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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.