Munich Has Saved €4M So Far After Switch To Linux 370
New submitter Mojo66 writes "Mayor Ude reported today that the city of Munich has saved €4 million so far (Google translation of German original) by switching its IT infrastructure from Windows NT and Office to Linux and OpenOffice. At the same time, the number of trouble tickets decreased from 70 to 46 per month. Savings were €2.8M from software licensing and €1.2M from hardware because demands are lower for Linux compared to Windows 7."
Not Surprised (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
Wouldn't help that much. When I worked for the provincial government IT, literally 90% of calls were people forgetting their passwords.
Re:Not Surprised (Score:5, Insightful)
Wouldn't help that much. When I worked for the provincial government IT, literally 90% of calls were people forgetting their passwords.
Seriously, that's your fault, with your password policies (passwords expire each month or two, have to be so and so long, contain the usualy mix of upper & lower case, numbers, special characters, and the icing on the cake: may not have 3 or more characters in common with a password ever used previously), the only way to remember your passwords is to write them down, which is officiallly a firing offense by the way. At some point, users, even the techies, are just not going to bother trying to come up with a new password that will pass the validation and can still be remembered, they'll simply call you and ask you to reset the password every time it expires. That's what I did.
Re:Not Surprised (Score:4, Insightful)
Either that or it's areally GOOD thing. Maybe all the other support calls dried up because everything just worked.
Re: (Score:2)
The policy at the time was 6 characters, with at least 1 capital and at least 1 number, and couldn't be the same as the last one.
What do you want? One character passwords?
Re:Not Surprised (Score:5, Insightful)
The policy at the time was 6 characters, with at least 1 capital and at least 1 number, and couldn't be the same as the last one.
What do you want? One character passwords?
Of course not, but also not useless-yet-annoying rules like the above...
Require a capital letter? 95% will make it the first one. Require a digit? 95% will just append "0". Increase in difficulty for someone trying to guess passwords? Zero.
Re:Not Surprised (Score:5, Interesting)
€1.2M from hardware because demands are lower for Linux compared to Windows 7
This is an often overlooked additional benefit, especially if you use a lightweight environment. A modern distro running LXDE and LibreOffice can make 10 year old hardware an adequate machine for 90% of office uses. As a bonus, future upgrades to ARM PCs would be essentially transparent to the users.
Re: (Score:2)
Comment removed (Score:5, Informative)
Re: (Score:2)
With old laptops, you often don't even have a choice. Want to change that ethernet port from 10mpbs to 1gig? Update the cpu? Good luck with that.
Re: (Score:3)
Or this might mean that an Atom or E-450 based PC will suffice, where Windows would require a (Core) Celeron/Pentium or better, and more RAM.
Re: (Score:3)
He isn't saying that you should run on 10 year old hardware, he is saying that it runs on 10 year old hardware.
Basically, since it will run on 10 year old hardware you can just buy new low-end hardware and still get faster results than buying high-end hardware with Windows 7.
I have seen it happen quite a few times that the DE would just make a reasonable machine come to a grinding halt. My one-fast workstation with a dual Opteron was always blazingly fast using KDE 3.5. Since I upgraded to KDE 4 it has been
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Not Surprised (Score:5, Informative)
I've deployed hundreds of older, off-lease systems in a corporaate environment, and have not seen anything like you've described. Failure-rate is slightly higher than brand-new systems, but still very low. They are also cheap enough there are ready spares, clones from the same base image, that the lowliest tech is empowered to use/swap at-will.
HDD failure rates follow a bathtub curve, so I'd actually rather have an old HDD that passes SMART tests, than a brand-new one.
And NICs? They've ALL been 100Mbit since the mid 90s, which is plenty fast enough for all but the heaviest file-transfer uses. And it's only been a little under 10 years ago that GigE showed-up in PCs, so you might get lucky.
You need to go read-up... WPA was a drop-in replacement for WEP, and cards much more than a decade only will only need a firmware upgrade. Besides, nothing says you have to depend on either... My company requires laptops to VPN in, even one the company's Wifi APs. It's only slightly inconvenient.
Re: (Score:2)
It's only Windows that makes it hard to store your files on a file server.
100Mbps Ethernet has been cheap for over 10 years and provides perfectly adequate speeds for most tasks, even if your files are stored on a server.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Err, you do realise that it is 2012 now? Ten years ago, Pentium 4s at 2 ghz+ were the average Intel cpu, gigabit over copper had been approved and brought to market 3 years before
Yeah, people don't seem to realize how long it has been... Think about this one: You could get a 2.2GHz Athlon 64 in 2003. K8 will be ten years old next year. Do you feel old yet?
Re: (Score:2)
And good luck changing your network "card" in a laptop (many of the Munich machines are laptops). Or finding a PCMCIA card for an old obsolete laptop. Or even an IDE laptop hard drive.
Re: (Score:2)
I think you've got something configured wrong. I'm sure you can play 240p or 360p videos easily enough with that and Adobe flash(gnash isn't quite up to it), as I've done it.
Alternately, use a HTML5-complient browser and watch the webm versions.
Re: (Score:2)
How can they survive without Flash?
That's a feature, not a bug.
Re:Not Surprised (Score:5, Interesting)
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Not Surprised (Score:4, Informative)
explorer.exe can be changed as the default windows manager.
Re:What window manager? (Score:4, Informative)
...change explorer.exe to what exactly?
KDE? Sure [kde.org]
Gnome? Why Not? [google.com]
XFCE? Not yet. But for lightweight you have LDE(x) [terica.net]
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Well, games, of course! Windows Solitaire is so much better than the linux versions.
Re: (Score:3)
i've found LXDE to be good, but not great. it lacks features a bit. i miss nautilus when i use LXDE, and terminal doesn't always do what it looks like it should do ($man anything).
i'll give XFCE a try next. i'd like to see a side-by-side comparison that works.
one thing - win7's drag-explorer-to-the-edge-and-it-fills-exactly-half-the-screen really saves the time i spend in a fit of OCD dragging edges around so i can move shit from two folders fast.
Re:Not Surprised (Score:4, Interesting)
one thing - win7's drag-explorer-to-the-edge-and-it-fills-exactly-half-the-screen really saves the time i spend in a fit of OCD dragging edges around so i can move shit from two folders fast.
In Gnome/KDE every window can do that (haven't used XFCE or LXDE so I can't say, but it seems like that's a pretty standard feature of every competent window manager).
Re: (Score:3)
And in gnome hit F3 and the explorer-equivalent (nautilus) splits itself into two independently navigable panes so you can move shit from two folders as fast as you want - no need to have two copies of explorer open in the first place.
Re: (Score:2)
one thing - win7's drag-explorer-to-the-edge-and-it-fills-exactly-half-the-screen really saves the time i spend in a fit of OCD dragging edges around so i can move shit from two folders fast.
I recommend FAR manager.
Re: (Score:3)
Good luck with XFCE. It's an outstanding DE. xfpanel is remarkably featured and it has a very comprehensive settings dialog. I do which the display manager would make it easier to expand your desktop, but I can use xrandr for that for now. I think Thunar is great, but you might still have the same complaint regarding your last comment, but I think you can use Compiz in XFCE for that feature and if you disable enough other options, it probably won't slow things down too much. Otherwise I'm sure there must be
Re: (Score:3)
Re:Not Surprised (Score:4, Interesting)
I've been using awesome for years without regret, I am only ashamed it took me so long to discover it.
I usd to hate all the resizing/moving work I had to do with KDE, although I really liked KDE, after a couple of days using awesome I never came back
Re:Not Surprised (Score:5, Informative)
Games... the last great reason to have Windows machines. My kids originally both had Ubuntu, but the whining about games was too much for me to withstand, and I installed Windows for both of them. Now I seem to install Windows fairly often, as they get freaking computer viruses like other children get the flu.
Re:Not Surprised (Score:4, Interesting)
I'm sure you mean mean "my children install malware frequently".
I'm so sick of the supposedly "smart", "tech-savvy" people on Slashdot bitching about Windows getting "viruses". If you were a good geek instead of a wayward one maybe you'd not give your children admin privileges and then they wouldn't install things they shouldn't.
Re:Not Surprised (Score:4, Interesting)
If you were a good geek instead of a wayward one maybe you'd not give your children admin privileges and then they wouldn't install things they shouldn't.
Sure being "smart" helps you from infection, not sure about admin rights sure it helps but not much.. The should have admin rights though, children are supposed to click everywhere and learn stuff and to do that they need to be able to break stuff. Sadly that will mean getting a slow Windows installation, or making the computer unbootable in Linux.
John Goerzen: has some great posts about 3 year old children and Linux [complete.org], my favourites are:
Re: (Score:3)
Right-click the offending program folder, select "Take ownership". Job done.
No need to compromise your entire system just for one badly written program.
Re:Not Surprised (Score:4, Insightful)
Games... the last great reason to have Windows machines. My kids originally both had Ubuntu, but the whining about games was too much for me to withstand, and I installed Windows for both of them. Now I seem to install Windows fairly often, as they get freaking computer viruses like other children get the flu.
This story is about the city of Munich i.e. a German government organization saving cash by prefering Linux to Windows. Games should be the last thing on their list. It may be a legitimate reason for home users not to want to adopt Linux, but it's a piss poor reason for either a company or a government organization not to adopt a particular platform.
For this particular problem, get your kids an XBox, and then put the PCs back to Ubuntu.
Re:Not Surprised (Score:5, Insightful)
On the various computers where I've installed most "trendy" modern distros (ubuntu, etc), they actually run slower under Linux than Windows.
In what way?
Reduced CPU speed? Slower network access? How does your OS reduce the speed of your hardware? Do you have any benchmarks showing comparative speed?
(The incredible sluggishness of nautilus is one of the things that made me reinstall windows on one of my development machines).
You're a developer and you changed your entire OS because you couldn't change the settings to speed up a file manager? (hint: Nautilus shows thumbnails and previews audio). Please tell/warn us which projects you're working on!
Re:Not Surprised (Score:5, Informative)
How does your OS reduce the speed of your hardware?
By using an inefficient graphics driver (nouveau) with an eye-candy laden window manager (compiz).
Re:Not Surprised (Score:5, Informative)
They're using a LiMux, a customised version of Ubuntu 10.04 LTS with KDE3.5. On any modern hardware, it'll be very responsive.
Read Florian Maier's presentation. Warning, PDF: https://www.desktopsummit.org/sites/www.desktopsummit.org/files/DS2011_LiMux_Desktop_Retrospective_2011-08-08.pdf [desktopsummit.org]
Re: (Score:3)
Re:Not Surprised (Score:5, Insightful)
If you care about performance, why are you running nouveau?
Yes its the default, but use a recent video card in windows and see how you like the default.
Just because its linux doesn't mean you dont have to install the right drivers from the manufacturer sometimes.
Re:Not Surprised (Score:4, Informative)
I agree completely. That being said, on the AMD side of things, it's exactly the opposite: The Radeon OSS driver, when it works(had to run a Debian Experimental xorg for good support) is *much* faster than it's closed source counterpart for desktop use: With KDE, by default it wouldn't even enable direct rendering on the Catalyst driver(meaning one cpu core used for compositing; horrible performance), and forcing it resulted in a low framerate and glitches.
Radeon driver on the other hand... I'm getting a good 60fps most of the time, low cpu load, and gorgeous transparency and effects... at the cost of slower OpenGL game performance.
Re: (Score:2)
He asked how, and I answered.
I agree with you, though, which is why I'm still on v10.10 and use the nvidia driver and vdpau.
Re: (Score:3)
You just got sucker trapped by anonymous coward and paid to mod marketdroids. Statement us absolutely pointless and meaningless.
I installed windows vista original first issue disk and it was the slowest most disgusting piece of crap imaginable, hell, it took three whole days to complete the install. First it patched (several times) and the it decided it need a whole support pack, after that it patched (several times), then it decided it needed another whole support pack, then it patched (several times ag
Re: (Score:3)
smbfs has not been maintained in the last few years. Instead, development has been focused on another implementation of the CIFS protocol in the kernel.
http://www.samba.org/samba/smbfs/ [samba.org]
Re: (Score:2)
they actually run slower under Linux than Windows.
That's why I stick with Ubuntu 10.10 and the nvidia binary driver.
Re:Not Surprised (Score:5, Interesting)
Strange, I have the exact opposite experience. Photoshop running in wine (on mint) runs faster than nativly in Windows on the same dual boot machine. I also find that from log in to finished desktop is MUCH faster with linux. Windows seems to come up, but then various programs keep popping up for attention.*
I will admit that flash is better in windows than Linux woo hoo.....
* before you say uninstall a bunch of programs in windows, I have the same functionality in Linux without the slowdown at boot.
Re: (Score:3)
That's only for unninstalling. The major problem is not unninstallation, but updating. The Linux package managers take care of updating all programs, while in Windows it's every program for itself, leading to stupid "updaters" being loaded at startup.
Re:Not Surprised (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Not Surprised (Score:5, Interesting)
Linux is better, faster, and more stable. Just the savings on support calls alone would be enormous.
On the various computers where I've installed most "trendy" modern distros (Ubuntu, etc), they actually run slower under Linux than Windows. Not that Linux doesn't have plenty of other advantages, but in my experience, for out-of-the-box installs, speed isn't one of them.
I think the big test would be to bench them again in six months and then a year. I think you'll find the Linux box catching up to, and then passing the Windows box as Linux does not suffer from "Windows rot." Every application you install seems to just HAVE to start up with the system and run ALL THE DAMN TIME! Do I really need iTunes, Google updater, MS Office, Acrobat Reader, and Winzip running ALL THE DAMN TIME? Here's a better idea: DON'T LAUNCH UNTIL I TELL YOU TO LAUNCH! I don't need MS Office preloaded and ready to go just case I might need to create a OneNote thingie. I think I'll be OK if I have to wait the extra 1.5 seconds when I decide to launch it. Nothing is more frustrating that when I see someone complaining about their computer being slow and I find that their little notification icons run from the clock to the middle of the task bar and then fixing it for them for the fourth time in a quarter.
It's also important to note that Linux upgrades itself for free with little user interaction. Windows can do the same, but it's not free and after four or five upgrades, your machine is useless from all the legacy stuff left over from installation's past.
Re: (Score:3)
What Adobe's software and Apple's software do to your computer is either their fault or your fault, depending on how you look at it. It's not Microsoft's doing.
Microsoft just provides the operating system that *allows* you to clutter up your startup sequence with all that crap. And if that's what you want to do with your computer, they should let you. But MS Office's behavior is their fault. and they provide useless bloatware, but it's far less onerous than the garbage that computer sellers (are you list
Re: (Score:2)
Y'know, I think this has less to do with windows than it does with applications. Back when I used Windows, one reinstall I decided to go for open source applications instead of the usual freeware stuff. My reinstall time went from 6 months to over a year, and it was still working fine when I ended up switching to Linux.
Re: (Score:3)
Ok, that is actually quite correct. I'd go one further and say that quite possibly it isn't the OS but the ecosystem it has created with everybody wanting to give you stuff for 'Freez' and then monetizing on your CPU, GPU, personal data, attention(via scary adds) etc.
OTOH Microsoft never did anything to prevent that. The only thing they care about is installing rootkits on your machine that determine if you are using a legit version of Win and then locking you out of it if you are running it preinstalled fr
Re: (Score:3)
Minor correction to your post, Google updater isn't persistent. It runs as a scheduled task (and maybe at startup too), does it's thing, then exits.
There is no excuse for software updaters that are left running all the time (even one open source program does this -- ClamAV), at least Google is smart enough to do better.
Re: (Score:3)
Another key factor in this is display drivers. I have to say, having begun using the gnu/linux desktop in the early 2000's (seems like yesterday) graphical performance has improved over the horizon. Having said that, its still got a way to go. I'd love to see vendors adopting the new
Re: (Score:2)
most "trendy" modern distros (ubuntu, etc), they actually run slower under Linux than Windows.
First lets get the obvious out of the way, shall we? You don't "run a distro under Linux", a distro IS Linux.
.NET say), and you might have a po
2nd, That's not what most people I have spoken to, read, and seen (like youtube) have to say about the speed scenario, your mileage may vary, of course. But nose to nose, OS to OS, running a desktop, I don't see how you can make that statement. Not if you were to run metrics on a particular app that's been ported to windows and Linux (Run a c# forms app on Mono and
Re:Not Surprised (Score:5, Informative)
Don't be silly - they're talking desktop users switching from Windows+Office to Linux+OpenOffice - 14,000 PCs and laptops. Since when does anyone run OpenOffice on a server?
Re:Not Surprised (Score:5, Informative)
I do. OpenOffice runs headless as part of a document conversion service, main use is to convert the various MS Office documents to pdf.
And this is why opensource is superior! (Score:5, Funny)
It has been a desperate struggle for all in the computer business to come up with the least usable software ever! Apple had a good long run with their 1 mouse button because options just give users options. MS for a long time stayed with its tried and tested "crash more often then the stockmarket" while Unix just had to rely on making even the manual an arcane command line.
But then stupid users tried to improve. Apple was forced to accept that with the PC, users could always just buy a multi-buttoned mouse! Can't have that Jobs said and have the word iOS, to get rid of not just right-click but double click in one go.
Aha! MS said, we can beat that, behold, the RIBBON, a beautifull piece of AI that ensures whatever command you want, you won't be able to find it.
Oops, said Linux, we started to lag. Quickly, upgrade the desktops so that whatever one you pick, you get the worsed ideas ever combined in a buddy alpha package!
But unbeknown to all, queitly working away were the OpenOffice people, show casing just how utterly evil you can get with opensource code... TADA! The text editor with NO USER INTERFACE AT ALL! MWAHAHAHAHAA!
Even Nintendo who gave us the handheld you got to move to control the game but hold still to be able to see can't top that.
Re: (Score:3)
There's a text editor with no user interface as a standard part of UNIX, you know.
yes, and there's bad copies of it in MS-DOS and AmigaDOS and probably many others, but if we go through cataloging every questionable UI decision we'll eventually get to squeak and then the flames will consume us all.
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:3)
Now go for another 4 million ... (Score:5, Funny)
Get rid of that office shit and replace with Vim and Emacs. :) :)
Re:Now go for another 4 million ... (Score:5, Funny)
Hell - let's just turn the computers off. That will save millions!
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
Re: (Score:3)
Yes, but those remaining hours will be spent trying to get that picture to go right...here or getting those tables looking just right. Then once they get that all figured out, they will waste the rest of the time customizing the hell out of everything from margins, footers, paragraph spacing, etc.
Don't get me wrong, I love LaTeX and use it whenever I can. But don't underestimate the time wastage that goes into programming a text document ;)
GNU Emacs (Score:2)
That's GNU Emacs, please.
Re:Now go for another 4 million ... (Score:5, Funny)
Emacs only costs nothing if your soul is worthless.
This message is brought to you by the Coalition for the Ethical Treatment of Swap Space.
Re: (Score:2)
If EMACS never swap then I guess 640k ^H^H^H^H 64GB ought to be enough for anyone.
Re: (Score:2)
Though whatever emacs uses, I'm sure OO.org is an order of magnitude worse.
Total? (Score:2)
Does it say what the total IT budget is? Hard to say what the number means without context.
(Sorry, I'm not getting the translation.)
Re:Total? (Score:5, Informative)
From the translation:
"The city of Munich with her ââsavings Limux project about a third of their spending in the IT sector, particularly in license costs."
numbers and translation don't make sense... (Score:2, Interesting)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
They migrated from NT. They compare the costs with w7. Limux project (the transition of Munich municipal computers to linux) has been going for a decade and received enough press - i suggest you google before trying to comment.
The most important benefit is not the money saved (Score:5, Informative)
As always the most important benefits of open source software is not highlighted. It is not always about the money saved. The more important issues are: Peruvian Congressman's Open Letter to Microsoft [linuxtoday.com]
It can't be the norm that government's IT infrastructure is depending on a foreign firm, with is subject to foreign laws. Especially with laws like the Patriot Act in place and laws like the SOPA and PIPA in discussions.
Glad the saved 4 million euros (Score:2)
But how much have they lost?
Re:Glad the saved 4 million euros (Score:4, Insightful)
> But how much have they lost?
- Lock-in to a single-source supplier
- Worries about not being able to read their own archived documents saved in legacy formats (OpenOffice supports over 100 office file formats)
- All trace of malware
- The need for a license compliance officer
- Any threat of being audited, or having a disgruntled employee dob them in to the BSA
- The upgrade treadmill
- Long delays during Windows updates
Re: (Score:3)
Dreadful, indeed! All those loved disabilities MS software comes with.
Re: (Score:3)
Bailing out Greece is a separate issue.
Where... (Score:5, Interesting)
Where is Florian Mueller?
Oh Florian, do you remember this?
"Linux violates 283 U.S. software patents," said Florian Mueller, software developer and adviser to the chief executive of Swedish open source firm MySQL,
Such bold words back in 2004. Such brave effort in trying to get Munich to abandon the plan.
It's 8 years later. Where is the "death by a thousand lawyers," Florian?
--
BMO
Re:Does that include cost of training and transiti (Score:5, Informative)
"Also in the bill were included training costs and costs of migration" FTFA
Re:Does that include cost of training and transiti (Score:5, Interesting)
The transition from Windows XP and Office 2003 to Windows 7 and Office 2010 has enormous training costs associated with it. I would not be surprised if the training for the Linux setup was less, if the kept the basic look and feel. And a wash if the didn't bother.
Re:Does that include cost of training and transiti (Score:4, Informative)
Still, a savings of 1.2 mil is a pretty good start.
Re: (Score:3)
According to the translation, yes it did. I'd guess that there was some hardship in moving some of the core services, but maybe not... If there were *nix editions of most of the software that the city used, then maybe it wasn't so bad.
I'd like to see what the transition plan was, how long it took, and what software blocks stood in the way. Kudos though to them for saving some cash on something that appears to have improved their reliability.
Re:Does that include cost of training and transiti (Score:4, Interesting)
You would be really surprised how much of this can be mitigated if your sysadmins and support staff already have a Linux backround of some sort. One person with 5 or so years of experience customizing a specific Linux distribution can virtually eliminate amost all of the cost of training for the transition for the rest of the staff simply by creating and deploying some common desktop software and related customizations to make it "more like Windows."
Re:Does that include cost of training and transiti (Score:5, Insightful)
Training? Ahahahaha, ohohohoho, eehehehehee.
Purely from an office drone's perspective (all software proselytizing aside), training is the bogeyman. The vendors bring it out to scare the customer, but it doesn't exist. It "costs" eleventy billion dollars! Nobody will know how to do anything if you don't buy training!
But big offices make big changes all the time, and they don't *really* do squat for training. They might gather the group around a conference table and click through some slides, and tell everybody that Joe has used the program before and they should ask him if they're having trouble.
Hooray, you wasted a day watching powerpoint and you got a photocopied certificate that you get to scrawl your own name on!
How many offices have gone from something, to Lotus, to Exchange, to Google... etc.? And it's not just email infrastructure. Your billing system as a consultant might change every few years; your code management system as a programmer might change. Your document control system might change. The way your network space is apportioned, the way you print; any number of things can change depending on the way the wind blows in management.
And then, you top it off with planned obsolescence: remember going from Office 97 to Office XP? And then to the new craziness of Office 2010? A little old lady secretary wouldn't be any more confused by moving to Open Office... and she's not getting any training when MS Office 2014 comes out and scraps everything she knows for touch-screen inspired insanity!
Even universities, where you would expect old systems to soldier on for far too long, seem to do that kind of thing in less than 10 year intervals. And the employees who you would expect to get some "training" (office staff, geezer professors) don't--they complain, they suffer, and then they figure it out ;-)
Re: (Score:2)
Not all corporate computer training sucks. Not all of them are power point flip throughs.
The kind I consider the most effective are the ones where everyone has a computer in front of them and go through step by step exercises with sufficient time allowed for people to actually complete the provided task. They also provide a class book that shows the exercise step by step so that when they are done with the class, they can take the book and repeat the exercises back at their desk.
Even from a support positi
Re:Does that include cost of training and transiti (Score:4, Insightful)
You're right; I was being a little hyperbolic, for humor's sake. Heck, I taught a pretty mean Outlook class to a bunch of little old ladies. I wanted to talk about sorting and mailboxes; they just wanted to know how to put background colors in their emails =)
But not all corporate computer training is good, either, and my experience has definitely been defined by the bad. I've got a whole folder full of those baloney certificates, and don't get me started on "mandatory online training." You know, the kind where you click through a powerpoint, guess "C" for all of the answers on the multiple choice test, and then get to go back and do it again once you know the right answers.
Most of the things that I hear about the potential cost of retraining a workforce to use (insert Linux, Google, etc here) seem like they were estimated using the same math that the local news uses to give a half-smoked joint a street value of thousands of dollars.
Re:Does that include cost of training and transiti (Score:4, Insightful)
It doesn't even include a study of productivity. The report seems to be done from a pure IT angle, as if IT weren't a tool to achieve goals.
Re: (Score:2)
Does that include cost of training and transition?
Have you seen Windows 8?
The jump to Linux from 7 is shorter.
Keep beating that dead TCO horse. We know you're lying.
--
BMO
Re: (Score:3)
We are currently migrating 4500 seats from Office 2003 to Office 2010. You will certainly not be surprised to hear that this migration costs us a lot and the next migration is coming, windows 7, and outlook, and, and, and, and.
Not only training and transition... (Score:3)
If I read TFA correctly from the google translate, they slashed a third of their IT costs total, despite adding 1.500 more clients. That's freakin' awesome! :)
Re:Does that include cost of training and transiti (Score:4, Funny)
ok, you can start by not posting as AC
Then we can start discussing your hatred of monkeys.
Re: (Score:2)
The Imperial system analogy brings up an interesting point, actually: People don't like change. It's why someone who likes XP and Office 2003 may just plain reject the 'ribbon' look of Vista/7 apps/office 2010... Which explains why xp marketshare will continue to be high for quite a while.
Same with the imperial system - unless absolutely forced, we aren't going to change to another system. Especially one with no tangible benefits for us.
Re: (Score:2)
Now watch all the rabid Microsoft zealots come out foaming at the mouths.
That's ok. If we don't argue about this, we'll argue about something else.
And these days, it seems like it isn't the MS zealots that come out foaming anymore anyway. (If I say more, I'll be accused of flamesturbaiting.)
Re:Popcorn (Score:4, Insightful)
Why? Competition is good. Even if you think microsoft makes decent products this gives you a sense of how much the competition compares and if it's cheaper, well MS needs to come out with cheaper.
The question with all of these things is whether or not employees are just working on personal laptops instead of linux machines (I've seen that happen a few times, and that's a very serious problem), and whether or not they have any productivity changes. They might, they might not. Depends what they're doing. Saving money on licencing isn't the same as saving money. If you have 10 000 computers (as per the article) but you reduce productivity by even 1% you're worse off with linux than windows since to make up 1% is 100 people, which runs about 10 million euros.
TCO is a hard thing to calculate. It's pretty obvious that you can save money on licencing using linux, and probably training as well (no microsoft certifications). The hard part is measuring employee compliance, the cost of non compliance (this is a big issue where I am, where the IT guys are very pro linux, so about half our staff just do all their work on personal equipment, since it's a university department that's not a huge problem, but for a corporation or a city that could be problematic), and productivity gain/loss. You'd think that in this day and age, when everything is on the web and a web service that most of this wouldn't matter too much productivity wise, if not a productivity increase by not being able to waste as much time with crap that isn't work related since you can lock down linux more easily.
Re:Popcorn (Score:4, Informative)
Or what if you let the employees work on any machine they want as long as the workflow is the same? I was impressed by the effort taken to allow users to bring iPads to work and use them if thats what they want. The trick is you dont let them choose their workflow or applications, you deliver those.
Every time I read Dave Richards blog I am at first astounded at how much they get done with so little money, and then ashamed that I call myself an IT professional. http://davelargo.blogspot.com/ [blogspot.com]
What people in business, and government are beginning to realize is that software is not a scarce commodity.You cant use it up, but you can add to it.Once they realize that their business is not IT, its, well, doing business, contributing code doesn't make their competition any better, but just improves everyone equally.Additionally, with open software, all the dialogs and desktop items can be customized to suit your particular workflow. Linux + Open Applications + open standards are an awesome combination.
Re: (Score:2)
by that argument the much larger windows ecosystem + software + knowledge base for training is and awesome combination. Which it is. That's why they continue to retain market share.
Bring your own device has its advantages. But it poses problems too, especially at public bodies. Did your employee leave a p2p app running? Who is liable if they start uploading bioshock from your network (we got a takedown notice for bioshock when precisely that happened a few years ago at a previous university). If it do
Re: (Score:3)
This is realistic. Remember this is a uniform desktop, and well-educated staff. Not the US+MS situation at all.