Government Desktop

The software product industry likes to promote the idea that one size fits all. For the office, this approach typically results in the most complex and expensive product being provided as the basis for deployment on the enterprise desktop. Never mind that the typical office worker uses only a fraction of the capabilities of the product. And never mind that the very complexity and universality of the solution can open it to grave security vulnerabilities and make safe use nearly impossible.

There must be a better way. Complexity should become the exception rather than the rule. Uniformity should be right sized, not one size fits all. It should neither sink to the level of least common denominator nor, at the other extreme, require that every user be overstuffed with a grab bag of complex and expensive tools.

An alternative, modular approach tries to adapt to the business processes of specific organizations. By uniformly deploying a simpler, more focused desktop suite using applications and capabilities targeted to an organization’s actual job, the solution can be cheaper both to acquire and to maintain.

Modularity and focus is the appeal of the new “Government Desktop” (Der Behördendesktop) unveiled in June at the LinuxTag 2004 conference in Germany. The German “Government Desktop” focuses just on what most government knowledge workers require: word processing, e-mail, presentation preparation, and spreadsheet analysis. The desktop distribution emphasizes security and reliability in a platform integrated and localized for the kind of work at hand and in the user’s own native language.

The German “Government Desktop” is one of a growing number of custom distributions designed to solve a specialized world of computing requirements. This desktop distribution is based on Debian and contains KDE, Mozilla and a highly integrated, themed version of OpenOffice. Emphasizing security, it uses encrypted filesystems and secure e-mail. It incorporates spam and virus protection and has a preconfigured personal firewall.

Like the “Government Desktop”, many customized distributions auto-configure and can be used live from CD without having to disturb an existing PC software installation. Important distributions are being aimed at organizations whose focus is scientific computing (e.g., Quantian), education (Skolelinux/Debian-Edu and Freeduc), business (Debian-Enterprise), non-profits (Debian-NP), law (Debian-Lex), medicine (Debian-Med), multimedia (AGNULA), government (Debian-eGov and Behördendesktop), as well as many others. Each of these distributions assembles best-of-breed applications for the kind of work being addressed and at the same time tries to provide automatic hardware recognition to ease installation and adoption. Where mature components do not yet exist in a particular area, the distribution can provide a working framework for making contributions and enhancements. Increasing attention is also being paid to issues such as RAS (reliability, availability and serviceability), security and performance.

While the assembly of the best-of-breed applications for a specialized subject area requires some domain expertise to pull off credibly, the technology for crafting a working distribution has rapidly matured. You certainly do not need to be a Red Hat, Novell, or Sun to build a compelling distribution. Each Debian project mentioned above is an example of a “Custom Debian Distribution” or CDD which is built using tools to select the right components from a superset of over 10,000 packages maintained by Debian. Other well-developed technologies also can be used to build special purpose distributions. For example, the LNX-BBC project offers a sophisticated foundation for building self-configuring, small-footprint solutions that can be targeted for appliances such as servers or security devices.

The beauty and wisdom of OSS is that such distributions can be collaboratively produced by the larger community of organizations that need a particular type of solution. For each kind of enterprise or department, a powerful tool set can be configured precisely, securely and cost-effectively. Such “just-in-time” distribution manufacturing serves to empower the very groups that will use the solution, providing a positive feedback loop to fine-tune and evolve the content of the solution. Deployment and maintenance are also a breeze because these systems, like the German “Government Desktop”, are based on Linux and can be easily scripted and centrally managed.