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Microsoft Alternative in Extremadura, Spain
grylnsmn writes "The Washington Post today has a front page article talking about how the Extremadura region in Spain is converting all government offices, businesses, and home from Windows to Linux. The article talks of their problems last spring and how the community banded together to solve them. "But the glitches are more an annoyance, [Ana Acevedo, who heads one of the government's document-processing units] said, than a hassle. 'It's mostly very tiny things,' she said." Overall, this is an important testbed for localities all over the world who are looking at making the switch. Overall, a very good and balanced article." Update: 11/03 20:37 GMT by T : Headline misspelled "Extremadura" as "Extramadura" -- fixed now.
OK, i'll not put my head on the block and make bold claims like "the revolution is beginning" or somesuch, but the constant small trickle of stories like these of insututions and corporations swithing from WIndows to Linux shows that Linux is a true alternative to Windows.
IT GETS THE JOB *DONE*.
This likely will get moderated down because of the slashdot bias, but it must be pointed out...
"The article talks of their problems last spring and how the community banded together to solve them. But the glitches are more an annoyance, [Ana Acevedo, who heads one of the government's document-processing units] said, than a hassle."
In other words, Microsoft software is terrible and GNU/Linux software is great.
"Overall, a very good and balanced article."
So it's a good article and balanced because it's pro-GNU/Linux and anti-MS.
Come on. No article is completely balanced but Slashdot seems to put a pro-Linux skew on everything. I like Linux too but I'd rather see it to be unbiased rather than have an immature hatred of everything MS. I mean, I see most stuff that MS did was negative, but Slashdot even managed to put an anti-MS tilt on an article saying that Win2k with SP3 was secure, saying that it took three service packs to do that. Linux patches things all the time too, and there's nothing wrong with patches to fix holes! But come on, please give some unbiased feedback. If it is unbiased I'm sure it will come out pro-Linux, but it doesn't have to be Pro-GNU/Linux Anti-Microsoft on _every single article_.
It would be great to see something like that spread more widely, but hey, it's a great start!
It's psychosomatic. You need a lobotomy. I'll get a saw.
LOL! Good one. Unfortunately Microsoft you made it war a long, long time ago, by killing anything that stood in your way. The computer industry has been in their grip for years, we've seen some of the largest abuses of the free market in history, we've seen the law bought, then bought again and now they tell people not to be emotional?
"There's been too much theology and not enough economic analysis in the debate so far," said Bradford L. Smith, Microsoft's general counsel, who oversees the company's global lobbying tea
This is rich coming from the company that described the GPL as "unamerican". I guess they're scared people might realise there's more to computers than the opcodes they run?
"Consider that there's a lot more to the total cost and value of a product than the initial offering somebody might give you," Smith said. For instance, it is often expensive to find support services for free software, whereas such help comes bundled with the purchase of Windows. And companies like Microsoft have a vested interest in updating their products; that's not necessarily so with free software.
You can pay as much as you like Linux tech support. I paid nothing for mine, and #linuxhelp came through every single time. You can buy it if you like, and it'll be of much higher quality than Microsofts - have you ever actually tried to get through to them on the phone when it matters?
"Somebody might give you a free puppy this afternoon," Smith said, "but you're going to have to go buy dog food in the morning."
When you use analogies, you should be careful that they can't be turned around on you. In Microsofts case, they'll sell you a puppy, then kill it when it gets old and force you to buy a new one. And you still have to buy dog food.
The software has become so popular that it has been downloaded more than 55,000 times from www.linex.org by people outside Extremadura.
Good for them. I hope they succeed, and let the community know if they need anything.
See if we can get businesses as a whole to start on Linux and consolidate that way. New startups, for instance -- rather than make a painful transition later, start early.
Part of the reason MS is so entrenched is because everyone expects to see it everywhere. The more of Linux they see in other places, and unexpected ones, the better a chance people will have of taking it seriously -- and actually buying it, using it, installing it, adopting it as their own, etc.
Maybe the idea of "Linux is dead on the desktop" is premature. Especially if enough places around the world prove it just ain't so?
Let's see, they've already transformed 10,000 machines which were previously enslaved to the windows drum over to the free'n'easy linux beat :-)
...) from above in return for bloody coin.
:-)
They've got another 100,000 scheduled for next year. That drum's just going to get louder, and louder, and louder. Can you hear it yet ? What you are hearing, ladies and gentlemen, is the hammering-in of the thin end of the wedge, and I for one can't wait for that wedge to grow.
Windows is the him-use-deep-magick-solve-problem approach, an oligarchy of high priests results with the local priests doling out consolences (note: not solutions
Linux is a meritocracy, where librarians are shown their due worth, knowledge is open to all, and the only currency you need spend is time, the only fear you need have is looking stupid when asking beginner questions. Even then, you are mostly treated well because of the "There but for the grace of [insert deity] go I" mentality.
No, I'm not a librarian, but I much prefer the latter over the former
Simon.
Physicists get Hadrons!
I live here, grew up here, and know that I'm not the only one who reads every front page story in the Post every day.
Best Slashdot Co
What's newsworthy about this story is that someone has taken a significant step towards doing it.
What I'm listening to now on Pandora...
Ooooh, goody, another libertarian troll!
There have always been alternatives. The issue was whether Microsoft was using its dominant position in the industry to strangle anyone it thought might be a competitor- e.g. using its near-monopoly on preloaded OSes to force OEMs into deals that prohibited loading competitor's software as well. It's not illegal to have a monopoly alone; you have to leverage that monopoly in restraint of trade. Rather than actually innovate their way into new markets, they simply used their existing strength to prevent others from participating.
(A related example: my parents home still has pieces of phone equipment that say "property of AT&T", because before their monopoly was split up you couldn't use non-AT&T equipment, even though in theory anyone could manufacture it.)
The antitrust thing was BS because browser tying was a bullshit example and the government made a crappy case. Microsoft did plenty of worse things that it deserved to get slapped down for. Like telling Apple that if it didn't make IE the default browser on OS 9 and hide Netscape, they'd drop Office for Mac.
And, um, you do realize that the antitrust suit was brought by the US government on behalf of US consumers, and not the Spanish government, right? Or would such facts get in the way of your misguided free-market cheerleading?
I recently went with a friend to buy a new computer and found 2 pre-built systems with identical hardware but different operating systems. One had Windows XP and the other Redhat. There was a $200 price difference between the systems and it was due to the software license cost.
The savings alone would have been enough for me to decide on the Linux box but my friend has no experience on any OS other that Microsoft so he went with the XP. The first time I had to work on a Sun Solaris box, it took a few days for me to figure out how the damn thing worked but I learned. Same for Linux, but with time and use I am pretty comfortable with the OS.
Until people either begin their computer learning or receive training with non-Microsoft operating systems, I don't see any major shift from MS/OS to open source in the US any time soon, even though the cost savings could be in the billions.
"Somebody might give you a free puppy this afternoon," Smith said, "but you're going to have to go buy dog food in the morning."
;-)
Uh, really weak! If someone sells me a puppy, I'm still going to have to buy dog food in the morning.
But I'll have less money, in the end
By being so lax on MSFT.
Often it is said that it is only logical, in these times of economic troubles, that the US government does not act too harsh on 'its own' software powerhouse MSFT.
But (apart from the damage it does to other domestic software companies): as can be read in the article, many foreign institutions/governments are very uneasy at the thought of being at the mercy of a single, foreign company (and rightly so). Therefore they abandon (or try to, gradually they shall succeed) MSFT and turn to the only alternative: Linux or other open source solutions.
Not that I oppose this, not at all. But from the perspective of US economic interest, it is clear that this diminishes software export turnover, which is bad. A more effective war against MSFT's illegal behaviour and monopoly would give alternative companies a chance, many of them would also be US companies. They could fill the hole, partly instead of Linux; this would create more choice for everyone, and would make many foreign governments feel more comfortable at the thought of importing and being dependant on foreign software. The net effect for the US trade balance of a harsh attitude against MSFT therefore would surely be positive, instead of negative as is often thought.
I was talking about this with people at the SCALE Linux expo yesterday. Linux will have a tough time gaining market share in the U.S. for assorted reasons. But countries outside the U.S. software and hardware costs make running cutting edge system cost prohibitive. With Linux using Linux they can save enough money on software and reinvest in hardware, but also invest in developers to support their business and contribute back to world community. This will help improve Linux and OSS an draw the attention of more U.S. users. Increased use of Linux by business outside the U.S. will give Linux the track record U.S. enterprises want to see.
No, the job of the government is not to tell you what operating system to use -though US government seems to have told you exactly that.
But it's the job of the government:
- To save costs in administration.
- To make sure citizens are given options in a free market.
- To worry about the security of the data they manage and be sure software they use makes exactly what it's intended to do.
- Anything that can benefit the community as a whole...
Ofcouse there's politics behind; they want their own distibution like France(mandrake) and Germany(SuSE). Besides I guess one of the important tasks for LinEx is likely to write a simpler installer and make disks that defaults to spanish locale and supports euro-sign out of the box (unlike Debian )
The bugs I'm worried about are security bugs. What happens when remotely exploitable holes start showing up in this distribution?
The one feature I like about Windows (& Mac OS) that I haven't seen in any Linux distribution yet is no cost, easy to install security patches. Windows Update, Critical Update Notification, and the like. Non-geeks aren't going to cope too well with, "download this patch, apply it, recompile, and restart the affected service (or reboot)."
Does Extremadura have something in place to handle this?
If you say, "now I'll be modded down because of X", I'll happily oblige.
It would have been nice to see Debian get some press, IMO.
"Demolish competition by knowing everything they do and thwarting their every move in the relevant spaces"
That's called business. Every other decent business does the same thing, or at least try to. There's nothing unusual about Microsoft except for the fact that they're very successful.
What happens when remotely exploitable holes start showing up in this distribution?
Exactly the same thing as happens when it does on Windows. Unless you have a very alert sysadmin (and very few have), the hole will go unpatched for a long time, then some CEO or marketing dude executes an attachement, and boom.
Then, some support guy will install the updates/patches that are needed.
No matter how much easier it may be on Windows, users doesn't upgrade anyways - for those that actually do, the Linux way is probably easy enough.
That does seem pretty steep, but consider how much licenses for WinXP and Office at about $600 per computer. (that's not even getting into annual license fees for XP)
It says they've already installed it on 10,000 systems and are planning to put it on a total of 100,000. So even at that seemingly ridiculous price, they've spent $180,000 instead of $6,000,000 on the first 10K systems, and in the long run will spend $180,000 instead of $60,000,000.
In addition to saving $59,820,000 (!!!) in software costs, I imagine that, like many of us in the U.S., they're able to extend the life of their older hardware for additional savings.
The requested URL
So, the number really doesn't sound unreasonable. And when that cost is spread over the 110,000 machines the article mentions (10K already converted to Linux, 100K planned in near future), that's only about $1.64 per computer. Sounds like a bargain to me. I'm sure they'll have additional costs by the time it's all done. But I suspect the development cost of customizing their Linux distro will be a fraction of the licensing cost of Windows on a similar number of installations. Plus, they won't be under Microsoft's thumb. And with more efforts like this, maybe the rest of us can eventually squirm out from under it too. Kudos to them.
Except that, so far, 'boom' in Windows means the OS and possibly the system goes down, in Linux the marketing dude's home directory takes the damage unless the entire deprtment is running root. So no, not exactly the same thing.