finance or human resources, for instance -- might also find that applications they depend on don't translate easily to Linux. They may find work-arounds; they may not.

While I liked many things about my Linux desktop (look and feel, elegant command-line implementations, robust open-source apps, the whole open-source concept), I found the lack of some key applications and the occasional hardware non-plug-and-play too limiting. Unlike Scot Finnie on Mac OS X, I'm not willing to tell Microsoft buh-bye. Not yet, anyway. But there's enough here I like that I'm going to keep the Linux system set up, too.