German State Plans To Migrate 13,000 Workstations From Linux to Windows (zdnet.com) 325
An anonymous reader quotes ZDNet:
The German state of Lower Saxony is set to follow Munich in migrating thousands of official computers away from Linux to Microsoft's Windows. As initially reported by Heise, the state's tax authority has 13,000 workstations running OpenSuse -- which it adopted in 2006 in a well-received migration from Solaris -- that it now wants to migrate to a "current version" of Windows, presumably Windows 10.
The authority reasons that many of its field workers and telephone support services already use Windows, so standardisation makes sense. An upgrade of some kind would in any case be necessary soon, as the PCs are running OpenSuse versions 12.2 and 13.2, neither of which is supported anymore.
According to the Lower Saxony's draft budget, €5.9m is set aside for the migration in the coming year, with a further €7m annually over the following years; it's not yet clear how many years the migration would take... Munich's shift away from LiMux -- the city's own Ubuntu-based distribution -- is expected to cost more than €50m overall, involving the deployment of around 29,000 Windows-based computers.
The authority reasons that many of its field workers and telephone support services already use Windows, so standardisation makes sense. An upgrade of some kind would in any case be necessary soon, as the PCs are running OpenSuse versions 12.2 and 13.2, neither of which is supported anymore.
According to the Lower Saxony's draft budget, €5.9m is set aside for the migration in the coming year, with a further €7m annually over the following years; it's not yet clear how many years the migration would take... Munich's shift away from LiMux -- the city's own Ubuntu-based distribution -- is expected to cost more than €50m overall, involving the deployment of around 29,000 Windows-based computers.
No problem (Score:4, Funny)
This should be easy. The German state has become quite the expert on migration as of late. Let's just hope no-one gets raped in the process.
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I can see it now, a group of 7 rape a woman in the middle of a town square at midday in the middle of a parade.
Sadly the police and media /and the victim/ reports that no one can describe the assailants with any more detail than "multiple men",........
Of course the one guy who caught it on film is being charged for privacy violations and hate speech!
Wait is this Germany or Sweden?
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I do wonder given the have 1300 employees.
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How is indifference any different. If the end result is the same, that people fleeing catastrophe drown, does it matter whether it was an active effort to drown them, are just callousness and apathy that allows it to happen? You either make an active moral choice or you invoke indifference, and make the moral choice by default. A drowning man doesn't much care whether someone in the lifeboat is shoving his head under water, or is just sitting watching him die.
And let's remember here that countries like Syri
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Czechoslovakia is a happy story. Counter that with Yugoslavia. One happy ending doesn't disprove a number of far less happy endings.
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American history proves you wrong. Every country should have a Statue of Liberty. Melting pots make the best societies.
So America has one of the best societies? Not the impression I get from American posters here and the news generally. I would not want to live there, and it is becoming increasingly unpleasant to live in Europe as people like yourself try to make that into a melting pot too.
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Although I understand your anger, your rant in this off-topic threat is a bit misleading. Germany has actually taken the refugees that it has taken because of the law, more specifically because of Article 16a of the German Constitution, the German Asylum Act, the Geneva Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees of 1951 signed by Germany and many other countries, and Article 78 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union signed by every member state of the European Union. In addition to that,
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The people Germany is taking in are not "refugees", they are adventurers taking advantage of a situation. The "Geneva Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees of 1951" does not apply to adventurers. Unless you count as "refugees" guys (and they are mostly young men of fighting age) who are getting away from GFs they have got pregnant, escaping debts they owe, running from petty crimes catching up with them, thinking they can earn more money, or any of he the miriad of other reasons that drives them.
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But not as sheiße as Slashdot's handling of anything outside ISO-8859-1.
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Erste shweinhund gepostierung (Score:2)
Ich habe keine Teufeltommyenglanderpigdoggenversicherung fur meinem Strassenbahnhaltestellehandytasche!
Re: Erste shweinhund gepostierung (Score:3)
Was auch immer Du geraucht hast, gib mir bitte nichts davon ab!
Cost (Score:2)
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I expect that it is because all those immigrants that Germany wants to employ cheaply instead of its own workers have been brought up on pirated copies of Windows.
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Shame (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Shame (Score:5, Insightful)
That should tell you how much desktop Linux sucks ass.
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...Linux can't run our .Net based applications natively....
Why does anyone write applications that are tied to one operating system?
Re:Shame (Score:4, Insightful)
An excellent question, but unfortunately organizations don't always have the luxury of selecting software that isn't. Different industries have different software requirements that often bind their hands with respect to OS choice. For example, healthcare require specific features in an EMR, and there may not be enough of a selection out there in that specialized field to allow for the luxury of selecting Linux, at least not in a simplified way... and part of the reason for this, is, even if you could run such clients on Linux, (with the help of Mono or other tech), the proprietary support from some of these companies would not allow for it. It becomes too much of a hassle, and nobody in these industries care much for starting a "holy war" over an ecosystem that they don't invest much heart or soul into. In healthcare, for example, patient care is all that matters, and whether that happens in Linux or Windows is typically a very minor concern.
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In healthcare, for example, patient care is all that matters, and whether that happens in Linux or Windows is typically a very minor concern.
Today, Windows computers are routinely exploited to gain access to such critical infrastructure as the power grid. Why would you want to put your life at risk by helping the bad guys get into your medical devices too?
Re: Shame (Score:3, Interesting)
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Remote Desktops (Score:2)
I routinely use two of the larger EMRs, Epic and Cerner, at multiple sites and between different hospital groups. They all run as RDP/Citrix remote Windows sessions. I've run exactly the same sessions on a Linux machine. The underlying host OS is not that important.
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Why not when you can have it run on >80% of desktop computers?
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most Linux adoption is based upon ideology
Most Windows adoption is based on inertia and sales pressure.
Re:Shame (Score:5, Insightful)
Here's the value of Windows: When something breaks, you can blame it on those dumbasses at Microsoft and no one will hold you responsible because you're just using the same platform that 95 percent of the world uses. When something breaks in Linux, it's all your fault because you took a chance on a screwball operating system to save a few euros.
Back when IBM ruled the industry they had a slogan: "No one ever got fired for buying IBM." Well that's been the case with Microsoft since the '90s.
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Sad but true - it's your fault.
A few years ago I was porting an application to Linux and had a recurring problem with one particular workstation which would loose keyboard functionality and freeze after a reboot. It turned out that Linux became confused about which keyboard was active during system boot if the workstation was connected to a network with an active VPN session between other workstations. That resulted in corruption of a critical configuration file which then needed to be reinstalled befo
Re:Shame (Score:4, Insightful)
So you got a rude reply. Guess what happens in the commercial world? They write a compiler that doesn't manage to do a typedef correctly, you need to debug, provide a trivial test-case and quote them the spec that they are actually wrong (as they keep claiming there is no bug), months later and after a lot of time invested they acknowledge it. Yet another few months later they come back and say they are too busy, couldn't we do without it for a while longer.
I've seen few companies where you'd get something better than the same reaction as you got from the "community", just with more politeness but minus the option to fix it yourself.
Same company has a tool that would be very useful if it supported pipes. Unfortunately someone felt they needed to add a stat call to make sure the input is a file. They've not managed to remove that single line of useless check in about a year.
They don't say "fuck off". But they're happy to leave you hoping until you die of old age (or at least retire). I still consider "fuck off" the reply I'd rather get.
Even though I admit your frustration at the episode is justified. I just disagree on it being an argument FOR proprietary.
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Re: Shame (Score:2)
A sane UI meant for desktops not phones complete with a start menu and controls to Maximize and resize Windows familiar to the user, Active Directory and group policy, Organization units, Oracle software, legacy stuff, activeX aka COM Excel and IE add-ons, printer drivers, wifi connectivity with EAP and all devices, Endpoint Security Protection software, Outlook for Free/Busy meeting & invites, system restore and chkdisk that mere techs can use(not senior admins), bitlocker, .pac files proxy, ADFS singl
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This is the real issue. Most users are technically illiterate. Yes, they may be in their 20s and can multitask Instagram and Facebook at the same time, but really, they are crazy technically illiterate. When the network connection drops and they don't realize it's because they kicked the CAT6 cable out of its socket, they call the IT department. IT workers that know Linux can only take so much of that before they move on to better jobs for the sake of their sanity. For a Windows IT worker, that's just a nor
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What are you using? I use KDE Plasma. Doesn't suck, far from it.
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Kde is too slow for network files.
Whaaaat?
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Who benefits by replacing inherently secure Linux with malware magnet Windows? Russia does most certainly. And just need to coopt as few as one official, a few weeks of over-the-paunch sex should do it, easier than winning at Russian roulette.
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Please. Windows hasn't been a malware magnet for years. The vast majority of malware out there targets applications (Adobe is good for this) and silly users who will run executables with admin privileges. There's very little malware out there targeting any OS these days.
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Willingly paying for closed source malware and spyware isn't my idea of using money wisely.
Since when do enterprises get the malware and spyware version?
Interesting dilemma (Score:4, Funny)
Idealism vs. getting shit done. It's no surprise that Germany's government is choosing getting shit done.
They should try that for electricity generation next.
Re:Interesting dilemma (Score:4, Interesting)
After dealing with German bureaucracy for the past eight years I can assure you, the German government's list of interests doesn't include "Get shit done".
I have for 20 years (Score:2)
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And they do indeed get shit done, the problem is that they are stickler for rules, and many people dislike that and feel it is a waste of time.
Rules as such are okay, the problem is when you've painted yourself into a corner nobody's the slightest bit flexible or helpful on how to get out of there. It could be because you've missed or misunderstood something, didn't understand the dependencies or somehow did it wrong. In other countries I've had some success with "Well maybe this wasn't the right way but this is where I am now so what can I do from here?" and get a useful answer. Germans like to reply "You should have..." and okay, I should have.
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No, the problem is EXACTLY that they are a stickler for rules rather than getting things done. There is no flexibility, no grey area in which things get done unless the rules specifically allow it.
Let me give you a very recent example. A year ago I had eye surgery to get a cornea transplant, and to help the cornea attach and not be rejected I'm taking a series of different medications and eye drops. Monday of this week I went to my doctor to refill my prescription for my eye drops only to find out he's on v
outcome? (Score:2)
I'm really curious how this turned out. I am all frustrated on your behalf ready to threaten a pharmacist to prevent your eyes from falling out. I hate rules and authority with an irrational passion. And yet I rarely change panes without signaling and become irritated at people who do. Maybe that is a politeness thing not a rule thing. I do like politeness. Right up to the point someone is quoting rules at me while my immune system is removing my new corneas.
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It turned out such that I am using some leftover eyedrops of a different brand I used to use before they swapped me to the current ones. Never got a reply to my second email asking if they understood the problem of telling me they couldn't help me while my doctor was away until they could get a note from the doctor who is away.
In such case you can doctor hop (Score:2)
Actually no they can't do anything if it is not an emergency/enduring disease, because first you have to be referred by A doctor. They count as specialist and before you go to a specialist baring emergency & chronicle disease, you have to got to a doctor. This actually avoid abuses and flooding specialist when not needed. But note that I said *a* doctor. Not *your* doctor. Do
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And thus you prove the point that is being made - that the Rules are more important than Getting Shit Done.
This is not some random hospital I contacted. This is a hospital where I have a current treatment going, but because the last time I was there was in April they refuse to write ONE prescription in order to Get Shit Done.
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There's no problem with sticking to rules. The problem is the formation and design of the rules in the first place. The Dutch are good at sticking to rules too, however the rules don't actually get in the way of progress.
In Germany specifically sticking to the rules IS a waste of time and the rules result in very little benefit other than to keep the bureaucratic wheel turning and people employed. Japan has a similar culture and set of rules.
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Every decision I don't like is always motivated by someone getting bribed. If people stopped taking bribes and started to do the things that appeal to me emotionally, everything in the world would be a paradise for all.
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The overwhelming majority of everyone chooses X. Germany now also chooses X. You really think bribery and corruption are the most likely reasons?
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There has to be some reason for the state to make a choice that clearly hurts them in multiple severe ways.
Most obvious possible reason: they disagree. They don't think it hurts them.
Re: Interesting dilemma (Score:2)
Hey I am a non techie CFO and need an Excel file with 50,000 rows in 25 columns which pull data from an Oracle database and uses thingie called SmartView Excel add-on. Can you help me?
Oh I forget to mention the German department of revenue is serving a file on a corporate Windows based share internally that I need to access. Their documentation mentioned about a trust relationship between something called a domain and ADFS SSO single sign on MFA authentication needs to be set so we can access material whate
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Where tax payers should be concerned is... (Score:5, Insightful)
That this is being done *without* a cost-benefit analysis.
There is a certain amount of politics here, but if I were a citizen/tax payer of Lower Saxony I'd be mostly concerned that this is being done before an analysis is available.
I understand that Open Suse 12.2 and 12.3 are obsolete, but I would think that migrating to Leap 42 or Leap 15 would would be a lot cheaper than buying Windows 10 licenses. In TFA, they cite the issue that telephone support is now being done on Windows - but I would think that it would be more cost effective to move them to Linux.
But, without any kind of analysis, the people who are going to pay for this won't know.
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From TFA:
Lower Saxony's tax authority will now conduct a cost-benefit analysis on the migration.
Decision was made before the analysis was done.
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Decision was made before the analysis was done.
A quick guide on how things work in Germany, not just in politics but also in private businesses. All those things you hold for granted in the USA, the ability to work together with someone from another department, or the adoption of an "idea" all of those have hopelessly bureaucratic channels to work through. Pretty much every thing you need to do over here involves you doing the hard work up front off the books to convince your boss (or someone else's) that doing the hard work is actually worth the time a
POTUS declares EU as fiend (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:POTUS declares EU as fiend (Score:4, Interesting)
If EU is not a friend anymore according to Trump, why does the EU allow USA software in their administration?
Snarky answer:
. . . probably because the EU is thinking long term, and that in six years, Trump won't be POTUS anymore.
And then everyone will pretend to be friends again.
Realistic answer:
. . . probably for the same reason that the US government is using software from SAP, produced in Germany, an enemy state of the US in the current government's eyes.
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8 - 2 = ??
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Same reason China uses US-designed semiconductors: no viable homegrown alternatives, now or in the foreseeable future. With some noteworthy exceptions, Europe has been falling further behind in areas of technology recently.
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If EU is not a friend anymore according to Trump, why does the EU allow USA software in their administration?
Because the EU like the rest of the sane world understand that shit coming from Trump's mouth is just that. Also common, EU is not a friend? Where did you get that idea from? Tuesday? As of Wednesday we're besties working towards open trade and Junker even gave Trump a kiss on the cheek.
Don't worry though, a stopped clock is wrong twice a day, and pretty much anything you think Trump thinks about something or someone is probably correct every other week too. Now that we're besties I fully expect him to lau
Linux is the worst (Score:2)
I hate it when an operating system doesn't charge me thousands of dollars per year to renew licenses
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You must not be using an enterprise version then. RedHat charges $299 per workstation license, per year, if you want support, $179 if you want to do it yourself. You can get the desktop version with no support, but you're still going to pay $49 / yr. Windows 10 is $84 / yr in comparison. So if you're going to compare apples to apples by comparing the pricing of enterprise licensing with support, then you're not really any better off in either camp.
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You must not be using an enterprise version then. RedHat charges $299 per workstation license, per year.
Somebody uses Redhat for workstations? Who? The vast majority of Redhat installs are servers. Stupidly expensive maintenance subscriptions imho, but it makes sense to somebody. I suppose, the cost is nothing compared to managing more machines with fewer admins.
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You must not be using an enterprise version then. RedHat charges $299 per workstation license, per year.
Somebody uses Redhat for workstations? Who? The vast majority of Redhat installs are servers. Stupidly expensive maintenance subscriptions imho, but it makes sense to somebody. I suppose, the cost is nothing compared to managing more machines with fewer admins.
It's a lame debate tactic. Yeah, if you cherry pick the most expensive way you could use Linux, it's expensive. How about that.
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I'm not saying Linux is expensive. I am saying, some server operators choose to pay a lot of money to Red Hat, when any serious Linux geek knows it's probably a dump idea because free distros are at least as reliable and usually have more up to date kernels. That's their business.
The big boys like Google, Facebook and even Microsoft don't buy per-machine support from Red Hat, and for the most do not run RPM-based distros. They do however hire Red Hat for consulting from time to time.
Speaking of lame, it's k
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You must not be using an enterprise version then. RedHat charges $299 per workstation license, per year, if you want support, $179 if you want to do it yourself. You can get the desktop version with no support, but you're still going to pay $49 / yr. Windows 10 is $84 / yr in comparison. So if you're going to compare apples to apples by comparing the pricing of enterprise licensing with support, then you're not really any better off in either camp.
And?
Realistically, most places with Windows support it themselves. That's while still paying for the licenses.
And you know perfectly well there are good usable Linux distributions that don't require paid support licenses. With Windows, you pay whether you use any support or not, no matter what.
With Linux you can have any kind of custom distribution you want. Not so, Windows.
Linux, "telemetry" optional. Windows, mandatory ...
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Windows (Score:2, Insightful)
Sorry I cant help you right now my computer is updating.
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The numbers (Score:2)
They have 13,000 linux-based computers, but after paying €50m to migrate they'll deploy 29,000 windows computers. This is bonkers. There has got to be conflict of interest here somewhere.
FAIL. (Score:2)
HAHAHHAHA
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No (Score:3)
I wish more companies would make OSX builds of software. I'd run a hackintosh in a heartbeat.
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Try this anecdotal evidence:
Open LibreOffice Calc 6.0.2.1, rotate text 180 and add borders. Things look, print and export with huge black lines.
Open random docx your friend or colleague sent you, it looks different or even terrible (yes, they are bad at formatting, yes, it would look slightly better if you had Microsoft fonts installed).
Print a document to an USB printer, unplug it during printing. Now google how to "Enable" your cups printer.
Open Firefox on your touchscreen laptop, try finger scrolling. It
Re:LOL (Score:5, Insightful)
This [beebom.com] is the graph that should worry Microsoft.
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Right, MS bailed on phones, therefore losing the war. Google is moving radidly into the full PC desktop space with ChromeOS aka Linux (check out Crostini [chromeunboxed.com]) and they already have a lock on the cloud productivity space. You will also see ChromeOS increasingly present with a standard windowing interface. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to see that many major software vendors are already eyeing ChromeOS ports. That's Microsoft's last line of defence.
Even without defeating Microsoft on its home turf, the world
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Google is moving radidly into the full PC desktop space with ChromeOS aka Linux (check out Crostini [chromeunboxed.com]) and they already have a lock on the cloud productivity space.
Are you high? ChomeOS is a blip in a rounding error of the market share.
Are you drunk? Chromebook shipments surge by 38 percent, cutting into Windows 10 PCs. [pcworld.com] Chromebooks are perennial Amazon bestsellers. [amazon.com] Chromebooks hold a majority of the US K-12 market. [edtechmagazine.com] Chromebooks can do everything Android can. [androidcentral.com] Time to sober up. Or don't, nobody cares about your Slashdot upchuck.
Did I mention, Chromebooks are pretty damn secure.
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Let's be real: 99% of Windows revenue comes from companies who don't care about Android, ChromeOS or any other OS in their AD- fueled desktops.
Good thing that segment of employees is shrinking so they can lay off some of those fat ass point and click Windows sysadmins.
And when K12 and Android users get a job, they will also use.. a Windows desktop.
See, that's the point, a lot of them won't because email isn't how you do things now, and Microsoft doesn't do a whole lot more of value. They don't even do a great job on email. So many businesses running on Gmail now. You don't need to accept my prediction, it's already a thing, and it's getting bigger fast. Why do you think PC sales are tanking? [forbes.com]
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Why? Kids playing with toys doesn't affect the OS that is used to keep the economy going. And if someone decided they do want to attempt to do work on their phone, MS is right there with the complete office suite available on Android.
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Kids playing with toys doesn't affect the OS that is used to keep the economy going.
Haha, that's really funny. Surely you have not forgotten that the PC was originally a toy home computer to compete with Apple II.
Even if you are a knuckledragger with mod points you did not change the facts because the internet remembers [ibm.com]
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Yeah I know. We'll all be writing our dissertations on our phones shortly. Which kind of leads me to my point: You'll be doing it with Microsoft Office on Android.
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So you are comparing cell phones to computers? I wonder which one people buy more...
Seriously? Cell phones, or rather smart phones. Revenue for smartphones and tablets passed revenue for PCs/Laptops years ago.
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Unfortunately the OS only matters in terms of what software it can run.
And Windows can't run Android apps, so it is doomed.
But not too soon I hope, because I quite like the cheap PC hardware scene for Linux installs. Who woulda thunkit, Windows hardware turns out to be more open for desktop Linux than Google machines.
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Who woulda thunkit, Windows hardware turns out to be more open for desktop Linux than Google machines.
Unless you get a google machine to which someone has ported libreboot...
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It all comes down to Microsoft Office. If you have it then people will want to use your machine. If you don't they'll rebel.
LibreOffice, OpenOffice, Google Docs don't cut it. People want MS Office. If they had that they wouldn't care if its Linux or AmigaOS or ProDos (well.. maybe they'd object to ProDos these days).
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It all comes down to Microsoft Office. If you have it then people will want to use your machine.
The 90's called and wants you back. Most people don't give a crap what they write their text on, most people don't even write documents like the old days. It's all instant messages and video chat now. You retired or something?
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The reality though is most apps are web based and windows still has more than 90% of the desktop marketshare and that is not changing anytime soon with no real competition out there.
Microsoft is indeed hanging onto its illegally gotten share of the PC market but the PC market is shrinking fast, didn't get the memo?