Birmingham To Buy More, Not Less Open Source 232
K-boy writes, "Last week, the press (and Slashdot) reported that Birmingham City Council had decided to ditch its open source project because a report said its trial had cost £100,000 more than it would have cost to buy Windows. However, Techworld has discovered that the opposite is true, and the Council is actually planning to use more open source software as well as to roll out Linux in the next few years. The head of IT was interviewed and he gives a fascinating rundown of the problems he had getting open source working with his systems. More interestingly, he points out that now the trial is over and he and his staff have the technical skills, they expect to save lots of money in future by going open source. Oh, and the report's figures were based on the special rates that Microsoft gives Councils just to make sure the short-term budget look worse — £58 for a Windows license as opposed to the normal £100."
Site getting slow; article text (Score:5, Interesting)
Birmingham City Council has defended its year-long trial of desktop Linux, claiming it to be a success, despite an independent report showing it would have been cheaper to install Windows XP.
In an exclusive interview with Techworld, head of IT for the council, Glyn Evans, argued that the higher cost resulted from the council having to experiment with the new technology and build up a depth of technical understanding, as well as fit it with the complex system already in place.
The 105,000 saving that the report says would have resulted from going with Windows XP has also come under question as it was calculated using the special discounted licence rate that Microsoft offers councils - something critics argue is a calculated effort to prevent public bodies from building up technical knowledge of open source offerings.
With Birmingham's trial period over and with lessons learnt and understanding gained, the Council now expects to make cost savings over time, and contrary to press reports which claimed Birmingham had scrapped the Linux initiative, it will in fact "significantly increase" its use of open-source software, Evans said. The trial also had other positive results, he claimed, such as demonstrating the ease with which Firefox and OpenOffice.org can be substituted for Internet Explorer and Microsoft Office.
The trial was carried out with the government-backed Open Source Academy (OSA), and planned to install Linux on 330 desktops in the council's libraries service, split between staff PCs and public access terminals, in an effort to build up practical experience that could be drawn on by other public-sector bodies.
It ran from April 2005 to March 2006, but is still ongoing, with the council refining its Linux desktop image and planning further rollouts next year, according to Evans. "The project did not end when the element of original funding ended, because it is part of the Library Service strategy," he told Techworld. "This project is still very much ongoing, and now that a stable image... has been developed, we would expect significant movement forward."
Over-ambitious
He admitted the council's original plans were over-ambitious, with rollouts of Linux-based staff and public PCs originally scheduled during the one-year trial period. In reality, ongoing testing of the desktop configuration means no Linux desktops have yet been installed. Instead, 96 public desktops and 134 staff desktops are running open source applications such as the OpenOffice.org office suite and the Firefox browser.
The council does plan to begin migrating those desktops to its Suse Professional 9.3-based desktop OS, however, a plan that should go into action in the near future, according to Evans. He said that far from scrapping the Linux initiative, as has occurred in some other high-profile cases such as the London borough of Newham, Birmingham is planning to "significantly increase" the number of desktops involved with the project.
Evans' description of the project is a sharp contrast to the findings described in a case study authored by iMpower Consulting at the formal conclusion of the trial in March, which is available from the OSA's website [pdf [opensourceacademy.org.uk]]. The case study found that the council had failed to make a business case for its Linux desktops, largely because the half-a-million-pound cost of designing and implementing the system cost more than the estimated cost for a Windows XP installation.
The difference is largely down to high "team costs", including setting up the project, technical definition and design, development and testing and training, all of which amounted to roughly 100,000 more than the estimated team costs for a Windows installation. The total cost of the trial was 534,710, compared to an estimated 429,960 for Windows XP.
"The project showed that there are considerable costs incurred in de
Re:Site getting slow; article text (Score:2, Insightful)
As would anyone contemplating a move to new systems and new technologies.
From my perspective it appears that both sides have a point. Free software has costs associated with it, just like "paid" commercial software. Those costs can be purchase price, future upgrade costs, support fees, training, planning and implementation time, helpdesk time, lost end-user productivity, and so on.
Anyone considering either needs to review the TCO and impact on the organization at large.
Re:Site getting slow; article text (Score:2)
Re:Site getting slow; article text (Score:3, Insightful)
1) Safety: so people can download various trojans, spyware or virus, without hurting other users who use the same terminal down the line.
2) Copyright: People download all sort of copyrighted materials on public terminals. If we allow those to stay on our harddrives, the liability issue is a concern. With those software, it just flush everything out, so it's all good when SBA showing up for audit.
3) Privacy: We don't have to give FBI the information we don't keep. And users don't need to see what any of the history or cache files other prior user, either.
Now, in linux, I suppose each session would be a new user with their own
Re:Site getting slow; article text (Score:5, Insightful)
No, always use the same user account, such as "publicusr". At the end of a session, just run "rm -Rf /home/publicusr/*". That will leave the publicusr home directory intact, but remove all of its contents, including any downloaded material (copyrighted material, malware, etc.) and clear the browser settings and browser history.
If you want to have certain settings exist in the user directory, copy them in from a pre-defined directory, after running the delete.
Don't force a capable athlete to ride in an expensive wheelchair, just because all of your professional experience comes from working with cripples.
Re:Site getting slow; article text (Score:2)
TCO hype --debunked! Up yours, Microsoft! (Score:3, Interesting)
Interviewer: So, Linux cost you more?
IT guy: Yeah, we had to learn stuff all over again and reconfigure everything. We blew so much money on that!
Interviewer: So, I guess it's a no-go for Linux, and you're going back to Microsoft?
IT guy: Are you kidding me? We already spent so much on Linux --why would we want to throw away everything we worked so hard for?
Bravo, Birmingham, for going through with the trial. I hope the word gets out --the bogeyman of TCO is what is keeping companies and institutions from taking the plunge.
Teach a man to fish... (Score:5, Insightful)
In this case the fishing classes cost some money, sure. And the report basically said the would have saved money by purchasing some fish... well duh. - but how long would that fish have lasted?
They now know how to get unlimited fish themselves and are free from the stinking fish market.
Re:Teach a man to fish... (Score:5, Insightful)
I think we need a new saying:
"Threaten to learn how to fish, and get a discount from the fishmonger!"
Since MS seems to give discounts to anyone who looks at OSS, if I was the head of a large city's IT department, I'd put a cheap student intern on the job of writing up a migration plan and publicize the plan loudly. It may be impossible to get everyone to move to OSS (especially with local politics and entrenched technologies), but Microsoft seems to be willing to give discounts on the next round of pricing. ;)
Re:Teach a man to fish... (Score:2)
You mean:
Give a man a fish and he eats for a day
Teach a man to fish and he gets rammed by a US submarine [pbs.org]?
Comment removed (Score:2)
Re:Teach a man to fish... (Score:5, Funny)
Set a man on fire and he'll be warm for the rest of his life.
Mod parent stupid (Score:2)
What is this, the next generation of Solviet Russia jokes? Come on.
Re:Teach a man to fish... (Score:2)
Teach a man to fish, and he'll spend all afternoon sitting in a boat drinking beer.
Re:Teach a man to fish... (Score:2)
Teach a man to brew beer and you waste a lifetime.
Re:Teach a man to fish... (Score:4, Interesting)
Now if you are a programmer, and your desktop linux is somehow reducing your ability to write code (IE you spend an hour each day dealing with software updates or something) then windows is a better fit... Although I'm much more productive coding under linux than windows....
Show a man the ocean (Score:3, Interesting)
Wisdom vs Intelligence (Score:3, Interesting)
With all of the rigged numbers originating in incumbent market dominators showing up in city council policy and budget analyses, it's obvious the councils need guidance. I know that the NYC City Council doesn't have any resources with "BS logs" of ongoing vendor distortions, except for consultants like me. State/federal or even international organizations that serve the people administered by these city councils should produce research to weed out the lies. Sort of like a "City Council Consumer Reports". In the US, the GAO (now "Government Accountability Office"), or the Office of Management and Budget, or some team at Treasury at the federal level, could produce them. Or the state Comptroller. Or maybe a "City Councils Association", that could reach internationally.
Government is really big. In the US it's about 25% of our economy, though that includes the military (about 30% of total). So maybe these guidelines are already being produced, perhaps redundantly. The government response would be to produce similarly obscure guidelines on finding the guidelines. That's how government gets so big (especially the military). Is there a better way for City Councils to share wisdom, not just knowledge, about the information used to make these decisions?
Re:Wisdom vs Intelligence (Score:2)
I hope the Gnome folks read this bit ... (Score:4, Interesting)
At one point, realising that most of the usability issues were attributable to Gnome, which had taken three months to configure, staff ripped out Gnome and replaced it with KDE.
I use Gnome, but it sure has usability issues. I hope the Gnome developers will take the trouble to understand why Birmingham dumped Gnome - sfter selecting it initially.
what usability issues... (Score:2)
What specific usability issues would the average user have in Browsing, Emailing and Wordprocessing ? was Re:I hope the Gnome folks read this bit
Re:what usability issues... (Score:2)
There is no easily-discoverable user interface that allows a user to type in the name of a file they wish to open.
Save-file dialogs use a totally different layout to open-file dialogs, requiring the user to learn two different user interfaces where the job can be trivially simplified to just one simple interface.
Gnome: Logical but not Practical (Score:2)
Yeah. Yeah. Let the flames about "Microsoft's way; Not 'natural' way!" begin. But who do you think has spent the most on usability studies? Who's studied how people like things presented, the most? Nerds should deal with the UI / machine layers and UI practitioners should tell us nerds where to place the buttons and window trimmings.
How much damage has Linux gotten from Gnome-pushers? "I hated Linux" is so unfair if you haven't tried any other DE...
Re:Gnome: Logical but not Practical (Score:2)
Re:Gnome: Logical but not Practical (Score:4, Informative)
Instead of "Do you want to save the changes? Yes / No / Cancel" you get "You have unsaved changes. Save / Don't Save / Cancel". All of your choices are verbs. This avoids monstrosities like "Click Yes to do xxxx, click No to yyyyy", which I've seen in numerous Windows programs (Microsoft Access comes to mind).
From: http://developer.apple.com/documentation/UserExper ience/Conceptual/OSXHIGuidelines/XHIGControls/chap ter_18_section_2.html [apple.com]
"Button names should be verbs that describe the action performed--Save, Close, Print, Delete, and so on. If a button acts on a single setting, label the button as specifically as possible; "Choose Picture...," for example, is more helpful than "Choose..." Because most buttons initiate an immediate action, it shouldn't be necessary to use "now" (Scan Now, for example) in the label. Don't use push buttons to indicate a state such as On or Off (where it would be more appropriate to use checkboxes).
Re:Gnome: Logical but not Practical (Score:2)
Re:Gnome: Logical but not Practical (Score:2)
I sometimes wonder how much better GNOME would be today if all that energy spent arguing over button order was spent instead solving real usability issues.
Re:I hope the Gnome folks read this bit ... (Score:3, Informative)
Re:I hope the Gnome folks read this bit ... (Score:2)
Anyhow, ignoring the GNOME vs. KDE issue (which I hope won't flare up), there are other questions here: how did they come to initially decide on GNOME? Perhaps their decision-making process wasn't very thorough, if they later spent 3 months of work to arrive at a dead end. If they really didn't know the subject matter, then the decision to go GNOME may have been premature; they should have investigated KDE more before wasting those 3 months. But, I guess that's how you learn.
Also, it has to be said: sure, GNOME isn't perfect, KDE isn't either, but at least on Linux you have a choice. That's a good thing.
Re:I wish that you would not do this (Score:2)
This can't be good (Score:3, Interesting)
I don't (yet) run Linux but have fiddled with a Slack 10 and Debian installation but the above comment can't be good for the folks developing Gnome.
Can someone with a bit more insight explain why one would work better in the above scenario since, presumbably, both do the same thing?
Re:This can't be good (Score:2, Interesting)
Gnome vs KDE? Toss 'em both! (Score:2)
Gnome and KDE are both big, bloated, and slow. I have a lot of older hardware, and have spent some time hacking on Slackware 10 and 11 to set up an environment that's far from perfect but good enough. Knoppix will tell you it just can't run KDE in a measly 64M of RAM.
A 4G hard drive is a bit cramped these days, so I've been experimenting with Reiser4, but who knows what will happen to that file system now, and "bzexe" (gzexe using bzip2 instead of gzip), and installing as few packages as possible while still having crucial "killer apps" user software, that being Open Office, Firefox (with Java and Flash), GIMP, xine (no luck with gxine) with codecs for viewing wmv stuff, xmms, a PDF viewer (xpdf), and GAIM. And gphoto2 for digital cameras. Solved printer setup problems by getting an HP with an ethernet interface and using HPLIP. (USB printers in Linux are a huge pain.) Can scan that way too. Learned of jwm from Puppy Linux, hunted around for a file manipulator like Windows Explorer and settled on Xfe, and I hacked agetty and the startx script to make login automatic. No display manager pigging out on resources that way.
Automatic mounting of CDs, DVDs, USB memory sticks, and all the varieties of flash memory is still a problem. I thought I had that solved with Submount (that's right, not Supermount), a relatively tiny daemon and kernel patch, but it doesn't seem to be maintained anymore. (Yes, I'm using the very latest kernels-- don't believe that about 2.6 not being suitable for low memory environments, I've run it and X on 48M and had 20M of RAM free according to top.) Instead, there's a movement towards HAL/dbus/ivman which are way way WAY larger. Don't have anything equivalent to Add/Remove Programs, or Settings (except CUPS printer management web page), and some other things are missing, but it works.
So, yeah, KDE, Gnome, or "hack it up yourself" all have their points. Only recently did Xubuntu pop up on my radar. Lot of the lightweight distros, like DSL, economize too much on the desktop.
Re:This can't be good (Score:5, Informative)
To Grossly over simplify, Gnome sacrifices customizability for usability and simplicity. KDE sacrifices simplicity for customizability In environments that demand a certain configuration which doesn't match Gnome's ideal usage case, KDE is often a better fit.
They're both great desktop managers, and each has strengths in certain areas. And yes, I know "customizability" isn't a real word.
BBH
Re:This can't be good (Score:2)
KDE==Practical/"Don't make me think"/Get-stuff-done
Re:This can't be good (Score:2)
Gnome has the start menu (well, Applications) at the top left, with the clock also at the top right, but open windows are at the bottom.
This makes things wildly confusing for clueless Windows users, who franticly search for their precious clock and start button (laugh all you want, I've given more people KDE than Gnome because of this).
Re:This can't be good (Score:2)
Right click the clock, select move, and move it to the lower right.
Right click notification area, select move and mave down beside the clock.
Right click the top panel, select add to panel, select main menu.
Right click the main menu button, select move and move it down to the lower left.
Right click the top panel and select "delete this panel".
Optional: Remove the "Show desktop" button, Workspace switcher, and trash from the panel.
And now you have the screwed up UI that is windows. But really people would be better off just learning to look at the top of the screen when they want to start something new and at the bottom of the screen when they want to go back to something they're already working on.
Not sure why you'd go to the extra effort to set up KDE just to get a start button in the lower left. You can do that in Gnome in under 10 seconds. Then you wouldn't have to support multiple desktop environments. And if all the users are working in the same environment, they can trade knowledge, so less training costs and the like.
So far behind? (Score:2, Interesting)
What's the logic of going with a version that is so far behind? I know that you don't go bleeding edge with such a project but 9.3 is ancient. I guess it is still supported but it seems like being *that* far behind would be leaving yourself open to a number of security/compatibility issues.
Re:So far behind? (Score:2)
Re:So far behind? (Score:2)
Suse Professional 9.3 was released, what, a year and a half ago? That's not precisely ancient, especially given that the council apparently took time to take an existing base and then do their own customization.
Re:So far behind? (Score:2)
Huh? My desktop machine is on 9.1. I installed it from the latest available version substantially less than 3 years ago.
And yes, I am rather annoyed that they've stopped issuing updates for it.
Under question? (Score:5, Interesting)
How could the savings be "under question" because of the discounted rate? What, do you expect them to calculate the savings while pretending that they would have had to pay full price? If so, Microsoft would have rightly stated that they were massaging the numbers just to make open source look good.
What's more interesting is whether their numbers for open source included the costs of Windows XP, as they didn't actually install any Linux systems. (Not exactly a big win for Linux there, either.) How do you spend £534,710 on installing OpenOffice and Firefox on 230 Windows computers, and playing around with Suse for a year, anyway?
Re:Under question? (Score:2)
My impression is that they've been messing around with trials of different replacement technologies, agree that Firefox and Open Office are clear wins and are still trying to decide on spots where Linux would make sense. The money is probably mostly salaries of people putting in full- or part-time work on it.
But, yeah -- that "based on the special rates" bit is brain-dead, even by the usual standards of statistical illiteracy around here.
Re:Under question? (Score:2)
Re:Under question? (Score:2)
Well... this is a case study. As such, one question that comes to my mind is "how does this apply to my environment?" If I happen to be the Burmingham City Council, or another such Council it seems, then there's no question. But what if I'm representing another entity that doesn't get the special discounts? Obviously that's a part of the case study that needs to be highlighted as highly situational.
There's also a whole slew of indirect questions one could start considering. Such as - how long does this special rate last? And sure - we're talking about desktops now... how about other licensing such as CALs?
oh dear.... (Score:3, Funny)
start the Gnome vs. KDE bun fight... 3, 2, 1...
Great news (Score:2, Funny)
Thees is bostin' nyohs! Oi main, an' all, oos Brummies 've bin pronaincing it as Leenux, and not Loinux, seence forever, loike. Way don' naid no steenkin' Moicrosoft!
Anywy, are yo mashin?
I feel vindicated with this piece... (Score:4, Interesting)
I have long said that Gnome had a problem for most users in a typical business environment, and was met with comments referring to me as a troll and as one who was just a KDE fanboy.
This article articulates just one of the problems with Gnome.
For this particular problem, there are folks who say that I should use "ctrl + L". Though this keyboard shortcut is not even documented anywhere near where one would want to use it. Imagine that.
These are just *some* of the issues that make Gnome a non-starter for me and I am glad the Britons found out as well. This will make the developers think about what users want. How can a desktop environment take three months to configure? This is insane! These are not my words but quotes from the article.
Re:I feel vindicated with this piece... (Score:2, Interesting)
Uh... what file selector dialog and where? And what are you trying to type in it anyway? File names? Love letters?
Because GNOME-VFS is basically inadequate and no one has got around to writing a system that actually works.
Oh, wait, that should be written instead as:
Because implementing network awareness at "open this file for reading" level is not the responsibility of the high reaches of the app layer. That's the operating system's job.
Unix assumes you're on a local system. Go install Plan 9 or something, or wait until someone comes up with a really awesome FUSE hack.
Both GNOME and KDE are doing this the hacky stop-gap way, and the only difference is that KDE folks have a solution that works, kind of. The elegant way would be to allow this stuff to work on any application. I'm not calling the present situation elegant until I can do "cat http://slashdot.org/ [slashdot.org] ".
(Oh wow, someone's actually working on the age-old mount -t webdav problem... We may actually have a great working filesystem one day!)
That said, as a GNOME user, I'm not terrified by the apparent lack of net transparency. If I want to open something from the web, it's Firefox's job to save it to /tmp and open up the appropriate document viewer. If I want to work on the file further, I'll save a local copy anyway.
Because people said "I want a file selector, not a file selector + submarine control dialog?" The fact that you can do something on a dialog that's not really none of the dialog's business is usually a symptom of excessive featuritis.
(Agreed, I think it'd be nice if the dialog had a button that says "open in Nautilus" for the rare cases where file management is needed.)
Re:I feel vindicated with this piece... (Score:2, Insightful)
(Agreed, I think it'd be nice if the dialog had a button that says "open in Nautilus" for the rare cases where file management is needed.)"
And the reason why Gnome will never be taken seriously.
Are you honestly telling me that in today's world of operating systems, (Mac and Windows), that you are going to force people into a two step process for something that other operating systems do in one step! You obviously fail to understand the user. If Linux cannot do the simple things that Windows and Mac do, then most users will not bother to switch. User in the Windows and Mac world want simplicity. They don't care how complex it is on the backend.
The short comings of Windows and Mac operating systems are not enough to force MOST people to switch to Linux because the simplicity is not there.
Power users and people who are willing to tinker, because you have to tinker: DVD playback is disabled by default and you have to go through hoops to enable it, whereas DVD playback just works in Windows and Mac. Most users just want it to work.
Re:I feel vindicated with this piece... (Score:3, Informative)
Re:I feel vindicated with this piece... (Score:2)
As to convincing users to switch from Windows and Mac to Gnome... Is that the goal? Hate to break it to you, but it's not. In fact, that isn't even on the list of Gnome goals.
Ratboy
Re:I feel vindicated with this piece... (Score:2)
Re:I feel vindicated with this piece... (Score:2)
"Fedora Core is a free operating system that offers the best combination of stable and cutting-edge software that exists in the free software world."
"Debian is a free operating system (OS) for your computer. An operating system is the set of basic programs and utilities that make your computer run. Debian uses the Linux kernel (the core of an operating system), but most of the basic OS tools come from the GNU project; hence the name GNU/Linux."
"SUSE Linux Enterprise: a platform for the entire open enterprise, delivering new solutions that help you outperform competitors, cut costs,
Ubuntu is a complete Linux-based operating system, freely available with both community and professional support. It is developed by a large community and we invite you to participate too!
"The Ubuntu community is built on the ideas enshrined in the Ubuntu Philosophy: that software should be available free of charge, that software tools should be usable by people in their local language and despite any disabilities, and that people should have the freedom to customise and alter their software in whatever way they see fit. "
"We produce Gentoo Linux, a special flavor of Linux that can be automatically optimized and customized for just about any application or need. Extreme performance, configurability and a top-notch user and developer community are all hallmarks of the Gentoo experience."
I see a lot of ideas here (freedom, customization, performance, free of charge, cutting-edge, stable), some of which contradict each other, but nothing about converting Windows users.
So where do you get that idea from? It seems to be a common meme.
Ratboy
Re:I feel vindicated with this piece... (Score:2)
Both GNOME and KDE are doing this the hacky stop-gap way, and the only difference is that KDE folks have a solution that works, kind of. The elegant way would be to allow this stuff to work on any application. I'm not calling the present situation elegant until I can do "cat http://slashdot.org/ [slashdot.org] ".
You are aware that there's a FUSE/kioslave bridge available, aren't you?
It's not quite as good as what you're looking for, because the kernel doesn't understand URLs and wouldn't know what to do with one, but it certainly enables some useful features.
Their calculations ignore Opportunity Cost (Score:2)
That is, several questions come to mind:
- What's the cost for not being able to do something? That is, if there end solution doesn't support a given task, what's the cost? Perhaps they don't even know they could perform this task right now.
- Imagine instead of spending time on this project, you did something else with your resources. What's the lost cost of not doing something else more meaningful?
- Productivity of endusers? Many people look at the cost of upgrading an old desktop, but don't measure the cost of not upgrading.
There are plenty of questions like this that don't seem to be answered by any of these articles.
not a single Linux desktop .. (Score:3, Insightful)
It strikes me that thay attempted a roll out of a Linux desktop solution with no previous experience. They would have been occupied in bringing in an experienced company to do the job.
"half-a-million-pound cost of designing and implementing the system cost more than the estimated cost for a Windows XP installation"
What were they implimenting on the Suse desktop that required spending half a million pounds.
"usability problems with the original Gnome interface
Like what, Gnome is specifically designed to provide a rich user interface. Either of them can be replaced by a Windows look alike.
"For instance, existing Windows 3.1 public terminals used a program called Deepfreeze that rebooted the system at the end of each session, something that had to be re-engineered for Linux"
He's kidding, put a line in
"Staff also found that the OS was storing information about the contents of public users' removable media, and for privacy purposes had to develop a script to delete this information"
Like where and how, Linux mostly uses
Re:not a single Linux desktop .. (Score:3, Insightful)
You really do have to think about some things in a different way with Linux. Part of the problem is years of preconditioning to the way Windows has (arbitrarily) chosen to do everything blinding you to the alternatives.
Re:not a single Linux desktop .. (Score:2, Insightful)
You're overlooking the fact that they were using Windows 3.1 systems. Why do you think they were doing that? Because they thought it just couldn't be beat?
What's more likely is they're using Windows 3.1 because the terminals are ancient and they don't have the cash to upgrade or replace them. So its rather unlikely that they have CDROMS drives, or flash drives, or gobs of memory for RAMDisks, or the money to equip them any of the above.
Re:not a single Linux desktop .. (Score:2)
This shows their inexperience. Deepfreeze returns the machine to the exact state in which it was previously. It's designed so that people can screw up the machine and it'll be fine for the next person. You need something like it when running Windows 3.1 or 9x. They could have done this in Linux, however, simply by deleting and recreating the
I've no idea what the removable media thing refers to...
Re:not a single Linux desktop .. (Score:2)
Re:not a single Linux desktop .. (Score:3, Insightful)
Interesting???? You mean "stupid," don't you?
In this day of virtual, all of this could be done with starting a new virtual machine for each user. Once the user is gone, so it the virtual machine. Yes, it would take longer to boot than windows 3.1, but you could have a second virtual waiting in the wings for when the logout happens, then start another one up to be waiting for when the current one is logged out.
There's always more than one way to skin a cat. If you like to have the cat screaming and scratching while you skin it, that is possible, but I prefer to skin my cats when they are dead. People too often want the elegant solution when the right solution is far simpler.
Short term budget (Score:3, Insightful)
Some people think Microsoft produces nothing but crap, and other people think Microsoft produces the nothing but the finest. Both views miss the point of Microsoft. Microsoft is about consistently delivering mediocrity, year in, year out.
This sounds like damning with faint praise, but consistent mediocrity has its advantages. Think of all the once great products that were run into the ground; or the promising projects that ended up going nowhere. Microsoft might be mean old Mr. Potter, but too often the alternative is like the Bailey Building and Loan without George Bailey. Do you really want Uncle Billy managing your nest egg?
Birmingham chose SUSE; how much trust should you put in Novell's future stewardship of SUSE, even granting the best of intentions?
It's important to acknowledge the leap of faith that Birmingham is making here. Pretending that short term costs don't matter underestimates the guts it takes to do that. Somebody has to take a leap of faith, every now and then, but it doesn't always end happily.
Re:Short term budget (Score:2)
Only Microsoft can sell you Windows.
That's the important difference. It's about the song, not the singer.
British Pounds in Alabama? (Score:2)
Interesting Comments On Usability (Score:2)
Re:Interesting Comments On Usability (Score:2)
Just my personal opinion, which is all you can really give here: no, it isn't. If anything, I'd say GNOME's strong point is its slavish obedience of the directives of so-called usability experts. The fact that most people seem to struggle to use it should tell us something: a lot of usability experts don't have a clue what they're talking about.
Vendor lock in logic. (Score:2)
Vendor: Ah! let me tell you all about the suite tools an licensing for the 2007 roll out.
Cust: Well, our budget is thight. We have a team working to port part of the application to Open Source servers.
Vendor (smiling): Do you have ANY idea how much is going to cost?
Cust: Well, the actual numbers are a big point of contention.
Vendor: I'll save you the agravation, IBM? Oracle? they have R&D and D stands for deep pockets, get it? But I'm here ready to offer you big discounts for the all our upgrades, you know that if you don't upgrade right now, you'll have to pay FULL price once the contract expires, right?.
Cust: (sight).
Vendor: Now about those licenses...
Applications good, OS problematic (Score:2)
Of course it shows that actually making Linux the centerpiece of your FOSS change is looking at the problem from the wrong angle. If you make applications that people don't need to install a new OS to use, and then make sure that they get used to them under XP or whatever, then the move to Linux is almost a no-brainer. Why? Because once you have apps that work well on Linux and XP, the fact that Linux distros are free (or much cheaper) means that the bottom line is on your side. Microsoft can drop its XP licenses to 58 quid and have that work while you NEED MS Office. But once you no longer use MS Office, then 0 quid beats 58 quid. MS can't compete. And wouldn't that be a nice change?
Of course, even at the price of free, badly developed OS user interfaces will stop Linux from being adopted. Everyone knows non-technical people fear Linux. And honestly, I don't blame them.
MS's committment to making a friendly OS is mediocre, but at least it exists and they have a product. Granted, being a monopoly has allowed them to force people to learn to deal with the rough edges that exist, but truly, Windows is a genuinely usable system for a newb. Not great, but its good enough. The Linux community really needs to get behind that effort, even to the exclusion of adding new features, if necessary.
It may be true that Linux needs to have a superior UI to beat out MS's mediocre monopoly UI, but what of it? Linux does nearly everything in a superior manner to Windows.
Or it can continue to be simply a server OS, and well, that's just fine too.
Typical media report: clearly false (Score:2)
I hardly think it's surprising any more that successful completion of a project is reported as the project being scrapped. It's almost surprising that we didn't get reports on the recent election of the Republicans keeping control of both houses of Congress for another two months.
The cost of proprietary applications (Score:2)
See where you went wrong here? You bought non-portable software, and also it was proprietary, so you were locked into doing business, in a world full of millions of programmers, with one entity in order to get the maintenance that you wanted. See all the IT workers whining about having a hard time finding a job (i.e. people you could hire very cheaply)? You can't use them. You don't get to take advantage of the market. You didn't get to request bids on the porting job.
Oops. Now is where Birmingham's IT people will have a real chance to show their where they are on the Wisdom-vs-Stupidity scale: are you moving toward phasing out this dead-end application? 10 Years from now, will you be able to use whatever platform you want to, or will one application developer still be making that choice for you, while also getting to charge whatever they want for maintenance without having to worry about pesky competitors underbidding them?
Re:*BUY* more? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:*BUY* more? (Score:2)
You need some level of support agreement with either solution - Windows or Linux. Comparing the costs of a MSFT support agent or a Red-hat/Novell/Ubuntu support agent is another choice (and cost driver) altogether. As is training and converting users.
My guess is it is a similar cost of support with either solution. I also expect the USER training required to migrate to Vista is similar cost to migrating to Linux. This then falls back to the cost of acquisition. Is it cheaper to pay $100,000 to train your sys admins in Linux so you have an 'organic' capability for OS upgrade and acquisition, or intall XP, then have to buy Vista in a year, then MSoffice 2008, Outlook server 2009, Explorer 2010 etc...
Re:*BUY* more? (Score:3, Interesting)
I remember times when people I worked with have been paying hundreds of dollars for sets calls to M$ on the same topic where they didn't get the answer they needed. In a truly competitive market that just wouldn't fly.
Re:*BUY* more? (Score:4, Informative)
Unix-like systems don't usually fail without good reason. So anybody working on them really needs to know their arse from a hole in the ground. This means Unix techies are expensive -- because they're good. They have no choice but to be. And there's more transferrability of skills between software: much of what you might learn about Linux can be applied to Solaris and the BSDs, some of what you might learn about MySQL can be applied to PostgreSQL or Firebird, Perl is a bit like PHP, ProFTPD and Apache have similar configuration file syntaxes, and so forth.
Basically, if you pay peanuts, you get monkeys.
Re:unix techies are expensive? (Score:2)
In short, there wont be as many *nix tech's because it does actually require a decent amount of understanding into what is happening within a system to administrate a *nix implementation successfuly. Windows is just too easy to administrate (A point in its favour if "out of the box" configurations are enough for you.).
Re:*BUY* more? (Score:2)
Of course what everyone else is doing in your area plays big into how much admins cost. If you traing/hire linux guys, and the next big hire in your town/industry/country is for a big windows install, then your employee's don't have the experience to be as desireable to be sucked away (=lower admin cost.) But if the next big job is that 5 other companys decide to transition to linux also, then you got a bidding war to keep an admin.
'sed s/linux/windows' is also true. Of course, you can buy with cash the experienced admin, instead of buying experience with time/mistakes if your not blazing the new trail.
being the admin, of course I want lots of transistions to LinuxApacheMysqlPhp because I got that experience, not windows/.net/...
Re:*BUY* more? (Score:2, Funny)
NO! (Score:2)
Re:NO! (Score:2)
Re:NO! (Score:4, Insightful)
Other possibilities are:
-acquire the expertise
-hire someone who has it
Are you trying to paint possibilities as a drawback?
Re:NO! (Score:2)
Re:NO! (Score:2)
Re:NO! (Score:3, Insightful)
I groan everytime i see a pro-linux person complain "all you have to do is recompile the device drivers!"
They just don't get it.
Re:NO! (Score:3, Interesting)
The problem is not that $39 is really unreasonable. The problem is that the lock-in makes it so that more and more can be added to that $39 as time rolls on.
Re:NO! (Score:2)
But that's not the point. In "theory" I could get a compiler, a debugger, OOo source and analyze why my documents are crashing.
I really *want* to go to OOo. It's just not there yet and even as a programmer, there is no way I can justify spending the time to make it meet my needs when my needs can be met for $39.
Re:NO! (Score:2)
I used to be one of those sort of, and I finally listened to the others saying how much modern Linux has changed and decided to move up from "compiling my own device drivers" to "just a GUI user". Surprisingly it has worked very well.
I installed Debian Etch on my laptop with KDE. Synaptic works at least as well as aptitude for package management. Abiword is excellent. CUPS had no problems working with my HP DeskJet over the network. Konqueror and Kmail have surprised me a lot in all the detailed improvements over Mozilla (better GPG support, much better filters in mail, better integration with CUPS, better handling of PDF, etc.). Even DVDs play easily with Kaffeine, and I DON'T have to mount/umount anymore. I plug in a USB anything and it generally works right out of the box: DVD writer, storage, ethernet, serial port, mice.
There are quirks, but they aren't bad. USB memory sticks need to be mounted as root -- the default policy isn't set for my non-root account to use it and I haven't fixed that yet. In order to get laptop battery stats I had to download a third-party OSS kernel module. Due to a weirdness in CMUCL I had to recompile the kernel, but that made installing the nVidia driver easier anyway (though I did have to delete the nvidiafb module). I had to install a third-party OSS driver for the wireless card, but that was easy too. So yeah, I still resort to some drivers but apart from wireless they were entirely optional.
All in all I'd say that there is essentially no reason anymore for ME to ever run anything but Debian now. Maybe in a few more years those other quirks will be fixed and you'll be able to use it too.
Re:NO! (Score:2, Interesting)
one of the problems with adoption of foss is in my opinion that people don't know how the whole mentality works. i sometimes wonder if the average worker goes into his local computer shop, doesn't find any software on shelves for linux and therefore concludes that there isn't any. it wouldn't occur to him/her, that you can download software which would for windows cost tens of thousands of dollars free of charge from the net for linux, because he/she just wouldn't look there for software.
Re:NO! (Score:2)
It is because the average Joe knows that the only software that you download from the internet is pirated software. :)
Re:NO! (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:NO! (Score:2)
You have this totally backwards. Who exactly do you think it is that has specialized apps? Companies do. If they have to be rewritten, thats greater risk and cost for them, so while it will generally cost the home user little except their time there is often a substantial cost for companies to go with OSS.
Re:NO! (Score:2)
The apps that I was talking about are the small apps that small (and sometimes large) companies buy. Typically, they are speciallized apps that deal only with that particular industry (or facet of it). In that case, the customer has little to no choice but to go with that company says. Interestingly, those companies that are on Windows would do well to try wine and open up their markets BEFORE somebody in the OSS world decides that it is worthwhile doing. But it rarely happens until the closed source is dieing anyways.
Re:NO! (Score:2)
Yep. Most people I know never bought any software (except possibly games and the software included with their computer), they just just pirate it instead. So cost is not an issue, has never been an issue and the probability of getting caught is next to nil. They'd rather continue to pirate Windows and Windows applications than try Linux or other open source software.
And then there is the "don't trust unknown people on the internet" advice, which for them translates into "I know Microsoft, ther are well-known and I'd rather trust them than some random unknown hobby developer on the internet that don't even care to put a box of the software on store shelves". And the attitude "Gasp! It's for free? Then it must suck! Better use a pirated proprietary program, they cost money (even if I cheat them on that), so it must be good".
Quit feeding this troll, guys (Score:2)
Re:*BUY* more? (Score:2)
Sure, if you are living in a cave.
In truth (and in reality), no piece of software is ever truly *free* -- you invest it in other forms. The things that you invest in with may not be very valuable to you, but they are investments neverthless (e.g. time).
Now, this is true for everything, and softwware, free or otherwise, is no exception.
TCO, maintenance, support and other things are not free, even if a piece of software is free. In some ways, *paying* for something would mean that the other party has made a contractual agreement towards providing you a product or a service, which is missing in free as in FREE kind of scenarios. Who is to be held responsible if something goes wrong? Who can I cast the blame upon?
Why do you think companies like RedHat and others make so much money?
Re:*BUY* more? (Score:2)
Re:*BUY* more? (Score:2)
Re:*BUY* more? (Score:2)
Re:*BUY* more? (Score:2)
Re:So, are they, like, not losers anymore? (Score:2)