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Spanish Region Goes Entirely Open Source
greengrass writes to tell us TechWorld is reporting that the Spanish region of Extremadura has decided to go completely open source with their day-to-day operations. While the region has long been a supporter of open source software, within a year it will be a requirement that all officials use the ODF and PDF formats for all documents. From the article: "Extremadura, Spain's poorest region, made headlines following a 2002 decision to migrate about 70,000 desktops and 400 servers in its schools to a locally tailored version of Debian called gnuLinEx. The government has estimated that the total cost of this project was about 190,000 euros (£130,000), 18 million euros lower than if the schools had purchased Microsoft software. "
This is what Opensource should be using its power to do. Good work every one!
I ate your fish.
I read that as "Spanish Religion Goes Entirely Open Source", and spent the next few seconds wondering about the implication of this transition.
Is this just a localised Linux distro, or does it have other specific properties? Small footprint, extra security, that sort of stuff? TFA weren't too clear about that, and the gnuLinEx website was a bit... Spanish.
All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain. Time to die.
Soon they'll propose a counter offer that costs less than the open-source solution.. for the next few years. Then they concentrate on taking the deciding parties to cruises, trips to USA and Bahamas etc. to keep them from ever again even thinking about migrating to another system. Or maybe I'm just becoming a bit jaded? :-)
Good. Now if only my local government would listen to me and stop wasting millions of dollars on MS licenses. (Their "compatibility" issue boils down to being compatible with the printer -- they always print out their stuff on letterhead and mail it through the post!)
Our intelligent designer has never created an animal that we couldn't improve by strapping a bomb to it.
"NOBODY expects the Spanish Inquisition!" ;-)
Paul B.
What exactly do schools look for in "Computer curriculum"? Most I know only look for a browser, a HTML editor and some presentation s/w on the clients side. The servr side is mostly some Courseware s/w - Moodle or Drupal; LDAP; Centralised File System etc.
There has been no incentive for schools to upgrade from Windows 98, indeed many schools near me have about 80% of their systems running Win98, and the students are quite happy with what they're getting. There's absolutely no incentive to upgrade to WinXP (although a RAM upgrade might allow XP to run).
Schools in fact have every reason to ask Microsoft WHAT EXACTLY they get in return for Big $$ they need to shell out in MS upgrades. If they switch (the servers are already on Linux) the clients also to Linux, schools will have absolutely zero incentive to upgrade to Vista.
If you keep throwing chairs, one day you'll break windows....
Hasta la vista, Microsoft.
IT staff? They probably let the IT staff produce a big guide to the new OS, and had everyone install it themselves on company time. Probably not included in the price tag.
Of course this means they lost some productivity through this, which just drives home the point that if you need to lose productivity, the cost may be difficult to measure but it can't possibly be as high as the productivity loss caused by M$ products.
Good argument for GNU, Linux and open source in general with your boss: cuts your software costs by 98.9%. Finally someone puts an official number on this.
Victims of 9/11: <3000. Traffic in the US: >30,000/y
Nobody expects the now Open Source based Spanish Inquisition!
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Superb hosting 20GB Storage, 1_TB_ bandwidth, ssh, $7.95
I think 'Extremadura' would be an awesome name for a release of a major distro.
With every year, MS Windows loses another advantage or another killer-feature and the playground - while far from fair - gets a little bit more leveled.
I still remember the mid-late 90s, when you still had to recompile the kernel for sound (now it's autodetected), when there was no office suite (StarOffice came IIRC somewhen around 1998), when there was no KDE.
Of course, in many areas (especially gaming) Windows is de-facto without competition, but these areas become smaller with each year.
For the pioneers like Extremadura and Munich, a lot of political will and forsightness was needed.
For those governments that come later this political will won't be needed (or let's say not nearly as much will be needed) as the migration will be easier, cheaper and faster than in Extremadura or Munich - because of the experience made there, because some programs will already be ported, because the software was developed further.
In the next years, the biggest chance for OpenSource are the OpenDocument formats. While the old .doc format will remain "the standard" for quite some time, I think OpenDocument has good chances beating Microsoft's new XML format and becoming the standard in maybe 10 years. (Mainly because MS XML doesn't offer the advantage of the old .doc format (= being established) and has no advantage versus OpenDocument)
If that happens, MS Office loses it's dominating grip, Microsoft loses a lot of revenue and the ability to fund expensive pet-projects like XBox - and Windows loses another advantage...
Why use IT staff? Schools are full of eager nerds who would love to hold an install fest...
There are many schools in Finland for example, which have student-maintained computer classrooms, school servers, web pages, etc. However, the higher level education a school offers, the less likely it is to find students maintaining the IT infrastructure...
I'm sure that with some thought they could cut that down to x minutes per infinite computers (unattended installations, etc), which would certainly make the price tag seem more logical.
Fedora Directory Services is a very robust implementation of LDAPv3, and is available under GPL. FDS also allows integration with Craptive Directory. Moodle and many other Courseware come with LDAP integration, so there's no problem if the school really wants to go in for Open Source.
If you keep throwing chairs, one day you'll break windows....
It's not just those government offices. It's also all those suck-up, KISS-ASS computer companies that have the VAPID, disGUSTING gall to slap on their hardware the stickers that say:
...
"(kiss-ass-hardware company) recommends microsoft windows XP home edition..."
"(kiss-ass-hardware company) recommends microsoft windows XP professional edition..."
"(kiss-ass-hardware company) recommends microsoft windows 2000 edition..."
As IF the consumer (nevermind the wiser PROsumer...) has a frackin' choice. These snivelly-ass companies are accepting marketing dollars for ms and whoring their names on the labels, stickers, and box art. THERE ARE NO other choices coming from MOST manufacturers, and the prosumers and adventurous consumers are ate least trying out Linux/Debian.
It ought to be illegal the SHIT ms gets away with.
It's like recommending "Milk. It does YOUR body good". Then they dairy council gets sued, and they change to:
"Milk. It does A body good."
With all the virii and other bullshit incessantly bringing up the cost of ownership of ms windoze products, its amazing that the industry has not demanded more Linux-based native apps to get off windoze.
-- lame file system... STILL needs defragging in XP/2K. What will vista have?
-- an admin logging off users STILL blows out any work they may have open as drafts. If ms is SOOOOO innovative, then WHY in the hell in the past 6 years have they NOT rewritten windoze to save the endangered draft docs/files as "admin-shutdown-draft 2006-07-31-1422-wordfile.doc" or "sysadmin-shutdown-draft 2006-07-31-1422-outlook.olk"....
Even if security is a problem, the SYSADMIN on the machine should be able to save the file and do the work that the crappy design causes them to do in reboot or log-user-out mode.
Open Source Devs... I think Linux needs something to deal with my 2nd comment, for those systems where the admin needs to bring down a multi-user machine... (presume the kids/family/housemate users left home and left drafts open but their session locked/screen-saved...) for maintenance or hardware change. It would be a "nice to have to be nice and behave" feature...
Previously: "Linux... Toward the Sunrise..." Now: "Linux... Toward the-- No, now, part of Every Sunrise"
Doesn't that work in Linux? I know from my own experince running KDE that when X crashes (I'm running the binary nvidia driver, sorry, but it only happens once every few weeks), when I log back in to KDE there's everything just the way I left it. Surely bringing down the system entirely wouldn't be more disruptive than that.
Thank God there is not a Nerd Union that would require one nerd per each install.
Keep in mind that Corey's method for arriving at $18/hour is totally asinine.
It's not offtopic, dumbass. It's orthogonal.
Seriously, I wonder how long it will be before a direct mental connection between Open Source and socialism develops in the minds of Americans. It'd be an easy weapon to deploy against Linux.
I assume the parent means "both parents", as in Spanish - father is 'el padre', mother is 'la madre', but both together are 'los padres'. This masculine dominance happens with many words for people
If this were really happening, what would you think?
padres = parents
Done, but you're not going to like what I charged you. ;)
On most of the Linux distros I've used, xscreensaver will accept either the user's password or root's password. If it doesn't, or if the user is using an esoteric screensaver program, switch to the console, log in as root, kill the screensaver process, and switch back.
http://outcampaign.org/
Let's review the statement from Extremadura:
The government has estimated that the total cost of this project was about 190,000 euros, 18 million euros lower than if the schools had purchased Microsoft software.
Do you think that "Before buying printer, check Linux compatability at linuxprinting.org." is included in these 190,000 Euros? (= well over 200.000 US Dollars)
Do you think that they called vendors ahead before they bought whatever was needed to upgrade 70,000 computers to the new printing-needs?
Do you think that they called vendors ahead before they set up printers for 70,000 computers, no matter if run on Linux or Windows?
OK, I fully admit it:
For some gamer who runs a single computer in a basement, Linux is probably not the prime choice. Even for many non-gaming home users Linux might not be the best choice.
But this is about a government organization that:
Here you can find the "home-user" version.a zine_DVD.pdf
And here (PDF Warning!!),
https://www.linux-magazine.com/issue/64/Linux_Mag
you can read an English language article describing this special
home version called JuegaLinex (Play LinEx).
It gives an option at install-time to d/l nvidia or ati 3D drivers.
I put this on a 800mHz mini-itx box for my niece and nephew--
They loved it!
(You can easily localize this version to English)
Many educational apps and a ridiculous number of games!
I recommend to try it on any small people you may know.
gnuLinEx is spanish for GNU Linux.
I reserve the write to mangle english.
PDF is not an open standard like ODF. Adobe, a private, for profit company owns and devlops the PDF IP. It is almost ubiquitous however it cannot be claimed to be an 'open standard'. It amazes me that in this audience that no one else has picked up on this!! Come on people!
Extremadura is the region of Spain from which most of Spain's global conquerors launched, starting a half-millennium ago. While that "pioneer" legacy does make it natural to lead in the brave new world of OSS, it's worth considering that its primary legacy from its past colonial leadership is extreme poverty.
--
make install -not war
Spain is not third world, by any account or figure.
Please google and research "peak oil" a bit. You will discover this crisis is a lot worse than they have told you
So how the heck do you pronounce "gnuLinEx" in Spanish? :-) that looks like a string of characters that's going to be hard for some people to remember surely.. probably I am being trite but I think one of the smartest things those nice browser people did was call their browser "Firefox", not some uberclever mashup of acronyms, just a friendly name. Surely there's some friendly localised name that could be used, will the school teachers and govt officials in this part of Spain really give a damn if their OS is based on GNU and Linux. I'd say the Spanish geeks should think of a friendlier name. Good on you though for what you've done getting the OS established though, good luck one and all!
18Mln vs. 190k euros? I'd say it doesn't hurt to try.
From my personal experience, 5 years ago Linux had problem of application availability and the quality of the applications. Now, most problems boil down to "Wind0ze does it differently". IOW, If you deploy Linux-only environment such problems don't exist.
I once worked for three years in Linux-only house. After 4 years on WinNT4. That was best experience of my life: easy installation and recovery, painless networking, simple backup, no-brainer collaboration with others, etc. Perl, python, apache/php/mysql, cvs, gcc, gdb, vim, etc - all stuff already installed for your there. And it all works! All servers are only click away. But of course the experience depends on kind of work you are doing. I'm software developer and Linux known to be developers' "nirvana".
All hope abandon ye who enter here.
So are the San Diego Padres supposed to represent Catholic priests, parents in general, or fathers? Which of these makes the best (well, least bad) mascot?
Even though it's clearly an ignorant troll, he's not completely off. Spain has a LOT of blood on its hands. First the moslems, then all of south and central america. We're talking millions and millions! And then "recently" the civil war and the fascistic dictatorship until 1974.
However - They've learned their lesson - that war does no good! And is now very peace-loving people. Passionate, but peace-loving. It was simply amazing to see how people went on the street after the Madrid-bombings to demonstrate for PEACE - the day after they had been victim to a large-scale terror attack. Their response was not to start wars. They had learned the lesson.
Other countries and people could learn from that......
Disclaimer: Yes, I live in Spain.
Here is the original document from the Junta de Extremadura:
http://www.linex.org/mocion_consejo_gobierno.pdf
And here is a free translation of that document:
http://www.hispalinux.es/files/mocion_consejo_gobi erno_english.pdf
Reality is a mass hallucination due to lack of alcohol in blood. - DeadLiver
But then, all the people who installed it will know better how to handle it in case of a problem and may not need to run to IT staff to solve little problems.
Bert
Why hack the grades when you control them. :P
Great Intellect...
Dear pope, /. told me your now open source so please could you open up the valuts of the vatican so that I can run scientific test on all the relics and books you hold their.
Someone on
Thanks,
Judus.
thank God the internet isn't a human right.
Try this instead. Once you can lower a cost, then change it to imcreasing their revenue. Than all that is left, is to overcome the money factor. If the gov. is attached to gates front pocket (or there abouts), then it is difficult to get their backing. But not all are that way.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Adobe has a few patents on it but anyone is allowed to use the PDF standard royalty-free. so it is an open standard (although not free)
You mean the Spanish GNU/Inquisition, of course.
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"Outlook not so good." That magic 8-ball knows everything! I'll ask about Exchange Server next.
I am learning Spanish and this can confuse as naturally I assume that someone is talking about their brothers, when they could also mean their sisters as well.
;)
Just remember that if they're talking only about their sisters, they'll use the feminine word. Masculine word = male only or mix of male and female. Feminine word = female only. (This obviously only applies to people or other things with genders, and not to such things as fruit, furniture, or anything else lacking a concrete gender.
"Your effort to remain what you are is what limits you."
Yes I was aware of this, but didn't want to go too in depth. Thanks for pointing that out more concisely than I could have.
If this were really happening, what would you think?
This has nothing to do with your post, except for the fact that I was tickled pink by your use of Battlestar Galatica termonology ('fracking'). That is all. Move along.
Putting the 33k in G33k.
Spain has a LOT of blood on its hands.
Name one developed (or even semi-developed) country that doesn't.
It's official. Most of you are morons.
Think about the US jobs that will be lost.
We are doomed, I am telling you, Mc Donalds, flipping burgers, blah, blah, blah.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
Spain has the world's 9th largest economy when measuring by nominal GDP. I've toured the whole country apart from the north-west corner, and in no way is it a third world country. You've got no idea what you're talking about.
Switzerland?
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
I have seen logos and the like of the team and that is the context.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
... if you are actually not defending your area (bunch of sissies) hopping to go to extra time. A famous Mexican soccer comentator used to say "The football is very lazy, it always choses to rest in the net that is closest to it"...
But now that you guys know that, you can apply this knowledge next time there is a WC in Germany.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
I just installed Ubuntu on a machine at home. The printer (HP LaserJet 1020) install on the Ubuntu box was much easier and took a fraction of the time than it did when I installed the same printer on an XP box. The printer was originally bought for use with an XP box and I didn't check for Linux compatibility before I installed it on the Ubuntu box. CUPS comes preinstalled and running on Ubuntu. The printer install wizard makes installing a printer with CUPS a very fast and easy point and click process. I noticed that Ubuntu also has a package available specifically for use with HP printers, I didn't try it because the already installed CUPS works fine.
I have installed printers on FreeBSD, other Linix, and Solaris boxes in the past and know what a pain in the ass it is. I was truly amazed when after just a few mouse clicks the wizard said that it was sending a test page to the printer, I heard the printer start up, and then a perfect CUPS test page emerged from the printer.
Am I the only one who kind of wonders about these cost estimates? First, to update 70,000 machines for 190,000 Euros means 3 Euros/machine. Does this include labor? Second, $18,000,000 divided by 70,000 is $257 per machine. Those are some expensive office licenses they have there (I presume those 70,000 machines already have Windows so they shouldn't have to re-buy those licenses). Isn't there some sort of middle ground that would be just as cheap, like using Open Office on Windows - this would sidestep all the compatibility issues with printers and such while reaping most of the cost benefits? While I don't doubt there could be significant savings, at least in the initial project costs, it looks to me like these estimates are way off-base.
The more you regulate a company, the worse its products become.
Iceland
They have an interesting history. While they don't have blood on their hands they have black marks from the way they dealt with the entire situation of WWII and all.. (Wikipedia has information about it).
"I thought what I'd do was I'd pretend I was one of those deaf-mutes" ~ Laughing Man - GITS:SAC
Ireland.
When the posters fear their moderators, there is tyranny; when the moderators fears the posters, there is liberty.
open source is the future
*Everything* in spanish has a gender. Fruit is feminine, "la fruta", furniture is masculine, "los muebles". If you mix both in a sentence, you use the masculine: "estas frutas y estos muebles son buenos".
Reading article before commenting is useful sometimes. It's precisely about municipality move to Linux - after successful pilot in education.
All hope abandon ye who enter here.
I welcome our Extremaduraian Overlords.
Is buying a Harley Davidson as your first motorcycle since you were 16 at age 49 a midlife crisis issue?
Spain is not third world, by any account or figure.
Although economic performance is very good and it's one of the most growing economies of Europe (so medicine, technological consumption, style of life, etc. is very similar to other developed countries...) there is a lot of municipal corruption. Corruption is as usual in Spanish councils as in third world countries: Marbella it's only the most known corruption case. Spain it's not comparable to northern countries.
Disclaimer: Yes, I live in Spain.
My city: Barcelona.
While I totally agree with you in that Spain is in no way a third world country, I don't think nominal GDP is a good measure of development, at least as exposed by your link. For example, according to that measure Brazil, India, and Mexico would be more developed than Netherlands, Switzerland, and Sweden. Somehow that seems incorrect.
I'm reading slashdot from a gnuLinEx computer in a public library right now. As somebody has told, it is a localised debian with funny names for the most used programs, taken from emblematic animals/monuments/people from Extremadura. In example, Zurbaran (the Gimp) was a famous painter, and Brasero (k3b) is a traditional coal stove. The government of Extremadura has also made a serious effort to bring broadband internet access to rural areas, were most of the people live. Now, all public libraries and schools in Extremadura have computers with gnuLinEx and broadband, and kids no longer use Windows at school.
This is a troll, right??
We were the invaded, not the invaders.
When the posters fear their moderators, there is tyranny; when the moderators fears the posters, there is liberty.
Also, another considerations when looking at the report:
This is a electoral year in many regions in Spain (maybe the politicians are a little prone to exagerate what they have done??).
Even if it is not an electoral issue, think of this scenario: The head of the department wants to write the report and asks to "the who really knows" the numbers. He says something like "well, the development has been 100.000 and installing will be 98.000, and then the others expenses in formation that we cannot calculate well. In the Windows side, if we had bought 70.000 licenses without OEM, discounts or deals, it would have been 20.000.000, but if we had negotiated a deal it could have been for 2.000.000". Then the head of the department compares the best scenario of Linux against the worst scenario of Windows, to boost to his chiefs that he had got savings for 19.800.000, instead of 1.800.000 or less.
Why can't
Yeah, war is not a good thing to base your economy on.
Old bones aside, it's good for anyone to avoid the M$ tax. $20,000,000 is money every school district has better uses for than software from a company that's as likely to sue them as give them anything useful.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
I could be mistaken, but I don't think so.
Plus, when I ever have to Ctrl+Alt+Del my KDE session (more than once a month) it DOES restore, but to the last KNOWN GOOD session. Any work saved is fine, most icons recently added to the desktop are fine, but any work open does NOT get intercepted and saved. At least not like WP and LWP do when windoze 98 crapped/craps out on me.
(On that note, WordPro and 1-2-3 in Lotus SmartSuite in win98 inside of Win4Lin STILL starts up 5x faster than Ooo.2 or lower. I have only 256 MB RAM, and while my system thrashes like hell, SmartSuite is (albeit on an older code and on a smaller footprint) is like lightning compared to the OOO Cessna. Too bad I cannot make it to the Linux Expo this year to show off what I can do in SmartSuite that I cannot do in OOO. At SOME point, I'll release my stuff under dual-licensing... less-featuredfree/open; heavily-featured for charge. Not sure if I'll "ask IBM" or if I'll approach Google. But, it'll be interesting to see what becomes of it.)
Um, this is what I mean. Here's a scenario:
User puts in ticket which requires a tech to log in. But, user is called to a meeting, or forgets to log out.
Typically, in windoze, trying to log of the logged on user generates a warning that all open work will be lost.
Torn, and depending on IT policy, some tech blow the work out, while some leave a note saying, sorry, we didn't want to risk blowing away your possibly-present work. As a courtesy, I REALLY hate assuming it's OK to boot them off unless they say "Go ahead even if I'm gone."
Now, what I would figure is that mshaft would have experienced a bazillion requests for such a feature. Only, the deprioritize it or suppress it so it never makes the cut. It seems so simple. A batch file notices the work is not saved, similar to when a user tries to close an app without first saving new or modified files. The user is prompted. I don't think I've seen this available in Linux, either, KDE, for certain. Now, the batch file could collect the app process info, name, and save-as a new version of the file. Any apps open would get similar treatment. The tech need not even know the contents of the work, just see a prompt that asks "Do you wish to abort the processes and not make any saves-as,or do you wish the elegant/courtesy boot-off with save-as steps?"Then, then the tech could respond and help IT look good when users tend to forget to log off. It also is good for cases when family or other members forget their passwords and no admin is around to force the log-off. Even if a normal attempt by a regular users generates a warning message, the save-as-for-new-logon process could spare people of grief.
I am sure there must be hundreds of thousands of regretted boot-offs a day, maybe a week.
As for the file system, it is just horrendous that, just today, I did a FRESH XP install on an NTFS partition, blown out and rewritten. With ONLY XP and orifice 2k3 and a FEW small apps, the filesystem was frackin' fragged as hell. Red vertical lines in Diskkeeper. The install was barely 20 minutes old. This is just HIDEOUS. I am sure Linux had better file contiguousness years ago. SO for 2K and XP it must not have even been possible for ms or they weren't willing to come up with a filesystem upgrade for existing or fresh installations.
So much for innovation. Seems more like enervation.
Now, I gotta gets some frackin' BSG DVD rerun time in. I wanna see Number 6 tell the newborn it won't have to worry about life problems, and see the blood-curdling screaming mother. And, I wanna seek Starbuck sock the shit out the drunkard XO.
And, the next time somebody at work sneezes, I am going to have to fight HARD not to say, "Lords of Kobol protect his/hear circulatory system."
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heheh this is just TOO funny.. when I posted my prev spiel, the image word was "incite"
Now, it is "sequel"... slash's tool is so funny often.
Previously: "Linux... Toward the Sunrise..." Now: "Linux... Toward the-- No, now, part of Every Sunrise"
The item press http://www.hispalinux.es/node/597
the law aproved http://www.hispalinux.es/files/mocion_consejo_gobi erno_english.pdf
article in newspaper http://socios.hispalinux.es/node/10258
Congratulation Extremadura peopleÑu !!