International Hout Interview

nederlandse versie

Interviewed by Fabrice Mous

What is the company's line of business? What kind of products/services do you offer?

We are a wholesaler/importer of tropical hardwood and American softwood.

What are your IT requirements for the business and how does KDE fit into your IT requirements and what solutions does it offer?

Within International Hout we started simultaneously with Linux and KDE and prior to that we never worked with MS Windows on PCs before within our organization.

On the KDE desktop we use applications like text editor, spreadsheet, database, terminal (for kermit- through a serial network logging in on a microvax) agenda, Office suite. These applications help us to do our daily work and fit our IT requirements for our organization.

The big advantage we have from using using KDE is the manageability of the workstations. Because there is not much need for maintenance I can take care of this aside of my daily work without the need for external expertise. This saves us a lot of money.

What are the KDE applications that you find most useful in meeting those requirements?

The email program KMail, which has numerous filter options, is used by our thankful employees to control and manage the email flood. Konqueror is used for filebrowsing, webbrowsing and even FTP. For quick editing of plaintext Kate is usually started. The Office suite "OpenOffice" is used for all our correspondence like letters and faxes. Sometimes I use the terminal application "Konsole" to show something in a quick way to users. For example when a process has jammed under OpenOffice so that one cannot open a new document. Unfortunately KDE is not that intelligent yet to show that by a error message. Klipper , the clipboard utility, is used for all our cutting and pasting and in this area integration between OpenOffice and KDE has improved a lot. We use "Kpaint" a lot for drawing "wood profiles".

Furthermore we use the agenda-application KOrganizer. Unfortunately it isn't (yet) possible to use one central agenda from where several people at the same time have writing permissions and where the agendas can be synchronized with each other. A program like Outlook would perhaps provide a solution so that on the "Sales" department one can see what the "Expedition" department has planned. Instead of using a separate spreadsheet with a weekly overview for transports verybody could have access to their automatically synced agendas which has a nice weekly overview and one could make appointments without any overlap.

What items did you take into consideration in choosing KDE, and what made you finalize upon it?

When we made the decision to replace our vt-420 terminals by PCs we first meant to deploy MS Windows 2000 with the accompanying software. However during the evaluation SUSE released SUSE Linux version 7.0 which was shipping KDE 2.0. SUSE Linux was also evaluated and appeared to be stable in such a manner that we dropped the idea of migrating to the Windows platform. Then we requested a quotation for Linux PCs and these were delivered by Bitwizard at Delft, including the file printserver and the firewall.

For the users which had a Windows PC at home it wasn't hard to get used to the new environment, or you pressed "start" or you pressed a "K" didn't seem to matter that much. Besides that the look and feel of the KDE desktop were in such a manner that even the people who didn't own a PC or never worked with a PC before felt could find their way easily on our new systems.

Do you feel KDE is a cost effective platform?

Certainly, as the learning curve is very low, very little time was lost on getting used to the desktop. Users could easily use the programs even when they were only used to MS Windows they could see advantages in the KDE desktop, for example the use of virtual desktops.

Was deploying KDE in your environment easy? If so, what made it easy? What could be done to make it easier?

Yes, it was easy as the environment felt very familiar, and with the layout of the SUSE Kmenu one could easily find the programs he/she would like to use.

What could KDE do in the future to help companies and users work with KDE?

KDE as a desktop environment doesn't need any adjustments, the interaction between several applications could be handled better. For example when copying something in StarOffice and pasting it in another application would only work when Klipper is opened. KOffice still has too many shortcomings to measure up to StarOffice or OpenOffice.org therefore KOffice is barely used.

If you could see one new type of application offered by KDE what would it be?

I have no idea, but a good database application with a clean user interface would be very nice. Or a decent budget accounting program to allow small to medium sized business to invest less in tailor-made programs.

Where would you like to see the future of KDE go, and what new features would you like to see in future releases?

KDE could be somewhat lighter on resources, therefore loading would take less time. The control center is on track with use of the new layout as now one can manage many things from within the application. Unfortunately help documents for a large number of programs aren't included so looking for certain info can be difficult.

Any other comments or suggestions?

KDE and Linux as a platform delivers a usable and stable environment for small to medium sized businesses in which most daily tasks can be completed. The help sections could be slightly more elaborate, and need to be translated to Dutch so any ordinary user can find the help they are looking for. Too many times it appears that asking a question is still easier than looking it up for yourself.

KDE as a desktop has an important role within our company and the people who need to work with Windows ask me on a regularly basis if it is possible to run their programs under Linux. I don't want to use Wine.

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Walter Stolk is a Systems Administrator for International Hout

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