Experiences with KDE-CVS at LinuxWorldExpo

[Marcus Camen]

> There were quite some very interesting visitors, representing
> government bodies, enterprises, small to medium companies, insurances
> and banks, seriously looking into the options to go from MS Windows
> to a different OS for their desktops. In some cases this would
> mean to deploy literally thousands of machines within a few weeks!
>
> Clearly KDE currently isn't ready for the task. Or, maybe *I* am not.
> I know there was (is?) this project group working on a "kiosk" mode.

Well, ATM we are switching from KDE2 to KDE3 on our customers boxes. The main 
reason for this? KIOSK mode and multiple $KDEDIR(S).
Indeed, the KIOSK features are not very well documented for people standing 
outside the KDE community --- but this is a known problem...

> * KDE needs to have an interface to draw the user configuration
>    for each user from a database (where each single application
>    allowed or denied for a user is defined).
> * KDE needs utilities which make it easy for an administrator to
>    configure, roll out and run 1000 user desktops (a "lost" configuration
>    must be restored within a minute or less).
> * KDE need at the same time to retain the flexibility to have all
>    these 1000 settings different (for different needs).
> * KDE needs to be able to serve the same user profile to a users
>    wherever he logs in (a different physical machine, but the same
>    desktop and user profile).

Oh dear. This sounds way to much like Windows for me.
A database (registry that is) with user specific settings. A filesystem 
structure like C:\settings\administrator, C:\settings\all_users, 
c:\settings\userfoo. A possibilty to authenticate against a central KDE 
domain server with user profiles on this server. A configuration utility like 
SMS packages....

Most of your visitors seem to have no idea about the 'UNIX way' and want a 1:1 
copy of Windows. I don't think KDE should evolve in this direction. We 
already have automounted NFS shares, KDE KIOSK mode, NIS, whatever.
And if you want to have different configurations for different users or 
different groups of users you want this not only for KDE applications but 
also for other programs. And there _are_ sysadmin tools for UNIX out there 
which can handle this.

> When 3.1 is out of the door, I will probably make an attempt to
> get this issue tackled by a group of people.

>From my experience KDE3 has basically all features you need for large 
corporations. Let's face it: if you want to administrate (KDE on) UNIX you 
have to learn shell script.


> I think this experience clearly shows there is a heavy need to change
> these icons back to something more colorful, more distinguished. Nice
> art doesn't automatically mean good usability at all.

ACK

--
Marcus Camen
science+computing ag
http://www.science-computing.de