Munich Reverses Course, May Ditch Linux For Microsoft 579
alphadogg (971356) writes with news that the transition from Windows to GNU/Linux in Munich may be in danger The German city of Munich, long one of the open-source community's poster children for the institutional adoption of Linux, is close to performing a major about-face and returning to Microsoft products. Munich's deputy mayor, Josef Schmid, told the Süddeutsche Zeitung that user complaints had prompted a reconsideration (Google translation to English) of the city's end-user software, which has been progressively converted from Microsoft to a custom Linux distribution — "LiMux" — in a process that dates back to 2003.
What a bunch of Wuss (Score:4, Funny)
Re: (Score:3)
These Germans. Cant follow through on anything. Fascism, Nazism, linux ..... No wonder they got their asses whooped by Americans. USA ... USA ... USA ...
Because American's are following through on Linux?
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Damn straight!!! They are in my house.
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Maybe they prefer fascism? ;-)
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
This.
Anecdote time: I have a sysadmin friend who manages a regionally successful food chains POS machines. When trying to upgrade the system he recently pushed to adopt a SQL database and a proper web interface for it, all running Linux (They were/are just dumping data into excel spreadsheets). The managements response? "Why would we want to run that communist software?"
Re:What a bunch of Wuss (Score:5, Funny)
These Germans. Cant follow through on anything. Fascism, Nazism, linux ..... No wonder they got their asses whooped by Americans. USA ... USA ... USA ...
Yea, they are the wurst...
Re: (Score:3)
Um... That "Laughing stock" was defeated on the western front during the WW1, hit by Treaty of Versailles and then the Great Depression. Despite such condition they were able to conquer the rest of Europe in an unprecidented short amount of time. It took the combination of the largest empire (British), greatest economy (USA) and the largest country to bring them down.
Say what you will, but when it comes to warfare Germans have always been amazing throughout history.
Re: (Score:3)
They don't reverse course (Score:5, Informative)
Their course only became part of city politics. There are people not wanting linux, but the city council still stands behind linux. The news is only that one of the people against linux started a study regarding linux effiency.
All that money... (Score:5, Insightful)
Yep. And then all that money that would be used to pay salaries that would be used on expenses locally, making the local economy work, will be redirected to Bill Gate's pockets.
I remember when Munchen waived Windows, in 2004. This was noticed a lot on Open Source news, as Quilombo Digital and BR-Linux in Brazil.
I did my share of criticize - Star Office was not ready at that time for the task, and a lot of documents were locked down in a proprietary format that would be a nightmare to convert from and back to be shared. As it's nowadays, by the way.
And things are gonna be worse.
When in a few years, when all our documents will be locked in a proprietary cloud (that anyone with the right influence will have access) or stored locally in a format that you must pay to read, remember 2004.
Re:All that money... (Score:4, Insightful)
Yep. And then all that money that would be used to pay salaries that would be used on expenses locally, making the local economy work, will be redirected to Bill Gate's pockets.
Who in turn gave the vast bulk of his money to end disease, educate children, feed the world, etc.
I can live with that.
Considering Germany is a net exporter: I'm not sure "keeping the money local" is actually a need.
When in a few years, when all our documents will be locked in a proprietary cloud (that anyone with the right influence will have access) or stored locally in a format that you must pay to read, remember 2004.
MS uses XML to save documents. Put them wherever you like.
Use of cloud storage is hardly unique to MS. Want me to start citing Linux distros doing it?
Misleading title & summary (Score:5, Informative)
The actual source article says they are *considering* going back to Microsoft, while the title and summary here imply its a foregone conclusion.
Re:Misleading title & summary (Score:5, Informative)
Well when the First Mayor is making statements like "Linux is limping after Microsoft" and the Second Mayor says the "employees are suffering [under Linux]" then I have a fairly good bet on how the "independent" committee to review their OS policy is going to turn out. And maybe finally we can stop flogging this dead horse, because I'm tired of hearing about Munich as the beacon of light that will usher in a new era of Linux on the desktop. It's been rather obvious to all but zealots that they weren't convincing anyone else to make the switch.
Re: (Score:3)
Parliament on the other hand still appears to be solidly pro-Linux.
We should note the types of complaints: on the one had there are the usual complaints ("it's broken"). These would be the same in an MS Office world. Why? Because most of government office work is based on standardized templates which are custom implementations. These would have to be retrofitted to MS Office in a switch back. There's little reason to assume that they would become any better in that case.
On the other hand, there are compl
Re:Misleading title & summary (Score:5, Interesting)
Maybe not (Score:5, Interesting)
The rest of the council disagrees [heise.de] (google translate [google.com])with the second mayor.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
For those that do not know the political parties in Germany, the CSU is basically the Republicans, SPD are the Democrats & Grünen are the Greens (though more powerful in Germany).
And if they all agree on something (which is like nearly never), then you can pretty much take it as true. Through in the FDP (market liberals) and Pirates (popular party) and that Mayors comments are pretty much mute.
Also, I wonder what the Mayor's technical knowledge is of the whole LiMux actually is. When my mom complai
Bribery and corruption (Score:5, Interesting)
From arstechnica
http://arstechnica.com/busines... [arstechnica.com]
Limux is a project which, up until 3 days ago, has been widely reported as successful. It's been going on for 10 years for god's sake.
Now, all of a sudden, out of nowhere, it's a failure - according to one politician.
This is a single politician in the german government trying to derail the project for personal gain.
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>Because, you know the average Linux user is smarter than the nose-picking windows users.
I use Linux and I pick my nose you insensitive clod!
LibreOffice/OpenOffice still kind of suck (Score:5, Insightful)
The basic office-type products for Linux still kind of suck. I've been using them since the StarOffice/SunOffice days, and now use LibreOffice. They've improved a lot, but they're still flakier than they should be, a decade after initial release. Nobody wants to fix the hard-to-fix, boring bugs which damage usability.
Oracle buying the remnants of Sun didn't help.
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The basic office-type products for Linux still kind of suck.
The geek still thinks in terms of the stand-alone office suite ca. 1995,
Its 2014 and LibreOffice doesn't include a plausible alternative to Outlook, OneNote and so on.
Microsoft sees MS Office as one component of an integrated Office system --- client, server, web and cloud --- that makes collaboration easy and scales well to an enterprise of any size.
Re:LibreOffice/OpenOffice still kind of suck (Score:5, Insightful)
But somehow changes between different versions of MS Office don't get this kind of response.
Clearly this is all just a misunderstanding (Score:2, Funny)
From TFA, some guy named Limix invoked the right to be forgotten. Nothing to see here, move along...
Document formats... (Score:5, Insightful)
As far as I can tell from that horrible translation the only real complaints from users are about document interoperability problems and a unified messaging platform. Document format problems were going to be a given as MS will NEVER allow their software to default to an open standard (gotta sell dem Office seats); the best you can do is tell everyone who is going to be dealing with your city to send your documents in universal standard. As far a unified messaging platform goes, somebody screwed up if they couldn't get a fleet of smartphones to talk to a standard email server. Integrating with an open caldav/cardav server is tougher, but not impossible. They've already dropped a lot of cash on this transition and if those are the only two real complaints it seems more likely that the politicos are banking on a pile of $$ concessions from MS.
Re: (Score:3)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ooxml
Not to be confused with Open Office XML or Microsoft Office XML formats.
I didn't say Mic
User complaints... (Score:2)
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And don't forget to put those old LiMux dvds under your pillow for the dvd fairy to exchange for credit at the Windows Store.
I don't think the DVD fairy is real... I've had the AOL CD's under my pillow for decades and she never even left a note saying "no thanks!"
Microsoft Products "Just Work" (Score:2)
And "normal people" are used to it because as sheep, they are familiar with the product.
On the other hand, the various open solutions are ok on a screen shot level and for very elementary tasks, but unfortunately when you go to do complicated things, you frequently find the Microsoft product has a feature to handle it and the open solution either doesn't or it is rather messy.
Why not google docs? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Why not google docs? (Score:5, Informative)
The paid version has the server in our control, maintained by us.
There is no version of Google Apps that is hosted on customer premise. Your company does not control the servers.
Google only updates the executables and server side stuff
They update whatever they want, its not on your servers. Your admins can select various options regarding what you see and how it feels and when you get new versions of the software, but its all in a Google data center somewhere.
they dont get to see any data or anything.
Google can read all your documents and email in the blink of an eye if its on Google Apps.
The authentication server somehow switches from mail.google.com to $company.com/mail somehow.
Just because your domain is attached to it, doesn't mean you're hosting it. Anyone can do this, even in the free version of Google Apps for Domains. $company.com is DNS CNAME to ghs.google.com. Go ahead, look for yourself.
Our company legal is quite sharp. They really would not like our documents outside our control.
Reality would disagree with those statements on both accounts.
But given the response we get from Google for down times and tech support questions it is likely to be between 50$ to 100$ per seat per year.
Its $50/year, same as everyone else who pays for Google Apps for Enterprises, unless you've negotiated a lower rate.
It is standard op for Microsoft. (Score:5, Interesting)
I just met a 50 something guy who bought Nokia latest phone Lumia 650 or whatever. His phone constantly forgets the google log in, changes the ring tone and randomly shutsdown. Normally some kid or a nephew would have fixed the issue had it been a iPhone or android. There is no kid in his extended circle who knows to troubleshoot a microsoft phone. His complaint is not the problems with the phone. ALL his phones malfunction because he answers yes/no to prompts without fully understanding the questions. But there are always children who would bail him out.
I wonder how long its desktop monopoly is going to provide the cash to try these gimmicks.
Open Source Integrated email/calendar/phones/etc (Score:4, Interesting)
Is there any open source equivalent that has all these features? Because that is what MS is bringing to the fight.
Munich Schmunich (Score:5, Insightful)
Please, stop posting blather about Munich adopting Linux. This drama has been going on for years and years and I'm tired of it. There are stories going back past 2004; "City of Munich Freezes Its Linux Migration", "Munich to Go Ahead with Linux After All", blah blah blah.
Munich uses Linux to pressure Microsoft for better deals, which is just fine, but not interesting to me or most of the rest of us I imagine. Linux is not some struggling underdog begging for attention. So much computing today is Linux, from super computers to $90 smartphones, set tops, huge cloud infrastructures, corporate data centers, weapons systems, etc. — what Munich's government clerks happen to use to print emails or whatever just doesn't matter anymore, if it ever did, and I don't care either way.
No retraining costs the other way? (Score:5, Insightful)
The Microsoft party-line has always been that retraining employees to use Linux is far more expensive than paying those license fees... It was always a ridiculous argument, since Microsoft products make major UI changes between versions that require just as much training.
But here, the employees are trained and working on Linux. So how is it that the fees for all that Microsoft software, PLUS the retraining fees, PLUS the undeniable reports of money savings, are still going to make a switch to Windows somehow worthwhile?
Popularity effects & user perception (Score:5, Insightful)
Reading TFA I suspect that the sorts of problems are:
The best way to fix Munich's problems is for others to grab the LiMux distribution and use it. This will:
* Reduce compatability problems. A tipping point will eventually be reached, look how MS IE was king and then it went to less than 80% and suddenly slid as web sites had to take web standards seriously.
* Hardware vendors will have to test against more than just MS Windows and its ecosystems
* Others will contribute software and patches, the cost to Munich will drop.
* Munich IT department will not be seen as maverick since others are also doing it. Eventually they will, hopefully, be lauded as pioneers and visionaries.
What's actually going on (Score:5, Informative)
From:
http://www.heise.de/open/meldu... [heise.de]
It looks like mayor of Munich is the one complaining about Limux, while the entire city council is united and calls it "sachfremde Einzelmeinungen", which translates into 'a single opinion from someone who's talking out of his arse'.
Re:Surprise? (Score:4, Insightful)
Is there anyone who really thought it would go any other way?
Yes. Linux fans have been absolutely sure the Munich transition would complete successfully. You can't pretend it was always stacked against it now, just because it didn't work out.
Re:Surprise? (Score:4, Insightful)
Yea, MS money made the users hate the experience. Just be honest, Linux kills it in certain situations, and the desktop for a regular office worker isn't it.
Re:Surprise? (Score:4, Insightful)
In fairness, there are at least two ways that could happen:
1) MS bribes people to complain. Unlikely, but not impossible.
2) MS bribes the relevant officials to *say* there have been overwhelming complaints. I mean, there are inevitably going to be complaints; that happens any time *anything* changes. The question is at what point they become important enough to sway the overall decision.
With that said, I suspect you're right.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Surprise? (Score:4, Insightful)
Reading comprehension fail?
First, I said there were ways it *could* happen, not that I thought either had occurred. So no, I don't "really, honestly" believe that...
Second, bribes don't need to be anything explicit - in fact, they rarely are, simply because it's so likely that people will report it - there just needs to be some kind of incentive. It doesn't need to be anything traceable to Microsoft; the people taking the hypothetical incentive never need have known from whence it came.
Third, there are always tons of people upset about any given change; with the years this project has run, MS has had plenty of time to find them and encourage them to complain. No need to bribe people to file false reports; just convince those who wouldn't otherwise have complained to do so (and maybe those who would have sent praise not to do so).
Fourth, I'm a security consultant. It is literally my job to be paranoid about potential attack vectors. That doesn't mean I think they'll happen - in fact, another part of my job is rating the risk of each threat coming to pass - but it's there.
Fifth, anybody who *doesn't* see that as the obvious answer to how MS having a bunch of money at stake could lead to this is (IMO) dangerously naïve. It's not complicated; it just requires asking yourself how you could generate complaints if you had lots of money and no morals.
Re:Surprise? (Score:4, Insightful)
I like how you didn't actually refute a single one of my points. It gives me a warm fuzzy feeling to be subjected to insults on my intelligence from people who can't even make a counter-point. The closest you came was failing to understand what an implicit bribe is. If the crash dialog message - the one that pops up when the program segfaults, the equivalent of Windows' "do you want to send an error report to Microsoft?" box - includes a button to submit feedback about this whole project (which just ate your file and wasted your time), most people will ignore it but some fraction will take the chance to vent some spleen. That kind of thing is easy to get added to a project if you have a little money to funnel to some coder, but will inevitably produce far more complaints than accolades. There's opportunities all over something like this for money to subtly make life better for those who complain.
But, if you want to take the concept of "bribes" more literally, remember my third point above. There are, statistically, many times as many people who are annoyed at this software as there are complaints filed; given the number of people involved in this project that's inevitable. People don't like change, they don't like needing to learn things, they don't like it when the new thing introduces even minor annoyances that the old thing lacked (and conveniently forget that the old thing had worse annoyances that the new one doesn't), and there's always the minority who honestly like even an inferior product. If Microsoft managed to identify even 10% of those people and give them the least bit of incentive to file a complaint, most of them would not turn it down. "Oh wow, sure, I'd love tickets to the football [soccer] game! ... Ha, you want to hear my thoughts on the software? Be ready for an earful! ... You know, I'd never thought about it before, but maybe if I complain somebody *would* notice..." Hell, just offer entry in a drawing for some fairly-cheap prize if people submit feedback and then only advertise the drawing amongst the disaffected...
I will readily grant that I'm surprised that so many people thought gothzilla's post was insightful, considering that it literally contains a fundamental flaw of reading comprehension: the inability to separate the hypothetical scenario from the statement of fact. I never implied, or even "ask[ed] questions" suggesting, that this had actually happened. I pointed out that it was *possible*. In fact, I explicitly pointed out that it was implausible. Did you think I was trying some weird reverse psychology BS?
As for the "naïve" part, it's either that or simply ignorant of history. Microsoft, and various other moneyed interests on the other side of the libre-vs.-proprietary debate (Oracle, SCO-via-Microsoft, Sony, etc.), have a well-established history of throwing money are successful open-source initiatives and sometimes successfully making them go away. In what world is "Microsoft has money, Microsoft wants people to complain about the project, therefore Microsoft finds a way to buy complaints" not a completely obvious possibility to anybody who isn't the "oh, they would never do that!" category of naivete?
Re: (Score:3)
I didn't see any actual complaint yet, nor any meaningful description of the main perceived defects. Did you? I'm not saying they don't exist, I just highlght that the actual motives are not stated and thus the explanation is totally insufficient.
On the other hand ... it's pretty damn too easy to produce a document in ms word that renders like crap on open/libre office, I see it happening all the time. The problem is never the content, but dumb and irrelevant formatting practices. Comparing MS to a global i
Re:Surprise? (Score:5, Interesting)
But Schmidt's comments have already been derided (translated from the German) as appeasements to Microsoft, specifically since the company is already doing a migration of its own: It's moving its German headquarters to Munich, and expects to be operational there by Summer 2016.
http://www.fierceenterprisecom... [fierceente...ations.com]
Its the second one Re: Surprise? (Score:4, Insightful)
Likely some MSFT graft in the picture. MSFT is relocating regional headquarters and Munich is a front runner. Lots of potential tax revenue, both directly from MSFT and indirectly from the employees and spin off economic activity.
Selection of Munich would undoubtedly be contingent on the city migrating back. I dont believe any outright bribing was involved or required. All Microsoft had to do was have a bean counting meeting with the high ups...if you go back to MSFT the extra money spent on migration, licensing, hardware and administative burden of the windows platform is more than offset over time by the economic benefits of a new major employer in the city.
And, well, how could you expect MSFT to do such a favour if you continued to spurn them at city hall?
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This is not a business, it's government. and YES it does work that way.
Re:Surprise? (Score:4, Informative)
there are inevitably going to be complaints; that happens any time *anything* changes
Obligatory [xkcd.com]
Re: (Score:3)
I think if I had to use Open/LibreOffice day in day out that I'd be pretty pissed off with it too. It's fine for simple things, but start using it for complex documents, spreadsheets or presentations and lots of little annoyances become apparent - resizing that doesn't snap to things, text that wobbles around as you type, dialogs which aren't prefilled with useful defaults, clutter in the men
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In fact... Here you go...
https://wiki.openoffice.org/wi... [openoffice.org]
So it scales to your 10,000 easily and readily and has around the world, Open Office has a lot of traction outside of the USA.
Some people always complain... the answer to those people is STFU unless they have a real compelling reason as in "you can not do X in Y and we need to do X to make/save/create money"
I dont like it or this is different is not a real complaint, but just whining.
Re:Surprise? (Score:5, Interesting)
It is pretty good in places that never developed a Windows culture. There are certain advantages for a regular office worker that come for the Unix way of doing things. I'm surprised that after a decade they hadn't switched paradigms and people weren't enjoying the Unix advantages.
Re:Surprise? (Score:5, Interesting)
It is pretty good in places that never developed a Windows culture..
I think this poster has identified the real issue. I doubt that Microsoft bribed people to complain, though I'm sure they provided subtle encouragement. I'm sure they also worked at a high executive level, not with outright bribes, but in the way that sort of thing is always done, the old FUD method.
But really, it comes down to people who are used to Windows wanting Windows, and they'll do that (mostly) even in the face of a mess like Windows 8. "What's this weird Linux thing they're making me use? I never had to use that anywhere else! Other organizations aren't converting, why are we?" And so on.
I don't buy that Windows is inherently more "office ready" than Linux for the vast majority of office users, all else being equal. The thing is, all else isn't equal. I do buy the idea that Windows is heavily entrenched and has a huge "incumbent" advantage, one that is going to persist for a long, long time, whether we like that idea or not.
Re:Surprise? (Score:5, Interesting)
I've seen non windows office environments. They have an answer to you ". "What's this weird Linux thing they're making me use? I never had to use that anywhere else! Other organizations aren't converting, why are we?" They do things that Windows just doesn't do. For example a lot of them actually use network transparency and share windows between workers. I can't message "Ron take a look at this" and send him an image of my screen. Then he says come over and I move the applications screen to his system. Or (especially prior to things like VMWare View) they loved to pass whole environments between physical computers so they don't have fixed desks. The same way that employees frequently login and logout of their phone in remote offices they can now do that with their computer so they don't even need a laptop. Something like building their applications on Docker and thus they get the advantage would be the modern equivalent where Linux far surpasses Windows where they can run just about any piece of software on any system without having to worry at all about the underlying Linux. Or a lot of the gurus who in the windows world would be your Excel or Word gurus pick up a little scripting and love to automate tasks and so you have shell scripts or Perl scripts flying around the office. There is for example much more blurring of lines between servers, and network shares and desktops because server solutions are also free.
If they are still doing things the Windows way then Linux is just a bad Windows. That's the key. The office culture changes and people don't do things the Windows way anymore. When new workers come in the work culture is so different they immediately see it is nothing like their old job.
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Where I've seen network transparency I'm talking about environments where the employees have high school or less. Thinks like repair or warehouse. I'm talking to someone we decide on what to do, then I push the screen to the terminal next to the relevant piece of equipment. Then maybe I duplicate it in the back to look for a part that's non-standard...
Betty from accounting is college or more. I've never seen it us
Re: (Score:3)
I don't buy that Windows is inherently more "office ready" than Linux for the vast majority of office users, all else being equal. The thing is, all else isn't equal. I do buy the idea that Windows is heavily entrenched and has a huge "incumbent" advantage, one that is going to persist for a long, long time, whether we like that idea or not.
Seems to be the main point all the Linux fundamentalists can't understand. Incumbency has huge benefits regardless of any other argument.
Re: (Score:3)
Re:Surprise? (Score:4, Interesting)
Why is it always Autocad anyway?
I am an engineer and I've not actually met one who uses autocad. The ones I know who regularly design 3D stuff seem to be rather fond of Solidworks. The richer and older ones prefer Pro/E. Autocad seems popular fot 2D stuff, but for 3D parametric cad it doesn't cut it as far as I can tell.
Anyway, I don't use any of them. I use Cadsoft Eagle which woks like a charm under Linux.
But yeah, familiarity is a HUGE thing.
The things is, this was from 2003. I wonder how many changes the upgrades to the unfamiliar Windows 8 and the Office ribbon would have garnered?
Re:Surprise? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Surprise? (Score:4, Interesting)
Just wrong. For what most people do, LibreOffice is just fine.
That may or may not be true, but it most definitely isn't true at all for power users, and especially so for power users of Excel. These users may not be representable of a typical user, but they are the ones actually running the business and they have enormous power. Suggesting that LibreOffice is "just fine" for these people is ignorant, and also the reason Linux won't make it on the desktop. If you don't even try to understand your users, what you offer isn't going to be good enough.
Re:Surprise? (Score:4, Interesting)
I've converted those Excel power users. BTW also Word Power users can be tricky. First off one can just leave them on Windows and just treat it as an isolated non-intergrated application. So for example the accounting department uses Excel in a VM or Wine (lags about 3 years and some addons fail but core program works) or they run Linux with their office integrations in a VM on their windows boxes. That's the easy way.
If you want to make them go fully open source generally it requires a complete shift in their workflow which ultimately is beneficial. Your typical Excel poweruser is someone who is benefiting greatly from the flexibility and short time to answer of Excel while having become a poweruser to compensate for the lack of dimensionality and scalability of Excel. Introducing them to BI and Business modeling tools which are better in these areas allows the to offload their more complicated Excel functions. This transition makes them into non-powerusers and then you can switch the spreadsheet on them. They actually become more effective as they are now using tools which can handle what they really want to do with Excel. But..., and this is not a small thing, they training costs of bringing on new people are large. Accountants don't walk in the door with those skills. Which is fine for government (and Germany for that matter) with long employee retention.
Most companies have IT accounting. If you can get those people on board and they have the skills, then via. training it can migrate down to the Excel Powerusers and from there to the Excel heavy users.
Again this comes down to understanding Windows is a culture not just software and to change the software you really need to change the culture. Obviously this keeps getting easier as LibreOffice Calc gets more feature rich. It certainly would be easier today than it was a decade ago.
Re: (Score:3)
The same Power Users are the ones that complain every time Office is upgraded because it broke their carefully made system of spreadsheets/documents etc ...
They are using Office to it's limits already and any change will annoy them at minimum, they are almost certainly using office as a substitute for a custom built package and do not represent the vast majority of users ..
LibreOffice is no substitute for these people because a) it is not MSOffice (they use all the features and rely on the quirks) and b) th
Re: (Score:3)
I am not sure if your are a troll or just stupid or ignorant. Libre and Open are WAY ahead of MS Word on this feature. It is far more stable and easier to use.
If people have trouble readng the docs with Word, tell them to download Libre - its free. It is Word that is an inconsistent, unstable (from version to version) POS, and it is DOCX that is poorly defined. If you want to share, you should be using internationally standard format for your documents, which
Re: (Score:3)
Re:Surprise? (Score:4, Funny)
MS money made the users hate the experience.
Well, I agree MS Money was horrible and I much preferred Quicken, but I'm not sure how that has anything to do with a desktop in the office...
(Removing tongue from cheek now.. )
Re: (Score:3)
No, I don't think so. Where I'm not going to argue Quicken has improved, I don't think Money was better. Microsoft didn't either.
I seem to recall when Microsoft tried to buy Quicken but got it's hand slapped in the cookie jar by the DOJ, fearing it would be a monopoly. Microsoft even tried to GIVE MS Money away to a competitor and the regulators said "nope, not even then". Microsoft shuttered the Money operation shortly after that.
So where your preference might have been for MS Money, the market was go
Re:Surprise? (Score:5, Informative)
Ubuntu 14.04 user here. Every time I login I am greeted with a stack of "System problem detected" warnings. Both Firefox and Thunderbird are extremely unstable. Firefox crashes a few times a week. Thunderbird does so twice a week (about). Now and then the whole system hangs when doing a rsync to an external disk (hangs, not busy).
Oh, I am sure Linux apologists blame me, my hardware, etc. But I've been running 10.04 for years on the same hardware, except that I replaced the 320G HDD for a 1TB one and switched to AHCI. Maybe that's the problem?
One issue I see often is this one: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubu... [launchpad.net] It gives a very unfinished/unstable feel to 14.04
Re: (Score:3)
Oddly enough, I've had unrecoverable filesystem errors under Linux and OS X and Windows over the past year. On top of that, I've had random system errors on the above platforms and application crashes with proprietary and FLOSS software. So I guess none of the above are suitable for use?
Re:Surprise? (Score:5, Informative)
Yep. I used Linux almost exclusively for many years at university. Back when I had the time and desire to fix things when they broke. Eventually I was worn down by the endless cycle of update break fix that you get in Linux. When you can't even safely update to the next version the system is broken.
About once a year I do a project on Linux or install it somewhere to see how it has progressed. In the important areas, it hasn't at all.
We did a project just recently using Intel NUCs running Ubuntu and some of our software to be connected to TVs. Here's the linux specific problems we encountered
1. Installing Qt dev environment is a huge pain. The default packages in both 14.04 and 13.10 are broken for multimedia playback in Qt and need files to be manually moved to work. Using a Qt build from qt-project.org also doesn't work with multimedia.
2. On Kubuntu we accidentally changed the desktop resolution to one the TV wouldn't accept. There was no confirm. X totally broken, no obvious way to fix it. Reinstalled.
3. On Kubuntu, we had to delay our delivery at the last moment because we discovered that when using a TV as a monitor and the TV was turned off, our application window disappeared (still running, just invisible). After many hours of debugging and no info, we ditched Ubuntu.
4. Had to install Ubuntu several times and fiddle with Bios settings for it to work (some kind boot issue with UEFI).
5. No standard mounting point for DVDs caused problems
etc etc
In the end it would have been far cheaper to put Windows on there and just have it work. Hours and hours wasted during development on silly bugs that should have never happened. And this is on quality hardware from a vendor that supports Linux (Intel).
Re:Surprise? (Score:5, Interesting)
Well, that's what you get for running Ubuntu in a dev environment. It's a distribution that's meant to be installed from Ubuntu's repositories, only updated from those same repositories, and never really used for any third party software. I've got a 75+ year old guy using it, because he kept getting infected when he was running Windows. Hasn't had any problems with it at all, other than when a stick of memory went bad, and it started crashing all the time.
For stable servers (and even workstations) I've been running Debian since at least as far back as 1997. There were some issues like you describe in the first 5 years or so, but honestly, the only thing I've run across in the last 5 years was when I tried to do a database server upgrade, and uninstalled the old postgreSQL version 7 before migrating the data to the new version 8 server. That was a relatively easy fix, though, and it only happened because I wasn't paying attention to what I was doing. Other than that, every Debian machine I maintain (and there are A LOT of them...) just runs perfectly.
I have a customer who installed an Ubuntu server because "it has a GUI and it'll be easy for me to use". I stuck with it for a while because they liked it, solving problem after problem that cropped up because we kept needing to add third party software to it, which broke on literally EVERY SINGLE kernel upgrade.
Finally, I figured out the amount of time I'd spent fixing shit that wouldn't have broken if we'd been using Debian, and how long it would take me to back up, blow away, install Debian, and restore data. Turned out the customer would have been 4 figures richer if I hadn't had to fix all the Ubuntu screwups over a couple of years. Recommended migrating to Debian, they agreed, and that machine hasn't had a problem since. That was 6 months ago.
Re: (Score:3)
Switch Thunderbird to off-line mode before you start configuring a new account. The **HORRIBLE** auto-configuration will not show up and you can just configure your account.
Re:Surprise? (Score:4, Insightful)
And to be honest, there's the typical "user" experience. They think Microsoft is big, they must know what they're doing, they can find a "Learn Word in 21 Hours" book, they can find thousands of people with Microsoft certificates they can hire, so why not use Microsoft? Issues like have open standards means nothing to the person typing up memos or creating a database; Microsoft *is* the standard and all those other standards bodies are annoying buzzing sounds. If twenty years from now all the records are lost because no one can decode .docx files properly then it's not their problem but the problem of the lazy IT guys.
Bucking the trend is hard, when the herd of gazelles turns and runs one way then all the gazelles follow, unless you're a wildebeest.
There's no need for bribery or incentives to switch back to Microsoft, all that is needed is for the bureaucracy to forget the original reasons for open standards and transparency. Those were thought to be important back when Microsoft was under the spotlight in Europe for monopoly issues, but that spotlight has been off for a long time.
Re: (Score:3)
Not all Linux fans. I'm a Linux fan. I recognize that it's not suitable for non-techie users. There is literally no focus on end user development - that's what I like about it!
It's sysadmin / developer oriented and I hope that never changes.
Re: (Score:2)
There were those who were sure that anyone exposed to Linux would immediately prefer it over MSWind. Most people were a bit more cautious, but figured that the city would prefer to save money and have control over its own destiny. Others have been cynical since before the plan was first announced, on various different grounds. Some people actually think that MSWind is better. Some think that the applications available under MSWind are better. Some just think that the party with more wealth and power wi
Re:Surprise? (Score:4, Interesting)
Here's the missing piece of the puzzle:
MS has been in talks with the city administration about moving their HQ from Unterschleissheim to Munich, which would result in a rather nice chunk of extra municipal tax income.
Re:Surprise? (Score:5, Insightful)
but figured that the city would prefer to save money
If you spend more than 2 days total over the course of an employees time at a company to convert them from MS Windows and Office to Linux you've lost money, even on the lowest paid employee you have.
Contrary to what you think, the cost of Windows and Office licenses are nothing as far as cost of doing business.
Re:Surprise? (Score:5, Informative)
At my company (125 users) a while ago we moved to OpenOffice to save money. Users were not happy and started to call it "BrokenOffice". Only people who needed to exchange documents with outside clients were allowed to use MS-Office, and this created a lot of tension between the haves and have-nots. Bootleg versions started to appear, etc.
The company has since switched to the Office.com deal (annual $100/user for 5 floating licenses), so each employee can install MS-Office on various computers in their family in addition to their workstation without requiring assistance from IT (plus they get more OneDrive space). With the recent version it's possible to "share" the licenses, so employees can authorize their kids who are in college and let them install the applications themselves.
Employees see that as a perk, and helpdesk is less busy with "BrokenOffice" problems (real or perceived), so everyone is happy. It's more than pennies but it's not that expensive either.
Re: (Score:3)
Just building a better alternative wouldn't do it. You'd have to be able to read Excel files and their attendant VBA. Therein lies the rub. A better alternative would have a different (I use term "semantics" for want of a better term) semantics. Some concepts wouldn't fit easily, and if they did, MS would sue you out of existence for copying their alleged software IP. It wouldn't even have to be a good lawsuit, just one intended to keep you tied up in the courts for several years until financial pressures g
Re:Surprise? (Score:4, Insightful)
It was a political decision that was reversed by politicians. The original decision wasn't some shining beacon of light and the reversal wasn't the triumph of the Dark Lord. The original decision was made to cater to the audience of the party in power, and no doubt the reversal was the same.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Sure, just sweep under the rug all the complaints made by so many of the people who actually tried to use the system.
Re: (Score:3)
I did. I've been following this since it started. They seemed to have a fairly high degree of commitment and had made tons of progress. I'm shocked to see them throwing in the towel since after a decade I'd assume they no longer have a Windows culture. We know that institutions that never developed a Windows culture were able to switch to Linux easily.
So yeah put me down for surprised.
Re: (Score:3)
Honestly, from reading the translated article, I get the feeling that a lot of the issues were because other agencies outside of Munich had difficulty interacting with them and this translated into Munich user unhappiness.
Re: (Score:3)
They seemed to have a fairly high degree of commitment and had made tons of progress.
There is a feature of OSS that is often touted and that is that you get to enjoy the progress of software development "for free". That is when someone solves a problem you get to benefit. As a developer I see this all the time and it's incredibly true. As a developer I love working with Open SDKs since I can make small changes and our powers combined results in improved results.
The problem is with someone like Munich it's Munich's IT department trying to create software on Linux which solves the proble
Re:Surprise? (Score:5, Insightful)
Well, yes, of course. When Microsoft throws that much software license cuts and maybe a few junkets for the mucky-mucks in exotic places for âoeconferencesâ, well, this is the way it goes.
Is there anyone who really thought it would go any other way?
I love linux as much as anyone on here. But I'm not about to pretend the sky ain't blue just to support my argument. Linux, plain and simple, is not user friendly. The only notable exception is Android. If they tried to just push their own Nix flavor at government types, I'm not surprised that they got complaints. I've never seen a Linux GUI environment that wasn't a tacked on joke. You're still required to go to the command line to do anything meaningful. Control panels that fail at even the most basic tasks, and on and on. If Linux is to ever take off as a desktop environment, someone will need to do a complete overhaul like Google did with Android.
Now queue all the people ranting about how the public is just dumb and don't know how to use Linux. To you I say, you're right... the public is dumb and don't know how to use linux. Yet those same people can use Windows. See the problem? You can have an IQ of a slice of Bacon and still get your mail open in Windows... that's how easy it has to be. Make Linux that easy and you'll have something.
Re: (Score:3)
You had me at Bacon...
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It's not incredibly HOME-user or POWER-user friendly...
But locked-down CORPORATE-user friendly? HELL YEAH.
Your IT department sets-up a computer with just 5 big bright icons on the desktop. These are the only applications you use for your job. You can't do anything else but launch these applications. It just keeps working like that 99.999% of the time. When something doesn't work, you call IT about it, move yourself to another computer and resume your work th
Teaching Windows/Linux (Score:5, Informative)
I teach IT classes for a living right now, and my experience has actually been the opposite.
In our intro courses, we double check that the students know the basics of the Windows GUI (what's on the start menu, control panel, etc.) and then teach them basic administrative tasks. We also do the same for Linux.
Windows is NOT user friendly. Neither is MS Office, etc etc. Pretty much anything Microsoft. How do I know? Because we have plenty of older students -- we're talking age 35-40 -- that used to be mechanics, truck drivers, etc., that are going back to school for a degree and have to take a basic computer class. If they don't know Window's idiosyncracies, which trust me they don't in general, then they are COMPLETELY LOST.
We really take for granted how much we've been indoctrinated as IT professionals into the Microsoft way. I mean, I'm not even talking configuring group policies or IIS or anything -- I mean, just finding things on the start menu, understanding that icons on the desktop have HIDDEN extensions, knowing when to left and right click on menus to get what you want (seems to switch in every program!). Where did the A and B drive go, why is it C? Why is it called C: anyway instead of just "Main Harddrive" or maybe even simpler "Main Files". You click and drag a window to move it out the way and now suddenly you moved to far and it is maximized. Let's install Firefox -- uhoh, pop up telling me "This came from another computer. Do you want to continue?" SHOULD I? IS THAT BAD?.
This stuff absolutely confounds my students. Nothing says anywhere that icon extensions are hidden -- you have to know how to go enable that. Nothing says anywhere "Right click here to change resolution!". You just have to right click everywhere and figure out what menu you get in every place. Stuff like that. List goes on and on.
It takes a while to teach them the basics. They can "use computers" in the sense of get on the internet, but they really have no idea what goes on otherwise, and really Windows gives no direction on what to do, where to do it, what is possible, and only bare minimum of messages (such as the error message -- instead of yes/no, why can't it ask if you want to install or not? Or explain why it might be a bad thing, or why it might be ok?). I mean seriously, they flip out.
Windows is NOT user friendly to a newbie. It just seems that way because we are so used to it and interact with it so much, and since it was the only major player for so long, a lot of its terminology has rubbed off people. Not because its easy, but because we're just exposed to it.
I won't say Linux is perfect, but they seem to get it pretty well, at least as well as Windows. A lot of the students have told me they actually enjoyed Linux more.
Re: Surprise? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3)
You seriously need to run Ubuntu. I think there are some distributions that have made some serious strides in user interfaces and Ubuntu is one of them.
What I would say is that Linux desktops are significantly different from Windows. The look and feel and the GUI standards are worlds apart. What needs to happen is Linux desktops and programs all need to ascribe to the windows look and feel as closely as they can without infringing on patents. X-Windows is just so different and we are bound by it's custo
Re: (Score:3)
If you're looking for a more traditional desktop combined with the Ubuntu ecosystem, Linux Mint might be worth checking out.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
There's a line for that? Man I just thought we were supposed to do it on cue...
Re: (Score:3)
That's because "IT" there is incompetent.
Setting printers up where I work, under Windows, is a breeze. You go to a web page, click on your location in the world, drill down to your country, city, building, click on the printer you which to have, click install, watch it install, print away. Point'n'grunt.
Re: (Score:3)
There's far too much broken desktop stuff for Linux to be usable on the desktop en-masse. Playing a video file from the network. Simple, right? OS X will play directly from share. Windows will play directly from share. Linux will copy it (all 4 GB or whatever) before it will play.
Errr...WTF are you talking about? Linux plays directly from network shares just fine. I do it all the time. In fact, I've been doing it for years. I can't remember the last time I had to wait for it to copy the entire file before it would start playing. (Although I do remember that happening, but it was YEARS ago. Maybe even a decade.)
Re: (Score:3)
Certain industries have expectations of what's normal. For law firms, it's Windows and MS Office.
Getting people to accept a Mac environment is tough enough. Some workers pass on the job because they know the NEXT job will be looking for Windows and MS Office.
That's the workers. After you walk off the job, that firm has to find a rare specimen who will be able to administer your fringeness. I took over a Mac shop once and converted it to what the workforce, and admins expect when we went to hire people.
You d
Just a year? (Score:3)
Well apparently it was the decade of Linux on the Desktop in Munich. Who said it would last anyways?
Re: (Score:3)
That's not the one example. Lots of unix, mainframe and mini shops transitioned quickly and easily. Lots of business where the owner forced the change transitioned easily. Lots of institutions with a Windows culture looked at the cost and balked early on. Munich was an example of a large public group that put the time and effort in. But it is not the only example.
Re:Ha ha! (Score:5, Informative)
One politician said it failed... all other reports of the project (even very recently) have said it's been a success. The actual article says they are convening a panel of experts to consider whether to go back to Microsoft, so despite the misleading summary here, nothing has been decided.
Re: (Score:3)
When has there ever been a "panel of experts" assembled by a politician
which was not stacked with "experts" guaranteed to deliver a predetermined
result? They're the consultants of the public service world.
Hell, one of the famo
Re: (Score:3)
Well, to be honest Gnome3 didn't help things any. Neither did whatever that mishmash that Ubuntu is up to. xfce isn't really slick enough for corporate work. Etc. KDE4 still isn't as good as KDE3 was, but it's definitely mainly usable, and can look as pretty as you desire.
My real guess is that they forgot what a nightmare it was to deal with MSWind, so now the problems with Linux are looming a lot larger in their minds. Please note, however, that this is just a guess.
Linux Desktop developers have pisse
Re: (Score:3)
I don't find that annoying, so much as unbelievable. What surprises me is that they can still find anyone to believe them after lying so often.
OTOH, I can hope that it's true, and that they actually HAVE reformed. I'm just going to let the evidence accumulate for awhile before I believe it. Possibly in a decade....
Re: (Score:2)
Well, let's test that. Let's ask them to open-source and de-patent (if there are any) the protocols used between the MS SQL client and server, and to perpetually keep that protocol spec completely open and unencumbered.
Embrace (Score:3)
Microsoft now likes to act like they are an open source company that believes in open standards.
But they DO. It's step one - embrace:
1) Embrace
2) Extend
3) Extinguish
4) Profit.