MA Dept. of Revenue consider Linux

hansroy writes "Massachusetts Department of Revenue is still using Windows 95 on the desktop. Faced with upgrade costs of $500-600 per user, they're considering Linux at about one-third the cost. This comes at a very good time, as the new governor of MA is making significant budget cuts this year."

Comments

Re:Win95 no longer working?

[BWJones]

I don't understand this "we must upgrade" mindset.

The problem is that Microsoft is no longer supporting older releases thus "forcing" many users to upgrade regardless of their satisfaction with the current OS. This is what happens when your business model relys on folks constantly upgrading and is a problem with the PC market. Apple appears to buck the trend in many ways in that while they do not officially support really old versions of their MacOS Classic OS, you can still download it from Apple's servers for computers that cannot support more modern versions of the OS. This is one of the many reasons why I purchase Macs. They simply are functional machines for a lot longer than Wintel stuff, they hold their value longer, and they run lots of commonly used software making my return on investment much higher with Macintosh than with Wintel.

Re:But

[molarmass192]

Not so fast with Linux Terminal Server Project you could just purchase one heavy duty box and run terminals on all the existing hardware. Also, CodeWeavers CrossOver Office would let you run MS Office remotely within Linux. Personally, I'd maintain a base image on the PCs from a central server but I'm sure there's more than just Office to consider here. What other apps do they use inhouse and can they be run without the need for Windows?

Re:hopefully it works.

[Black Copter Control]

in addition, our parts database has pdf's, doc's, xls's and such as part of the oracle database. there is a web frontend, but what good is it if you can't open the microsoft attachments.

Never used Linux, have you?? Those are all openable under Linux -- especially the Win-95 versions which are the best reverse-engineered (if only due to the time that they've been out).

there are many other layers of shackles in place, and there is no way anyone would easily be able to change platforms.

Most such changes are structural in nature... Build once, deploy to the entire enterprise. Those sorts of things amortize very nicely with OS, but not so much so with MS per-seat licenses.

Since you'd have to teach a bunch of '95 users how to use XP anyways, training costs would probably be no different than with Linux. When I forced my roommate to deal with my Linux box, he had few months of "how do you do this" -- maybee once per week. After that he was an absolute Linux booster. Even though the machine could dual boot to Windows, he almost never did that after the first month -- no need to. Linux worked so much better for him.