Slashdot Mirror
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."
Just curious, how came we don't have stories about people using Linux and switching to windows?
I don't want to troll but the question simlpy begs itself. Considering the majority of people here are still hooked up on windows, it's surprising that moved-to-linux stories are quite popular.
I mean, if the damn thing is already too superior, why aren't everyone switching now?
But please don't give me the 'switching cost' argument. It's simply not valid. You run a bussness, you plan estimates in YEARS ahead. Switching cost is less than licencing cost for any long term business planning. Plus the ability to (f)ix your own tools is the most powerfull leverage you can have.
It's important to realize that the government and government workers have more important things to do and to be working on than dealing with computer problems. Now, Linux doesn't have all that many problems if set up correctly and everything else. The unfortunate part is that most folks who work in government aren't going to want to have to learn Linux. That's just my guess, after all. I could be wrong.
With Windows, if something goes wrong, a "shrug and reboot" will take place. If something's still wrong, a work order or whatever else will be put in, and the problem will be fixed. Now, here's the kicker: when things have to get fixed, does the government want to have to pay for a bunch of people who are like the character Nick Burns from SNL?
Perhaps government offices feel like Microsoft and associated tech support teams are more friendly and cooperative. I think it would be nice if the government switched over to Linux. It would avoid some security issues like when Republican staffers "broke into" Democratic bulletin boards and published internal memoranda.
Oh well, what do I know? I'm more about government than technology anyway, but I don't have a problem with switching over to Linux. Maybe the powers that be do.
I have to agree, it totally isn't Windows' fault that it decided my soundcard should share ISA resources with some USB interfaces, causing spectacular blue screens and frustration!
Wake me when there is something like a Windows live disc that detects everything on startup and works fine. There's something funky when a one time boot up OS like Knoppix does a better job than Windows XP...
-- Reality is for people who lack imagination.
Ever tried the DivX players that come with Red Hat distro under GNOME? The thing is so glitchy I wondered whether there was any single machine in the world that would run it properly. Even developer lists were filled with error messages and crashes that took down the entire GUI shell.
A very good point, although I suspect you (and I) will be moderated down by the /. hive-mind in no time. I run a Linux server at home, but I only access it remotely only using my desktop PC running Windows. Why?
Well, let's see. Legitimate support for a DVD playback, games, MS Office (no, OpenOffice does not import/export files properly), painless firewalling (ZoneAlarm) and free, automatic updates. That's for starters. Linux, on the other hand, is perfect for the old Pentium II server in the closet.
The owls are not what they seem
We were formed about two months ago, and our charter was to figure out the rollout of the following :
1) Samba, to better manage file and print servers... We currently use Windows products, and really dissatisfied.
2) Apache. We currently use windows, and are REALLY dissatisfied
3) Linux Cluster for doing distributed computations (there is no windows alternative, and many of us learned these techniques in graduate school and are appalled they aren't available to us)
The institutional constipation on changing these things is utterly appalling... Here is an example:
Prior to this groups formation I tried to get permission to use R to replace S, as most of the people who use it, do so infrequently, and dont' really justify the cost... I was told, by boilerplate, "freeware is written by 'hackers' and is riddled with security holes..." when I CCd a letter to the then director of R, asking for advice, I was read the riot act by the people who make such decisions...
Please don't take this the wrong way as I mean it sincerely. I just love that you write with an accent.
A big part of the problem in American government, insofar as OSS software adoption goes, is that middle managers and "higher-ups" still equate "secure" with "secret" even though this is demonstrably untrue.
OP Microsoft still dominates in mindshare and governmental purchase orders
I thought that once a court found a business to be crooks, the government stopped doing business with it.
gewg_
If you wait long enough, you will be using a UNIX variant. In fact, the bits you're relying on to read Slashdot, assuming you read it from your WinXP PC, originated in a UNIX distribution.
Personally, I get along fine with Windows (writing to you using XP Pro at the moment). But I don't like Microsoft's attitude toward its customer base. Specifically, customers are "revenue streams" that must be encouraged vigorously to stay on the never-ending upgrade carousel. Why do you think Longhorn will have such a completely different API / programming system? Primarily, in spite of all the claims of productivity and security, it's so that users will have to buy the newest versions of software packages they already have.
For a small company providing significant enhancements and consistently delivering value, that sort of practice isn't necessarily bad. But I don't need a web services interface to my word processor (*cough* intentional strawman). Microsoft is experiencing a problem typical of any publicly traded company that dominates its market. They can't grow. And it's this artificial need to grow that causes them to look for new ways to milk revenue streams from their existing customers. It's not about profit, it's about the stock price.
So, yeah, Windows is OK if you keep it patched and turn off or strap down the whiz-bang features. I just hope that Microsoft outgrows (in the maturity sense) their focus on leasing you their software and gets back to the business of selling competitive products.
A couple of months ago I decided it was time to try out a differnt distro (from Mandrake 9.1), so I downloaded gentoo. Well, I've grown impatient in my old age, so no, I did not want to read all 50ish pages of the installation instructions, so I read the quick start and got stuck in.
:-)
When it failed to boot, I shrugged, rebooted to XP and downloaded Fedora Core 1. Installed fine, booted - no support for my modem. Okay, shrug, reboot to XP, download the packages, reboot to Fedora. Ah; no NTFS module, not even read support. Try installing the kernel sources to compile it, and it wants to install another 400 meg of tenuously-related crap along with them; not on this small a partition, no. Shrug, reboot to XP, download Mandrake 9.2.
The morals of this story:
a) I can't remember the last time I "shrugged and rebooted Windows", yet in this particular week, various Linux distros caused me no end of hassles
b) I should've stuck with 'drake
Seriously though, it's getting tiresome. Sometimes I could almost believe that the people most vocally bashing Windows are the ones who haven't actually used it in years, and are basing their vitriol on out of date experiences.
It's official. Most of you are morons.
Perhaps the Linux community would do a better job of shutting people like me up by fixing the REAL issues
Perhaps the "REAL" issue is, Microsoft has found a sweet spot in your wallet -- and then you're working your way backwards from there into an oppinion.
I work with Windows boxen nearly every day of the week. We install Linux servers in every office we can, centralizing file shares, centralizing databases (including Act! and Access). We then add a little sauce, like IM and web-based CM and Calendar, etc., etc.
We never service our clients' Linux boxen. Never. However, we bill thousands of dollars a week for Windows "help". In other words, I could easily say that Microsoft has been good to us -- indirectly. But I have to ask myself: What's best for our clients? Not Microsoft Windows. Also, what's best for our own business?
In the office, we run 100% Linux -- have for 6 years. In all that time, we've never had to reboot a system except to upgrade the kernel or move a box from one room to another. We do all invoicing, payroll, taxes, inventory control and all "desktop" functions using Linux.
You Windows-dependent businesses really don't know how smooth operations can be with Linux. Virii? Ha! Pop-ups? Haven't seen one of those in over two years! Reboots for every application installation? Never. Networking? Rock solid. Application crashes? Occasionally, but never does the OS go down with.
Does one need a "Systems Administrator" for Linux? What an irrelevant question! It's irrelevant given the number of hours our clients have us in the office *just* rebooting their systems. If we were to find a client which could switch to Linux, I'm certain we'd spend perhaps a little more time doing initial setup and then never hear from them again until they needed hardware upgrades.
So the reason for the above rant? Our clients aren't made of money. They can't afford to keep calling us back because each time they buy a new Windows-based laptop, we have to do our "magic" to get the thing immune to virii, etc. Unfortunately, computing has become a social thing. The reality is, JohnTheFisherman will never change his/her mind until such a time that Linux affects his/her wallet, directly. So my clients have to live with the social status quo, to keep compatible with other businesses.
How sad.
People who are well versed in Windows have a better time with it.
:)), partly it's a matter of user interface.
... maybe it no longer appears in XP, I'm a bit behind, can't recall.)
.dll file, and Norton's utilties pop up another dialogue box saying that some minor file other is missing, and instructs the user to remove and reinstall the Norton package. In all, four error messages pop up on boot, and the owner, not into computers except as things on which to write / check email / *use*, doesn't know how to resolve them, so ... they remain, and the computer seems to work.
:) [Much better than the opposite situation, which seems to be more common.] The laptops's owner showed me this, to ask me why it said that (on the basis that I know something about computers), but as usual I had to point out that I know little about computers and far less than that about Windows ;)
... could be the hardware, or maybe the software is primarily to blame -- all I know is that the combination fails a lot!)
;)
I see a fair number of people's Windows machines (not a huge number, but computers belonging to friends / acquaintances / family members), and in my limited sample, most of them provide evidence for the "Windows is Flaky" point of view. (And I'm mostly ignorant of Windows, fall into the same category.)
Partly this is the fault of malicious (or merely thoughtless) 3rd party software (there are people who seem to think that Microsoft is basically a real-life Virtucon intent only on ransom money, impaling infants on pikes, etc, but I am not one of these
(How many Windows login screens are there out there with a blank password that the user would just as soon skip altogether, but has gotten used to hitting return to get past? Of the motley Windows installs I've seen, I'd say 90% of the users have just gotten used to clicking through that screen
Past the login screen, there are cryptic error messages all over the place that non-guru Windows users just shrug at and click past. Maybe they shouldn't, but that's the time/effort decision many users have come to accept. Whenever I work on Windows machines, I tend to agree.
Case in point: For the last few days, I was using a borrowed laptop -- wireless connection worked only with the one I was using, and my housemate can't find the documentation for the wireless box. (More complicated that that, but suffice it to say it was easier to just borrow.) On startup, Windows pops up an error message about a missing
Trying to bring up his wireless card's special driver software (privded by SBC) tells the user that the access point cannot be found or is not connected -- even though in fact, it seems to be working fine
(That machine, a Dell Inspiron, a few years old, is running Windows 2000 Pro, crashes frequently
So far, in my experience, all operating systems suck ["'PC load letter?' WTF does *that* mean?!" is a universal experience] but I've had far happier experiences with Linux and other Unixy operating systems (and with the pre-X Mac OS as well) than with Windows. Personality, prior experience, expectations, aesthetics all play into it. In matters of taste, there can be no dispute
wrt to the claim (made frequently, and close to what you've said here) that under Windows "things just work, snap in a driver disk and click some arrows", I've found that to be a mixed bag when trying to help my dad install software while on family visits. Some things (scanner, one printer) worked fine, just click-click-click; other things he's had and tried repeatedly, and with telephone tech help, to install, with no luck. His color laser printer, he *never* got to work under Windows 98, and eventually reached a tech who confided that many other people had the same experience, with no solution in sight. [Under Windows XP, it finally works as expected -- Yay! -- but I was somewhat smug in pointing out it was supp
jrnl: http://tinyurl.com/c2l8yr / foes: http://tinyurl.com/ckjno5
A tool maker should not have any control over the actions of the one using the tool. That is the whole point of Software Freedom.
Imagine those kind of restrictions on physical objects. Imagine people selling shoes that couldn't legally be used to march in a pride parade. Or vegetarian only forks.
Even if a no-army provision was put into the GPL, the US government would just waste money building their own software. Money that otherwise could be used to help people or just not taxed away in the first place.
Yes, we really want everyone to have Software Freedom, not just a chosen few. We cannot control people with software and its wrong to even try.
"The reality is, JohnTheFisherman will never change his/her mind until such a time that Linux affects his/her wallet, directly. So my clients have to live with the social status quo, to keep compatible with other businesses."
Nice assumption. If you spend a lot of time at work administering Windows boxes you must not be a very good administrator. I work at a Honda car manufacturing plant and advertising office and we have just under 5000 PCs in the plant. Out of those 5000 computers probably about 4,500 of them are Windows boxes that are used by the staff daily. We have virtually no problems with any of them and almost all the tasks are automated. Most of the calls we get are stupid user problems that are caused by them at no fault of the operating system.
"You Windows-dependent businesses really don't know how smooth operations can be with Linux. Virii? Ha! Pop-ups? Haven't seen one of those in over two years! Reboots for every application installation? Never. Networking? Rock solid. Application crashes? Occasionally, but never does the OS go down with."
First of all it's viruses not virii. We simply have a virus scanner, strong firewall and security rules and we have had no major problems with viruses in over 8 years. Pop-ups? This is not a problem as there are plenty of browsers that have pop-up blockers that are available for Windows. Reboots for every application installation? That is such a stupid comment, very few applications in Windows 2000 and above require reboot, mainly Operating System updates and video card drivers. Networking? Don't have any problems with the Windows networking so I'm not sure what you are referring to. Windows can network fine with any OS we have including various distributions of Linux and Solaris. Application crashes? Virtually none. However, in my experience this is much more frequent in Linux as so many of the Open Source applications are poorly coded and documented even worse.
I have the *same* "problem", but it is on a laptop where I kill it with the power button. Moreover, on restarting on a subsequent day I see nothing about an improper shut down. Hence, not quite as convient, but not a real hang either.
/usr/local/ ...
Of interest too are the number of packages that did not install properly. Nonetheless, I was mostly blissfully ignorant until I had to use particular packages. More recently, my own installation of updated or new packages have gone well where I have installed as a shared resource, e.g.
Some problems, yes but nothing as crazy as I have encountered in "Windows".
Prefect, of course not - but certainly more than good enough. I cannot remember the last time I booted into Windows - months ago when I was searching for some email.