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Largo Loving Linux
A little over a year ago, dot.kde.org and Newsforge did stories on the Linux-based systems being used in Largo, FL to run the city government. Roblimo went down there, drank their coffee, and wrote a follow-up piece which might be, but wasn't, entitled "How to be a sysadmin whose pager doesn't go off". (Newsforge is part of OSDN.)
Everything backed up... neat stacks of CAT5... no emergencies... no rushing...
Are we quite sure these guys are HUMAN sysadmins, not evil intergalactic sysadmins from Myronacia here to lure us all into their evil plot of low-stress jobs and a life of being eaten?
best web host ever
What does Hayasaka think of it.
"My God...It's full of ads!" -Fry, about the Internet, Futurama
Considering that 40 out of the 50 U.S. states are experience severe budget shortfalls, a good way to get more bang for the buck is to consider switching to open sourced software. You have:
1) Front-end savings on licensing.(perhaps offset by re-training costs)
2) Savings on future licensing
3) Less tech support headaches and consequently less staffing requirements.
As the article illustrates, spending 1.3% off a municipal budget vs. 3% (or 4%) is a substantial savings. Bring that up to the state level and you are talking tens to hundreds of millions.
I won't even start talking about the Feds...
I'm glad a municipality has caught onto hitting eBay for quality used equipment, as Largo did according to the article. OSS, plus cheaper (and SLIGHTLY) older equipment can add up to huge cost savings. Hell, any .com that dies probably has enough server and networking hardware to outfit any small company. Municipalities need to make it easier for their IT managers to purchase items used (like from eBay) and quit limiting themsleves to purchasing contracts.
for Debian Does Dallas!
"Don't forget, Harold isn't getting paid by anyone except Largo taxpayers, and his job is to keep their IT expenses as low as he can while providing ever-better IT services to the city employees who use them to do their jobs. In light of this, Harold's comparative cost figures are probably at least as trustworthy as anyone's -- and lots more trustworthy than some."
Its good to finally see a TCO that is about as unbiased as you can get. Other than this I've not yet to see a TCO (either proclaiming Linux or Windows) that isn't slanted in some way to paid for by a OS supplier.
Having said that, the 1.3% vs. 3% IT budget cost reduction is not all because of linux. All of that dirt cheap hardward adds up. I'm sure their bottom sure would still be significantly less than 3% even if they did use windows. Spending a couple dollars on a dumb terminal equals hugh hardware savings.
I'd say linux is just icing on the cake, (and probably leads to more silent beepers and a couple less admins). Still, remember that this is a total implementation comparision between municipalities, not purely Windows vs. Linux.
Why, o why must the sky fall when I've learned to fly?
I thought we were against digitized cops with access to all our private data.
I worked as the sysadmin/programmer/everything it for a police department for a few years, including working on a project to put laptops in the police cars. Putting laptops in cars is a great idea, but unchecked, could have cause for concern.
Allowing officers to lookup their own plates and see information about the possible drivers, including photos if available, is nothing but a great idea. Its simply a matter of putting information they already access at the right time in the right place. Most of the software also allows them to write and access all their police reports from the car. Not only does this allow them to spend less time working on the interminable paperwork, but be in the field doing it making themselves more valuable to the public.
Now, there also are some major problems with unchecked use of computer systems in the police departments, specifically squad car use. Every incident is logged into huge logbooks, traditionally by the dispatcher. More and more, those logbooks are being moved to computer systems. This allows them to look up any past incidents with a subject much easier.
On one hand, it would be very useful to know that John Doe has a history of violence to police officers, but on the other hand, they are able to build up huge files on people without allowing the subjects to have a trial to defend themselves. Once departments start sharing their incident databases, it would be possible for an officer to lookup any time any police had contact with you, whether you were actually charged with something or not.
It will be interesting to see how this one turns out.
I also was impressed that they spend less than half the money other towns do on their IT. Of course, from the sysadmin POV that's bad as it means they aren't paid much. But that's the price of freedom, I guess.
One of the real plusses of being UNIX savvy in general, and GNU/Linux/free software/open source savvy in particular, is that one actually often earns a better living than their Microsoftoid equivelents. Why? Because paying one knowledgable person who, in a GNU/Linux, *BSD, or *NIX shop can do the work that requires three or four MSCE's (assuming a modicum of competence on the MSCE's part, an assumption that is, as many here have pointed out repeatedly, is not one that is safe to make), 1.5 - 2 times the salary still translates into a tremendous human resources savings, and brings with it the added benefits of expertise, lower turnover, and attention to detail (and research) pointed out in this article.
If you are saving money because your staffing requirements are lower (in raw numbers of bodies), your licensing costs are lower, and your TCO costs are lower (all nearly always true with GNU/Linux or FreeBSD vs. Microsoft), you can pay a premium for really good people and have the benefits that brings along with tremendous savings.
Which is great for everyone, except shoddy admins who probably should find another line of work anyway. It is certainly great for those of us who know what we are doing and take pride in doing quality work for our clients/employers, and like to be rewarded in kind.
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
I'd recommend Cyrus IMAP with Postfix SMTP, run both in SSL (with SMTP AUTH) and point it all to an OpenLDAP backend. Put phpgroupware in for web-based access. In fact, everything you do should be using LDAP, preferably LDAP over SSL, since once you go LDAP you start seeing neat possibilities open up when it comes to offering single username & password everywhere..
If compatibility with Outlook is not an issue, this is the easiest and thriftiest way to get groupware functionality.
After having worked for a highschool IT dept for 3 years, and having dealt with a univsersity IT dept for 2 years, i have to ask: why can't schools do this?
My highschool regularly got grants for buying hardware, and would then proceed to spend $2000 per windows workstation, not including software (they didn't license until they got yelled at by M$). But, they wouldn't hire more then 1 IT guy for 250 workstations, so nothing ever worked.
Same at my university. Aside from all the departmental and faculty machines (~4500), there are about 1500 open-area machines for students. These are a mix of unix thin-clients running solaris, and wintel machines, most of which are outdated. They insist upon buying new NCD/Sun thin-clients, running solaris, or buying new Wintel machines running win2k. Yet these machines cost them $1500-$2000 a piece! And all the old unix clinets (~800) running solaris are super slow (5+ minutes to log in!). Explain to me why a city, with offices here,there, and everywhere, manages to run a linux-based thin-client network, while a university with a huge IT budget runs one that's too slow to use!
Considering the non-existant cost of "outdated" hardware in the marketplace, people would figure out that to run an office suite, web browser, and email, all you need is a P150!!!
-Michael Roy Some people are like Slinkies. Not really useful, but you can't help smiling when you see one tumble down
I suspect they aren't using 802.11b or cellular for their wireless connection. Probably they're using a radio datalink on a dedicated channel in a band reserved for their use. Those tend to be much less susceptible to link-lossage.
As for as Terminal Services or Citrix, I've used both. Their performance does not measure up to X11 in a remote application, because X11 was designed for network connections while TS and Citrix were both grafted onto a system that assumed it was dealing with a physical screen. You can do a lot hooking into GDI, but in the end the system wasn't designed to support the application. Server performance isn't the bottleneck, it's the relatively low-bandwidth connection between the server and the client.
As for free license fees, sure they're free now. Is MS going to guarantee that all upgrades to all future versions will also be free? I doubt it, and there's the hook inside that tasty free-license bait. With Linux, the city's guaranteed that in 10 years their system will still be available without paying license fees or worrying about license bookkeeping to keep the BSA off their backs.