Quite often nowadays, there is a discussion on Linux’s sutability for genereal desktop use. In my opinion, some of this discussion is misguided, as ‘desktop user’ is used to cover many quite varying types of user. I would say that there are at least two different types of desktop user - home and office. The suitability of Linux for both of these area depends on very different factors.

In the office, the main needs for the OS are the ability to integrate many computers over a large area. This need tends to be above the usabiliy of the programs. Most people at work, given the programs they need to do their job, would not care whether the OS was Windows or Unix. Many would not even notice, especially if a desktop environment like KDE or Gnome was used. In the office it isn’t a case of ease of use for the user, more for the sysadmin.

For a sneak peak of ShellOn v3 beta9, check out my desktop shot and whet your appetites…

There’s a new ShellOn beta released today: beta 8. Have a look at my desktop to the left to see something nice =)

The changes are as follows:

• Shells are now stored in a global shells.ini file for all users.
• Each user of the PC now has their own settings file for timeouts etc.
• Option not to display launcher window for ‘silent’ shell loading
• Hopefully fixed the ‘buttons off the bottom of the window’ bug
• New style launcher window

Head over to the ShellOn v3 beta page to download and try it. As always, the beta releases of ShellOn should be used by advanced shell users and come with no docs. For this release, you will need to delete your old settings files.

Interesting piece of news (well for me anyway): book 5. Oh, okay, not just interesting, but exciting!

Just a quick post to say I tried linEAK, and it seems to work fine. This is good news indeed. I wonder if I can set up a script to send commands to Ogle/Xine when I watch DVDs and to Xmms at other times. That would be nice. Or maybe I could just use the web keys for DVDs… Choices, choices!