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View Full Version : Building a test-plan for desktop Linux comparisons



househead
December 15th, 2005, 02:29 PM
Hi all,

I have been commissioned to undertake a study into desktop viability and 'readiness' of a number of Linux distro's, Ubuntu being one of them. It's part of a wide scale project funded by the government and aimed at open source within the UK public sector, specifically Local Govt.

I have started work on a test plan looking at what features, both system-wise and interface/application-wise, that a desktop Linux OS needs to provide / achieve. I just thought I would put this message up on a few forums to attempt to really ask the questions I should be asking.

Please hit me with your ideas. This report will be released under Creative Commons when complete, so I aim to provide an authorititive viewpoint which is useful not only for the brief in-hand, but for the wider Linux desktop audience. If I can get some clearence, I'll post the work-in-progress up here.

Thanks in advance for your time.

ember
December 15th, 2005, 02:43 PM
I would recommend to define a set of common use cases, the time it takes you to set up these from a fresh installation and the features they offer, e.g.:

Networking-Scenario (home user): Surfing, Emailing, Instant Messanging - probably with POP/IMAP on a free email account, connecting to some movie sites and an homebanking account, mouting windows-shares, maybe setting up a simple FTP-server for file-exchange or using ifolder.
Networking-Scenario (enterprise): see above, but without movie and homebanking, but with Exchange server connect, work with Outlook-Meeting-Invites etc., mounting NFS-shares

I guess that style could be extended to multimedia, games, administration etc.

HTH,
ember

prizrak
December 15th, 2005, 03:09 PM
Also look at the hardware support of the various distros and see how easy/cheap it is to build/purchase a machine that will meet the requirenments. Also look into availability of drivers and ease of installation in case the hardware isn't supported out of the box. This is usually a major hurdle for any Linux to overcome. Although that is more or less specific to your deployment case.
Oh and another thing I would recommend is seeing if there are OEM's that sell machines with Linux on them for a good price and with support.