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UK Councils May Dump Windows For Linux
An anonymous reader writes "Local authorities in Newham and Nottingham are expected to migrate more than 10,000 desktop computers from Windows to GNU/Linux.
ZDNet has the story. "If this is seen to work in Newham, it has the potential to be a significant project, changing the perceptions of other councils," said Tim Dawes, director of local government technology consultants Nineveh."
...can anyone tell me when we ever saw a large-scale switch from Linux to Windows NT?
It should say, "The sheriff of Nottingham is stealing from the rich and giving to the poor."
I don't know if its the way its being reported or if its actually true but it seems Linux is get more and more chosen over M$.
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While it has very good Word im-/export, it's not yet faultless (and won't be any time soon, because of inherent limitations of OpenOffice). And you NEED that import, because otherwise you can't exchange documents outside of your department.
They could also use the excellent CodeWeavers' CrossOver Office but then they'll probably pay more $$$ for the MS Office licenses than when they make a OS+Office deal with the MS sales reps.
Either way, they'll have to solve a problem, now or in the future. Then again, Windows brings its own host of problems.
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What has happened to Linux zealotry on /. The actual article title clearly and totally ignores the fact these councils are only doing feasability studies, not actually switching.
/. header actually notes this fact that these councils may switch to Linux. What happed to the good old days when /. would report them as having already switched with lots of interesting anecdotes about how shit Windows is and how brilliant Linux is.
UK councils dump Windows for Linux
Most bizaarly then the
I just dont know what the world is coming to
Do not try to read the dupe, thats impossible. Instead, only try to realize the truth
What truth?
There is no dupe
This can only be a good thing for suppliers of certain local government based software (SX3, Ocella) - many of their products used to run on UNIX alone, and even now some of them run emulated under W2K.
The council I work for runs iWorld, an SX3 product - unfortunately our UNIX admin is a bit of a fool and didn't notice when the project suggested running the system emulated. If he'd have been paying attention, we might have got some Linux boxen in!
"I hate Cthulhu, Cthulhu hates me, I kill his cultists, He eats worlds for tea"
Eddie Bleasedale, of Netproject has been one of the UKs most prolific advocates of the Open Source movement. Hes been running seminars, Discussions and meetings with a large variety of "movers and shaker" within the UK for several Years now. This is the not the first large scale project in the UK but it is certainly the most important. The Architecture employed to move everyone to the Linux Desktop , which I have seen , is certainly the most influential and consistent to date. We at 3aIT wish Eddie and his team all the best in this project and the future.
Though I am wondering when the UK Magazines are going to start including Eddies Name for Linux Advocacy nominations.
And if youve ever tried getting your boss to understand the benefits of Open Source in business then look out for Netprojects Day Conferences ( next on is 10th June 2003, London ) where Netprojects put together a excellent series of dicsussions and topics detailing issues and concerns over the Linux Answer.
And thats why Firecrackers and kittens don't mix.
Mansfield LUG (In nottinghamshire) currently has a discussion going on this. On the members works at the Mansfield council and has been pushing Linux for years. The only realy barrier is that the guy in charge of IT is anti-linux - but he's Unix programmer. Another member works for another local council. He has managed to get linux onto their servers by way of stealth. Their mail servers were orignially just a 'test' to see if linux would be able to cope. Since then they've ditched their previous server OSes and have replaced them with Linux. They've been trying to get Linux on as the desktops too. No success with 'those with the say' there at all. This decision by the Nottingham council may be more pursuasive.
I disagree. I have used Linux as my desktop since 1994 and when I set up my company I put it on everyone's destops too. I recently offered to switch to Macs but was resoundingly told that we should stick with Linux as they liked it. We have no trouble working with other companies, OpenOffice is fine for all our documents which are the vast majority of what we need an office suite for. We can share those with others as PDF as generally they should not be changing the content of our docs, and if we need to work with others OpenOffice is free so I give them a copy. And if totally unavoidable, we have Office2K under crossover on one machine but it is rarely used. Even if we were using Office2K primarily, docs sent out should be in PDF unless there is a specific reason. Word itself has trouble rendering docs correctly when done on another copy so PDF preserves the formatting better and should be used instead.
Linux is ideal for places like Council Offices -- little complex software beyond Word-processors or Spreadsheets is required, meaning any OS can conceivably be used. What sets apart one from another is the cost, and ease of maintenance/deployment. And, here, it is obvious that Linux wins.
Having said that, this doesn't do much for Linux in the home, or for those who use PCs for anything more complex.
((lambda x ((x))) (lambda x ((x))))
So we see there stories all the time on Slashdot.
But has any government ever ACTUALLY DONE IT?
Ever government in the world has "considered" mandating and using open source for everything (usually around the time a MS contract comes up for renegotiation/renewal).
Isn't this just the usual Linux as a bargaining chip thing all corporations and governments do right before they sign their latest MS contract to try and get MS to sweeten the deal?
I mean has any government actually done the switch? ever?
First, yes the story says they are considering the switch, second, the header dosen't contain the word "may".
I wonder about pressure that local governments can apply externally on businesses. People resist moving from Windows and MS Office saying it will be too hard to convert to something else because file formats are a problem. Yet San Francisco can mandate that any company that deals with the city must have gay friendly policies in place across the entire corporation at the local, state and country levels.
Why can't this same pressure be used to ensure that documents sent to local governments must be readable by freely available packages like Openoffice.org or the companies can not continue doing government business? Make it a requirement and watch the barriers to free and opensource software drop. Then if a local government is having a financial crunch, let them convert older systems to linux/freebsd/whatever without worrying that common document formats can't be read. This way governments could cut computing costs and hire another teacher or policeman, heck maybe even fund youth baseball for a season ( not cheap).
Kindness is the language which the deaf can hear and the blind can see. - Mark Twain
I hope the consultants are working on these lines rather than just doing the "can we do everything we do not with a different technology".
The biggest problem is likely to be user retraining - and this is where educational policy needs to be looked at. Schools don't teach Gallimard French or General Motors physics. We expect school subjects to be vendor-neutral. Yet IT is often far from it. Hardware has to be made by somebody, but surely education software should be fully standards compliant and vendor neutral. Potentially, this should level the playing field for students, employers and vendors, and allow companies and local authorities planning long term strategy to make market-independent assessments of needs. I believe that UK local authorities share some responsibility for education with the central government. If so, that's an area of policy they might want to influence.
Panurge has posted for the last time. Thanks for the positive moderations.
What you have said here is very interesting.
Don't worry about Linux on old systems, however. I run Linux on a 233 MHz computer that I rescued from a customer's upgrade a long time ago. It works fine. My experience is that Linux is much faster on old hardware than Windows.
I know UK Police forces (West Yorks initially) were looking at a thin client Linux desktop deployment, which it was claimed could lead to greater Linux take-up in the public sector - story. Any connection I wonder? My favourite quote - "Linux is Unix done properly.".
The story doesn't say that the final decisions have been made. A feasibility study is being mounted to replace Windows systems by the end of the year. Microsoft will be pulling out all the stops against this. A May 14th Slashdot discussion on the topic quotes Orlando Ayala, head of sales at Microsoft, as saying: "Under NO circumstances lose against Linux." They're going to practically give Windows away to avoid these setbacks. Even if they do prevail, though, the die is cast against Redmond.
I think that Microsoft has "jumped the shark."
Longhorn is two years away. Palladium-Next Generation Computing is alarming large segments of the IT community. Microsoft's latest licensing scheme antagonized its business customers. It is a convicted monopolist; its options against future challenges aren't what they were before that conviction and they face antitrust action in Europe and elsewhere. Viruses and worms spread by and through Windows IIS, Hotmail, Outlook, Outlook Express and Internet Explorer create weekly embarrassments in the face of Bill Gates's call for improved security. The strategy to impose a Microsoft-powered Digital Rights Management regime on users has been hurt badly by Apple's iTunes Music store. Economic conditions have slowed the adoption of Windows XP because new machines aren't being bought at rates anticipated before the technology industry nosedive. Millions of Windows 98, ME, and 2000 customers see no need (and have little incentive) to upgrade.
And now, the growth of Open Source has crippled Microsoft's ability to "embrace and extend" critical standards. The first big mistake in that battle is their recent announcement that there will be no more standalone versions of Internet Explorer. Open Source alternatives will be able to develop and implement improvements in browser technology at a much more nimble rate than will Microsoft while maintaining compatibility with current standards. New versions of IE that cripple functionality will drive customers toward alternatives rather than toward IE (and the requisite release of Windows that delivers it).
Microsoft's stated goal of "Windows on every desktop" is no longer practical. Steve Ballmer's recent memo to the troops admits as much. I've been in the computer industry for over twenty years now and I assure you that that is a HUGE victory, but the advantage has to be pressed now or Microsoft will catch up like it has caught up so many times before. Open Source has to continue its emphasis on better, faster, cheaper, safer, and more reliable.
But for now? Bravo!
Merrill Lynch research shows that deploying Linux internally that could save the company millions of dollars, an executive at the investment banker said.
During a presentation Friday at the Enterprise Linux Forum, Mark Snodgrass, vice president of Merrill Lynch's in-house technology provider, the Global Technology & Services group, said that the company has found that re-architecting its information infrastructure using Linux can reduce administration costs dramatically.
In fact, Snodgrass found that, while the software licensing costs of Windows was higher than Linux, the highest cost was in managing traditional Windows infrastructure.
"It's the people that cost the most," he said.
Merrill Lynch's new plans for its information infrastructure call for running much of its Linux applications not on their own physical machines but in virtual machines running on high-end servers. Such a scheme simplifies management and allows for rapid deployment of new Linux "servers" by activating a copy of a stored pre-configured image in as little as 2 minutes 14 seconds.
"We are not trying to promote Linux," Snodgrass said. "We are just trying to reduce the cost of ownership."
Using such virtual Linux servers to store files could cut costs dramatically, he said. Keeping their file systems on Windows servers would have cost the company $600,000 in hardware and five times that to pay for the personnel to manage the servers.
"We know that Linux is not for everything," he said. "But there are not many applications that require more than Linux can give us."
Snodgrass's group proposed replacing the company's Microsoft Exchange servers with a Linux-based solution that would have all the same collaboration features and have a cost savings of 70 percent to 80 percent. However, for other reasons that Snodgrass wouldn't discuss, the company's executives decided to stick with Exchange but outsource the management of the groupware to save money.
Not everyone agrees that Linux saves money, however. Last year, market researcher IDC released a report, heralded by Microsoft, that indicated that the five-year cost of ownership for four out of five applications would be lower if Microsoft software was used. The sole Linux winner was Web server software, according to the report. (and for the slashdotters/windows users hanging on this bit of hope, note that this study was decimated when it was examined and certain facts, like license renewals being omitted, the timeline favoring unrealistic (over 5 years for the same release) use of windows, no hardware upgrades for newer versions of windows, no accounting for the fact that linux/unix admins can run more systems per admin, no patching/crashing problems with windows, downtime costs, and more).
Snodgrass said he wasn't familiar with the study, but his own data indicated that running virtual Linux servers saves a lot of money compared with running those same services under Windows.
"We've done our numbers, and we are a bank, so we know our numbers," he said.
Other companies apparently have crunched the numbers and come to the same conclusion.
Telecommunications provider Verizon disclosed that it saved nearly $6 million in equipment costs by moving its programmers to Linux from proprietary-Unix and Windows workstations. In October 2001, Amazon.com revealed that it had replaced Web application servers running on a proprietary-Unix platform with Linux, saving millions of dollars.
Snodgrass said the next target for deploying Linux could be on the desktop. The company plans to do a pilot project that will allow thin clients--computers with minimal hardware requirements--to be used as workstations. The applications would actually run on Linux and Windows terminal servers. To the user, the result would be the same, but to the company's
I hope the people making these sorts of decisions in developing countries realize that there are hidden costs involved in going to Linux. In India, for example, I am sure there are oodles of MCSEs that can click their way to a semi-functional network, but are there enough people familar with *nix to handle a major shift to Linux? I think not.
Not that this is a permanent roadblock, but it's something they need to be aware of. They have to realize that if something goes bad and they aren't with someone like IBM/Redhat, they might be screwed if they don't have geeks on hand to tackle the problem.
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Linux is made in most parts of the world. Many local goverments must consider locally made products before buying from outside of the county, state, country etc.
Anyone one want to dig up a list of countries where work on linux has been done and then find out how many of them have offical logos (like this or this) and then find out what rules apply and come up with a nice mixed image?
I noticed clueless people spreading FUD like "Linux is not ready for the desktop" as if they get paid for doing it.
If Linux would be ready for the desktop in the meaning like windows is ready for desktop then we would have to remove virtual desktops, changing of resolution with hotkeys, the shell, the flexible window manager concept... everything..
Maybe it's more like that Linux has a different (better) desktop than windows and will (hopefully) never gain that state of "readyness for the desktop" that windows has achived and which these people are looking for.
With this move from a propiertary software vendor to an Open Source vendor is a great move, and I hope they go through with it. Maybe with some help of the local LUG maybe they can cordinate something with the users to help them make the transistion easier? Hav the groups have a special day that can be posted through out the company for employees to goto to learn more things, or even have the people come in and help people in the spare time? or even get paid? Nothing wrong with taking the Open Source mentality of taking a large group of people and making great products.
Perhaps StarOffice is the right answer to the wrong question. Most of the functions for which we use a computer are very basic - text entry, messaging, numerical spreadsheets. MSOffice has built critical mass because it has all the functions that you might ever need, even if you use them only once every six months.
If you are a large employer, then it's probably in your interest to reduce the number of functions in the software that you give to your workers. If they need a car, you don't give them a Ferrari, do you? What do council workers really do? My guess is that mostly they are interpreting text (ie laws) and transmitting their interpretations to other people, either as text or email. If you can build templates in a basic text processor that will output as a letter, then you don't need to worry too much about having sophisticated word processing. That way they don't waste time playing around with complex programs, and they have fewer opportunities to pursue extra-curricular activities while at work.
The thing is, the Microsoft programs are so good at what they do, everyone has organised their work processes around it. If you could re-engineer those processes, a little, then you could probably significanly reduce the sophistication of the programs that you need. So instead of trying to fit a square peg into a round hole, think about changing the shape of the hole a little.
I have only had 1 major glitch in a PowerPoint file being read in OpenOffice 1.0.1. All other files I have read in OpenOffice made from MS Office (mostly .DOC files but excel too) have rendered to such a degree that I could not see any difference. Not to say that there wasn't an error, I just could not see it, which ought to be good enough.
All of these have been the Win32 build on Win2k sp3
The error that I did see was in 1.0.1 I think but after that in 1.0.2 and 1.0.3 everything is working great. In my experence
Disclaimer: your milage my vary, see store manager for details, batteries not included, some assembly required, not for small children or big babies, offer not valid where prohibited, MS zelots need not apply
Cities switching to Linux happens so often that it is going to be available as an option in Sim City 5.
Slashdot Sig. version 0.1alpha. Use at your own risk.
Down in florida a couple of years, a city converted. Jefferson county, CO runs Linux on desktop. Apparently, they did it the intellegent way some time ago. They let the user decide, by giving them choice. runninng NT/2000 with the current MS office OR upgrading their hardware and using Linux of which these were about the same costs. I understand that first year the offer was taken up by a small percentage, but the next year quite a few ppl took it up as the MS ppl were getting starved on CPU cycles. Apparently, the top hardware was 586's with 64 and 128 M rams. Hard to get things done when MS keeps demanding more, but the group is not going too fork out the increase in hardware and support costs.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
I have been seeing more and more large scale "trial" runs for linux in corporate and government settings. I sincerely hope (as I cannot assume) that they are putting the necessary planning and talent behind these transitions. For something of this scale, you cannot simply re-train your current IT staff (once an MCSE, always an MCSE). It requires significant restaffing, rearchitecting, and user re-training.
Anyone who has done a platform migration in an enterprise knows that this is an extremely difficult undertaking. I can't even imagine having to do this for 10,000 systems! I really hope that the community reaches out to support these large trials, and that they are ultimately successful. We all know that linux "can" be successful in this setting. Here's to hoping they get it right.
Thank you for your time,
Frank Russo
Nothing beats the flexibility, scalability and useability of Microsoft Windows® XP.
For starters it's mostly just a matter of opinion. Plenty of user much prefer Gnome/KDE to explorer (which still crashes at least once a day on me). And what about OSX? Most would agree that it beats the crap out of Windows for usability!!
I asked my dad to try using OO instead of MSOffice for a day at work to see how well he could transition. Couldn't use it for more than 10 minutes because all the Excel files they have had specific macros to kick off printing and do weird formatting and calculations. OO wasn't able to deal with them. Sure, you could try to rewrite them, but why do that? They're already working in MSOffice. If/when Excel can import and use those, he'd switch.
creation science book
I am part if IT-Support/Admin for an international company (in eleven countries). So far I haven't seen a convincing set of Linux tools to migrate the MS-Chain of Command (Exchange, Office and Explorer). So far there is no Linux package out there that is equal to Office+Exchange combo - or is there?! Another problem is, that many custom (web) applications rely on IE (they won't work with any other browser). Plus we are a travel company that relies on many specialized tools that are simply not avail under Linux. If you have a company that hardly relies on special apps - and just needs office and net apps - Linux is ready to go.
Considering my council tax has risen 20% in a single year, compounded on last years 12% and similar amounts from previous years, you can gather that local authorities in the UK are possibly the most wasteful and ineffcient in the Western world, anything that will save costs is great, however I doubt I'll see the benefit, the money saved with just be spent on other follies.
In fact my local council has a very similar archicture to Windows... resource hungry, prone to errors, file corruption, constantly crashing and losing data, the list gones on, they're a match made in heaven.
Maybe it is a bargaining chip, but in the case of Nottingham council, they have already made a foray into Linux by changing their mail system from a proprietry system to Linux (it's mostly a webmail type interface so the end users don't see Linux as such). I would guess that it is partially off the back of the large success they had with the mail migration that the change to Linux on the desktop is being considered - certainly it will be a large feather in the cap for Linux.
:)
Richard Heggs, the Nottingham council IT guy who oversaw the mail migration gave a talk on it to Nottingham LUG and iirc mentioned that they may well consider changing desktops to Linux. So there does appear to be some intent to change even if management just want to use the whole thing as a bargaining chip.
Personally I hope they do go ahead with the change as then we can ask Richard to do another talk for us
Cheers,
Roger
Do you have any better hostages?
I never said .NET was bad, but after all, it is still a Java clone.
.NET is useful, but I for one am hoping that its main use will be to get Sun to get its act together, and admit to a difference between the VM and the language, sort out JNI, get rid of checked exceptions, etc etc.
The point is, if you were starting fresh, why on earth would you use a tool beholden to MS? The only advantage is if you are already stuck on windows and would like to dig a deeper hole.
And Mono is nice, but until MS indemnify them against patent infringement claims its really hard to use without getting scared.
More languages? Really?
I agree that
I'm glad you liked the talk. Personally, I thought it was far too much waffle. :)
It's true that the success of our email system has increased the value of Linux in the eyes of TPTB, but the fact remains that we are only *considering* Linux as a possibility. Just as we are considering Windows, Netware and various proprietary versions of Unix.
Microsoft let the cat out of the bag by saying that if you menace them with Linux they will giver you their software for free. So expect a rising volume of incidents such as this while everybody negotiates them dry.
That's ultimately self-defeating. The more Linux is given away the better Linux does. Linux gains more mindshare, developers, and generates opportunities for small businesses as it propagates. This is not true of MS. When MS gives away licenses to maintain marketshare, it is at the expense of revenue. Sure they can threaten to take away the crackpipe if they aren't paid down the road but then the "feasibility studies" start up again. Mind and marketshare doesn't do them much good if it isn't making them money.
This feasibility study is not news. When Ballmer flies out to Britain with a briefcase full of free/deeply-discounted licenses, that will be news. It isn't a "loss" for Linux either. To MS, it'll be the equivalent of a played out one-crop field. Sure, nobody else will grow anything but they won't either.
MS faces a mature market for their only two moneymakers (Windows/Office). Palladium-style lockin strategies won't save them either. At best, they can hold the line a little while longer. They need new products and new business model that doesn't involve making legions of potential users and developers highly pissed at them.
Why is this a problem ?
They will be looking at a smooth transition, not a big bang, some people may continue with Windows boxes for a long time. These and those moved to Linux are still going to want to arrange meetings/... with each other. The trouble is that the MAPI protocol used in not known and there are no open source clients/servers.
We need to reverse engineer the current M$ MAPI protocols so that open source clients/servers can be written. The key to the success of this project is going to be seamless continuity of end user work while desktop and server machines are migrated one by one.
Does anyone know of tools other than ximian connector and bynari ?
OpenOffice does the .doc, .xls & .ppt well enough.
Evolution/kmail does the email well enough (smtp).
``Well enough'' means can interoperate in terms of protocol and file/wire formats.
I just wrote a letter to my local council (which was not mentioned in the article) encouraging them
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to follow Newham's lead. I didn't write it very well, but if anyone wants to copy bits of it to send to their council...
Dear Councillors,
A draw your attention to the following article:
http://news.zdnet.co.uk/story/0,,t272-s
In it, it is mentioned that "Newham in London and Nottingham City Council, are
examining the feasibility of shifting all their 11,500 staff desktop
computers from Windows to Linux with open source desktop applications by the
end of the year". It is also mentioned that such a move is being considered
by Barking and Dagenham, Hackney, Havering, Redbridge, Thanet, Tower Hamlets
and Waltham Forest.
I was wondering whether Greenwich Council might also consider such a move. As
a resident of Greenwich I think it would be a good idea for the following
reasons:
-Studies have show that significant cost savings can be achieved by switching
to Linux. http://news.com.com/2100-1016_3-1014287.html?tag=
-I do not believe it is right that some of the money I pay in council tax
should find it's way to Microsoft, a convicted monopolist.
-I believe that all government documents should be stored in an open format.
Word documents are not open.
Yours sincerely,
Having seen the current quality of UK Government computer systems: a poor mish-mash of different systems, some of them decades old, and some of them windows. I got an experience placement at a low level Govt. org recently, at the IT dept, and most of the systems were absolutely terrible. The systems are all different, and the file types that are used to communicate between the different systems have to be continuously converted. Maybe a free system such as linux would be a good way to escape this problem and bring a uniform standard that would be affordable for the UK.
Joseph Farthing
http://josephfarthing.com