UK Councils May Dump Windows For Linux 331
An anonymous reader writes "Local authorities in Newham and Nottingham are expected to migrate more than 10,000 desktop computers from Windows to GNU/Linux.
ZDNet has the story. "If this is seen to work in Newham, it has the potential to be a significant project, changing the perceptions of other councils," said Tim Dawes, director of local government technology consultants Nineveh."
And for the Linux pessimists... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:And for the Linux pessimists... (Score:3, Funny)
Well...definitely not on slashdot ;)))
Re:And for the Linux pessimists... (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:And for the Linux pessimists... (Score:5, Insightful)
In other words, Microsoft thinks it's better than Linux (except in the simplest cases). I'll be damned !
What's next, companies making hammers saying that their hammers have better ROIs than screwdrivers. I wander how such a presentation would go. "When nailing three hundred nails, each nail costing around $0.5, each MS hammer costing $7, each LN screwdriver costing $.50, each employee costing $10 an hour, [...]; our MS Hammer does the job 5000 times more accurately than our LN Screwdriver, therefore the ROI with a MS hammer is superior to LN screwdriver by a factor of blah...blah."
Hopefully, most IT managers already know that Linux and Windows are not necessarily interchangeable. They're both different tools with different capabilities and it sure would be stupid not to have both those tools in your toolbox.
Re:And for the Linux pessimists... (Score:3, Interesting)
Going FreeBSD for the web box, Oracle and Linux for the application server, and Windows for the file servers, just isn't piratical. When you choose a system unless there is very unusual circumstances you only go with one platform.
Which tha
Re:And for the Linux pessimists... (Score:5, Interesting)
It is an absolute nightmare to do anything on Windows that isn't explicitly allowed by Microsoft.
Have you ever tried to debug some random piece of crap VB dll or vbscript ( two of the four current VB dialects... vb.net, vb6, vbs, vba )? Its a fuckload harder than a horrible shell or perl script. Python scripts are pretty hard to make truly horrible, so those are usually even easier to debug.
COM is really just a horrible hack to make people think there is a C++ abi on Windows. It is an absolute disgrace to actually use. This is the reason so much is done in VB on Windows. Microsoft have made C and C++ into a completely useless platform for doing anything quick. There are over 30 different types of string used in the MS apis... what does that tell you?
Every api seems to have from 9 to 35 arguments. Nobody knows what they are for... its a cut and paste job from MSDN, yet again... and then we get on to business processes.
People start off with a spreadsheet or a word document. They add macros to it. They expand it. They go fucking insane. The next thing you know you are expected to work out what a fucking idiot has created in the worst language known to man, VBA. There are so many random limitations in this crud that even the bog standard excel user hits them on his first macro, and starts making up crazy work arounds, each different than the other. Fuck you, Joel Spoelsky..... [joelonsoftware.com]. I can't believe that guy is proud of his "Excel macro strategy".
And before you say
On unix, the first thing is that I have choice... I don't have to go with Apache, or Tux, or publicfile, or roxen, or zope, or roll my own with twisted [twistedmatrix.com] , my current favorite trick. On windows, if you don't use IIS, you are likely to get screwed over at any point.
Now, be honest. You tried to use unix but you got scared. "Mummy, theres no drive letters! I'm lost!!!!! Waaaaaah!!!!". You didn't want to know what was going on. Windows protects you from knowing what the hell you are doing by restricting you to do only what their focus groups tell them. Have you ever actually worked out what was happening when something broke on Windows? Or did you just give up and abandon that functionality, and blame it on Microsoft? Microsoft, in their incompetence, provide a great scapegoat for Windows developers. If they had to use an Open Source system, this excuse would become fairly hollow...
Anyway, when you have a problem on Unix you don't ever reach some inscrutable, impenetrable barrier. You can look at what every component does, and if required, dive into the source and fix it. There are no artificial limits. The fact that anyone can look at the source means that people are less inclined to publish crappy code... And this effect increases with time.
To your "advantages":
DFS - please. This is a dodgy hack of SMB - it is not "distributed" in any real sense. OpenAFS is about as good as gets there, maybe Coda when it gets stable...
User administration: Huh? Can your helpdesk staff not learn a web front end to do this? Its not very hard to find one.... eg webmin, linuxconf. And this kind of thing is easy to customise - ie force your staff to put the required info..
and frankly it will always be easier
As soon as someone uses the word "frankly", it means "I'm going to say something completely unsupported and expect you to believe it."
Comparing windows to unix is like comparing a swiss pen knife to a fully equipped machine shop, with almost every tool available to you to use. Except you can fit it in your pocket....
Re:And for the Linux pessimists... (Score:2)
Actually, I use Apache on win2k with JSP for my lovely porn site [autopr0n.com] and I've had no problems, (other then weird instability with tomcat 1.4). Sure, I don't have a gui front-end or anything like with IIS, but I wouldn't really have that with Apache on Linux either. Apache runs as an application in it's own little world with tomcat and leaves doesn't worry about the OS or anything else. Hell the config would work right off th
Re:And for the Linux pessimists... (Score:3, Interesting)
One of my pet peeves. A complicated spreadsheet is a program. A complicated spreadsheet that invokes significant numerical routines (eg, a nonlinear optimization plugin) is a program. A complicated spreadsheet that includes VBA is a program. Programs need to be designed and tested.
Several years ago, I got kicked out of a meeting. The company was making a decision involving tens o
Re:.NET ain't really all that bad. (Score:3, Interesting)
The point is, if you were starting fresh, why on earth would you use a tool beholden to MS? The only advantage is if you are already stuck on windows and would like to dig a deeper hole.
And Mono is nice, but until MS indemnify them against patent infringement claims its really hard to use without getting scared.
More languages? Really? [tu-berlin.de]
I agree that
Re:And for the Linux pessimists... (Score:2)
I mean finding out what causes a bug. I have found that the average piece of VB code is very hard to work out what is going on, because everyone has their own crazy error handling mechani
Re:And for the Linux pessimists... (Score:3, Insightful)
That's nonsense. Not putting all your eggs into one basket is a very smart thing to do.
What if Microsoft raises license costs for corporate users (again)?
What if some worm knocks out half of the IIS servers (again)?
What if (god forbid) you need some non-x86 platform, maybe something like a mainframe?
What do you do then?
That's the beauty of Unix. (
Not really (Score:2)
The difference is
Re:And for the Linux pessimists... (Score:3, Insightful)
Now, I'm not saying that we ever will see such a shift; but the fact that we haven't seen one yet implies absolutely nothing.
Re:And for the Linux pessimists... (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:And for the Linux pessimists... (Score:2)
This sounds like a dream job. I've done this in our organization (not on the desktop
Re:And for the Linux pessimists... (Score:2)
Re:And for the Linux pessimists... (Score:2, Troll)
OK,
Local authorities in Newham and Nottingham, one year from now
Re:And for the Linux pessimists... (Score:2)
It would be nice to implement some of these things. I just don't have the time.
Re:And for the Linux pessimists... (Score:2, Informative)
The point is, making a complete move to Linux if you're doing real work (i.e. you're not an HS/undergrad student or dilettante dabbler, to use the words of the *BSD-is-dying troll) is extremely difficult. Even if the features are
Re:And for the Linux pessimists... (Score:2, Informative)
Maybe time you took another look.
Re:And for the Linux pessimists... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:And for the Linux pessimists... (Score:2)
Where's Robbin Hood? (Score:5, Funny)
More converters... (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:More converters... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:More converters... (Score:4, Interesting)
The highly applauded switch of the city of Munich [zdnet.co.uk] to Linux had an order volume of 30 millions of Euros over a couple of years. That's just about nothing in M$'s budget. (They have fighted so heavily for it just for it's symbolic and psychological value.)
Re:More converters... (Score:5, Interesting)
It was a political decision and as such, it carries the implicit rider: 'if this is feasable'. The IT department has started on the detailed planning for the switchover. If they decide that in is not possible or cannot be completed within budget - and this involves retraining costs - then large parts of the administration there will continue using M$ products.
Reading between the lines of that article, some participants were willing to go for it and some looked to be trying to torpedo the decision.
The City of Munich has more than one HW/SW platform at the moment, it looks very much as though this situation will continue, with linux and windows both being present.
The article also considered the figure of â30 Million to be ludicrous - the M$ final offer was less than 25% of that (that was self-defeating, it demonstrated their profit-margins) and SuSE's offer (allegedly â34 Million) was also much lower.
The city is also currently migrating to SAP (no idea what from) which is taking up a lot of time/money, they were considering hiring students from the local University to help with the work.
Re:More converters... (Score:3, Informative)
Re:More converters... (Score:2)
If I installed a copy of Linux at work, it'd make front page news. Do you really want to develop your impressions of the computer world by what's posted on Slashdot?
OS is not the problem (Score:5, Insightful)
While it has very good Word im-/export, it's not yet faultless (and won't be any time soon, because of inherent limitations of OpenOffice). And you NEED that import, because otherwise you can't exchange documents outside of your department.
They could also use the excellent CodeWeavers' CrossOver Office [codeweavers.com] but then they'll probably pay more $$$ for the MS Office licenses than when they make a OS+Office deal with the MS sales reps.
Either way, they'll have to solve a problem, now or in the future. Then again, Windows brings its own host of problems.
Re:OS is not the problem (Score:4, Insightful)
I'd hate to work in the Support department of either of these much larger Councils, if they choose to go ahead with these desktop changes. The amount of documentation, archived information, templates and standards in place to update would be horrendous!
Re:OS is not the problem (Score:3, Insightful)
And just being curious: does MS provide tools to migrate from 97 to XP?
Re:OS is not the problem (Score:2)
I really really want OO to work, but so far there is no way I can afford to swap over from Excel. I recently tried to set up a new multi-sheet ss and used OO for it from scratch. After two hours of head scratching at one point (associated with references to cells on othe
Re:OS is not the problem (Score:5, Insightful)
The situation you sketch above with migration problems for ms-office, is very scary for a government that is supposed to have some openness and accountibility. Currently nearly all governements in the western world have 'standardized' on some microsoft format, but none of these governments can actually guarentee that these documents will be available for reading in 10 years time, simply because Microsoft does not give any such guarantees. In fact, the situation you sketch with public data that is only accessible through the software made by a single company should be made illegal.
People are starting to realize the danger of this situation, that all these nice documents and templates can become unreadable simply because a commercial company decides that it is not in their interest to be compatible with their older formats. Other issues in government are proprietary database formats. In many places it is such that the data of general practitioners cannot be read in the hospital's system and vice-versa. At this point to collect a person's medical dossier, the only way is to print out everything that is known and collect it through regular mail. This simply costs lives, as ambulance personal has no way of knowing that the person who just broke a leg is on a particular type of medication that cannot be combined with particular pain-killers.
The only way out of this mess is the use of Open Standards, which is a much less controversial issue than the use of Open Source. It seems that the awareness of this issue is rising, even though many people will not let go of MS-Office willingly. At some point (which I think is not far off), it will become illigal for a governmental body to standardize on MS formats, unless MS will create an open standard of it. When this situation arises, MS will probably comply, but this does mean that suddenly the playing field is leveled, as everyone has access to the specs and can write their implementations/frontends.
However, although this (political) struggle for Open Standards is fought for a large part by the Open Source community, it is actually hampered by the community as well. Unlike Open Standards, which is non-controversial, Open Source is (This is mainly caused by economic arguments: governements want to endorse a local software industry, and open source is not much of an industry). By pushing both Open Standards and Open Source, the non-controversial point (Open Standards) is obscured by the controversial one (Open Source). It is easy to convince even the most business-friendly official that Open Standards are mandatory for a governmental body, but much more difficult to do the same for non-corporate backed software.
Ironically, if Open Standards are compulsory in government, this will be a big boost for Open Source, as then it is no longer neccessary to reverse engineer formats, and software can be evaluated on their merits (compliance to standards, functionality, price, etc.)
Thus in my opinion, by wanting to have both issues resolved at the same time, the Open Source lobby hampers its own goals. To get back on topic, although it is great that some council in the UK is starting to use open source, the issues that are raised in this discussion seems to center on the possibility of loading in proprietary formats of Star/Open Office. The important question that I miss being asked here is: On what formats does this Council standardize now?, and how are they planning to exchange information with other governmental bodies?
I'll finish this rant with a plea to the Open Source community as a whole: when dealing with governments, keep pushing Open Standards, and lobby for official stand
Re:OS is not the problem (Score:3, Interesting)
Ummm, I think the President (or was it Prime Minister) of India would disagree with you there, and in fact would say the exact opposite. He said recently that India should embrace open source to support its local IT industry, with the implication to stop sending so much money abroad to Microsoft!
Re:OS is not the problem (Score:5, Interesting)
I keep hearing this criticism of Open/StarOffice, that it does ok with Word docs but doesn't work with most of the other MS Office file formats. I got curious about this so I've been forwarding various Word docs, Excel spreadsheets, and PowerPoint presentations to my home email address from work just to test opening up files with OpenOffice. (If you're reading this, Boss, don't worry I delete everything right after the test!)
While there are some very minor little anomalies that I've noticed, I've been able to read and manipulate the data for every file that I've opened (and I've opened them all right from the email that they were attached to). So I'm wondering if my lack of problems is isolated to Red Hat 9.0 being my distro or if it's something else? Just last night, I opened up two PowerPoint presentations (the second even had sound transitional effects that played) with absolutely no problem. I don't mean to suggest that anyone reporting problems is spreading FUD; I'm just curious as to why I haven't experienced those problems.
--K.
Re:OS is not the problem (Score:2, Interesting)
OpenOffice and MS (Score:4, Informative)
All of these have been the Win32 build on Win2k sp3
The error that I did see was in 1.0.1 I think but after that in 1.0.2 and 1.0.3 everything is working great. In my experence
Disclaimer: your milage my vary, see store manager for details, batteries not included, some assembly required, not for small children or big babies, offer not valid where prohibited, MS zelots need not apply
Macros (Score:5, Informative)
Re:OS is not the problem (Score:3, Informative)
Re:OS is not the problem (Score:3, Informative)
On the down side, I just recently needed to open a 44Mb PowerPoint presentation - it contained nothing fancy, just a lot of slides with hi-res images. OOo takes f-o-r-e-v-e-r to open the document and requires approx. 512Mb memory to do it! When you re-save in the native format it manages things better though.
Aside from that, I've found odd things like date/time ce
Re:OS is not the problem (Score:2, Interesting)
I'm guessing you are American, or at least have never dealt with British councils. The inability to talk to other departments would be considered a benefit. Remember, whilst it is usually permitted to provide a good service, if anyone in authority finds out then your
Question (Score:2)
Is this true or is the problem that the
Any clarification of the above would be apperciated.
The shift required is even bigger than that (Score:2, Interesting)
If you are a large employer, then it's probably in your interest to reduce the number of functions in the software that you give to your workers. If they need a car, you don't give them a Ferr
Re:OS is not the problem (Score:2)
2) You don't want people sending you Macros anyway (virus risk!) so it's no bad thing to be incompatible with the rest of the world in that case. Everything else IME has been faultless with OpenOffice.
3) OO 1.1 includes Office Macro support.
So stop spreading FUD > Linux is perfectly adequate WRT documents - certainly for a saving of >> £400 / desk.
Re:OS is not the problem (Score:2)
Would such a limitation not be a good thing? I'm sick of getting Word attachments - then having to mail/phone the sender explaining why I can't read the damn thing. Perhaps if users hit the same snag they'll start to realise plain text is the best way.
Re:OS is not the problem (Score:3, Interesting)
OpenOffice is great because they don't want to force you to upgrade all the time by breaking the format.
I demand to know (Score:5, Interesting)
UK councils dump Windows for Linux
Most bizaarly then the
I just dont know what the world is coming to
Re:I demand to know (Score:2)
We all know Linux is so good that we don't have to trump it up. it's such common knowledge we can just go with the facts.
Y'know, it can do an infinite loop in 3 seconds.
when WAS the last time Linux was dumped for Windows?
Different spin (Score:5, Interesting)
I wonder about pressure that local governments can apply externally on businesses. People resist moving from Windows and MS Office saying it will be too hard to convert to something else because file formats are a problem. Yet San Francisco can mandate that any company that deals with the city must have gay friendly policies in place across the entire corporation at the local, state and country levels.
Why can't this same pressure be used to ensure that documents sent to local governments must be readable by freely available packages like Openoffice.org or the companies can not continue doing government business? Make it a requirement and watch the barriers to free and opensource software drop. Then if a local government is having a financial crunch, let them convert older systems to linux/freebsd/whatever without worrying that common document formats can't be read. This way governments could cut computing costs and hire another teacher or policeman, heck maybe even fund youth baseball for a season ( not cheap).
Re:Different spin (Score:3, Insightful)
Then Microsoft Office is forced to read/write OOo native formats.
Further, any "stunts" Microsoft tries to play will, because the OOo formats are known, make it rather blatant just where the problem is.
Re:I demand to know (Score:2)
So which headline will generate more site traffic:
UK councils dump Windows for Linux
or
UK council doing feasibility studies on switching from Windows to Linux
Re:OK (Score:2)
Come on, Rob, log in [slashdot.org] when you're going to post comments so the new people know it's you!
Ooooh... (Score:2, Troll)
The council I work for runs iWorld, an SX3 product - unfortunately our UNIX admin is a bit of a fool and didn't notice when the project suggested running the system emulated. If he'd have been paying attention, we might have got some Linux boxen in!
Some are working on the streets, too. (Score:2)
Interesting: PCs at work as status symbols (Score:3, Informative)
Don't worry about Linux on old systems, however. I run Linux on a 233 MHz computer that I rescued from a customer's upgrade a long time ago. It works fine. My experience is that Linux is much faster on old hardware than Windows.
Can someone help us here? (Score:2)
For office work, Linux seems fine to me on slow machines.
Mandrake (Score:2)
I use well-supported hardware. (Score:2)
Maybe I get better performance because I use very well-supported hardware. Also, when MS Office is installed, it loads a component that starts every time you start your computer. Be sure that is disabled when you run tests.
Differing experience (Score:2)
I ran Gnome on a Cyrix 120/ 64MB RAM machine. It was occasionally sluggish, but very far from unusable. What was a problem, was mozilla and/or netscape. Being such memory hogs, they were indeed pretty much unusable untill I upgraded to 96MB, whereupon they behaved tolerably. Personally I think this says more about the code quality of Netscape than the capacity of linux generally.
On the other hand, I was not running OpenOffice -- all my text work was emacs and LaTeX.
At one point I was also running Windo
And whose behind it ? (Score:5, Informative)
Though I am wondering when the UK Magazines are going to start including Eddies Name for Linux Advocacy nominations.
And if youve ever tried getting your boss to understand the benefits of Open Source in business then look out for Netprojects Day Conferences ( next on is 10th June 2003, London ) where Netprojects put together a excellent series of dicsussions and topics detailing issues and concerns over the Linux Answer.
Local Councils (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Local Councils (Score:2, Funny)
Hmmm... (Score:4, Insightful)
Linux is ideal for places like Council Offices -- little complex software beyond Word-processors or Spreadsheets is required, meaning any OS can conceivably be used. What sets apart one from another is the cost, and ease of maintenance/deployment. And, here, it is obvious that Linux wins.
Having said that, this doesn't do much for Linux in the home, or for those who use PCs for anything more complex.
Re:Hmmm... (Score:2, Informative)
You'd be very, very surprised. Off the top off my head, my IT Dept support and maintain around 22 applications other than Office apps. Not including the fact that we run almost all these over Citrix, and have to look after about 14 Oracle 8-9i Databases too.
We're a busy bunch.
Re:Hmmm... (Score:2)
My IT dept (myself and a helpdesk PFY) support over 90.
You reckon YOUR busy..
ok (Score:4, Insightful)
But has any government ever ACTUALLY DONE IT?
Ever government in the world has "considered" mandating and using open source for everything (usually around the time a MS contract comes up for renegotiation/renewal).
Isn't this just the usual Linux as a bargaining chip thing all corporations and governments do right before they sign their latest MS contract to try and get MS to sweeten the deal?
I mean has any government actually done the switch? ever?
Re:ok (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:ok (Score:2)
Amen to that. I now propose that no new story about a "switch" be posted till the switch is in implementation stage. Or at least approved and budgeted. Microsoft let the cat out of the bag by saying that if you menace them with Linux they will giver you their software for free. So expect a rising volume of incidents such as this while ever
Agreed (Score:4, Insightful)
That's ultimately self-defeating. The more Linux is given away the better Linux does. Linux gains more mindshare, developers, and generates opportunities for small businesses as it propagates. This is not true of MS. When MS gives away licenses to maintain marketshare, it is at the expense of revenue. Sure they can threaten to take away the crackpipe if they aren't paid down the road but then the "feasibility studies" start up again. Mind and marketshare doesn't do them much good if it isn't making them money.
This feasibility study is not news. When Ballmer flies out to Britain with a briefcase full of free/deeply-discounted licenses, that will be news. It isn't a "loss" for Linux either. To MS, it'll be the equivalent of a played out one-crop field. Sure, nobody else will grow anything but they won't either.
MS faces a mature market for their only two moneymakers (Windows/Office). Palladium-style lockin strategies won't save them either. At best, they can hold the line a little while longer. They need new products and new business model that doesn't involve making legions of potential users and developers highly pissed at them.
Re:ok (Score:2, Insightful)
Richard Heggs, the Nottingham
Re:ok (Score:2, Interesting)
It's true that the success of our email system has increased the value of Linux in the eyes of TPTB, but the fact remains that we are only *considering* Linux as a possibility. Just as we are considering Windows, Netware and various proprietary versions of Unix.
that screeching sound... (Score:2)
Document interchangeability (Score:4, Interesting)
I hope the consultants are working on these lines rather than just doing the "can we do everything we do not with a different technology".
The biggest problem is likely to be user retraining - and this is where educational policy needs to be looked at. Schools don't teach Gallimard French or General Motors physics. We expect school subjects to be vendor-neutral. Yet IT is often far from it. Hardware has to be made by somebody, but surely education software should be fully standards compliant and vendor neutral. Potentially, this should level the playing field for students, employers and vendors, and allow companies and local authorities planning long term strategy to make market-independent assessments of needs. I believe that UK local authorities share some responsibility for education with the central government. If so, that's an area of policy they might want to influence.
Re:Document interchangeability (Score:2, Informative)
I am a university professor, and I've tried OO.o many times, to see if it's ready for prime time. I have found that OO.o falls a bit short even on simple documents. I've been using OO.o for quite a while, and although its problems are fading, they aren't gone. Most recently, I found that font w
this is not the only place looking to change (Score:2)
If this is seen to work in Newham, it has the potential to be a significant project, changing the perceptions of other councils," said Tim Dawes, director of local government technology consultants Nineveh.
Any connection to the police force scheme? (Score:3, Interesting)
Congratulations, Open Source! (Score:5, Interesting)
I think that Microsoft has "jumped the shark."
Longhorn is two years away. Palladium-Next Generation Computing is alarming large segments of the IT community. Microsoft's latest licensing scheme antagonized its business customers. It is a convicted monopolist; its options against future challenges aren't what they were before that conviction and they face antitrust action in Europe and elsewhere. Viruses and worms spread by and through Windows IIS, Hotmail, Outlook, Outlook Express and Internet Explorer create weekly embarrassments in the face of Bill Gates's call for improved security. The strategy to impose a Microsoft-powered Digital Rights Management regime on users has been hurt badly by Apple's iTunes Music store. Economic conditions have slowed the adoption of Windows XP because new machines aren't being bought at rates anticipated before the technology industry nosedive. Millions of Windows 98, ME, and 2000 customers see no need (and have little incentive) to upgrade.
And now, the growth of Open Source has crippled Microsoft's ability to "embrace and extend" critical standards. The first big mistake in that battle is their recent announcement that there will be no more standalone versions of Internet Explorer. Open Source alternatives will be able to develop and implement improvements in browser technology at a much more nimble rate than will Microsoft while maintaining compatibility with current standards. New versions of IE that cripple functionality will drive customers toward alternatives rather than toward IE (and the requisite release of Windows that delivers it).
Microsoft's stated goal of "Windows on every desktop" is no longer practical. Steve Ballmer's recent memo to the troops admits as much. I've been in the computer industry for over twenty years now and I assure you that that is a HUGE victory, but the advantage has to be pressed now or Microsoft will catch up like it has caught up so many times before. Open Source has to continue its emphasis on better, faster, cheaper, safer, and more reliable.
But for now? Bravo!
Merrill Lynch: Linux saves money (Score:4, Interesting)
During a presentation Friday at the Enterprise Linux Forum, Mark Snodgrass, vice president of Merrill Lynch's in-house technology provider, the Global Technology & Services group, said that the company has found that re-architecting its information infrastructure using Linux can reduce administration costs dramatically.
In fact, Snodgrass found that, while the software licensing costs of Windows was higher than Linux, the highest cost was in managing traditional Windows infrastructure.
"It's the people that cost the most," he said.
Merrill Lynch's new plans for its information infrastructure call for running much of its Linux applications not on their own physical machines but in virtual machines running on high-end servers. Such a scheme simplifies management and allows for rapid deployment of new Linux "servers" by activating a copy of a stored pre-configured image in as little as 2 minutes 14 seconds.
"We are not trying to promote Linux," Snodgrass said. "We are just trying to reduce the cost of ownership."
Using such virtual Linux servers to store files could cut costs dramatically, he said. Keeping their file systems on Windows servers would have cost the company $600,000 in hardware and five times that to pay for the personnel to manage the servers.
"We know that Linux is not for everything," he said. "But there are not many applications that require more than Linux can give us."
Snodgrass's group proposed replacing the company's Microsoft Exchange servers with a Linux-based solution that would have all the same collaboration features and have a cost savings of 70 percent to 80 percent. However, for other reasons that Snodgrass wouldn't discuss, the company's executives decided to stick with Exchange but outsource the management of the groupware to save money.
Not everyone agrees that Linux saves money, however. Last year, market researcher IDC released a report, heralded by Microsoft, that indicated that the five-year cost of ownership for four out of five applications would be lower if Microsoft software was used. The sole Linux winner was Web server software, according to the report. (and for the slashdotters/windows users hanging on this bit of hope, note that this study was decimated when it was examined and certain facts, like license renewals being omitted, the timeline favoring unrealistic (over 5 years for the same release) use of windows, no hardware upgrades for newer versions of windows, no accounting for the fact that linux/unix admins can run more systems per admin, no patching/crashing problems with windows, downtime costs, and more).
Snodgrass said he wasn't familiar with the study, but his own data indicated that running virtual Linux servers saves a lot of money compared with running those same services under Windows.
"We've done our numbers, and we are a bank, so we know our numbers," he said.
Other companies apparently have crunched the numbers and come to the same conclusion.
Telecommunications provider Verizon disclosed that it saved nearly $6 million in equipment costs by moving its programmers to Linux from proprietary-Unix and Windows workstations. In October 2001, Amazon.com revealed that it had replaced Web application servers running on a proprietary-Unix platform with Linux, saving millions of dollars.
Snodgrass said the next target for deploying Linux could be on the desktop. The company plans to do a pilot project that will allow thin clients--computers with minimal hardware requirements--to be used as workstations. The applications would actually run on Linux and Windows terminal servers. To the user, the result would be the same, but to the company's
Caution ... (Score:2, Interesting)
Not that this is a permanent roadblock, but it's something they need to be aware of. They have to realize that if something goes bad and they aren't with someone li
Push it as "made in ____" (Score:3, Interesting)
Anyone one want to dig up a list of countries where work on linux has been done and then find out how many of them have offical logos (like this [abnormal.com] or this [abnormal.com]) and then find out what rules apply and come up with a nice mixed image?
Re:Push it as "made in ____" (Score:2)
If you want to check if a given country has had people involved, searching through for instance KDE and GNOME-cvs for xxxx@xxx.yy where yy is a given country code could be an indication.
I don't think there is many countries that are NOT involved, and you only have to start a project in your home country to package local stuff with a
Windows isn't ready for the desktop! (Score:4, Insightful)
If Linux would be ready for the desktop in the meaning like windows is ready for desktop then we would have to remove virtual desktops, changing of resolution with hotkeys, the shell, the flexible window manager concept... everything..
Maybe it's more like that Linux has a different (better) desktop than windows and will (hopefully) never gain that state of "readyness for the desktop" that windows has achived and which these people are looking for.
local LUG groups to help out (Score:3, Insightful)
What do all these studies tell us ? (Score:2, Interesting)
There are two alternatives:
1) Linux. If the usability problems are solved, it may have a chance.
2) OS X. Apple does not understand that they can take big revenge on Microsoft by releasing OS X for 80x86.
Especially in the short-term future that Microsoft will switch to subscription-based computing, more and more will seek solutions outside of Microsoft.
Proprietary Corporate Apps (Score:2)
In a complete turnaround, most apps in this area are of course becoming browser-based on the client side
The problem is as much cultural as factual (Score:2)
The argument that MS is an anti-competitive monopolist just hasn't broken through.
It happens so often... (Score:5, Funny)
Let's hope that they get this right! (Score:3, Insightful)
Anyone who has done a platform migration in an enterprise knows that this is an extremely difficult undertaking. I can't even imagine having to do this for 10,000 systems! I really hope that the community reaches out to support these large trials, and that they are ultimately successful. We all know that linux "can" be successful in this setting. Here's to hoping they get it right.
Thank you for your time,
Frank Russo
Complexity and missing tools (Score:2, Insightful)
20% Council Tax Rises (Score:2, Funny)
In fact my local council has a very similar archicture to Windows... resource hungry, prone to errors, file corruption, constantly crash
Windows XP cannot copy some of its own files! (Score:2)
I've been reading the posts to this story, and I can see that many people don't understand the underlying issues.
Here is a fact that is symbolic of why organizations switch to Linux: Microsoft Windows XP cannot copy all of its own files! Microsoft decided to treat all of its customers as though they were criminals just because some were making illegal copies. So, Microsoft crippled the Windows XP file system to prevent people from cloning their copies of Windows. This vastly increases the problems in u
Nottingham is cool...IT is cheap there I take it? (Score:2)
Searching for employees (and replacements) is a big concern for management who entertain the idea of Linux: sure, Microsoft is expensive, proprietary, arrogant and unstable... but MSCE folks are much more common than knowledgable UNIX people.
Many small companies just want day-to-day IT operations like rebooting and virus removal... it is difficult
Exchange/Outlook are going to be the difficult bit (Score:3, Interesting)
Why is this a problem ?
They will be looking at a smooth transition, not a big bang, some people may continue with Windows boxes for a long time. These and those moved to Linux are still going to want to arrange meetings/... with each other. The trouble is that the MAPI protocol used in not known and there are no open source clients/servers.
We need to reverse engineer the current M$ MAPI protocols so that open source clients/servers can be written. The key to the success of this project is going to be seamless continuity of end user work while desktop and server machines are migrated one by one.
Does anyone know of tools other than ximian connector and bynari ?
OpenOffice does the .doc, .xls & .ppt well enough.
Evolution/kmail does the email well enough (smtp).
``Well enough'' means can interoperate in terms of protocol and file/wire formats.
Letter i just wrote (Score:3, Interesting)
to follow Newham's lead. I didn't write it very well, but if anyone wants to copy bits of it to send to their council...
Dear Councillors,
A draw your attention to the following article:
http://news.zdnet.co.uk/story/0,,t272-s
In it, it is mentioned that "Newham in London and Nottingham City Council, are
examining the feasibility of shifting all their 11,500 staff desktop
computers from Windows to Linux with open source desktop applications by the
end of the year". It is also mentioned that such a move is being considered
by Barking and Dagenham, Hackney, Havering, Redbridge, Thanet, Tower Hamlets
and Waltham Forest.
I was wondering whether Greenwich Council might also consider such a move. As
a resident of Greenwich I think it would be a good idea for the following
reasons:
-Studies have show that significant cost savings can be achieved by switching
to Linux. http://news.com.com/2100-1016_3-1014287.html?tag=
-I do not believe it is right that some of the money I pay in council tax
should find it's way to Microsoft, a convicted monopolist.
-I believe that all government documents should be stored in an open format.
Word documents are not open.
Yours sincerely,
Re:I tend to agree (Score:5, Interesting)
Mod parent up. (Score:2)
Re:Proud Tradition (Score:2)
I know what you mean. I switched. Windows comes with a small handful of timewaster games. Minesweeper, and a few card games. Linux on the other hand....
Re:Linux? (Score:2, Insightful)
For starters it's mostly just a matter of opinion. Plenty of user much prefer Gnome/KDE to explorer (which still crashes at least once a day on me). And what about OSX? Most would agree that it beats the crap out of Windows for usability!!
Re:Gee Jizz (Score:2)
"New Labour" is very good at disguising their socialism. Levying stealth taxes such as the tax treatment of pension funds.
In effect, Gordon Brown has "helped" the poor without frightening the middle and higher classes. "New Labour" hasn't taken credit for this, since it would make it obvious to the common idiot that they are doing it.