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GNU/Linux Clears Gov't Procurement Hurdles
Sam Hiser writes "Tom Adelstein makes some sound if subtle points about where GNU/Linux really is in the government space -- not far enough. With OpenOffice.org and Mozilla (Firefox) now popular harbingers of file format freedom and browser security on Windows, he says, there is hope that public mindshare is catching up with reality; and that the 'Microsoft Two-Step: Shrug & Reboot' will soon be a thing of the past.
Adelstein, in his column today in Linux Journal, discusses the significant advances made by GNU/Linux and its achievement of Common Criteria certification for government and enterprise use in a world where Microsoft still dominates in mindshare and governmental purchase orders."
Government can't switch to Linux or even free software, people say. Well, such has done München (Munich you say) here in my country. I am professional involved with some of people who are with the project involved, and it is as they are accorded going "smooth move, exlax" as you Americans say.
Read journal when you are not understand
I spend about 10% of my time in them vs. Windows, and I 'shrug and reboot' more times in Linux.
This is your conditioned behaviour due to your familiarity with microsoft products. By your own admission you are a linux newbie, so when you see something you don't understand, it's easy to fall back on the old habits. I can't remember the last time I've booted a linux box, other than for hardware maintenance or a new kernel. My expee using friends boast about how they've gone a whole month without rebooting, and I show them my 450 day uptime, just to put things into perspective.
Much as microsoft has improved their stability, and taken some baby steps towards being a wee bit more linux-like in that regard, they still have a long way to go. I spent some time with expeee in the past week, upgrading several relatives from ie and outlook to mozilla/firefox, and I have to say, I found expee to be the same old windows I left years ago.
Oh, it was cuter, microsoft has put a lot of effort into making it cute - and it doesn't seem to crash quite as much as win95/98/nt (thanks no doubt to the generous helpings of bsd unix code they've helped themselves to - gee, you don't have to reboot now just to change IP address) but after a few days of expee, I still felt like I'd been forced to work while squeezed into one of those tiny kindergartner desks. blech, give me my SuSE 9.1 desktop anyday.
Legitimate support for DVD playback - Check the Slashdot story from a week or so ago about powerdvd for linux. I admit this is a bit weak but xine plays dvds fine. Are you seriously concerned about illegally playing DVDs?
Games - Agreed. Then again some of the quality new games are also available for linux.
MS Office - Openoffice for 99% if the work. If you really need 100% compatibility you can run Office with Wine
Painless firewalling - Painless like not enabling the firewall until after the internet is up? Please, theres tons of nice graphical firewall config apps for linux too.
Free, automatic updates - C'mon.. Linux has had free updates from its creation. And any decent modern distro has an autoupdate facility. And not just for the OS but for all the applications you have installed!
I run a Linux network at home (4 systems) and no Windoze machines. My wife has to have Excel so I run Crossover Office with Microsoft Office 2000 Professional on my Linux boxes. I have absolutely no problem with DVD playback, copying, backup, TV capture, you name it. My systems are up 24/7/365 and have been for the past two years (not counting major power outages). I'm firewalled out the wazoo. I have no viruses. The only legitimate reason that I can see for you running Windoze is games (it *is* a valid reason though for the time being). I don't play games on my systems so it's not a problem for me. BTW, I work for DOD and Linux is there in force, and growing daily.
I hope someone reads this far down... I work as an IA specialist for DoD and linux and vxworks are used in a lot of crucial areas. radars run vxworks. networks that transfer target data run linux. Common Criteria (the orange book) is an old standard and is recognized as untenable. The red book came out to address some of those issues. the orange book only certifies non-networked platforms. the minute you connect it to something the certification is void. the DoDI 8500.2 is the reigning instruction for certification of all systems. and just to be fair... win2k, xp, or 2003 aren't CC certified either. Sometimes you just have to ask a govy before deriving your own conclusions. underCat --- because cats just don't care
Sig? No, thanks. I don't smoke.