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Munich Struggling with Linux Transition?
rune2 writes "The Toronto Star has an article up that mentions that Steve Ballmer is gloating about how the Munich transition to Linux and Open Source software isn't going too well." Even if the transition is going poorly, what about when Munich is finally set? Funny how there's no mention of all the future costs of licenses they've already saved themselves from, yet there's a nice plug for the next version of Windows. Last time I checked, Windows' upgrades from one version to the next were not free by any definition.
For those a little bit envolved in this transition, that comes as no surprise.
E.g. some departments are already running AD and have been issued permissions to run this setup for 2 or 3 more years.
Other factors are lots of home-grown VB-apps that need to be ported or converted into Webapps, with the added complexity that there's no budget and virtually no knowledge about how to do that...
Nevertheless, the city will not go back (I hope), because the decision *does* make sense. Just not for Steve Balmer.
But that should come as no surprise, either.
Rainer
Windows 2000 - from the guys who brought us edlin
"They're saying it's more expensive," Ballmer told the Star yesterday
So we're going to base this entire article on HEARSAY?
Microsoft's Ballmer says this and says that in the article. What does MUNICH have to say about all this???
PS: my experience has shown that Linux is the cheapest, most secure, and most reliable system to run. #2 would be OS X with Windows boxes coming in a very distant third. All costs absorbed in the switching happened in the first year (higher hardware & training perhaps) -- but within two years it was paying for itself in the lack of Microsoft tax alone...
Steve Ballmer, chief executive of Microsoft Corp., appears to take delight in the troubles that Munich is having as it switches 14,000 city computers from Windows to a rival Linux operating system.
Don't forget that 80% of the Linux computers in Munich run Windows on VMWare. But they don't mention that in the article, of course, which is intentionally written to make Linux look bad.
The little information the community has about this seems to be that the main problems are purely related to the monopoly status of Windows, ie app compatibility, lack of knowledge, admins who don't want to have to retrain, infighting and so on... not much that can be fixed with changes to Linux, it's purely a matter of economics and inertia
Sounds like a good opportunity to look into why and exactly what isn't going too well, so it can be fixed.
They are still preparing the invitation to bid. It seems that Red Hat, SuSE, IBM and all the usual suspects want to see too much money, more than initially expected. There isn't much you can do about it. Even bidding yourself wouldn't help because you wouldn't be able to compete against these brands, even if your bid were much lower.
I work for a fortune 500 company that has done many many large Windows rollouts. We also have done many Solaris and Linux installations. Guess what... Windows is often more difficult, more expensive and less stable than Solaris or Linux. Real "objective" reporting. Sounds like the media is appealing to it's sponsors (Microsoft).
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= - The Celtic - =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
That's really a poor example. Getting lpd printing working on Linux is pretty simple, far easier than Windows.
You may want to check out CUPS and the kdeprint framework. It's childs play.
I'd be willing to bet there wasn't a transition plan in Munich beyond "Lets format those Windows machines with Linux and life will be happy!" That's the typical silver bullet attitude that management seems to have ("Lets use SCRUM and all our development problems will go away!", "Let's use XML and all our development problems will go away!", "Let's use Object Oriented Programming and all our development problems will go away!")
If we could get Munich and some Linux advocates together, we could go in there, look at their setup and what they need to do, architect a solution, show their guys (Who probably only have Windows experience) how to set the machines up, and be done in time for beer and sausages at the local pub. The Linux advocates get to put "Helped government of Munich set up their systems" on their resume, Munich gets a working setup that puts anything Microsoft ever built to shame and Ballmer pulls out his last 3 hairs in frustration. All in all time well spent, I think.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
A Toronoto newspaper says that Steve Balmer says that Munich is having trouble switching to Linux. Boy, that's great investigative journalism there.
The primary source is German: c't.
Slashdot's audience is anglo-american, primarily, and the useless Babelfish-translations of this article would only have added to the confusion.
Windows 2000 - from the guys who brought us edlin
The situation for general use by the average home user isn't the same as for a company or government entity.
At home, you may want to buy a new gadget and plug it in, and expect it to just work.
In a company environment you will not expect that. In fact, in many environments the OS will have been configured to NOT allow installation of addons unsupported by the ICT department.
See (with Babelfish if you don't read German) http://www01.silicon.de/cpo/ts-csh/detail.php?nr=1 3043
- Linux-MS_030403.pdf and p df
For background, see http://www.spd-rathaus-muenchen.de/presse/press14
http://www.muenchen.de/aktuell/clientstudie_kurz.
I wanted read some other sources about this issue ....
Keep on eye on Google news.
I admin a 7000 node network with 35000 email accounts, we have a 4 server cluster for email (postfix, courier imap) it easily supports the 35000 customers, when we were building the network we looked at everyone, to do a MS solution with exchange we would have needed between 100 and 150 dual proc xeon 2.4 procs (because exchange only supports between 200 and 300 accounts per box).. Not to mention the fact that we would then need 100-150 copies of Advanced Server at 1500 a pop... instead we have a very comparable email system for less than 8 grand... Oh yeah and we don't spend 8-10 hours a day rebuilding corrupted exchange databases.
- Resistance among the user base (people don't like change)
- Vast number of different applications/suppliers to work with
- Lack of support from on-high
None of these problems are specific to linux - but rather to any attempt to introduce change on massive scale. Nowhere are they saying that "linux doesn't work"Wired has an English summary of the information in the German press:
6 22 36,00.html
http://www.wired.com/news/infostructure/0,1377,
According to the story, here are the major problems, aside from some resistence among city hall staffers:
1. Munich insists on a whole bunch of studies into topics like Open Source security, desktop ergonomics, and software component stability and compatibility as part of the transition, but wants someone else (i.e. IBM and SuSE) to pay for them.
2. Local custom software contractors don't know how to write Linux apps.
Obviously, the first problem has more to do with politics than technology (to paraphrase Ballmer). You can always raise costs by wrapping something in red tape.
The second is a real technical problem, but it also occurs trying to move older Windows apps (i.e. 95, 98) to newer Windows versions. Solution: write Web apps, bozos (that way, if they ever want to go to yet another OS on the desktop, their apps will still work). The real problem is that they still think writing custom client-side apps in *any* OS is a good idea.
Linus should also make a visit and poke around to figure out what is really going on. Out Balmer Balmer with counter-PR.
Table-ized A.I.
I live in munich, and there have been some problems even noticable for the average person. They have had to close some offices a couple of times because of "EDV Probleme". But it'll pass, and I still think it is worth some passing troubles to move to a free system. A lot of the university departments here have been using linux for years and it works great for them.
I can only speak from my own example.
700+ Macs --- Never had an email virus. Never had an issue with spyware.
100 linux machines -- Never had any virus. Never had any spyware issues.
1000+ windows boxes. Many full time jobs spend doing little but virus removal. Yes we have Norton... Also spyware is a HUGE problem. It has gotton to the point that our clients machines do nothing but have pop-ups and slow down to a crawl.
So in my opinion, switching to ANYTHING non Microsoft Windows will reduce the total cost of ownership after the initial pain of moving. Also, non of these Windows users have administrative access. I will say one good thing about Microsoft Windows, you generally don't have to ask if it is supported, but then again it is almost getting that way with Linux.
Also, do you honestly believe that SP2 will address all the remote secuirty issues of Windows? Would you bet your job on it? I wouldn't...
The more I learn about science, the more my faith in God increases.
We actually had another article posted to the Linux Users Group of Cleveland website way back on February 11th. Full text of the article can be read here.
a simple case of sloppy reporting, seems to me. check for yourself:
= /n ewsticker/meldung/43485&words=Linux%20M%fcnche n
t ik elDetail&id=80114785&cfid=57927&cftoken=85649319&n r=2&kw=munchen
first source for all things german, heise.de:
http://www.heise.de/newsticker/result.xhtml?url
based, in turn, on this article in computerwoche:
http://www.cowo.de/index.cfm?pageid=267&type=Ar
nothing in there about linux being more expensive (than what?).
main problem seems to be that the head of the project hoped to put together a municipal linux task force, but the municipality isn't freeing city employees to dedicate their hours; since the city coffers aren't brimming, there's now a budget problem for the "refined project" phase they're currently working on.
who publishes the toronto star...?
I've been on both sides here. I've done the OpenLDAP database of users, with OS X desktops an Samba fileservers, Sendmail / QPopper / IMAP mail setups for a few thousand users. I've also done the Win2k3 servers with AD and Exchange, and WinXP desktops, again for a few thousand users. The bottom line is that they both serve the same roles: user management, mail, fileserving.
:w
You've got a great point, there. The MS way is tightly integrated, and that really shows off in the provisioning/de-provisioning functions. You'll never get that kind of tight integration in the Open Source world, but you can get close with "standards". Sadly, standards for leveraging LDAP for mail and file service lag way behind. For account provisioning, we have the experimental RFC 2307 for storing NIS information as objectClass posixAccount. There are only a couple of expired Internet-Drafts for mail. For file servers, there's basically nothing.
All this is not to say that standardization is not the way to go, it's just that there's still a ways to go. And the people who know how to make this sort of solution work -- people with lots of practical, large-scale, real-world experience -- are just not the people working on "standards."
Much less. Much, much, much less.
Start with a Linux setup. Apps like OpenOffice and Mozilla are trivial to convert because there are Win32 versions available. Perl and Python environs are available for Windows. GTK libraries work on Windows.
Apache has a Windows port. Your Windows users can't tell if their home directory is being served up by a Windows server or Samba.
If you desperately need some application that only works on Linux, you can set up a computer or two with Linux and present the apps over the network. Cygwin is also a viable option.
It's all about open standards and interoperability.
You want the truthiness? You can't handle the truthiness!
It's certainly not easier to use..
Depends on the definition of "easier to use". We customise all user desktops (we use Linux as a terminal server) so that only 5-10 icons are present and those are the only apps the users can access. Easy to use, no confusion. Study after study shows that giving the administrative workers access to all sorts of "accessiores" produces hours of fucking around with screen savers. Web access is restricted to the intranet and few choice sites. No ebay and chatting. Huge increases in productivity and a lot of whining from the spoiled brats when we implement this, usually in the vain of "this sux! On Windows I could play my Backgammon with the dude in shipping all day!". Those who are there to work and make their company successful somehow never complain. Go figure.
Oh and I can just imagine the sort of friction the dudes in Munich are getting from the government workers, I truly sympathise guys.
Again depends on the definition. If you are looking to squeeze the maximum from your existing hardware so that your return on investment is maximized, you use Linux. Otherwise you go upgrade all your PCs every 2 years on schedule. The advent of Windows Terminal Services (something Linux/Unix had for ages) made Windows more competetive but thats not how most Windows installations are deployed. We tend to use Linux based Terminal Servers as a primary mode so the hardware requirements on clients are next to nothing.
You cant be for real. I have people with applications on Windows who pay $7.5k in "support contract" fees for their windows software and they call me to rescue them because that wonderful support just works so great. Did you ever call Microsoft for anything? I did a dozen or so times. Last time it was ~$250 US per "incident" (you will not catch me dead with a MS support contract) and after spending 1/2 a day I still didn't get to talk to anyone who could diagnose a BSOD, even though I went to all the trouble of preparing the dumps and messing with the system debugger and symbol files to try to get the call stack extracted so we could backtrack to the offending code. Oh, and that other time when I called after finding out a critical bug in MS SQL only to find out that a) SQL support is ~$350US per incident and its a call-back "less then 48hrs" response time and b) its not a "bug" but it will be fixed in the "next release". I stopped calling MS many years back, simply because when I looked at the results they never provided me any useful assistance.
Windows world suport is not in any shape or form better then that on Linux and unlike Windows apps, I can at least attempt a work around or even a fix since I can program in several languages.
I am starting to find all these people who repeat mindlessly Redmont's propaganda with no actual practical experience in the matter, truly infuriorating.
- A new entry in the Control panel called Security Options
- Conveniently provided links within this section to Automatic Updates, Internet Security Settings, and the Internet Connection Firewall.
- Default settings enabling the firewall, automatic updates, and applying a security policy to IE so damn restrictive, you get error messages displaying 404 pages (no kidding).
- Pop-up blocker not turned on, so only those who know about it or happen to stumble upon it will find it.
- Erm, that's it.
On a related note, inside sources have indicated that SP3 for Windows XP will contain more innovative features. Chief amongst these will be the Microsoft ActiveTransport Enabling-Agent Device.
Deployment of this device will obviously be considerably cheaper than easier than the open-source alternative - the wheel.
Windows Tweaks
This argument is coming up again and again. It used to be true, but no longer is. The most likely companies to do the job are IBM and SuSE. IBM is American, SuSE is now 100%-Novell owned and therefore also American. Both will certainly most likely use local personal, but this is no different from Microsoft, whose German headquarters is based in Munich with several thousand employees.
Why do so many less-than-fully-competent system administrators who complain that they spend all their time removing Windows viruses get modded up to +5 here?
I work as an independent contractor developing applications for large electric and gas utilities in North America. In any given year, I spend two or more weeks working hands-on with up to five different large organizations: in the past nine years, this has included over thirty organizations.
All of these organizations have primarily (or entirely) Windows workstations for their users (NT, 2000, and XP over the years). All of these organizations take computer security seriously. At none of these organizations has there ever been more than one instance of a virus or worm causing a real disruption to the rank-and-file folks using Windows. To summarize: over nine years, over thirty organizations, and none suffered even a second occurrence while I was there.
Clearly, it is possible to administer Windows-based networks proficiently. I sincerely hope that the next time you (and others like you) choose to post to Slashdot professing your inability to do that, you instead take that time to learn how to do your job effectively.
Slashdot is entertaining like pro wrestling is entertaining
This article gives a few more details: http://www.wired.com/news/infostructure/0,1377,622 36,00.html
Here you go.
I'm a network admin and i'm platform agnostic. We use all types here; my job is to make them work.
So you image 14000 windows computers and you forget to install an application. Using group profiles you can remotely deploy that application the next time your users login.
Company bookmarks change? No problem, just use group profiles to update everyone's favorites next time they login.
Security patch update? Easy, after you've lab tested the patch, go to your Software Update Services machine and automatically deploy the update to all your client machines.
Love or hate MS. They have done a very good job integrating the server products to the desktop products. It helps administrators do their job without making a visit to every workstation, or writing and debugging pages of scripts.
I like OS X and Linux, and I use them every day, but MS seems to do a better job of centralized administration and deployment.
-ted