City of Turin To Switch From Windows To Linux and Save 6M Euros 249
jrepin writes: The municipality of Turin in Italy hopes to save 6 million Euro over five years by switching from Windows XP to Ubuntu Linux in all of its offices. The move will mean installing the open source operating system on 8,300 PCs, which will generate an immediate saving of roughly €300 per machine (almost €2.5m altogether, made up from the cost of Windows and Office licences) — a sum that will grow over the years as the need for the renewal of proprietary software licences vanishes, and the employees get used to the new machines.
Boom in the EU = Boom in Redmond (Score:4, Funny)
Well, the MS lock-in may just be starting to fray enough to make a difference.
Re:Boom in the EU = Boom in Redmond (Score:5, Funny)
One thing's for sure: There's no longer a shroud over Turin's OS source code.
Re: (Score:3)
Yeah, I was about to say that the reasoning behind the decision was shrouded in mystery, but same idea. Oh well.
What's in the EU water? (Score:5, Interesting)
Europeans seem quite forward thinking when it comes to OSS. I found it interesting that a game I play and run servers for Xonotic has WAY more European based players than North American and they prefer the games because its OSS.
Re: (Score:2)
What idiot modarated this as a troll? I'm in Canada but its quite interesting how many EU players especailly in Germany love OSS.
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
Mostly, Germany is simply big and densely populated (by European/US standards), and with good enough infrastructure to be visible on the Internet.
While in some parts still having a bit of a tradition of not spending more money than you have to (and/or having quite a lot of people not too poor to have internet and computer but still very tight with money).
It also seems to have more Linux User Groups than most other European countries, not to mention Linux fairs/events, both of which are a great deal for enth
Re:What's in the EU water? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:What's in the EU water? (Score:4, Insightful)
Language support. MS is American and only do English well. Any other language is a total clusterfsck on Windows.
That's kinda impressive - from experience, there aren't all that many Americans, that "do English well" :)
Re:What's in the EU water? (Score:4, Interesting)
That's kinda impressive - from experience, there aren't all that many Americans, that "do English well" :)
The quality of the English version is what it is. The quality of the non-English version is what it is plus all that was lost in translation, it's certainly not going to be better. The worst is when they move around on standard shortcuts, for example in MS Office all English versions has Ctrl-F as Find and Ctrl-B as Bold. In Norwegian Ctrl-F = Bold (Fet) and Ctrl-B is Find (Finn) and I absolutely hate it every time. And yet in the interest of sanity they do keep other English shortcuts like Ctrl-S = Save (Lagre), even though that makes no sense in Norwegian. Never mind that when you're working with code or databases there is no Norwegian C# nor SQL, so it all ends up rather Norwenglish when you try.
Don't get me wrong, I'm fond of my language when it comes to identity and culture. But when it comes to communication having global terminology and one way of doing it makes everything so much simpler. Yes, there's a whole lot of "English" speakers out there but any resemblance of a common tongue beats trying to use translators. It's something of a first world issue though as 16% of the world is still illiterate in their first language but I hope that in 100 years you could talk to at least half the world's population in one language.
Re: (Score:2)
Don't get me wrong, I'm fond of my language when it comes to identity and culture. But when it comes to communication having global terminology and one way of doing it makes everything so much simpler. Yes, there's a whole lot of "English" speakers out there but any resemblance of a common tongue beats trying to use translators. It's something of a first world issue though as 16% of the world is still illiterate in their first language but I hope that in 100 years you could talk to at least half the world's population in one language.
Now you know why I started to learn Mandarin a few years ago - yeah, I've accepted that I won't get far on Danish alone, and there are more people knowing Mandarin/Hindi/Spanish than English :)
Meanwhile, I'm trying to recall the short-cuts in MS Office's Danish version ... thinking they are the same as in the UK version.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
...or the players don't like the idea of trading their money and personal data for some game they want to play for a limited time.
Greetings from Yurop!
Re: (Score:3)
Language support (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Or ...
You could use TCPView and Microsoft Network Monitor to see if you are delusional or stuff.
Re:Boom in the EU = Boom in Redmond (Score:5, Funny)
Holy fuck you actually read that wall of text enough to respond to it? That takes some effort...I forgot what I was doing after the first period. My combat log looked like this:
sillybilly's Wall of Text hits YOU for 923,532,262,523 (Critical)
You die.
Re:Boom in the EU = Boom in Redmond (Score:5, Funny)
I use Windows XP as much as I can. I have a lighhouse puppy 4.1.2rc1 with Mariner(KDE 3.5) linux boot disk when I really have to get shit done - like erase recycled or system volume information, or other locked files, also resizing partitions with windows on it - but I use windows because it's more user friendly and faster on a lot of things, plus I don't want Windows to end up like BeOS or Solaris, something that might be really on the horizon given the major fuck ups with Windows Vista and 8 (7 was tolerably decent, though still a massive decay from Windows XP, which itself is like a decay from Windows 2000), and the onslaught of cheap laptoppy-like things at Micro Center from Arm based systems and Chrome OS based x86 systems, neither Microsoft based, back in April, when I last looked around to see if I can find another laptop with a better battery life than this HP Mini 200 Intel Atom thing with 9 hr battery life, and like a 7 Watt chipset+cpu, which is like unheard-of-ly energy efficient, unfortunately it needs XP and can't run Windows 7 well, and even in XP it's a constant constant constant struggle to keep it down, somebody from Microsoft always logs on and restarts services when I kill and keep almost everything disabled, run none of the dotnet/silverlight/new C runtimes/windows live/office crap from microsoft, run the last non-dotnet version of zonealarm to kill every program possible - lsa (export) shell , lsass, Nt Session manager, smss, and the like are not killable, which is bullshit, so I thoroughly hate Windows for the constant struggle I have to put up to kill every useless fucking snooping thing wasting my CPU on it to get decent speed, with the 500 or so services out of which I constantly have to kill 495 and 15 I have to leave up and running simply because the computer won't work without them, when Ideally, I'd like to kill those too, and even then, once in a while the harddrive goes into this churning mode, like somebody from Microsoft or the NSA logged on and set off something, when I have Indexing service and System Restore Service killed, remote assistance killed, windows update service killed, and absolutely nothing should be moving on the computer, but it does, you can see it from the CPU use in task manager, and even that one lies sometimes saying it's 0% when the harddrive is going absolutely crazy.
That was a very long sentence . . .
Re: (Score:3)
given the major fuck ups with Windows Vista and 8 (7 was tolerably decent, though still a massive decay from Windows XP, which itself is like a decay from Windows 2000)
The past is always better. I don't know what went wrong at Microsoft to start doing those silly things like "Windows Services" instead of sticking with a proven technology like TSR. Was there even a need for Windows? I'm pretty sure that if there had been no Windows there would be a Sidekick extension available to display twitters and facebooks.
Let's all stop this progress madness NOW and focus instead on the sound principles of the Ordnung.
Re: (Score:2)
Are you implying that Sidekick was not a graphical interface? What about dosshell?
Those were great graphical interfaces, responsive and fluid. I remember switching to a larger monitor and being amazed to see that dosshell was still filling the whole screen. Nowadays you don't get that with those big fancy Apple monitors, people have to use non-maximized windows.
Re: (Score:2)
Nowadays you don't get that with those big fancy Apple monitors, people have to use non-maximized windows.
Wait, what?. Running my shell full screen, corner to corner, requires one button press on my big fancy Apple Terminal Window...
Just because that many hosts is a big deal in MS (Score:4, Interesting)
A few sysadmins with ssh plus puppet or one of dozens of other similar system management tools. They don't even have to be paticularly experienced since this is now a very well travelled road.
There's probably a few clusters that big being being managed by single sysadmins. Just because managing that many MS windows hosts with a bastard child of LDAP requires a lot of time doesn't mean it's going to take a long time with other platforms. With enough of a budget and a few recent graduates I could have rolled something like this out in 2004 let alone 2014 - as could have many others.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
CALs are free?
Re: (Score:3)
Re: Boom in the EU = Boom in Redmond (Score:4, Interesting)
We heard this argument many times before.
The problem with it is that with Windows you are pretty much forced to buy such solution, either from MS or from 3rd parties.
With Linux, it is really an option, a "nice to have".
For example, a small engineering company in Germany. They actually bought it for 12 desktops in their office. (One desktop is actually server.) Not because they had to, but because it basically freed them up from having a full time admin. (They have admin, but he wanted to go into the CAD/design, and the Ubuntu managed solution simply allowed him to.) (Why Ubuntu? They have tried it - it worked for them well and they have stayed with it.)
The Microsoft Tax can buy you... (Score:2, Insightful)
Hell, you might even be able to buy a smart-TV for $300 that can run the same items.
Microsoft either better cut their prices or give out free XP upgrades, unless they want to be upgraded out of business.
The Microsoft Tax can buy you... (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Depends entirely what the "average office worker or bureaucrat" actually does. The ones I work with need Acrobat Standar/Pro, Office (because LibreOffice still doesn't do a great job formatting documents created in docx), plus at least one industry-specific application (of which very few support Linux).
It also buys you (Score:4)
Maybe 6-10 hours of staff time. What I mean is you have to factor what your people cost you. If someone costs $50/hour when you count in salary + ERE (meaning payroll tax, benefits, insurance and all other expenses) then 6 hours of their time costs $300. So, if your transition wastes more than 6 hours of their time, it is a net loss.
You always have to keep that cost in mind when you talk about anything: What does it cost your employees to do? This is the same deal with old hardware. It can actually cost you more money, because it takes more IT time to support. Like if you have an IT guy whose salary + ERE is $30/hour and you have them spend 20 hours a year repairing and maintaining an old P4 system that keeps failing, well that is a huge waste as that $600 could have easily bought a new system that would work better and take up little, if any, of their time.
That is a reason commercial software wins out in some cases. It isn't that you cannot do something without it, just that it saves more staff time than it costs. That's why places will pay for things like iDRAC or other lights-out management, remote KVMs, and so on. They cost a lot but the time they save in maintenance can easily exceed their cost.
Just remember that unless employees are paid very poorly, $300 isn't a lot of time. So you want to analyze how much time your new system will cost (all new systems will cost some time in transition if nothing else) and make sure it is worth it.
Re: (Score:3)
But you have to compare it to what they would otehr wise be doing.
If you pay them $50 an hour but this sucks out of their water cooler time, then no loss.
If you pay them $50 an hour but this sucks out of "figuring out where the hell the command I always use went on the new ribbon system" then no loss.
Seriously, Ribbons cost me well over 10 hours of time figuring out how to do what I'd always done.
Re: (Score:3)
Yeah but this fails to address the point of which requires more upkeep: Microsoft or Linux.
It's been my experience that Linux is easier to administer (at least at scale) than Windows. Therefore, your argument adds to the fact that a switch to OSS would benefit the city.
Re:The Microsoft Tax can buy you... (Score:5, Insightful)
Of course, when switching from one version of Windows to another version of Windows, the cost of training the average city employee to use that new version of Windows could buy you a dozen copies of Windows. Especially if you're factoring in training on the newer versions of Office.
The interface changes between Microsoft versions are as radical (or more radical) than the interface changes in transistioning between XP and Linux.
Ms tax is trivial compared to other costs (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
So much has changed since XP that they will need to be trained anyway.
Re:The Microsoft Tax can buy you... (Score:4, Insightful)
Click this icon for the word processor, this one is the folder that contains all your work related documents. This icon is for web browsing, but stay off that unless you're on break. This is the menu icon down here in the lower left corner, just like you're used to, just look for the name of the program you need to run if it's not already on the desktop.
Click here, click there. It's all the same no mater what OS you're using. If it takes more than an hour to train the average employee how to to use a new OS with similar software, you need a new employee, that one's broken.
Now it may take a day or two to train the ones who create documents and a few days to a week to train those that write scripts/programs in it, but it is not going to cost more than the several hundred dollars (or Euros) it would cost for each user.
Re:The Microsoft Tax can buy you... (Score:5, Interesting)
I agree... even 5 or 6 years ago, my father was visiting and asked to use my computer to check some things online... he sat down, ran the browser (Firefox at the time, which looks like the Firefox he has installed on Windows); he had to print out some PDFs he'd created that had his travel documents (hotel reservations and stuff), plugged it in, the window opened, he double clicked - they opened, he printed. Later I asked what he thought about using Linux, he said he didn't realize it wasn't Windows.
Of course, that's a simple example - he didn't do anything complicated, just double-clicked the Firefox icon and everything else was the same user experience, double-clicked some PDFs and the UX was the same... but while there are of course differences, anyone that can use MS Office could probably figure out Open/LibreOffice with little effort for all but pathalogical special cases.
Re: (Score:2)
Good timing (Score:2)
Munich may be looking to pick up a bunch of Windows licenses on the cheap...
maintenance costs (Score:2, Informative)
headline should read "...at least 6 million Euros"
they get their number from the license fees **only**
think about the savings from tech support & maintenance...
then think about how much could've been saved the the US government had done this 10 years ago
then think about how much of our tax dollars have gone to M$ or their subsidiaries just since 2000
If you think Linux doesn't have tech support costs (Score:3, Insightful)
Then you've never worked in an enterprise environment that uses it. You'll have a ton of tech support and maintenance costs with Linux. You not only have all the regular user shit, people who can't figure out how to use their computer, administrative stuff, etc. However I've also observed that a good bit of the stuff in Linux requires a lot of sysadmin work, scripting and such. We do Linux and Windows in our environment and we certainly make Linux work on a large enterprise scale, but our Linux lead spends
Re: (Score:2)
think about the savings from tech support & maintenance...
... because they won't need to support Linux or perform maintenance on it? Or do fairys do that for you with Linux?
The retraining alone will cost far more than licensing costs over the last 10 years, let alone interoperability issues.
Licensing costs are a drop in the bucket compared to an employees salary and time, the fact that you don't realize or consider this just shows how utterly disconnected you are from the realities of running a business.
Re: (Score:3)
think about the savings from tech support & maintenance...
... because they won't need to support Linux or perform maintenance on it? Or do fairys do that for you with Linux?
Yep. The apt-get fairy does the maintenance. And it's considered axiomatic that a single operator can ride herd on about 10 times as many Linux machines as a Windows operator can on Windows machines.
The "retraining cost" boogeyman argument no longer carries any credibility. It's a lot easier for most people to adjust to a Linux desktop than it is to adjust to that montrosity that Windows 8 foisted on us.
Re: (Score:2)
Really? So Linux is support and maintenance free? It just magically installs and configures itself? Trains the users? Installs patches? Or are you expecting each user to do this on their own? And who will monitor the security of each system?
Also left out of this whole "saved" calculation is the cost of time lost due to frustration with incompatabilities between open source software and "global standards". Likewise the need to find replacements for more specialized software.
Re: (Score:3)
Not much more than it would when Windows was redesigned in 7 or 8.
That's the problem with constantly changing the UI on windows releases. We saw it when going from 98/ME/2000 to XP and again from XP to 7 and again with 8. There will be a support influx with each change so I'm not sure it is of any concern.
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
OpenLDAP, NFS and home folders on a file server.
Jesus Christ, Microsoft junkies well and truly believe there's no alternatives.
Re: (Score:2)
Glad To See Linux Making Progress (Score:3)
http://www.debian.org/CD [debian.org]
About 1/2 of 1 percent of their budget (Score:3)
hopes to save 6 million Euro over five years by switching from Windows XP to Ubuntu Linux in all of its offices. The move will mean installing the open source operating system on 8,300 PCs, which will generate an immediate saving of roughly €300 per machine (almost €2.5m altogether, made up from the cost of Windows and Office licences)
€6,000,000/8,300 = €723 Euro per machine. Subtract 300, up-front (OS/Office) = €85 per year savings, after the licenses.
Let's say the average city employee makes €40,000/year (I have no idea what they make, but assuming one employee per workstation, those workers are about 1/4 of the cities annual budget of €1,266,000,000)
So, the half a day's wage saved (€85) per year isn't a big deal either way - either they are happy with the open source systems and they make out, or they go back to proprietary software and spend a couple of days wages, if needed.
And why does it need to be all or nothing? People should use what makes them most productive... within the support capabilities of the IT staff. Out of 8300 workstations I wouldn't be surprised if a large share of them could get by with basically running a web browser, but for those who need Windows or MacOS to get their work done, so be it.
Re:About 1/2 of 1 percent of their budget (Score:5, Insightful)
It is more than E85 a year, as this is only the upfront cost, excluding renewal of licenses.
The amount is small on a per-employee basis, however that E6 mln that the city saves can now be used for other purposes. If there's no benefit of using Windows over Ubuntu, this E6 mln (or more, over time) becomes a waste of money. Explain that to your voters, why you'd throw millions of Euros to some foreign company for some unnecessarily expensive product!
And why all or nothing? Because it makes the work of the IT staff a lot easier. Standardise computers, give them all the same hardware and software, and the bulk of the office can do exactly what they have to do. Maybe put in some non-standard (higher end, different OS, whatever) machines in the mix for the people that really need this - this are probably also the people that need the least support, so not much of an issue there.
Admirable, but why stop there? (Score:3, Interesting)
Do all 8300 employees need individual desktops? This is not a software development company, and those machines still need to be managed, maintained and replaced. Keep big depos of $250 chromebooks where anyone can get one for temporary or permanent use at office or home. Then return when done, as still working or broken. No IT costs, as data is in the cloud.
For heavier use, provide computer labs with a choice of platforms, so if someone really needs to work on the latest version of Office or Photoshop, they can.
And of course, anyone who is expected to work on computer for hours every day, or handle sensitive data, should get a laptop/desktop of their choice with reasonable price constraints. Savings from all the other use cases will more than pay for the luxury.
Yes they need individual desktops (Score:3)
Yes they do, because ergonomics require decent keyboards, screen and mouses. They may not need fat clients and would be off just as well with thin clients, but laptops or that form factor do *not* replace desk top systems since they still need the keyboard, mouse and screen and will essentially be used as a desktop almost all of the time.
They need access to their individual applications and data too. While it may be possible migrate all those to web applications or some client-server model, I doubt Turin h
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Ergonomics is for 40 hours/week desk workers. If you are a gardening supervisor and spend most of the time interacting with workers, you can manage an hour/day hunched in front of a laptop filling in forms. In fact, you will prefer the flexibility to work anywhere, connected to a Windows XP cloud instance running your thousand custom applications. Obviously if you are going to spend most of the day at your computer, you should have a nice big monitor and a height adjusting desk.
Re: (Score:2)
As opposed to what? Data on thousands of individual laptops? Servers in the hands of IT department in a company for which IT is not a core competency? I would think a cloud provider that specializes in this sort of stuff is less risky, all things considered.
Now, government secrets or say Coca Cola formula should be obviously stored in physically secured datacenter guarded by best security money can buy. Probably still not users laptops. But city gardening logs? I think Google Docs is fine.
You forgot every other factor (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
Waning! (Score:3, Interesting)
The company I work for has a number of workstations close to that of the one represented in TFA, in the 5 digits. Instead of forcing such a radical change down everyone's throat, they went about it step by step, over several years, and it's still ongoing.
They started by gradually replacing several critical programs with web apps or frontends, killing off IE6 with "please use firefox" prompts for good measure. This part was met with only some token resistance by the users, mostly because of a couple of glitches that where promptly fixed. After the first couple of months, general opinion was that the change was very positive, especially because of how cumbersome and hard to use the old apps (some over 10-20 years old) where.
The next phase was replacing Office, and it came with a huge backlash. The chief complaints where not so much about OpenOffice funcionality (along with some "it's *UGLY*!"), but about compatibility with MS generated documents. As of yet, it has been impossible to take MSOffice away from the "higher-ups", as any single minor UI or functionality change is bitched about as if it was a sign of the Apocalypse. Coupled with the long standing tradition of "sending down" 2-slide ppts, it was a huge mess.
It's somewhat better now, as PDF has become the standard for operational documents, and xls or docs are glossed over to make sure nothing's horribly broken.
Some areas (notably, reporting and analysis of KPIs) still rely heavily on excel features. Work is being done on that front, not so much because of the OSS push, but mainly because of the nightmare levels of voodoo in macro and VBA scripting involved. One hears talk of chicken blood and other dark rituals several times a week, which is how frequently something breaks.
There's also a couple of critical windows-specific programs that haven't yet been replaced, but when that's done in another year or so, pretty much any OS is a viable pick. Though definitely not an easy change, it can be done in small steps and with minimal disruption. YMMV, mostly on how dependent you are on MsOffice...
Well, this is interesting... (Score:2)
...open source guru Richard Stallman...
I am familiar with free software guru Richard Stallman, but who is this other guy with the same name?
u and i, i and u? (Score:3)
Munich, Turin --- Linux
Any other cities with a u and i in it? And would it work the other way, with i and u? /Simon
Oh Noes! (Score:3)
OS less significant (Score:3)
I remember when the Redmond faithful used to go on about needing Windows to get "real work" done. My work must not be real because I can do it on Windows, Linux, Mac, Android and iOS. I find myself using my Android tablet more and more for work and all my social media promotions.
The operating system is becoming less relevant every day. People are choosing devices, not operating systems.
Re:... and back again. (Score:5, Interesting)
(Yes, I'm trolling, but desktop experience for the average Joe really is a problem, no matter how many excuses we Linux folks make.)
Well, which would you think is harder - switching from an XP desktop to a Linux desktop, or switching from an XP desktop to a Metro desktop? Either way, there's a learning curve, so since switching is going to be a PITA either way, why not save some money?
Re: (Score:2)
As long as all the programs you use work, and are available, I agree.
Re: (Score:3)
Well, which would you think is harder - switching from an XP desktop to a Linux desktop, or switching from an XP desktop to a Metro desktop? Either way, there's a learning curve, so since switching is going to be a PITA either way, why not save some money?
Great point.
Anti-Linux folks get to count every possible cost of change, while the costs of anything that changes in the Windows world don't count, because, er ... look, a squirrel!
Re: (Score:2)
After all this time, have you even tried Windows 8 or do you prefer to just comment on it without any prior knowledge?
Re: (Score:2, Funny)
Because it is a stupid idea that died in the early 90's because it is bad UI design. For some reason MS thought it was time to try again.
It is mind-boggling how desperate the MS shill brigade is becoming.
Re:... and back again. (Score:4, Interesting)
It's not that someone's moved the cheese. Microsoft have moved the cheese with every version, and it was only mildly annoying. "I'll just go to Add/Remove Programs and... wait, what? Oh right, it's Programs and Features now"
The problem with 8 and 8.1 is that they are deliberately making the cheese less enjoyable. They took a shit on my cheese, and rubbed it in my face.
The full screen menu has a direct impact on short term memory - i.e. the computer equivalent of walking into a room and forgetting why you went there, except with the menu on the regular desktop you probably had cues to remind you what you were about to do. When the entire screen is blocked, it's easier to forget why you brought it up.
This doesn't happen to me when I'm focused on a task, but it does happen a lot if I'm distracted - something that happens constantly during the work day.
Re: (Score:3)
Metro is dying before our very eyes. It has been deemphasized in Windows 8.1 and by Windows 9 will be little more than a fancy start menu.
For chrissakes, most suppliers if enterprise systems I deal with still happily ship you Windows 7 Pro machines, or at least heavily advertised downgrade rights. "Business class" systems still ship with Windows 7 preinstalled. The enterprise customers never bloody wanted Metro to begin with, and so act as if Windows 8/8.1 didn't exist.
Re: (Score:3)
Nobody's complaining about moving the cheese. They just figure that as long as it's moving anyway, the kitchen will be a better place than the toilet.
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
Users in an office probably shouldn't be installing any software, if the right software is available to do your job (there is some convergent towards a decent web browser only) then why not switch to Linux.
If special sw is required then install the correct OS.
Re:... and back again. (Score:5, Informative)
Ubuntu user here... unless I'm installing something really odd (which, if you work for some municipality you probably shouldn't be doing on your work computer), software installation is just as easy - sometimes easier - than using Windows. The days of downloading something that won't install because of missing dependencies, so you download them and they won't install because of missing dependencies.... etc., etc., is long gone with pretty much every distribution.
Don't know how this will turn out, of course, they are all pretty much test cases, and I think some of them make these announcements just to get MS to make them really great deals, and I'm not saying it will definitely work... but when you whittle things down to what a company computer should have installed in it - office software, email clients, browsers, etc., then there's no fundamental reason why Linux shouldn't work (except that it's not MS... which is what most arguments seem to boil down to).
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
I use Kubuntu and can say the same. Just today I had to install SQL Server Enterprise on Windows 2012 on an AWS platform in a subnet with no internet connection. Guess what isn't included in default 2012? .Net 3.0. Guess what you can't install with a download, even if you can get it to the server? You need the install media, and with AWS you don't have the install media. So now I have to find it and copy it up to the server, all 3G of it for a 20M install because Windows. A 15 minute "it just installs
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
This installs PostgreSQL on kubuntu with all dependencies.
sudo apt-get install postgresql
You can do that from a GUI too. Same thing for mysql. We can argue about PostgreSQL/MySQL vs SQL Server but you would install sqlserver with sudo apt-get install sqlserver if MS made it run on Linux and cared about building a deb package for it. The Windows way of installing software is conceptually broken.
Re: (Score:2)
The days of downloading something that won't install because of missing dependencies
Sure, but you are missing the point when you say "downloading"...
What on Earth would you be downloading to install in this environment? The machines will be locked down anyway, tested and set to a specific configuration, there won't be any downloading of anything.
Re: (Score:2)
What you are missing and most here are missing is the backend ERP and accounting software. Yes the office documents are setup but you also have to setup the database and Interface for the reporting and auditing software.
Not all of that is available for Linux. What is available may or may not suit the needs you are trying to do.
You don't run a city out of spreadsheets.
Re: ... and back again. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
That hasn't been true for a very long time.
Re:... and back again. (Score:5, Informative)
As for interoperability, last time I looked, Germany is in Europe, where open document formats are now mandated in many jurisdictions. Much easier to do with LibreOffice than MS-Office, just by using the default settings. So as far as "shitty interoperability" goes, score one for switching to Linux/ODF/LibreOffice.
And lest you forget, a couple of decades ago people had a hard time with Windows 95 just turning off their computers. "What? I have to click on Start to turn it off?" The Metro start menu is a problem for people who are used to a different paradigm - especially one that they've had drilled into them over the last couple of decades.
Re:... and back again. (Score:5, Interesting)
Compared to XP users with Office2003 - most definitely in terms of workflow. Nearly a decade on I still get users bitching to me about the ribbon and asking me to find things in the UI for them.
That only matters if you are exchanging editable documents with outsiders. Personally I'm not fond of the idea of outsiders being able to change the terms of contracts or tweak the findings of technical reports to their own advantage.
That "interoperability" problem is overstated anyway. I've been in a mixed environment of *nix + MS for over a decade and the secretarial staff have had very few hassles over the years with documents in both openoffice format and MS formats - although incompatibilities between different versions of MS Word forced an upgrade on the MS side. That's with technical documents containing a lot of graphs, maps and other images. With typical office stuff I'm sure it would be even easier.
Re: (Score:2)
Are you seriously trying to claim Office 2013 in Windows 8 is radically different? And that its not that much different than Linux
Yes. Windows 8's new user interface "boot to metro", "push apps first and foremost," and "deprecate the desktop" is a radical departure from Windows XP / Windows 7. The metro is the new UI experience, and there is no sidestepping it.
It has caused extremely poor adoption of Windows 8 as users are sticking with Windows XP and 7 instead. Even XP users who acknowledge the need
Re: (Score:2)
http://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/201... [omgubuntu.co.uk]
Sort of.. But there is more to the story. It appears that most of the complaints were with OpenOffice.org capability. But neither, the migration to MS or decision to stick it out is set in stone as far as I am aware.
... and back again. (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
1) Claim to leave Windows for Linux
2) Use the law that passed in Italy a few days ago to guarantee refunds for the Windows Tax
3) Buy machines with Linux on them instead
4) Install pirated copies of Windows and Office on each machine.
Italy tends to operate more like an 3rd world country than a
Re: ... and back again. (Score:2)
Because government transparency is based on their choice of a desktop operating system...
And no, it isn't based on file formats used by your preferred office application suite either.
Re: (Score:2, Funny)
Good thing you posted AC; you just publicly confessed to child abuse.
Re: Windows is less expensive than Red Hat (Score:2)
Yeah, managing 8,300 Linux desktops and user accounts requires nothing more than a couple shell scripts...
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
We've done everything we can in our Active Directory network to overcome roaming profile issues. Even with folder redirection, you have a huge fat ntuser.dat for prone to corruption. Users' home folders on a server, with discrete text-based configuration files would be a dream.
Did you know that in 2014 you still can't safely put risking profiles on a DFS share?
Re: (Score:3)
I believe that a lot of Windows users (including administrators) simply don't understand anything beyond the personal computer. They just don't understand a world in which one can sit down at another machine, log in and continue working just like they had sat down at their regular workstation. It's an alien concept to them.
Re:This again... (Score:5, Interesting)
Well since you asked so nicely.
The government of the autonomous region of Valencia (Spain) earlier this month made available the next version of Lliurex, a customisation of the Edubuntu Linux distribution. The distro is used on over 110,000 PCs in schools in the Valencia region, saving some 36 million euro over the past nine years, the government says. [europa.eu]
Re: (Score:2)
Early days and not built for speed (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
For an unsustainable model, it sure has worked well for a very long time. You should let the millions of people using Libre Office, Firefox and Linux for year after year know that it's not working.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
looking at the results of the city of Munich's progress in ditching windows as evidence that
How many Microsoft shills are there who read Slashdot? I ask, because I keep seeing the same tired arguments over and over again that don't seem to make any sense or have already proven wrong.
Their world is eroding, and soon they will have only their denial left.
Soon the sole joy in their lives will be their triumphant "See! I told you so" when any vulnerability is exposed in Linux.
It is not only possible to get along perfectly well in a world without Microsoft, it's actually better. I don't have Office document incompatibility between Mac and PC versions, and in general, I spend a whole lot less time just getting things to work. Libre office documents work seamlessly between platforms Mac