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Standardization vs. Customization

Hi, "No_Ax_to_Grind".

You said:

I hear you, I simply do not agree at all. Tell you what, look at any business PC and you WILL see that they do in fact have lots of individule apps installed. Like it or not, those are the facts, I see it every day.

It's true that users sometimes do install individual applications on their PCs, but the question becomes, are they doing so with company approval, and are their PCs better off for them having done so? I think in both cases, the answer is a resounding "No!".

The "dumbing down" of PCs is actually because of the users' inclination to install everything under the sun on their PCs. You've got users with custom screen savers, apps that connect to the Internet to tell the weather, apps that put fuzzy little mascots on their screens, apps to instant message their friends, etc., etc. Most of these apps waste clock cycles at best, and at worst endanger network security. Even in cases where it could be argued that users select better apps (e.g., installing Mozilla as a browser, or WordPerfect as a word processor), the result for the company is still havoc, as the documents produced by these "renegade" programs may not be 100% compatible with the corporate standard.

It's true that users (and companies) don't want to go back to the days of the dumb terminal, but it's also true that there's a big difference between a dumb terminal and a PC with a standard set of tools selected by the company to allow users to do their assigned tasks. Standardization for a company is must. The only question I have is whether it is wise to create an entire Linux distro around the idea of standardization, which at its root is anathema to what Linux is supposed to represent. I think Linux vendors ought to customize Linux to individual companies, rather than releasing cookie-cutter versions of Linux.

Posted by: bhartman24   Posted on: 12/24/03 You are currently: a Guest | Members login | Terms of Use

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