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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."
I gotta say, what's cheaper?
1. $600 for WinXP
2. Putting Linux on all the machines, configuring them to work interoperably with the Windows machines, and retraining everyone?
No idea which really is cheaper, but I wouldn't automatically say "Linux is cheaper". Training costs money. Interoperability work costs money.
-Erwos
Plausible conjecture should not be misrepresented as proof positive.
Running on 95 at this point is a good example of actually getting use out of your hardware and software. If you don't have an absolute need for the newest, snazziest, fastest machine in the world with the latest and "greatest" (YMMV) operating system and software, then don't bother. Having them consider linux is the best thing they can do, since even if a vendor drops support, updating one's system is free if you do it right. Imagine being an administrator of an all-Gentoo government department...you could easily update everyone from your own desk via terminal emulation, simultaneously from your office, while maintaining that humming little pentium II (if that high) buzzing in the corner as a portage download mirror for speed...
ah, a man has gotta have a right to dream, eh?
In SOVIET RUSSIA... erm...NSA AMERICA, the Internet logs onto YOU!
What's the reason for their upgrade? Windows 95 + Office 95 is still a decent combination and probably does more than what 99% of their users will ever need. Security isn't too great out of the box, but it's not that hard to configure the clients and/or a firewire in a sane manner.
I don't understand this "we must upgrade" mindset. If the wiz-bang product worked wonders when it was new, isn't is still working just as good today? My office recently replaced hundreds of P3/933 machines (running Win2K + Office2K) with P4/2.5G machines running WinXP + OfficeXP. Aside from the different default color and button theme, nobody really noticed a difference.... other than having to migrate files to the new boxes. The new machine rollout wasn't needed and was expensive... but the IT department said it "NEEDED TO BE DONE".
I don't get it.
You make an excellent point. In the short term Linux might not be cheaper. In the long term however, what is going to be cheaper for continuing upgrades, given that the retraining (which might be minimal) only needs to be done once, but you have to pay Microsoft every few years.
Lasers Controlled Games!
What I'm curious about is what software they plan to run on their desktop. If it's the standard office package then cool. If they run, like some public agencies do, canned software they they may have issues with getting that ported or finding alternatives, which isn't so cool (unless the alternatives are equal or better in useability and performance.)
Still have the brown screen. Looks grim.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
hopefully it works for them. most companies are so tied to windows and x86 they couldn't get out for anything near $200 a seat. they would need custom software to interact with their old data in proprietary format. many would need custom software just to allow them to continue working because no open-source software or even linux software is available to do the things they need for their business.
for example, i use a 3d cadd package (solid edge) to model parts and make drawings. as far as i know, the closest thing for linux is the army's brl-cad. which isn't very close at all.
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.
there are many other layers of shackles in place, and there is no way anyone would easily be able to change platforms.
linux may work in this situation where the switch is from windows 95. any place the dor switches to will require new file formats, new programs and more training for everyone. so there is no net loss directly associated with switching to linux in particular.
HEy, everythings working fine, why dont we cut the IT departments budget......
All Troll + "offtopic" mods are meta moderated as "Unfair", because you abused the system.
That isn't to say UI can't ever be changed (I'm not arguing against progress, nor making any comments on whether XP's approach is progress), but the "familiarity" argument for staying with MS is total bullshit.
The "ease" argument is bullshit too. You have to turn off the firewall that comes with XP to use Win98's SMB printer. Yeah, that's really intuitive and easy. Today, somebody paid a couple hundred dollars for that "ease."
Applications: this one is true; you might be locked into MS. Tell your vendor you want the next wave of custom apps to be platform independent. It is inexcusable for most business software to not be super-portable these days: PYTHON ROCKS and there's almost nothing it can't do (well, not counting realtime stuff, like monitoring the neutron rods in your reactor ;-). And I'm sure
the Java and perl guys have something to say as well. If your vendors are
still creating unportable apps, either find other vendors, or at least
tell them that their decisions are costing YOU money.
BTW, I mean that about portability. Don't trust Linux either. Just be able to use anything and then whatever platform comes out on top .. will come out on top. I don't see Tux's flippers shaking with
fear over that prospect.
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
A) Ballmer should be booking a flight to MA right about now?
B) So I understand that the state estimates that they will have to pay $300 per new PC, with no cost for Linux? Who wants to be that Ballmer will now offer to sell the state XP licenses for fifty bucks a pop.
Now what's going to happen next is going to be intereting. Microsoft will argue that fifty bucks a pop would still be cheaper than the cost of retraining their orkers.
That's absolutely true. The only realistic way I see for Linux to be a viable option here would be either if:
A) The state intends to load Linux on their existing, aging PCs, thus eliminating the hardware costs alltogether, but were this true the story would've reflected that
B) The state was so scrapped for cash that even the fifty bucks per XP is too much, and they do not consider retraining as a budget line item
C) The state is smart enough to realize the monetary value of vendor lock-in. The greatest savnigs the state will realize with the Linux solution, of course, is the elimination of vendor lock-in. That's something that Microsoft will desperately try to avoid mentioning, but their popular trick is to first act as if they're going to give away copies of XP at rock-bottom price, only forgeting to emphasize that the "fire sale" is only for the first two or three years of the annual XP subscription license, and after the honeymoon is over, you bend over, grab your ankles, and start shitting out XP license fees...
Not to ask the obvious, but why upgrade?
I mean, if the computers were built for a specific purpose, and they're still used for that purpose, why upgrade?
Reasons to upgrade:
1.) Your programs require more system resources. This is fair. We were using QuickBooks from ages ago until they stopped providing tax tables for our version, forcing us to upgrade *grr* and the new version has new bells and whistles so that it bogs down the P-90 w/ 32 megs of ram.
2.) You want support from Microsoft. But, then, if you really wanted to install all the updates for windows 95, wow. That's a lot of updates, probably adding enough to your system to bog it down alone.
But, then, why not upgrade the hardware and install the same copies of Win95? You'd be surprised how many programs will work with win95.
Or, how much do new copies of windows 98 cost? I don't know if they're still available, or how that works. You may have to do the MS stupid "upgrade to downgrade" thing.
If you want to keep windows there are lots of alternatives to look at. I say this because developing new software for linux and training your average high school grad 40 year old secretary to use linux won't be cheap. Something like RedHat 8 is intuitive, but it ain't perfect. Keep in mind that intuitive doesn't mean everything - familiarity is much more important.
I'm all for linux, but I'm also all for lowering the TCO. And i know that over time, linux is definately cheaper. But, then, how many politicians look long term? You look short term so that you get re-elected. Long term politicians get voted out of office.
~Will
sig?
I really like the "if it is not broke dont fix it" group here.
We are talking about windows 95.. Guess what? It is broke. It has a MTBF of about 180 hours,
The product is no longer supported by the manufacturer. This means no more security updates. Windows 95 was never a very secure networked computer OS. I am sure that the Massachusetts Department of Revenue, could use some security.
Get a free ipod.
A company I used to work for had around 6 users on terminals connected to a Unix box. I was experimenting with Linux at the time and was taken aback by these users who had been running tape backups, as root, from the command line years before I ever did!
:-
Anyway - the point!!!
People will use *anything* at work. If the average user is sat in front of a well controlled desktop with easy access to the software they need, they'll care "not a jot" whether it's Linux, Windows or "Whatever"-soft (bought from "Whatever" local company who can supply the goods cheap enough).
As long as the Linux desktop crashes *less* than Win95 (ahem) then at least this may be an another outlet which exposes Linux to the average person in a positive way - as long as they can get stuff done on it.
In businessess I have worked in, price has always been the deciding factor and this might just be where Linux has the perceived edge to the business. Maybe business is the (indirect) way to the user desktop?
I'm guessing you mean faster processors. It doesn't take SMP to run openoffice. But hey, what do you expect from a troll, intelligence? bah!
No, he meant processors. Not as in multi procs for one system, but as in multiple machines. Obviously it's not newsworthy if Mass. is upgrading one machine. He meant multiple machines, processors with cost over many machines.
It's compatible with more than koffice. Word isn't compatible with much other than word. If Koffice is all you're using, why the fuck do you need it to support word?
Because word is the world standard for written documents in the professional business world. Hate to break it to you, but where I work, we don't have but 2 windows machines, and one running VMware, out of about 80 computers. We get lease documents, legal notices, business proposals, ad nauseum, in word or excel format. If you can't read it, you limit your professional image and connectivity.
K-office is compatable with k-office. Open/Star office at least has basic word compatability and functionality.
Please, microsoft may suck for their draconian EULA's, their extremely high prices, their business model, etc. But they make a good office suite. Plus, like it or not, it's the world standard.
Touche, troll. Touche.
~Will
sig?
My maternal grandmother is considering the possibility of switching to Linux. Citing increased budgetary pressure from her retired lifestyle, she thinks moving to Linux might save enough money to get her dentures professionally cleaned. Truly this means Linux is well on its way to being the #1 Operating System on the PLANET!
With better information and ability of individuals to provide a check on mass media, this will create standards that go beyond price. It's great that people consider Linux because it's cheaper than Windows, but perhaps that's not the full story of what's going on.
Linux wins on two fronts. Not only is it cheaper, but it's also better. Let's use an analogy of food as an example and consider Microsoft as the McDonald's of the computer industry. Just about everyone goes there every once in a while. It has cheap prices, and the food tastes good, just like Windows used to be relatively cheap, and looked good too. It served the lowest common denominator.
Now, however, we have this new kind of food coming out, and a new consciousness about health, nutrition, the environment, first, and price in a very distant second. This food _simultaneously_ redifines the playing fieild in terms of both price and quality. Sure, it has some way to go before it's complete, but the people that are aware of the ingredients going in absolutely know that it will crush other competition once it comes out of the oven. It's composed of the most fantastic, nutritious, tasty, ecosystem-friendly ingredients. Some of us are tasting the ingredients going in, and while the end users (or customers) are saying "we don't want a meal composed of just boring x", we respond, no, this is just one ingredient in the most fantastic potluck ever conceived.
Those that don't bring something to the table may eat anyway, but if they are allowed to bring something to the table, it should be at least as good as what's already there. Some redundancy is ok, like two different types of the same dish, but overall people try to coordinate so that there can be sufficient variety to solve the main categories.
We can get the basic requirements out of the way, and then start allowing for more specialized dishes. Then, certain people can start skipping producing meals if they have an idea for a dish that requires much more time to prepare, but will be an incredible treat once it arrives.
If meals can be taken care of, maybe other types of goods can come next, and people can skip producing for meals as long as people trust that they're producing other goods. We may not require perfection in terms of allocation of services, but be satisfied with evidence of effort. It all depends on the infrastructure to coordinate such a feat. Perhaps this is what we're working on now.
Look, enough is enough. How many stories about X considering a switch from win* to *linux are going to be posted by Slashdot editors ?. This is just ridiculous. First of all, GNU/Linux is enough into the mainstream as to waste time with "potential users" stories. Second, and more importantly, many companies, governments, agencies, etc., try to fscking negotiate with MS for a discoung and this is way they announce that they are "considering" Linux. I mean, come on, this is not a secret ! Let's get real. Let's talk about real users using Linux for real. There are plenty :-)
Doesn't matter.
What you have demonstrated is that there is now real competition, something that has been absent from the Desktop OS market for far too long.
Customers will start switching unless Microsoft does something - lowering prices, adding more value, reducing TCO - anything to try and keep them in the fold. Capitalism at work.
We win.
Soko
"Depression is merely anger without enthusiasm." - Anonymous
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?
Good people do not need laws to tell them to act responsibly, while bad people will find a way around the laws-Plato
One P4 computer can serve dozes of linux X window terminals terminals, smoothly running the latest OpenOffice and Evolution replacing MS Office and Outlook, and saving productivity loss because of better uptimes, less software failures and virus inmunity.
Even if they have 10BaseT, LTSP.org will work OK 8)
And the lights all went out in Massachusetts.
160,000 Join Massachusetts Do-Not-Call List
Massachusetts Appealing Microsoft Ruling
given the recent law passed in Massachusetts, which prevents people from just throwing away old computers and monitors....
Pretty impressive...
$x='S24;r)>63/* h@<5+oZ)32"5cz';$me='phroggy'x$];
$x=~y+ -xz+\0-Tx+;print$_^chop$me for split'',$x;
The third group, system administrators, don't really count. True, they have the highest learning curve, and they're success if often tied to a particular platform, but since they're upgrading from Windows 95, they're screwed no matter what you do...
In short, the greater the number of power users, the more of a problem you will have. I'm guessing MA Dept of Revenue has a lot of data entry clerks, accountants, lawyers, and bureaucrats (all group 1 types). The people who maintain the databases and manage the data (group 2 types) will be greatly affected, but they'll probably be pleased to get away from Win95. And as usual, the SysOp gets the shaft.
My father is a blogger.
so that we can all admire its stony security.
Ah, how soon they forget....
- The IP stack can be remotely crashed.
- Unencrypted password hashes are sent across the wire.
- The password cache can be decrypted and read by anyone on the machine.
And this is just off the top of my head.
The important thing here is that weaknesses in the networking protocols are not just bugs that can be fixed, they're design flaws. Microsoft just have not backported the most recent RPC stack to W95, so there's no way you can get proper network security. (Why would they bother? It's not like they care about customers who haven't paid their upgrade tax.)
I've always thought this "retraining cost" argument was a ruse.
I mean, what exactly are the retraining costs when the majority of users utilize maybe three applications? On the whole, office workers don't utilize "advanced" features available in the software anyway.
For example: how many secretaries are using Word Styles to author documents? Even though Word Styles are available, and take some amount of training to understand, if they're not being used, why worry about it?
What it boils down to is the applications. If those applications are available, and operate in a similar way, it doesn't matter what platform they are running on. The overhead involved in user training is much ado about nothing.
Now, don't get me wrong, there's a number of reasons why continuing down the Microsoft treadmill could make more sense (for now). But retraining isn't one of them.
Notes From Under *nix: blas.phemo.us
I wish I had a buck for every time I asked a secretary what operating system their computer runs and they answered "Office 2000".
/mnt/winserver/docs.
Can you imagine training these people?
Secretary to IT person: Where are my documents?
IT person to Secretary: They are on
Secretary to IT person: What drive letter is that?
IT person to Secretary: AAARGH!{jumps out a window}
Yeah, i'm sure linux will be MUCH cheaper.
-ted
For most businesses the cost of the actual software is only a drop in the bucket compared to the cost of technical support for the software over the years. Truth be told, your average user has an easier time and needs less help using Winblows and it's proprietary applications than Linux. This is mostly because of familiarity with the products at work and most likely home as well. So for a business, especially one with many non-technically savvy employees as I'm sure is the case here, it may make more sense to just pay for Windows.
Microsoft should hire me. I can write code that doesn't work faster than the guys they have doing it now.
The cost of training the average user isn't that big of a deal. How hard is it to click on an icon? I understand that they do some of that in Windows also. All word processors work in a similar way. A spreadsheet is a spreadsheet. Email is email.
All staff have to be trained at some point to use all these things. Clicking in Windows or clicking in Linux, it is about the same. Training to use a word processor under Linux is no more expensive than training to use a word processor under windows.
The real training is not so much with the average user but with the support staff. Linux is very different under the hood than Windows. But again staff must be trained and retrained every time that Microsoft upgrades their server software. The new active directory is way different than the normal domain model.
The question is not whether the training is expensive the question is do you want to train to use Linux or Windows.
With Windows it seems like you get lead by the nose down the path of expensive proprietary software. That doesn't happen with Linux.
The race isn't always to the swift... but that's the way to bet!
First off, to say that everyone only uses Office and email programs is naive. The Office and Email is the easy part, especially with outright knockoffs a la Evolution. But many govt. entities will already have huge investments in 3rd party line of business applications that are Windows-only. Replacing _these_ kinds of programs (not office and email), and the subsequent loss of productivity and poor customer service is what makes retraining expensive. Also, should they just trash their business relationships with these companies who may not have the means or demand or desire to create a port of their programs?
:)
Secondly, in many state and local governments, employees are required by the state or the feds to use particular software for reporting, fund transfer, etc. Sometimes the other government entity only supplies Windows binaries. Their support even on their own Windows programs ranges from grossly incompetent to altogether nonexistant. Throw trying to run it on some other platform into the mix and they are not even going to talk to you. This isn't something that lower-level government entities have any say in. They can't choose to not use these programs, especially when it comes to funding.
Thirdly, IMO the choice and quality of 3rd party apps for other platforms just isn't there yet. If you have a large group of talented engineers that have used Autodesk products for years and are well-versed and highly efficient using them, what products could you offer them as an viable alternative? (and maintain a straight face).
I'm just amazed that Windows 95 was such a long-lasting solution in Massachusetts. MS should be commended for continuing support for W95 as long as they did. Well I gotta go now; I have to go upgrade all my Redhat 7 boxes that EOL this month.
you make some good points. I should have qualified that "according to microsoft, you are in violation".
but, the bottom line is, if you are using OEM licenses and get reported, expect to hear from the gorillas at the BSA.
If you want to settle it in court that's your choice for sure.
Seems the cost of the software is only part of the TCO for an XP upgrade. What are the chances of XP running on those old Win 95 machines? My guess is that $600 figure includes the hardware upgrades necessary to run XP bloatware.
Ok-- if they are running Windows 95, chances are these are 80486 or Pentium I. Chances are to have a meaningful production workstation you would have to upgrade your hardware too.
I would probably not look at the hardware on this one.
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
At the company I work for, we were in a similar boat with many old Windows 95 installations, with replacement hardware only having drivers for Windows 98 or higher, and so on. Last summer we made the decision to move from Windows to Linux based primarily on the Windows upgrade cost.
The replacement consisted of RedHat Linux (7.x until 8.x came out), Gnome, OpenOffice and Mozilla. The choice of RedHat over other distros was made more because the other techs were new to Linux too and I might not be there all the time. The servers still run Slackware >:)
The results have been great and the staff had far fewer problems than expected and interestingly 98% of the tech calls that come in are from the on the road sales guys having problems using XP, which came preloaded on their laptops.
--- Commission free trading & free stock up to $500 - use http://share.robinhood.com/kelvinp6
We're talking about Mass, here. It's pronounced "retahded."
Mit Romney's adversary in the gubernatorial race (Shannon O'Brien) used Staroffice on all their hardware to cut costs. I know this because I supplied all the computers.
Nothing really newsworthy, I guess, it's just late and I'm bored.
Except time usually DOESN'T have any monetary value. You either get to use it, or you get to waste it. There's no magic "time fairy" around to pay your for your idle time.
At worst, Linux becomes an "opportunity cost" and that is only real for an economics professor.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
IIRC, the biggest training problems when Largo switched were along the lines of "How do I set my wallpaper" and "How do I take my documents home?"
Except people who are "on the clock" are quite often a fixed cost. You either fully utilize them, or their time is wasted.
And "retraining" is a bit of a red herring since Microsoft likes to change it's interfaces anyways.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.