MA Dept. of Revenue consider Linux

hansroy writes "Massachusetts Department of Revenue is still using Windows 95 on the desktop. Faced with upgrade costs of $500-600 per user, they're considering Linux at about one-third the cost. This comes at a very good time, as the new governor of MA is making significant budget cuts this year."

Re:MIT have a say?

[aePrime]

Sorry, here's better. http://hacks.mit.edu/Hacks/by_year/1996/gates/inde x.html [mit.edu]

Re:Wait a second. $500-600?

[Anonymous Coward]

thats a upgrade... u need to buy the full version for new computers

Re:I dunno

[Tailhook]

The difference between win95 and XP is cause for a retrain all by itself. Remember, these are municipal governement employees. Mostly clerks. Most of them don't know what version of Microsoft's bootloader their running and won't care they've been switched to something else.

Finally! Or is it?

[Anonymous Coward]

There was an excellent overview of the Linux on the desktop issue [osnews.com] at OSNews [osnews.com] some time ago.

Personally, I feel that if they get pretty good hardware (800 to gigahertz range to run Gnome or KDE without glitches) then they wouldnt need that much training. Maybe just a bonus to the IT guys for answering some questions but that would be all.

So, indeed, Linux does cost less and it will cost even more less in the future with the 2.5 and 2.6 solving many many problems. First thing that pops into my mind would be ALSA in the kernel - no more messing around, just build the kernel and be done with it. Excellent!

Re:Wait a second. $500-600?

[green pizza]

We recently looked at the final costs from a new machine rollout in my office. The numbers do add up, even when using the cheaper OEM versions. Win XP Pro was about $100 per machine. Office XP was about $150 per machine. Client access licenses for the multiple new fileservers and Exchange server farm cost about $150 per client machine. Misc other other software (full Acrobat, antivirus, etc) added another $150.

It's not cheap... the little things add up.

Re:Win95 no longer working?

[BWJones]

I don't understand this "we must upgrade" mindset.

The problem is that Microsoft is no longer supporting older releases thus "forcing" many users to upgrade regardless of their satisfaction with the current OS. This is what happens when your business model relys on folks constantly upgrading and is a problem with the PC market. Apple appears to buck the trend in many ways in that while they do not officially support really old versions of their MacOS Classic OS, you can still download it from Apple's servers for computers that cannot support more modern versions of the OS. This is one of the many reasons why I purchase Macs. They simply are functional machines for a lot longer than Wintel stuff, they hold their value longer, and they run lots of commonly used software making my return on investment much higher with Macintosh than with Wintel.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:But

[molarmass192]

Not so fast with Linux Terminal Server Project you could just purchase one heavy duty box and run terminals on all the existing hardware. Also, CodeWeavers CrossOver Office would let you run MS Office remotely within Linux. Personally, I'd maintain a base image on the PCs from a central server but I'm sure there's more than just Office to consider here. What other apps do they use inhouse and can they be run without the need for Windows?

Re:I dunno (Largo knows..)

[PetiePooo]

The city of Largo, FL, has been running Linux for a while now, and everyone seems to love it. Their IT budget is 1.3% of the total municipal budget, as compared to the normal 3 to 4%. The tides seem to be turning this way, and will continue to as more an more municipalities see the potential savings.

Newsforge article [newsforge.com]
First /. article [slashdot.org]
Latest /. article [slashdot.org]

Re:I dunno

[xenocyst]

the article appears slashdotted, however....
simple: $250 for Windows XP Pro, because you can't run the "Home" version in an office; and another $350 for MS Office XP Pro, because you can't run Office 9x on Windows XP Pro; this figure may also include the horrendus amount of time it takes to move machines from * to XP due to the shitty system deployment tools available

I am a linux bigot, deal with it.

Re:hopefully it works.

[Black Copter Control]

in addition, our parts database has pdf's, doc's, xls's and such as part of the oracle database. there is a web frontend, but what good is it if you can't open the microsoft attachments.

Never used Linux, have you?? Those are all openable under Linux -- especially the Win-95 versions which are the best reverse-engineered (if only due to the time that they've been out).

there are many other layers of shackles in place, and there is no way anyone would easily be able to change platforms.

Most such changes are structural in nature... Build once, deploy to the entire enterprise. Those sorts of things amortize very nicely with OS, but not so much so with MS per-seat licenses.

Since you'd have to teach a bunch of '95 users how to use XP anyways, training costs would probably be no different than with Linux. When I forced my roommate to deal with my Linux box, he had few months of "how do you do this" -- maybee once per week. After that he was an absolute Linux booster. Even though the machine could dual boot to Windows, he almost never did that after the first month -- no need to. Linux worked so much better for him.

Please post the IP of your 95 machine :-)

[boots@work]

so that we can all admire its stony security.

Ah, how soon they forget....

- The IP stack can be remotely crashed.

- Unencrypted password hashes are sent across the wire.

- The password cache can be decrypted and read by anyone on the machine.

And this is just off the top of my head.

The important thing here is that weaknesses in the networking protocols are not just bugs that can be fixed, they're design flaws. Microsoft just have not backported the most recent RPC stack to W95, so there's no way you can get proper network security. (Why would they bother? It's not like they care about customers who haven't paid their upgrade tax.)

Re:I dunno

[Radical Rad]

You forgot to include the retraining costs for migrating to XP and office XP. Alhough to be fair, it is probably no harder for a user to learn how to use the Microsoft products than to just use KDE and Star Office. Plus MS Office has a dancing paperclip which is fun to play with... for about 5 minutes... unless you're retarded.

Re:I dunno

[Erore]

You're right, you dunno.

Licensing v6.0 has a few different elements that you are not distinguishing between. You can purchase the upgrade license, such as going from Windows 2000 to Windows XP, or you can purchase Software Assurance, or you can purchase a full license. You are speaking of Software Assurance which entitles the licensee to upgrades for the term of the contract (2 or 3 years depending upon license program).

See, it entitles you to upgrade. You are not forced to upgrade, the big hand of almighty Bill G does not reach down and strike your computer with the blight that is Windows Longhorn. However, if at the end of your term Longhorn was the latest version available, but you were still running Windows 98 you are entitled to make the switch to Longhorn whenever you want. Meaning, if 5 years pass since your Software Assurance expired you can still upgrade to Longhorn, because it was the latest version available when your Software Assurance contract expired. However, if you want to upgrade to the version past Longhorn, you will have to pay full price, there are no upgrades because you didn't continue your enrollment in Software Assurance.

The reason people go with Software Assurance is because it is the cheapest alternative if you do upgrade with each OS release. However, if you are like DOR in MA you haven't upgraded since Win 95. Therefore, you probably don't want Software Assurance. You just want a regular upgrade.

But, DOR missed out on the chance for a regular upgrade price, that deadline ended last July 31st. Now they are in the time period where they must pay full price (minus volume discounts) for a switch from Win 95 to XP.

FUD

[Anonymous Coward]

How about we de-FUD this article by reducing the price of Windows XP to a realistic level. For god's sake we can buy it in CANADA for under $200. And that's in our play money.