Birmingham To Buy More, Not Less Open Source

K-boy writes, "Last week, the press (and Slashdot) reported that Birmingham City Council had decided to ditch its open source project because a report said its trial had cost £100,000 more than it would have cost to buy Windows. However, Techworld has discovered that the opposite is true, and the Council is actually planning to use more open source software as well as to roll out Linux in the next few years. The head of IT was interviewed and he gives a fascinating rundown of the problems he had getting open source working with his systems. More interestingly, he points out that now the trial is over and he and his staff have the technical skills, they expect to save lots of money in future by going open source. Oh, and the report's figures were based on the special rates that Microsoft gives Councils just to make sure the short-term budget look worse — £58 for a Windows license as opposed to the normal £100."

Comments

*BUY* more?

[IflyRC]

Isn't the point of OSS that its FREE?

Re:*BUY* more?

[lastchance_000]

Free as in freedom, not free as in beer. Where have I heard that before?

Re:*BUY* more?

[Andrewkov]

Cost of the software is a tiny portion of the "Total Cost of Ownership", or TOC. Support contracts and making this stuff all work together is where the costs are.

Re:*BUY* more?

['nother poster]

You need support. You need techs and installers and troubleshooters on staff. You need a support contract so that if anything bites it big time you can call up Novell, or Redhat, and have them find the solution for you rather than tying up your staff that already have other duties. Besides, if it becomes unresolvable you can point to the purchased support as the cause thus covering your very tender and precious butt. Same thing goes on with any software in a commercial/governmental setting.

Re:*BUY* more?

[jimstapleton]

that's the phrase, but most open source users/advocates seem to think "free as in beer" is something other than "not paying money", and "free as in freedom" contains "not paying money", as well as some obscure subset of the standard definition of "freedom"

Re:*BUY* more?

[Anonymous Coward]

You're sig answers your question, plus you forgot to say "First Post!"

Re:*BUY* more?

[Anonymous Coward]

I've always considered OSS to be free as in no-cost if you're bad-ass enough that you don't need any support.

Re:*BUY* more?

[russ1337]

>>> "You need support. You need techs and installers and troubleshooters on staff. "

You need some level of support agreement with either solution - Windows or Linux. Comparing the costs of a MSFT support agent or a Red-hat/Novell/Ubuntu support agent is another choice (and cost driver) altogether. As is training and converting users.

My guess is it is a similar cost of support with either solution. I also expect the USER training required to migrate to Vista is similar cost to migrating to Linux. This then falls back to the cost of acquisition. Is it cheaper to pay $100,000 to train your sys admins in Linux so you have an 'organic' capability for OS upgrade and acquisition, or intall XP, then have to buy Vista in a year, then MSoffice 2008, Outlook server 2009, Explorer 2010 etc...

Re:*BUY* more?

[Anonymous Coward]

Bad-ass or stupid-ass? In this case, they are one in the same. If you are brave/stupid enough to use FOSS software in a business environment, you shouldn't be a complete moron and choose to not buy support for said software. And, now that you have proven that you need this advice: NEVER TELL YOUR CUSTOMERS THAT THE SOFTWARE WITH WHICH YOU ARE SUPPORTING THEM IS FOSS THAT YOU DECIDED WAS GOOD ENOUGH TO NOT WARRANT SUPPORT. Good luck...you're definitely gonna need it!

Re:*BUY* more?

['nother poster]

It is, but the Birmingham council and the civil servants working there aren't that bad ass when it comes to computers. But I bet they are more bad ass than you about things governmental.

Re:*BUY* more?

[metlin]

> Isn't the point of OSS that its FREE?

Sure, if you are living in a cave.

In truth (and in reality), no piece of software is ever truly *free* -- you invest it in other forms. The things that you invest in with may not be very valuable to you, but they are investments neverthless (e.g. time).

Now, this is true for everything, and softwware, free or otherwise, is no exception.

TCO, maintenance, support and other things are not free, even if a piece of software is free. In some ways, *paying* for something would mean that the other party has made a contractual agreement towards providing you a product or a service, which is missing in free as in FREE kind of scenarios. Who is to be held responsible if something goes wrong? Who can I cast the blame upon?

Why do you think companies like RedHat and others make so much money?

Re:*BUY* more?

[Anonymous Coward]

"If you are brave/stupid enough to use FOSS software in a business environment..."

Not true. The very large company I work at leverages Python as their glue language with great success and Apache is used successfully as well to name a few.

Re:*BUY* more?

[Anonymous Coward]

The obscure subset part is the ability to keep other people from making money as well.

Re:*BUY* more?

[MrAnnoyanceToYou]

Part of the reason for the difference is also that Microsoft has a virtual monopoly on support contracts for their own software. Sure, there's lots of help out there, but generally if politicians buy M$ software they assume they're going to get some M$ support. This is directly opposite in standing from Linux; there's so much in common between the various distros that basic support can be cross trained. Resultingly, there is a much more competitive market, and the support acquired per dollar is probably much higher quality.

I remember times when people I worked with have been paying hundreds of dollars for sets calls to M$ on the same topic where they didn't get the answer they needed. In a truly competitive market that just wouldn't fly.

Re:*BUY* more?

[jd]

Depends on your definition of "free". Here are some that I made up earlier:

• Free as in beer: Technically, Linux and a good 90% of everything a user may need for data center operations or enterprise activities can be downloaded for no cost beyond the cost of the bandwidth to obtain it, the cost of the physical storage used to hold it and the cost of the time to install and configure it. So if you define "net cost" as the cost to install after you subtract all the things you'd need to spend money on whatever you used, assuming you install yourself, then Open Source has a zero net cost and is therefore "free".
  
• Free as in freedom: Local councils do not, as a rule, have needs that are 100% identical to everyone else. No, I don't just mean a bribes column in the accounting books, but they have to be able to interrelate all kinds of extremely different and often illogical information, and in an emergency have to be able to access any of that information with amazing speed. They are also dealing with information not for public consumption (except when deliberately leaked), so have security needs that differ a lot from the norm. This means they need to be able to tinker with the code in a way that, oh, certain vendors aren't keen on. This means they're free to obey their legal requirements.
  
• Free as in TCO: The total cost of ownership is not merely the cost of installing something and maintaining it, but also considers the return on that investment. If it didn't, then it would not be the true cost of ownership, as it excludes any consideration of the penalty for NOT owning it. To be free, Linux merely needs to have a ROI that is equal to or greater than the cost of doing things manually plus the total investment made in having a Linux solution. If a computerized solution works at all, then the cost of doing things manually swamps all other concerns, and you're guaranteed a true total cost of ownership that is either extremely small or below zero. That's true for almost any solution, so for this definition, ALL systems are free in the long term.
  

Re:*BUY* more?

[jimstapleton]

quite true, but I'd prefer a way of saying "you can make money if you contribute back." It allows them to make money on it, but fairly. One more freedom to add to the mix.

Re:*BUY* more?

[ajs318]

Windows is prone to going Tango Uniform for no good reason, and nine times out of ten Windows cab ne fixed simply by rebooting. And you can train a monkey to reboot a Windows machine -- in fact, it wouldn't surprise me one bit if somebody somewhere has actually done this. This means Windows "techies" are cheap, because nine times out of ten they'll just reboot the errant machine (which the user could have done for themself, were they not scared absolutely shitless by the complexity of anything that plugs in and has more than three buttons on it) and it will work -- and the tenth time they'll reboot it a few times, mutter a few sotto voce expletives, realise it's not having it, give up and buy a new one. This means you end up scrapping repairable machines -- but of course, they ultimately come out of departments' own budgets, not IT's budget.

Unix-like systems don't usually fail without good reason. So anybody working on them really needs to know their arse from a hole in the ground. This means Unix techies are expensive -- because they're good. They have no choice but to be. And there's more transferrability of skills between software: much of what you might learn about Linux can be applied to Solaris and the BSDs, some of what you might learn about MySQL can be applied to PostgreSQL or Firebird, Perl is a bit like PHP, ProFTPD and Apache have similar configuration file syntaxes, and so forth.

Basically, if you pay peanuts, you get monkeys.

Re:*BUY* more?

[Dare nMc]

My guess is it is a similar cost of support with either solution.

Of course what everyone else is doing in your area plays big into how much admins cost. If you traing/hire linux guys, and the next big hire in your town/industry/country is for a big windows install, then your employee's don't have the experience to be as desireable to be sucked away (=lower admin cost.) But if the next big job is that 5 other companys decide to transition to linux also, then you got a bidding war to keep an admin.

'sed s/linux/windows' is also true. Of course, you can buy with cash the experienced admin, instead of buying experience with time/mistakes if your not blazing the new trail.

being the admin, of course I want lots of transistions to LinuxApacheMysqlPhp because I got that experience, not windows/.net/...

Re:*BUY* more?

[Anonymous Coward]

Free as in freedom: Local councils do not, as a rule, have needs that are 100% identical to everyone else. No, I don't just mean a bribes column in the accounting books,

Sounds like Mexico.

Especially, Tijuana cops are corrupt.

Re:*BUY* more?

[WhatAmIDoingHere]

Last time I was at a bar, my beer wasn't free..

Re:*BUY* more?

[6031769]

Don't be so quick to knock it. The GP is saying that it is the brave who deploy open source software in business environments. By implication he is saying that only the cowards buy proprietary solutions. In business cowardice gets you nowhere. QED.

Site getting slow; article text

[cerberusss]

Birmingham City Council has defended its year-long trial of desktop Linux, claiming it to be a success, despite an independent report showing it would have been cheaper to install Windows XP.

In an exclusive interview with Techworld, head of IT for the council, Glyn Evans, argued that the higher cost resulted from the council having to experiment with the new technology and build up a depth of technical understanding, as well as fit it with the complex system already in place.

The 105,000 saving that the report says would have resulted from going with Windows XP has also come under question as it was calculated using the special discounted licence rate that Microsoft offers councils - something critics argue is a calculated effort to prevent public bodies from building up technical knowledge of open source offerings.

With Birmingham's trial period over and with lessons learnt and understanding gained, the Council now expects to make cost savings over time, and contrary to press reports which claimed Birmingham had scrapped the Linux initiative, it will in fact "significantly increase" its use of open-source software, Evans said. The trial also had other positive results, he claimed, such as demonstrating the ease with which Firefox and OpenOffice.org can be substituted for Internet Explorer and Microsoft Office.

The trial was carried out with the government-backed Open Source Academy (OSA), and planned to install Linux on 330 desktops in the council's libraries service, split between staff PCs and public access terminals, in an effort to build up practical experience that could be drawn on by other public-sector bodies.

It ran from April 2005 to March 2006, but is still ongoing, with the council refining its Linux desktop image and planning further rollouts next year, according to Evans. "The project did not end when the element of original funding ended, because it is part of the Library Service strategy," he told Techworld. "This project is still very much ongoing, and now that a stable image... has been developed, we would expect significant movement forward."

Over-ambitious

He admitted the council's original plans were over-ambitious, with rollouts of Linux-based staff and public PCs originally scheduled during the one-year trial period. In reality, ongoing testing of the desktop configuration means no Linux desktops have yet been installed. Instead, 96 public desktops and 134 staff desktops are running open source applications such as the OpenOffice.org office suite and the Firefox browser.

The council does plan to begin migrating those desktops to its Suse Professional 9.3-based desktop OS, however, a plan that should go into action in the near future, according to Evans. He said that far from scrapping the Linux initiative, as has occurred in some other high-profile cases such as the London borough of Newham, Birmingham is planning to "significantly increase" the number of desktops involved with the project.

Evans' description of the project is a sharp contrast to the findings described in a case study authored by iMpower Consulting at the formal conclusion of the trial in March, which is available from the OSA's website [pdf]. The case study found that the council had failed to make a business case for its Linux desktops, largely because the half-a-million-pound cost of designing and implementing the system cost more than the estimated cost for a Windows XP installation.

The difference is largely down to high "team costs", including setting up the project, technical definition and design, development and testing and training, all of which amounted to roughly 100,000 more than the estimated team costs for a Windows installation. The total cost of the trial was 534,710, compared to an estimated 429,960 for Windows XP.

"The project showed that there are considerable costs incurred in de

Re:Site getting slow; article text

[shmlco]

"Glyn Evans, argued that the higher cost resulted from the council having to experiment with the new technology and build up a depth of technical understanding, as well as fit it with the complex system already in place."

As would anyone contemplating a move to new systems and new technologies.

From my perspective it appears that both sides have a point. Free software has costs associated with it, just like "paid" commercial software. Those costs can be purchase price, future upgrade costs, support fees, training, planning and implementation time, helpdesk time, lost end-user productivity, and so on.

Anyone considering either needs to review the TCO and impact on the organization at large.

Re:Site getting slow; article text

[tijnbraun]

For instance, existing Windows 3.1 public terminals used a program called Deepfreeze that rebooted the system at the end of each session, something that had to be re-engineered for Linux

Could someone enlighten me why this program "Deepfreeze" was needed in the first place. And why this behaviour should be replicated in linux?

Re:Site getting slow; article text

[QuessFan]

As a librarian who manage several public access terminals, we also use similiar software to reboot the system back to a know good state.

1) Safety: so people can download various trojans, spyware or virus, without hurting other users who use the same terminal down the line.

2) Copyright: People download all sort of copyrighted materials on public terminals. If we allow those to stay on our harddrives, the liability issue is a concern. With those software, it just flush everything out, so it's all good when SBA showing up for audit.

3) Privacy: We don't have to give FBI the information we don't keep. And users don't need to see what any of the history or cache files other prior user, either.

Now, in linux, I suppose each session would be a new user with their own /usr/random directory . Once they are done, the user got deletedd. For large insitutions, it may be worthwhile to do custom configuration and custom script in-house. But for most smaller libraries, it's usually came out cheaper just to pay license fee for software like "deep freeze."

Re:Site getting slow; article text

[indifferent children]

I suppose each session would be a new user with their own /usr/random directory . Once they are done, the user got deletedd.

No, always use the same user account, such as "publicusr". At the end of a session, just run "rm -Rf /home/publicusr/*". That will leave the publicusr home directory intact, but remove all of its contents, including any downloaded material (copyrighted material, malware, etc.) and clear the browser settings and browser history.

If you want to have certain settings exist in the user directory, copy them in from a pre-defined directory, after running the delete.

Don't force a capable athlete to ride in an expensive wheelchair, just because all of your professional experience comes from working with cripples.

Re:Site getting slow; article text

[flyingfsck]

Sure, in a Library, I would recommend using a CDROM based Linux installation. Then you just reboot whenever you want to start fresh. The machine doesn't even need a hard disk.

Re:Site getting slow; article text

[cerberusss]

I (used to) see Deepfreeze in action in other libraries. It returned the OS to a known, preset state, including stuff that restricted users can change like backgrounds, font settings et cetera.

Re:Site getting slow; article text

[Rob Kaper]

Pedantic remark: ditch the * and recreate the directory or at least include dir/.* if you want user configurations to be cleaned up as well.

Re:Site getting slow; article text

[EnderWiggin99]

Points for the contribution, but... =)

For Linux? The system-level stuff can't be changed by a normal user anyway, and it's easy enough to script a delete and stock restore of the desktop-level config stuff every logon cycle. Instant terminal restore, with no fuss, muss, or slowdown.

Re:Site getting slow; article text

[dwater]

I agree. A CD-based distro would make more sense, IMO.

Re:Site getting slow; article text

[cerberusss]

Yeah, however I'm certain these guys have been figuring that out by themselves. Suppose you only had Windows/DOS-related knowledge -- it could take a while before you have a nice shell script running, called from .xinitrc or something to restore any settings made.

Nice nickname BTW

Re:Site getting slow; article text

[Anonymous Coward]

or at least include dir/.*

".*" matches "." and ".."

Whoops.

The easy solution is to rm -r and recreate the directory. Otherwise, "find -mindepth" would be needed to get the .-files.

Re:Site getting slow; article text

[Bert64]

I would keep a tarball of a default home directory for the public user stored somewhere, and when the user logs out, kill all his processes (even abckgrounded ones), erase his homedir and temporary areas (run the rm command under the public userid so it cant remove any root owned files from /tmp etc), and untar the tarball back to /home to give the public user a fresh default profile.
Unlike under windows 3.x, the public user won't have sufficient privileges to write files anywhere other than the above mentioned places, nor to overwrite system files so it's much faster to clean up and return to a default state without having to do a full reboot... This will result in much less waiting around when someone leaves and someone else takes their place.

Re:Site getting slow; article text

[pjt33]

ls -A | xargs rm -r

Re:Site getting slow; article text

[Rob Kaper]

But rm without -r refuses to delete directories. No oops.

Teach a man to fish...

[russ1337]

This reminds me of the "You can teach a man to fish" saying...

In this case the fishing classes cost some money, sure. And the report basically said the would have saved money by purchasing some fish... well duh. - but how long would that fish have lasted?

They now know how to get unlimited fish themselves and are free from the stinking fish market.

Re:Teach a man to fish...

[ajs318]

Give a man a fish and he'll come back the next day for more fish -- and you can charge him money.
Teach a man to fish and you can sell him expensive, proprietary bait for the rest of his life.

Re:Teach a man to fish...

[FireFury03]

Give a man a fire and he'll be warm for a day.
Set a man on fire and he'll be warm for the rest of his life.

Re:Teach a man to fish...

['nother poster]

Yes, but sometimes I can make more money by using the time I would have been fishing to do other things that make more income than the difference in the cost of the fish at the market. For some enviroments Microsoft products really do make sense. For others OSS solutions do. For still others maybe Sun Java Desktop, or whatever it's called now, would be the best fit. Use what works for you.

Re:Teach a man to fish...

[pavera]

True, but in the public sector, and in IT in general you aren't in a "production" environment. There isn't something else you are doing that is bringing in revenue. IT is budgeted all over the world in all kinds of companies as OVERHEAD. So, spending a little more overhead up front to reduce overhead over the long haul and get off the upgrade treadmill is almost always the right thing to do.

Now if you are a programmer, and your desktop linux is somehow reducing your ability to write code (IE you spend an hour each day dealing with software updates or something) then windows is a better fit... Although I'm much more productive coding under linux than windows....

Re:Teach a man to fish...

[dasunt]

I think we need a new saying:

"Threaten to learn how to fish, and get a discount from the fishmonger!"

Since MS seems to give discounts to anyone who looks at OSS, if I was the head of a large city's IT department, I'd put a cheap student intern on the job of writing up a migration plan and publicize the plan loudly. It may be impossible to get everyone to move to OSS (especially with local politics and entrenched technologies), but Microsoft seems to be willing to give discounts on the next round of pricing. ;)

Re:Teach a man to fish...

[JanneM]

This reminds me of the "You can teach a man to fish" saying...

You mean:

Give a man a fish and he eats for a day
Teach a man to fish and he gets rammed by a US submarine?

Re:Teach a man to fish...

[rvw14]

This reminds me of the "You can teach a man to fish" saying...

"Give a man a fish, and he eats for a day. Teach a man to fish and lose your monopoly on fisheries.

Re:Teach a man to fish...

['nother poster]

Just because I'm in a "cost center" and not a "profit center" doesn't mean that I don't have defined roles and such. My management would much rather pay someone else to support the occasional broken driver or disk mirroring bug freeing me up to troubleshoot aplication and architecture problems that are specific to our company. They can buy a bunch of SUSE support seat licenses for what they pay for my salary each year. Much cheaper and efficient that way. Besides SUSE/Novell are more likely to find the problem and bug fix it for something like a driver than local staff would.

Re:Teach a man to fish...

[binner1]

My brother recently did a co-op placement for a Canadian Federal Goverment ministry as part of his degree program. He was tasked with drafting a report about switching from Oracle to MySql and/or PostgreSQL database platforms. He was told flat out from the beginning of the project that no real switch was planned...

I wonder if this ministry was pandering for some Oracle discounts?

-Ben

Re:Teach a man to fish...

[spk037]

For some enviroments Microsoft products really do make sensethe only enviroment i can see ms products make sense would be a landfill. Look , using ms products may be more convenient short term for some. But its obvious, the more concentrated their monopoly becomes, vendor lockin gets tighter, usage restrictions more onerous and costs (see the 20 flavors of vista) become higher. Using anything ms is a short sighted solution that winds up costing everyone more, eventually.

Re:Teach a man to fish...

[indifferent children]

Give a man a fish, he eats for a day.

Teach a man to fish, and he'll spend all afternoon sitting in a boat drinking beer.

Re:Teach a man to fish...

[Anonymous Coward]

"Teach a man to fish" analogies are only supposed to be posted in OLPC stories! Didn't you get the memo?

Re:Teach a man to fish...

[kwilliam]

That's a quote from Terry Pratchet! One of my favorite authors. :-)

Re:Teach a man to fish...

[einnar2000]

I thought it was :

Give a man a fish, and he'll be well fed.
Teach a man to fish, and he'll spend all day in a cheap boat with his buddies, drunk off his ass.

Or is that just me?

Re:Teach a man to fish...

[Anonymous Coward]

Give a man a fish, he'll be full for a day.
Teach a man to fish, you lose your monopoly on fishing.

Is this funny or insightful for this story?

Re:Teach a man to fish...

[Anonymous Coward]

the only enviroment i can see ms products make sense would be a landfill.

Hey, a computer without Microsoft is like ice cream without ketchup.

Re:Teach a man to fish...

[houghi]

http://www.itmanagersjournal.com/feature/21464 gives some insight about this and how The Weather Chanel percieves and uses OSS

Re:Teach a man to fish...

[Brandybuck]

Give a man a beer and you waste an evening.
Teach a man to brew beer and you waste a lifetime.

Wisdom vs Intelligence

[Doc Ruby]

City Councils are making pioneering tech policy decisions these days on open source, WiFi, broadband, and other tech procurement. But they're totally outclassed by marketing strategies that distort the facts on which decisions are made.

With all of the rigged numbers originating in incumbent market dominators showing up in city council policy and budget analyses, it's obvious the councils need guidance. I know that the NYC City Council doesn't have any resources with "BS logs" of ongoing vendor distortions, except for consultants like me. State/federal or even international organizations that serve the people administered by these city councils should produce research to weed out the lies. Sort of like a "City Council Consumer Reports". In the US, the GAO (now "Government Accountability Office"), or the Office of Management and Budget, or some team at Treasury at the federal level, could produce them. Or the state Comptroller. Or maybe a "City Councils Association", that could reach internationally.

Government is really big. In the US it's about 25% of our economy, though that includes the military (about 30% of total). So maybe these guidelines are already being produced, perhaps redundantly. The government response would be to produce similarly obscure guidelines on finding the guidelines. That's how government gets so big (especially the military). Is there a better way for City Councils to share wisdom, not just knowledge, about the information used to make these decisions?

Re:Wisdom vs Intelligence

[abigor]

Or, it becomes a whole new line of revenue for municipal councils: IT consulting to larger branches of government.

Re:Wisdom vs Intelligence

[Anonymous Coward]

Is there a better way for City Councils to share wisdom, not just knowledge, about the information used to make these decisions?

There's always http://www.openadvantage.org/ !

I can't believe Bham council have not consulted them as they are only about 5 mins away ...

NO!

[WindBourne]

it is that you are Free to make changes to the code. For a single person, it may be cheaper to go with Windows. But for any company with an IT dept. it will nearly always be cheaper and better to go with OSS. The one place where Windows wins out is for specialized apps that run only on windows, which only encourages competition in an OSS version that will run on Linux and apple.

Re:NO!

[johansalk]

Making changes to the code is all nice and dandy, but realistically, how many people actually have that expertise that'd enable them to make such changes?

Re:NO!

[Timesprout]

it is that you are Free to make changes to the code

A fact which is completely irrelvant to about 98% of the population.

For a single person, it may be cheaper to go with Windows. But for any company with an IT dept. it will nearly always be cheaper and better to go with OSS. The one place where Windows wins out is for specialized apps that run only on windows

You have this totally backwards. Who exactly do you think it is that has specialized apps? Companies do. If they have to be rewritten, thats greater risk and cost for them, so while it will generally cost the home user little except their time there is often a substantial cost for companies to go with OSS.

Re:NO!

[Mateo_LeFou]

Doesn't matter how many have the expertise. With proprietary software the possibility outright *does *not *exist and with FOSS it does.

Other possibilities are:
-acquire the expertise
-hire someone who has it

Are you trying to paint possibilities as a drawback?

Re:NO!

[kryten_nl]

For every problem, you only need 1.

Re:NO!

[howlingmadhowie]

we're not talking about individuals here, we're talking about a city council. they should be able to offer bounties/find someone to carry out the required changes. after all, they managed it to get specialist software developed for windows.
one of the problems with adoption of foss is in my opinion that people don't know how the whole mentality works. i sometimes wonder if the average worker goes into his local computer shop, doesn't find any software on shelves for linux and therefore concludes that there isn't any. it wouldn't occur to him/her, that you can download software which would for windows cost tens of thousands of dollars free of charge from the net for linux, because he/she just wouldn't look there for software.

Re:NO!

[Maxo-Texas]

Only when the number of possibilities is significantly large compared to an existing working solution by another vendor.

Re:NO!

[Mateo_LeFou]

Yes a "working solution" is one that meets your needs and this is a great strategy when you know for a fact your needs will never change.

Re:NO!

[WindBourne]

For an in-house operation, it is actually cheaper to move their code to OSS. They can take advantage of better security, lower admin costs, as well as a great deal more of debugged and tested code (as opposed to code that is tested by the customer such as was witnessed in many of the recent elections and I am sure in the newest release of Windows). In contrast, the general individual does not have a clue about all the security issues and many of them will bury their heads anyways. They just want things to install easily and work the way that they are use to. In many cases, they continue to rip it off, so they view the security and low cost of OSS as a none issue.

The apps that I was talking about are the small apps that small (and sometimes large) companies buy. Typically, they are speciallized apps that deal only with that particular industry (or facet of it). In that case, the customer has little to no choice but to go with that company says. Interestingly, those companies that are on Windows would do well to try wine and open up their markets BEFORE somebody in the OSS world decides that it is worthwhile doing. But it rarely happens until the closed source is dieing anyways.

Re:NO!

[Maxo-Texas]

If "word" for $39 as part of home office meets 99% of my needs and openoffice meets my needs but could in theory be enhanced to meet 100% of my needs- I'll probably go with word despite disliking paying $39 and microsoft in general.

I groan everytime i see a pro-linux person complain "all you have to do is recompile the device drivers!"

They just don't get it.

Re:NO!

[teh_chrizzle]

make changes today? hell no, why would they? make chages in 5 years after the vendor has gone out of business/got bought by a competitor/stopped making or supporting your product? hell yes

Re:NO!

[Mateo_LeFou]

I don't have a problem with your decision to be locked-in if you want. The problem comes later, when you decide you don't want to be locked in anymore, so you try out OOo and complain that it's "broken" 'cause it can't display your .doc files the way Word did.

The problem is not that $39 is really unreasonable. The problem is that the lock-in makes it so that more and more can be added to that $39 as time rolls on.

Re:NO!

[init100]

i sometimes wonder if the average worker goes into his local computer shop, doesn't find any software on shelves for linux and therefore concludes that there isn't any. it wouldn't occur to him/her, that you can download software which would for windows cost tens of thousands of dollars free of charge from the net for linux, because he/she just wouldn't look there for software.

It is because the average Joe knows that the only software that you download from the internet is pirated software. :)

Re:NO!

[init100]

In many cases, they continue to rip it off, so they view the security and low cost of OSS as a none issue.

Yep. Most people I know never bought any software (except possibly games and the software included with their computer), they just just pirate it instead. So cost is not an issue, has never been an issue and the probability of getting caught is next to nil. They'd rather continue to pirate Windows and Windows applications than try Linux or other open source software.

And then there is the "don't trust unknown people on the internet" advice, which for them translates into "I know Microsoft, ther are well-known and I'd rather trust them than some random unknown hobby developer on the internet that don't even care to put a box of the software on store shelves". And the attitude "Gasp! It's for free? Then it must suck! Better use a pirated proprietary program, they cost money (even if I cheat them on that), so it must be good".

Re:NO!

[Maxo-Texas]

I agree with you. I regularly test OOo and use it for some trivial documents. For my 10 meg documents (I have 2 with several hundred graphics each), OOo crashes. I've sent in the bugs and after a year it still crashes.

But that's not the point. In "theory" I could get a compiler, a debugger, OOo source and analyze why my documents are crashing.

I really *want* to go to OOo. It's just not there yet and even as a programmer, there is no way I can justify spending the time to make it meet my needs when my needs can be met for $39.

Re:NO!

[ciggieposeur]

I groan everytime i see a pro-linux person complain "all you have to do is recompile the device drivers!"

I used to be one of those sort of, and I finally listened to the others saying how much modern Linux has changed and decided to move up from "compiling my own device drivers" to "just a GUI user". Surprisingly it has worked very well.

I installed Debian Etch on my laptop with KDE. Synaptic works at least as well as aptitude for package management. Abiword is excellent. CUPS had no problems working with my HP DeskJet over the network. Konqueror and Kmail have surprised me a lot in all the detailed improvements over Mozilla (better GPG support, much better filters in mail, better integration with CUPS, better handling of PDF, etc.). Even DVDs play easily with Kaffeine, and I DON'T have to mount/umount anymore. I plug in a USB anything and it generally works right out of the box: DVD writer, storage, ethernet, serial port, mice.

There are quirks, but they aren't bad. USB memory sticks need to be mounted as root -- the default policy isn't set for my non-root account to use it and I haven't fixed that yet. In order to get laptop battery stats I had to download a third-party OSS kernel module. Due to a weirdness in CMUCL I had to recompile the kernel, but that made installing the nVidia driver easier anyway (though I did have to delete the nvidiafb module). I had to install a third-party OSS driver for the wireless card, but that was easy too. So yeah, I still resort to some drivers but apart from wireless they were entirely optional.

All in all I'd say that there is essentially no reason anymore for ME to ever run anything but Debian now. Maybe in a few more years those other quirks will be fixed and you'll be able to use it too.

Re:NO!

[richlv]

that was the reason companies were mentioned as the biggest benefactor.
seriously, how many people have the expertise to automatically restore their machine at work ?

seriously, how many people know how to change oil for their car (probably more than those who really can code, but hey) ?
we're not getting cars with sealed un-serviceable-everything because for some tasks a specialised person is required...

Re:NO!

[richlv]

hmm. have you reported this issue (or issues) in issuezilla ? can you make the document available for testing ?
oo.org team takes application stability and qa very seriously, so it seems surprising that crashes could be unfixed for such a long period.

Re:NO!

[richlv]

not that it deters most of them from pirating most of the software anyway ;)

Re:NO!

[richlv]

oil for car engine can be changed in any service or by any person. a fact that is irrelevant to 90% of the population... not.
imagine only the car manufacturer being able to change oil. would you buy such a car ? and how much would oil change cost ?

Re:NO!

[Maxo-Texas]

I've reported it everytime it crashes (send in the crash report that it asks if it can).
I reopen the document, recrash and resend the error report everytime we get a new version number.

Just this week, I finally cut it into smaller pieces because I can no longer yahoo it around (too big an attachment) so maybe I'll see how the pieces work. They are about 3-5 megs each with about a hundred graphics each.

Re:NO!

[speculatrix]

I think in the last year I've only ever had to recompile ONE device driver and that was to run a wireless lan sniffer that ordinary users (sh)wouldn't use!

You, feel free to stick with windows and pay the microsoft taxes... but don't complain when your entire music collection is lost due to your DRM keys being lost or wiped (or zapped by Microsoft accidentally or deliberately), or you find all your archived documents cannot be read by the latest version of Office, or the TPM module on your motherboard gets corrupted and you can't even boot your system to back it up and restoring it is impossible and you can't reinstall because Vista licensing has locked you out.

Me, I'm willing to pay the up-front investment in self-skilling to keep my systems and data free. Buying Microsoft is a gradual way to sell yourself into slavery!

Re:NO!

[richlv]

well, those reports are just stack traces, which can and can not be helpful to determine the cause.
you can register at oo.org qa project (http://qa.openoffice.org/) and submit your bugreports to issuezilla - this way you will know what is the status of your problem.

if you don't feel like doing it yourself, you can send the document to me and i'll try reproducing the crash.

i promise to handle the document appropriately if it is confidential, but you probably know that you should not trust random persons in the internet forums ;)

So, are they, like, not losers anymore?

[Anonymous Coward]

One sample comment from the previous /. story:

I love my city but everyone knows that Birmingham council are a bunch of absolute losers, so this does not comes as any big surpise.

Re:So, are they, like, not losers anymore?

[SkunkPussy]

All of a sudden, Birmingham council IT dept is awesome :)

I hope the Gnome folks read this bit ...

[njdj]

At one point, realising that most of the usability issues were attributable to Gnome, which had taken three months to configure, staff ripped out Gnome and replaced it with KDE.

I use Gnome, but it sure has usability issues. I hope the Gnome developers will take the trouble to understand why Birmingham dumped Gnome - sfter selecting it initially.

Re:I hope the Gnome folks read this bit ...

[Intron]

They are smart, I think I spent 6 months before abandoning Gnome for KDE. The last straw was when they broke the menu system.

Re:I hope the Gnome folks read this bit ...

[kripkenstein]

I prefer GNOME, and I'm really curious about what 'usability problems' they had with it (hopefully we'll find out somehow?).

Anyhow, ignoring the GNOME vs. KDE issue (which I hope won't flare up), there are other questions here: how did they come to initially decide on GNOME? Perhaps their decision-making process wasn't very thorough, if they later spent 3 months of work to arrive at a dead end. If they really didn't know the subject matter, then the decision to go GNOME may have been premature; they should have investigated KDE more before wasting those 3 months. But, I guess that's how you learn.

Also, it has to be said: sure, GNOME isn't perfect, KDE isn't either, but at least on Linux you have a choice. That's a good thing.

Re:I hope the Gnome folks read this bit ...

[Anonymous Coward]

I thought GNOME was the default on SUSE now, which from TFA they were using. Assuming the default desktop on a professional distribution is the best choice is not an unreasonable assumption rather than spending lots of time evaluating all possible choices.

This can't be good

[smooth wombat]

At one point, realising that most of the usability issues were attributable to Gnome, which had taken three months to configure, staff ripped out Gnome and replaced it with KDE. The new interface was up and running within a week.

I don't (yet) run Linux but have fiddled with a Slack 10 and Debian installation but the above comment can't be good for the folks developing Gnome.

Can someone with a bit more insight explain why one would work better in the above scenario since, presumbably, both do the same thing?

Re:This can't be good

[eddy]

KDE is more Microsoft Windowsy. HTH. HAND.

Re:This can't be good

[0racle]

They do the same thing (provide a GUI desktop interface) but in very different ways. Apparently the way KDE does things worked better for them then the GNOME way. It's the same reason why people will prefer one over the other.

Re:This can't be good

['nother poster]

Actually KDE is more CDE'ish.

(CDE = Common Desktop Enviroment)

Re:This can't be good

[BigBuckHunter]

Can someone with a bit more insight explain why one would work better in the above scenario since, presumably, both do the same thing?

To Grossly over simplify, Gnome sacrifices customizability for usability and simplicity. KDE sacrifices simplicity for customizability In environments that demand a certain configuration which doesn't match Gnome's ideal usage case, KDE is often a better fit.

They're both great desktop managers, and each has strengths in certain areas. And yes, I know "customizability" isn't a real word.

BBH

Re:This can't be good

[soloport]

Gnome==Different/Rebel/Grunge/"Logical" in a techno-nerd kind of logic
KDE==Practical/"Don't make me think"/Get-stuff-done

/totally *my* opinion

Re:This can't be good

[thepotoo]

KDE has the start menu at the bottom left by default, with the clock at the bottom right.

Gnome has the start menu (well, Applications) at the top left, with the clock also at the top right, but open windows are at the bottom.

This makes things wildly confusing for clueless Windows users, who franticly search for their precious clock and start button (laugh all you want, I've given more people KDE than Gnome because of this).

Re:This can't be good

[14CharUsername]

Gnome to windows in 6 or 7 easy steps:

Right click the clock, select move, and move it to the lower right.
Right click notification area, select move and mave down beside the clock.
Right click the top panel, select add to panel, select main menu.
Right click the main menu button, select move and move it down to the lower left.
Right click the top panel and select "delete this panel".
Optional: Remove the "Show desktop" button, Workspace switcher, and trash from the panel.

And now you have the screwed up UI that is windows. But really people would be better off just learning to look at the top of the screen when they want to start something new and at the bottom of the screen when they want to go back to something they're already working on.

Not sure why you'd go to the extra effort to set up KDE just to get a start button in the lower left. You can do that in Gnome in under 10 seconds. Then you wouldn't have to support multiple desktop environments. And if all the users are working in the same environment, they can trade knowledge, so less training costs and the like.

Re:This can't be good

[Anonymous Coward]

On the other hand, IMO, Gnome is the "Users are idiots, so we make choosing anything besides default as hard as possible" DE. The GTK file dialogs are a good example of that. Attempting to save anywhere besides the default location requires more clicks compared to any other file dialog I've used so far.
And what made me finally ditch it was a GAIM update removing the ability to configure keybindings.

Re:This can't be good

[Anonymous Coward]

Gnome stores it's configuration in a database similar to the windows registry. Only some of the configuration options are presented in the standard gnome UI. Everything can be accessed through gconf, either in a regedit-like ui or on the command line. Personally I like this approach, only the important stuff in the UI presented simple and clean, and easy to find. Advanced options can still be accessed by advanced users.

Re:This can't be good

[natrius]

To Grossly over simplify, Gnome sacrifices customizability for usability and simplicity.People say this often, but I've never heard someone give an actual example of something they wanted to customize, but couldn't. Care to enlighten me?

Re:This can't be good

[troels]

Yes, there are more options available when you dig into gconf, but even then it is still very limited compared to KDE. (besides, even in KDE not all settings are exposed in the GUI, for some, usually obscure, things you have to edit the config files. But to some people, those "obscure settings" matter)

Re:This can't be good

[Anonymous Coward]

Windows is a screwed up UI because they have one taskbar instead of two? wtf?

Instead of 'looking up for new tasks and down for old tasks', what's wrong with 'looking in one place for all tasks'? Not only does it save space, but you can then have common desktop stuff at the bottom, and active window stuff (read: contextual) at the top. I'll have that arrangement any day over what you're describing as optimal.

Re:This can't be good

[nadaou]

If you want configureable and don't use the sawfish WM, you should give it a try. It helps make modern Gnome a bit less dumbed-down. e.g. add a trick or two to be able to pull windows across workspaces [you do have to use Google and configure that by hand in a config file]. Sawfish kicks metacity's butt.

Re:This can't be good

[VON-MAN]

So you can pull some obscure registry-like hack out off your hat? No thanks.

Re:This can't be good

[Anonymous Coward]

KDE can be locked down into some fixed configuration for publuc terminals (look up: Kiosk).

Re:This can't be good

[14CharUsername]

Not enough space? One taskbar for everything is great if you only have the start button, 2 or 3 quicklaunch icons, 3 task items, and a couple of things open in the system tray. But if you want to break up the start menuinto multiple menus (3 in gnome) have more quick launch icons (I have around 5) have more than 3 windows open (I have 6 on my current virtual desktop, more on others) and have a bunch of things in the system tray (I have a mail checker, volume, IM, weather). Yes, you can squeeze all these things on your taskbar by grouping tasks, jamming everything into a single start menu, and haveing a hide button for the quicklaunch and system tray, but these things are only useful if you can see them. On Gnome I'm one click away from everything, on windows it takes two clicks to do a lot of stuff. Even worse you sometimes have to click just to see the features available.

Really the one taskbar interface is just a legacy thing going back to windows 95, which was designed for a 640x480 resolution. Gnome was designed more recently, and even on a 800x600 screen, a 32 pixel panel at the top is worth the sceen space. The windows style single panel interface was fine 10 years ago, but don't you think its time for an update?

Re:This can't be good

[Anonymous Coward]

Try setting the default terminal size when it's started from Gnome panel.
(This can be done with a struggle, and some fairly obscure editing).
Try finding the "Other" category in Gnome Applications.
(Even more obscure, but doable).
Try removing topics from the RMB menu. (Not possible without recompiling Gnome).

These are all things I've done, or been asked to do. Gnome works, for a
given value of works, but I wouldn't recommend it in a production environment.
Although it's easy to use, it definitely isn't easy to configure.

Will

Re:This can't be good

[natrius]

I'll give you the first one. That should definitely be an easily accessible option, especially since the terminal is a power user program in the first place. For the second one, I'm not sure I understand you. Do you mean the Other category in the Applications menu? If so, it doesn't show up for me on Ubuntu by default because there's nothing in it. I've installed a program that goes there in the past, and the Other menu appears. For the third one, I have no idea what this RMB menu you speak of is. Rhythmbox? That's not really a normal use case. If you're talking about the main menu, you can right click on it and click Edit Menus.

So far behind?

[fitten]

The council does plan to begin migrating those desktops to its Suse Professional 9.3-based desktop OS,

What's the logic of going with a version that is so far behind? I know that you don't go bleeding edge with such a project but 9.3 is ancient. I guess it is still supported but it seems like being *that* far behind would be leaving yourself open to a number of security/compatibility issues.

Re:So far behind?

[NineNine]

Stability, and fewer bugs. In my business, I don't buy any software that is newer than a year or two old. 9.3 is only a year and a half old. That's certainly not ancient. If patches aren't being released for a product that's only a year and a half old, then I'd say that's a very serious problem (and I wouldn't buy it). You gotta remember, that they're not in the business of installing software. Like most businesses and other organizations, the software is supposed to be installed, and forgotten. If it requires attention that often, then it's bad software, or bad management.

Re:So far behind?

[paskie]

AFAIK Suse 9.3 has only security patches released. For a comparable product with other bugfixes released as well, you want to look at the "enterprise" version of the distribution, in this case SLES9 (or SLED10).

Re:So far behind?

[DragonWriter]

What's the logic of going with a version that is so far behind?

Suse Professional 9.3 was released, what, a year and a half ago? That's not precisely ancient, especially given that the council apparently took time to take an existing base and then do their own customization.

Re:So far behind?

[julesh]

What's the logic of going with a version that is so far behind? I know that you don't go bleeding edge with such a project but 9.3 is ancient.

Huh? My desktop machine is on 9.1. I installed it from the latest available version substantially less than 3 years ago.

And yes, I am rather annoyed that they've stopped issuing updates for it.

Rumors for neds

[Anonymous Coward]

Slashdot, Rumors for nerds, inaccurate speculation that matters.

Do you guys ever bother to check the vlaidity of a source before you publish a fucking story.

ASSHATS!

Quit feeding this troll, guys

[Mateo_LeFou]

The point of FOSS is that it works better and can be customized if it still doesn't work well enough. EOF.

Under question?

[aardvarkjoe]

The £105,000 saving that the report says would have resulted from going with Windows XP has also come under question as it was calculated using the special discounted licence rate that Microsoft offers councils - something critics argue is a calculated effort to prevent public bodies from building up technical knowledge of open source offerings.

How could the savings be "under question" because of the discounted rate? What, do you expect them to calculate the savings while pretending that they would have had to pay full price? If so, Microsoft would have rightly stated that they were massaging the numbers just to make open source look good.

What's more interesting is whether their numbers for open source included the costs of Windows XP, as they didn't actually install any Linux systems. (Not exactly a big win for Linux there, either.) How do you spend £534,710 on installing OpenOffice and Firefox on 230 Windows computers, and playing around with Suse for a year, anyway?

Re:Under question?

[Otter]

How do you spend £534,710 on installing OpenOffice and Firefox on 230 Windows computers, and playing around with Suse for a year, anyway?

My impression is that they've been messing around with trials of different replacement technologies, agree that Firefox and Open Office are clear wins and are still trying to decide on spots where Linux would make sense. The money is probably mostly salaries of people putting in full- or part-time work on it.

But, yeah -- that "based on the special rates" bit is brain-dead, even by the usual standards of statistical illiteracy around here.

Re:Under question?

[ronanbear]

The importance of the discount rate it important for extrapolating the study to corporate entities. It is also important because of vendor lock-in. There's no guarantee that the discount will be available (or as good) in 5 years time. They spent 3 months trying to tinker with Gnome before switching to KDE. It's easy to see how costs could add up quickly doing that.

Re:Under question?

[Anonymous Coward]

The savings are under question because the "independent" analysis of the savings was done using a "discounted" rate that is given to cities and schools, not corporations. The real cost of any product should be what will actually be paid, not what someone else paid. Therefore, as a business owner, I can't expect to have the same kinds of "savings" as are reported in last weeks report. The "under question" is only referring to what can be inferred from the study, not the study itself.

Re:Under question?

[Anonymous Coward]

The same way I would have spent it,

Hookers and Heroin

Sorry, Open Source hookers and Free Trade grown Heroin.

Re:Under question?

[dedalus2000]

is the discount guaranteed in perpetuity through all windows incarnations? unless Birmingham is just a fad and will eventually fade back into the English country side the cost of windows will continue to rise the licensing costs will compound over decades and increase over generations. while on the other hand the costs associated with initial Linux deployment (mostly educational costs) will not need to be repeated and only ongoing operating expenses rather than massive licensing fees will need to be payed.

Re:Under question?

[_Sprocket_]

How could the savings be "under question" because of the discounted rate?

Well... this is a case study. As such, one question that comes to my mind is "how does this apply to my environment?" If I happen to be the Burmingham City Council, or another such Council it seems, then there's no question. But what if I'm representing another entity that doesn't get the special discounts? Obviously that's a part of the case study that needs to be highlighted as highly situational.

There's also a whole slew of indirect questions one could start considering. Such as - how long does this special rate last? And sure - we're talking about desktops now... how about other licensing such as CALs?

Re:Under question?

[Bwian_of_Nazareth]

Open sores hookers... I am not sure I will finish my dinner today.

Re:Under question?

[Anonymous Coward]

I imagine part of the "3 months of gnome" also includes some time of "what do we want, anyway?". If they'd started from scratch with KDE, it would've taken longer than a week as they sought to find out what they did want.

oh dear....

[advocate_one]

usability problems with the original Gnome interface. At one point, realising that most of the usability issues were attributable to Gnome, which had taken three months to configure, staff ripped out Gnome and replaced it with KDE. The new interface was up and running within a week.

start the Gnome vs. KDE bun fight... 3, 2, 1...

Re:oh dear....

[Sloppy]

Why would anyone fight over trivial little things like that? These people had real problems: their Linux distro included Emacs! And a bunch of its scripts were written in perl instead of python (and I heard the script writer even indented things The Wrong Way, with regard to spaces vs tabs).

GNOME usability has several elements

[Anonymous Coward]

1) It is quite different from Windows.
2) It is a newer idea than the desktop metaphor as used by windows (so the wrinkles haven't been ironed out)
3) Hiding configurations. Again *what* needs to be hidden hasn't been 100% worked out

It could be that the system will be fine when bedded down. For those not used to windows' way it may be fine NOW.

Re:GNOME usability has several elements

[Anonymous Coward]

No, it's because Gnome lacks the depth of integration necessary for a proper desktop environment. It's a big mish-mash with probably the creakiest underpinnings in all of open source (which is saying something). KDE is the only open source desktop worth a damn, and it's still only at the beta stage. KDE 4 will hopefully fix that, and become the first real Linux desktop contender.

Re:GNOME usability has several elements

[Anonymous Coward]

Patrick Volkerding? Is that you?

Yeah, you know... Because GNOME developers came up with those great ideas, like HAL and Project Utopia. Or GStreamer. Or Dbus, or Cairo... Or any number of projects that become Freedesktop standards and ultimately get absorbed into KDE as well.

Maybe you want to look at where these "mis-mashed" and "creaky" underpinnings in KDE actually come from.

Re:GNOME usability has several elements

[Zantetsuken]

I disagree with a *LOT* of your "hiding config options" arguement: for example, KDE can display a panel perfectly fine using a reduced portion of the screen, and even aligned to left, center, or right. Now why can't GNOME do that?

Maybe its because I want most of the panel and desktop settings *exactly* the way I want them, or maybe its because of using Windows since at least 96' or so and being used to having to use dialog boxes with tons of options which you only find out what they do by playing with them - and so I actually prefer the cluttered dialog box setup. It's actually easier for me to only have one dialog box to open and switch tabs for different settings, whereas GNOME it seems like there is a different dialog box or front-end you have to run just for each setting for display and screen-saver.

Pricing is way off

[Anonymous Coward]

Sign a licensing deal with MS and it will be way less than $58 for budget purposes.

Show a man the ocean

[Mateo_LeFou]

I don't think the fish analogy maps very well. Migrating to FOSS isn't necessarily like teaching someone to fish (teaching himher how to program). It's more like taking someone who has only ever seen fish in the supermarket, and showing them a harbor. Explain where fish come from, the fact that they reproduce on their own, etc. At this point the person doesn't have to learn to fish. She could just buy from one of the many beachfront markets. She could hire one of the many fishing companies or individuals in the harbor there. Or buy/rent a pole and ride with one of them. And so on.

Re:Show a man the ocean

[Anonymous Coward]

"I don't think the fish analogy maps very well."

Then why did you procede to extend it for a paragraph?

Wait. I think Linux is the fish and FireFox is like caviar! Or maybe, Windows is the fish and IIS is the stinking pile of fish heads and guts. That makes Solaris the giant squid that wraps it's tentacles around your boat and drags you to a watery grave. And BSD is like El Niño. and ... and

Re:Show a man the ocean

[nadaou]

An even better and relevant Ocean analogy would be Ghandi's Salt Satyagraha march. Show the people how to get their own damn salt for free, then they can give the flip to the salt tax.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salt_Satyagraha

s/Ghandi/RMS/
s/Satyagraha march/GNU project/
s/Salt/Software/

Great news

[Anonymous Coward]

Somewhere near where the M6 joins the M5 .....
Thees is bostin' nyohs! Oi main, an' all, oos Brummies 've bin pronaincing it as Leenux, and not Loinux, seence forever, loike. Way don' naid no steenkin' Moicrosoft!

Anywy, are yo mashin?

I feel vindicated with this piece...

[bogaboga]

From the article...

"At one point, realising that most of the usability issues were attributable to Gnome, which had taken three months to configure, staff ripped out Gnome and replaced it with KDE. The new interface was up and running within a week....

I have long said that Gnome had a problem for most users in a typical business environment, and was met with comments referring to me as a troll and as one who was just a KDE fanboy.

This article articulates just one of the problems with Gnome.

For this particular problem, there are folks who say that I should use "ctrl + L". Though this keyboard shortcut is not even documented anywhere near where one would want to use it. Imagine that.

• I want to be able to type in Gnome's file selector dialog. Gnome will not permit me!

• Why should Gnome assume that every file I want to open *is* on the local system? KDE on the other hand, does not assume that. And you can type/paste whatever URL you want and it will do the needful.

• Why can't I be able to do some basic file operations (renaming, deleting, moving) in the selector dialog itself? Why do I have to go back and open Nautilus?

These are just *some* of the issues that make Gnome a non-starter for me and I am glad the Britons found out as well. This will make the developers think about what users want. How can a desktop environment take three months to configure? This is insane! These are not my words but quotes from the article.

Re:I feel vindicated with this piece...

[WWWWolf]

I want to be able to type in Gnome's file selector dialog. Gnome will not permit me!

Uh... what file selector dialog and where? And what are you trying to type in it anyway? File names? Love letters?

Why should Gnome assume that every file I want to open *is* on the local system? KDE on the other hand, does not assume that. And you can type/paste whatever URL you want and it will do the needful.

Because GNOME-VFS is basically inadequate and no one has got around to writing a system that actually works.

Oh, wait, that should be written instead as:

Because implementing network awareness at "open this file for reading" level is not the responsibility of the high reaches of the app layer. That's the operating system's job.

Unix assumes you're on a local system. Go install Plan 9 or something, or wait until someone comes up with a really awesome FUSE hack.

Both GNOME and KDE are doing this the hacky stop-gap way, and the only difference is that KDE folks have a solution that works, kind of. The elegant way would be to allow this stuff to work on any application. I'm not calling the present situation elegant until I can do "cat http://slashdot.org/ ".

(Oh wow, someone's actually working on the age-old mount -t webdav problem... We may actually have a great working filesystem one day!)

That said, as a GNOME user, I'm not terrified by the apparent lack of net transparency. If I want to open something from the web, it's Firefox's job to save it to /tmp and open up the appropriate document viewer. If I want to work on the file further, I'll save a local copy anyway.

Why can't I be able to do some basic file operations (renaming, deleting, moving) in the selector dialog itself? Why do I have to go back and open Nautilus?

Because people said "I want a file selector, not a file selector + submarine control dialog?" The fact that you can do something on a dialog that's not really none of the dialog's business is usually a symptom of excessive featuritis.

(Agreed, I think it'd be nice if the dialog had a button that says "open in Nautilus" for the rare cases where file management is needed.)

Re:I feel vindicated with this piece...

[Anonymous Coward]

"Because people said "I want a file selector, not a file selector + submarine control dialog?" The fact that you can do something on a dialog that's not really none of the dialog's business is usually a symptom of excessive featuritis."

No, it's consistency, something a GNOME fanboy should be all in favour of.
If I can see the file, I can right-click it and operate on it.

Re:I feel vindicated with this piece...

[oh_my_080980980]

"Because people said "I want a file selector, not a file selector + submarine control dialog?" The fact that you can do something on a dialog that's not really none of the dialog's business is usually a symptom of excessive featuritis.

(Agreed, I think it'd be nice if the dialog had a button that says "open in Nautilus" for the rare cases where file management is needed.)"

And the reason why Gnome will never be taken seriously.

Are you honestly telling me that in today's world of operating systems, (Mac and Windows), that you are going to force people into a two step process for something that other operating systems do in one step! You obviously fail to understand the user. If Linux cannot do the simple things that Windows and Mac do, then most users will not bother to switch. User in the Windows and Mac world want simplicity. They don't care how complex it is on the backend.

The short comings of Windows and Mac operating systems are not enough to force MOST people to switch to Linux because the simplicity is not there.

Power users and people who are willing to tinker, because you have to tinker: DVD playback is disabled by default and you have to go through hoops to enable it, whereas DVD playback just works in Windows and Mac. Most users just want it to work.

Re:I feel vindicated with this piece...

[Demona]

"DVD playback just works in Windows" You misspelled "not available by default in Windows so your DVD drive cannot play DVD's until you install a third-party application".

Re:I feel vindicated with this piece...

[ratboy666]

DVD playback "just works" in Windows? No, it doesn't. I installed Windows XP -- it doesn't play DVDs (not without additional programming).

As to convincing users to switch from Windows and Mac to Gnome... Is that the goal? Hate to break it to you, but it's not. In fact, that isn't even on the list of Gnome goals.

Ratboy

Re:I feel vindicated with this piece...

[julesh]

Then Gnome shouldn't be the default desktop for most Linux distributions, as most of them do have that as a goal.

Re:I feel vindicated with this piece...

[julesh]

Unix assumes you're on a local system. Go install Plan 9 or something, or wait until someone comes up with a really awesome FUSE hack.

Both GNOME and KDE are doing this the hacky stop-gap way, and the only difference is that KDE folks have a solution that works, kind of. The elegant way would be to allow this stuff to work on any application. I'm not calling the present situation elegant until I can do "cat http://slashdot.org/ ".

You are aware that there's a FUSE/kioslave bridge available, aren't you?

It's not quite as good as what you're looking for, because the kernel doesn't understand URLs and wouldn't know what to do with one, but it certainly enables some useful features.

Re:I feel vindicated with this piece...

[vector_prime]

Are you honestly telling me that in today's world of operating systems, (Mac and Windows), that you are going to force people into a two step process for something that other operating systems do in one step! You obviously fail to understand the user. If Linux cannot do the simple things that Windows and Mac do, then most users will not bother to switch. User in the Windows and Mac world want simplicity. They don't care how complex it is on the backend.Yes, I'm honestly going to tell you that we're going to force the users to take an extra step. Filesystem operations from an "Open" or "Save" dialog are Bad Design. It completely shatters the conceptual purpose of the dialogs and makes simple operations that really should require more thought. As a former Windows admin, I can say with certainty that most non-powerusers will never need or want this "feature", and that the number of files accidentally renamed by too slowly doubleclicking far outweighs any benefit derived from the functionality. DVD playback is disabled by default and you have to go through hoops to enable it, whereas DVD playback just works in Windows and Mac. Most users just want it to work.Oh, you think Windows XP comes with DVD playback built in. That's cute. Try it on a vanilla install sometime. Most vendors package a DVD player with their preinstalls, so it looks like it works out of the box.

Re:I feel vindicated with this piece...

[tiocsti]

Good UI design is often less about delivering what is logical and more about delivering what is expected. For a lot of users, this means delivering a UI experience quite similar to what windows offers today, for good or bad. Anytime you diverge from these expectations, you create friction for users, which should be avoided.

Leveraging existing user knowledge seems to be the best way to go about things for niche systems, even if those experiences were in user interfaces which arent 100% logical or consistant.

Re:I feel vindicated with this piece...

[ratboy666]

I disagree. Converting Windows users is not a goal for most Linux distributions. Let me quote from several distributions:

"Fedora Core is a free operating system that offers the best combination of stable and cutting-edge software that exists in the free software world."

"Debian is a free operating system (OS) for your computer. An operating system is the set of basic programs and utilities that make your computer run. Debian uses the Linux kernel (the core of an operating system), but most of the basic OS tools come from the GNU project; hence the name GNU/Linux."

"SUSE Linux Enterprise: a platform for the entire open enterprise, delivering new solutions that help you outperform competitors, cut costs, ..."

Ubuntu is a complete Linux-based operating system, freely available with both community and professional support. It is developed by a large community and we invite you to participate too!

"The Ubuntu community is built on the ideas enshrined in the Ubuntu Philosophy: that software should be available free of charge, that software tools should be usable by people in their local language and despite any disabilities, and that people should have the freedom to customise and alter their software in whatever way they see fit. "

"We produce Gentoo Linux, a special flavor of Linux that can be automatically optimized and customized for just about any application or need. Extreme performance, configurability and a top-notch user and developer community are all hallmarks of the Gentoo experience."

I see a lot of ideas here (freedom, customization, performance, free of charge, cutting-edge, stable), some of which contradict each other, but nothing about converting Windows users.

So where do you get that idea from? It seems to be a common meme.

Ratboy

Re:I feel vindicated with this piece...

[WWWWolf]

No, it's consistency, something a GNOME fanboy should be all in favour of. If I can see the file, I can right-click it and operate on it.

To me, "consistency" means something along the lines of this: if I say "Open a file", I get to open a file.

Next you're probably saying that "Save as" dialog should be used for opening files too, because that's consistent ("if it looks like a file dialog, well, you can use it just like all other file dialogs") and you get to use the exact same features the file manager supports, too.

Re:I feel vindicated with this piece...

[WWWWolf]

Are you honestly telling me that in today's world of operating systems, (Mac and Windows), that you are going to force people into a two step process for something that other operating systems do in one step!

What "two steps"? In Windows, I choose File, open, pick a directory, pick a file, hit OK. In Linux, I choose File, open, pick a directory, pick a file, hit OK.

GNOME file dialogs don't really make opening or saving files significantly harder than on Windows or Mac.

DVD playback is disabled by default and you have to go through hoops to enable it, whereas DVD playback just works in Windows and Mac. Most users just want it to work.

And that happens to be a legal issue, not technological. We can't do much about it until it's unquestionably legal to provide the software everywhere.

If you want, you can just download VLC and suddenly your DVDs "just work". Just don't sue anybody.

Re:I feel vindicated with this piece...

[rp]

The one thing I never understood is the reversal of the OK and Cancel buttons.
I'd like to see the history of that.

Re:I feel vindicated with this piece...

[Brandybuck]

You're right that it's the operating system's responsibility for network transparency. Too bad the user still abandoned GNOME in favor of KDE.

Unix's great success came not from it being perfect, but from it being "good enough". Multics did things the right way, but look where it is today. HURD is trying to do things the right way, and look how many decades it's taken to get to the unfinished state it's in today. Perfectionism is the enemy of sucess.

Re:I feel vindicated with this piece...

[zippthorne]

If they want users, there are only two sources. Existing users of some operating system not their own, and users who have never used any operating system at all.

Since we're talking about desktops, The former happens to be the most immediately accessible group as they either already have the hardware, or are likely to purchase new hardware in the not-too-distant future. Further, windows dominates the desktop by a significant percentage.

If new-desktop designers want to have something people use (rather than just scratching their own itches a dark corner somewhere) then they are implicitly going after windows desktop users by definition.

Re:I feel vindicated with this piece...

[JoshJ]

From what I understand, the next Gnome will have the "control-L is always on" thing on by default. Can anyone confirm this?

Re:I feel vindicated with this piece...

[chill]

Because implementing network awareness at "open this file for reading" level is not the responsibility of the high reaches of the app layer. That's the operating system's job.

Kioslaves are usable everywhere in KDE, the main GUI. That is part of the OS, depending on your definition of OS.

If you mean back down to the non-GUI level, then you need to use the correct tool for the job. Interpreting every protocol known to man is NOT the job of the kernel, it is a user-land exercise. So, when you ask to do "cat http://slashdot.org/" you really need to just do "curl -O http://slashdot.org/ | cat". Or more likely "curl -O - http://slashdot.org/", but I can't remember the curl syntax off the top of my head.

Feel free to do "curl -O - http:///{slashdot,pbs,npr}.org" to get them all at once.

The man page would be a good start, because curl is one of the most powerful command-line network tools there is for file manipulation.

And I'll second his complaint about not being able to type a URI directly in the dialog box. Having to fucking point, click, point, click, point, click, ad infinitum to get to a deeply nested folder was the last straw for me and Gnome.

Having a GUI that is friendly to noobs is fine, but making it actively hostile to power users is bone-headed. Those two things are NOT mutually exclusive, but Gnome seems to think so.

  Charles

Re:I feel vindicated with this piece...

[Anonymous Coward]

Sure. If I'm in a Save As, and I notice a file that already has the name I want to use, I should be able to open it, see what's in it, rename it if I want, or just copy over it. Why should I have to open another app to manage that file?

Re:I feel vindicated with this piece...

[WWWWolf]

Kioslaves are usable everywhere in KDE, the main GUI. That is part of the OS, depending on your definition of OS.

But the thing is, people don't pick desktop environments because of the brand. They pick programs that work.

I'm a GNOME user, but I use a bunch of KDE apps. GIMP still kicks Krita's butt. Psi is better than all GNOME Jabber clients combined. gDesklets appears to actually work, as opposed to SuperKaramba. Amarok appears to actually work, as opposed to Rhythmbox.

Part of my world has kioslaves. That's what's so aggravating to the users. That's why implementing them on the app library is bad.

And putting them in the app library is even more fun. (I can't open URLs in GIMP at all. Well, I can't do that in Scribus either, so I guess that evens it out.)

If you mean back down to the non-GUI level, then you need to use the correct tool for the job.

Ah. But think of it this way: You're advocating two kinds of applications. First, there are KDE apps, where every application is the "correct tool for the job", whether designed for the job or not. You can rip CDs in your word processor if you know how, thanks to the miracle of kioslaves.

Then, you're advocating the non-GUI tools which don't have that luxury and you're supposed to use the correct tool for the job. No, you can't use LaTeX and GNUPLOT to typeset an automated analysis and a frequency plot of a music file you rip from CD, but for a handy Unix guy with a solid grip of shell scripts (and maybe a bit of Perl), that's not a problem at all! It's all in the pipelines! Good old Unix stuff!

So which is better? In Unix, everything is about the pipes. If you could open() an file that's actually defined as an URL, you could use any tool, not just GUI apps, to open it.

And by the way, it's curl <url>. I hates® it when cURL dumps everything on to standard output, unlike wget which dumps everything to a guesstimatingly named file. I award you today's Useless Use of cat Award for suggesting curl ... | cat. =)

And I'll second his complaint about not being able to type a URI directly in the dialog box. Having to fucking point, click, point, click, point, click, ad infinitum to get to a deeply nested folder was the last straw for me and Gnome.

I can open files just fine in GNOME apps without touching the mouse at all or squint around. remembering how the file name begins helps tremendously, I can just type the first few letters and it jumps there.

I still don't know where you supposedly can't type. I can type just fine in the file dialogs.

Their calculations ignore Opportunity Cost

[sheldon]

Calculating ROI is difficult in technology projects, because there's a factor which is difficult to measure. I'd call it Opportunity Cost, but perhaps there is another name.

That is, several questions come to mind:

- What's the cost for not being able to do something? That is, if there end solution doesn't support a given task, what's the cost? Perhaps they don't even know they could perform this task right now.
- Imagine instead of spending time on this project, you did something else with your resources. What's the lost cost of not doing something else more meaningful?
- Productivity of endusers? Many people look at the cost of upgrading an old desktop, but don't measure the cost of not upgrading.

There are plenty of questions like this that don't seem to be answered by any of these articles.

Re:Their calculations ignore Opportunity Cost

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes these questions are missing.

Opportunity cost when clearing a virus from windows. Rolling out to hundreds of computers. Upgrade treadmill.
What about when a Closed Source App doesn't do what you need (or does but you need to change workflow).
Productivity lost when the system slows down with all the AV/FW/Blocker software installed.

And what about the things you could do with the money that would resilt from using old computers instead of replacing them.

Correct, these questions are all missing from the study.

not a single Linux desktop ..

[rs232]

"no Linux desktops have yet been installed"

It strikes me that thay attempted a roll out of a Linux desktop solution with no previous experience. They would have been occupied in bringing in an experienced company to do the job.

"half-a-million-pound cost of designing and implementing the system cost more than the estimated cost for a Windows XP installation"

What were they implimenting on the Suse desktop that required spending half a million pounds.

"usability problems with the original Gnome interface .. staff ripped out Gnome and replaced it with KDE"

Like what, Gnome is specifically designed to provide a rich user interface. Either of them can be replaced by a Windows look alike.

"For instance, existing Windows 3.1 public terminals used a program called Deepfreeze that rebooted the system at the end of each session, something that had to be re-engineered for Linux"

He's kidding, put a line in .bash_logout 'shutdown -r 0 now' and that's it. And besides which, why do you need to reboot at logout.

"Staff also found that the OS was storing information about the contents of public users' removable media, and for privacy purposes had to develop a script to delete this information"

Like where and how, Linux mostly uses /tmp to store temp files all you have to do is add another line to .bash_logout 'find /tmp/ -user $user -exec rm -r {} \;'. Or else put /tmp in a ramdisk and flush it to logout.

Re:not a single Linux desktop ..

[Anonymous Coward]

"For instance, existing Windows 3.1 public terminals used a program called Deepfreeze that rebooted the system at the end of each session, something that had to be re-engineered for Linux"

He's kidding, put a line in .bash_logout 'shutdown -r 0 now' and that's it. And besides which, why do you need to reboot at logout.

Deep Freeze isn't actually a simple boot utility. It prevents changes to the computer by periodically (usually daily), rolling it back to a previous configuration. The idea is that any crapware, malware, or viruses that someone manages to install is eliminated. I'm not sure if it uses drive images or how, as I've only experienced it peripherally.

Wait...they're still using Windows 3.1? Wow...that's interesting.

Re:not a single Linux desktop ..

[ajs318]

"For instance, existing Windows 3.1 public terminals used a program called Deepfreeze that rebooted the system at the end of each session, something that had to be re-engineered for Linux"
"Staff also found that the OS was storing information about the contents of public users' removable media, and for privacy purposes had to develop a script to delete this information"

Or just don't fit public terminals with HDDs -- boot them from CD, or read-only Flash drive, with all writable directories in RAMdisk.

You really do have to think about some things in a different way with Linux. Part of the problem is years of preconditioning to the way Windows has (arbitrarily) chosen to do everything blinding you to the alternatives.

Re:not a single Linux desktop ..

[dylan_-]

What were they implimenting on the Suse desktop that required spending half a million pounds.

You answered that with your first observation I think: they were bringing their own staff up to speed with Linux administration.

[re deepfreeze]: And besides which, why do you need to reboot at logout.

This shows their inexperience. Deepfreeze returns the machine to the exact state in which it was previously. It's designed so that people can screw up the machine and it'll be fine for the next person. You need something like it when running Windows 3.1 or 9x. They could have done this in Linux, however, simply by deleting and recreating the /home/whatever dir on logout rather than implementing some kind of imaging (or whatever) thing....normal users can't affect the system files anyway so there's no need to keep restoring it.

I've no idea what the removable media thing refers to...

Re:not a single Linux desktop ..

[paskie]

"For instance, existing Windows 3.1 public terminals used a program called Deepfreeze that rebooted the system at the end of each session, something that had to be re-engineered for Linux" He's kidding, put a line in .bash_logout 'shutdown -r 0 now' and that's it. And besides which, why do you need to reboot at logout.

Perhaps because the reboot was just something they needed to do to achieve something else on Windows 3.1? And with a more usable system they *gasp* needed to figure out how to do it better on Linux?

"Staff also found that the OS was storing information about the contents of public users' removable media, and for privacy purposes had to develop a script to delete this information" Like where and how, Linux mostly uses /tmp to store temp files all you have to do is add another line to .bash_logout 'find /tmp/ -user $user -exec rm -r {} \;'. Or else put /tmp in a ramdisk and flush it to logout.

And that will flush all the buffers with data from the media and pages left in the swap partition from programs crunching on the data. Yeah. What you were quoting is pretty clearly not a technical description but something simplified for general public. It's entirely likely that the most interesting technical challenges weren't mentioned at all since they wouldn't be easily sold to the public.

Re:not a single Linux desktop ..

[gsslay]

Or just don't fit public terminals with HDDs -- boot them from CD, or read-only Flash drive, with all writable directories in RAMdisk.

You're overlooking the fact that they were using Windows 3.1 systems. Why do you think they were doing that? Because they thought it just couldn't be beat?

What's more likely is they're using Windows 3.1 because the terminals are ancient and they don't have the cash to upgrade or replace them. So its rather unlikely that they have CDROMS drives, or flash drives, or gobs of memory for RAMDisks, or the money to equip them any of the above.

Re:not a single Linux desktop ..

[curmudgeous]

I've no idea what the removable media thing refers to...

I've been running different flavors of Suse for a couple years now and have noticed that they've chosen to keep track of removable media under /media. It's annoying, but as far as I can tell they're only tracking the volume label, so it hasn't been worth chasing down to disable.

Re:not a single Linux desktop ..

[howlingmadhowie]

you know, this is the sort of thing that makes me realise how hard the adoption of linux actually is. people have been accustomed through windows to having an operating system which can do almost nothing and having to spend money on development and software to complete the most simple tasks. what one needs to do is teach the windows world that there are operating systems out there which don't try to inhibit the user from doing the most basic things unless he/she starts spending money.

I wonder if the head of an IT department used to linux wants to hear solutions similar to the ones you present above. i imagine he would not accept a solution which doesn't require spending large amounts of money. the companies i've worked for have certainly expected to have to buy software to do simple things which could be accomplished with 2 lines of bash script. my boss was shocked and deeply suspicious when i fired up the linux box to write a short perl program to recursively search a directory and replace one tag in each xml-file it found with another.

Re:not a single Linux desktop ..

[dylan_-]

Ahh, yeah, they were using submount. It's been dropped in the latest release I believe.

Re:not a single Linux desktop ..

[doodlebumm]

Interesting???? You mean "stupid," don't you?

In this day of virtual, all of this could be done with starting a new virtual machine for each user. Once the user is gone, so it the virtual machine. Yes, it would take longer to boot than windows 3.1, but you could have a second virtual waiting in the wings for when the logout happens, then start another one up to be waiting for when the current one is logged out.

There's always more than one way to skin a cat. If you like to have the cat screaming and scratching while you skin it, that is possible, but I prefer to skin my cats when they are dead. People too often want the elegant solution when the right solution is far simpler.

Re:not a single Linux desktop ..

[Abreu]

Well, with the ammount of money spent on the reconfiguring, it is likely that not being able to buy equipment is not the reason.

Re:not a single Linux desktop ..

[richlv]

well, a cdrom costs 20ls here, that's close to 20 pounds. let's say, 360x20, 7200 pounds. that's a drop considering the amount they have spent.
i suppose they could have saved a lot of time, which seems to be the most expensive factor here.

additionally, if they are even remotely considering gnome/kde, that means they are not sticking to a hardware that is only barely capable of win3.1 (also, migrating to winxp was used as compare case) - so new hardware that probably has cdroms/flash was either acquired or planned.
oh, omitting hdd in favour of cdrom would also probably allow to save some fifty or slightly less pounds per machine - not a breathtaking amount, but kinda helpful.

flash could be more reliable, though, both cds and cdroms are quite fragile and unreliable, especially in public space.

btw, i really hope they will be reading this discussion a couple of days later, among flaming there are some interesting ideas that they could adopt ;)

You iNsensitive clod!?

[Anonymous Coward]

rotting corpse And exciting; which dOn't use the users. BSD/OS a Hsad world. At

B-B-B-B-B-B-Birmingham... Pow!

[Anonymous Coward]

Here's a link to a marvellous Birmingham infotainment-video, for those who don't know much about our City of Sunshine:

http://www2.b3ta.com/birmingham/

what usability issues...

[rs232]

"I use Gnome, but it sure has usability issues"

What specific usability issues would the average user have in Browsing, Emailing and Wordprocessing ? was Re:I hope the Gnome folks read this bit ...

Re:what usability issues...

[julesh]

What specific usability issues would the average user have in Browsing, Emailing and Wordprocessing ? was Re:I hope the Gnome folks read this bit ...

There is no easily-discoverable user interface that allows a user to type in the name of a file they wish to open.

Save-file dialogs use a totally different layout to open-file dialogs, requiring the user to learn two different user interfaces where the job can be trivially simplified to just one simple interface.

Re:what usability issues...

[richlv]

open/save dialogs, yeeesssss....
i use kde, but some applications use gtk dialogs (gimp, thunderbird and others).
i'm pissed off each time use one of those dialogs. that must be the worst advertisment gnome could ever have for other desktop environment users.

Short term budget

[hey!]

It's unfair on several levels to imply that using short term figures is dishonest. The short term budget is the only budget you can point to with any certainty.

Some people think Microsoft produces nothing but crap, and other people think Microsoft produces the nothing but the finest. Both views miss the point of Microsoft. Microsoft is about consistently delivering mediocrity, year in, year out.

This sounds like damning with faint praise, but consistent mediocrity has its advantages. Think of all the once great products that were run into the ground; or the promising projects that ended up going nowhere. Microsoft might be mean old Mr. Potter, but too often the alternative is like the Bailey Building and Loan without George Bailey. Do you really want Uncle Billy managing your nest egg?

Birmingham chose SUSE; how much trust should you put in Novell's future stewardship of SUSE, even granting the best of intentions?

It's important to acknowledge the leap of faith that Birmingham is making here. Pretending that short term costs don't matter underestimates the guts it takes to do that. Somebody has to take a leap of faith, every now and then, but it doesn't always end happily.

Re:Short term budget

[ajs318]

At least if it doesn't work out with SUSE, they can jump ship to another vendor. All they need to do is copy the whole of /etc over to whoever's distro they're using</oversimplification>, and it will pretty much work just the same as it did before.

Only Microsoft can sell you Windows.

That's the important difference. It's about the song, not the singer.

Gnome: Logical but not Practical

[soloport]

"Would you like some coffee? No? Yes?" isn't natural (unless you're a Gnome, I guess). But -- and this is just one example -- you can't pry the "logical way" out of the hands of Gnome developers. Can't convince a highly-technical (nerd) person that "practical" isn't always "logical".

Yeah. Yeah. Let the flames about "Microsoft's way; Not 'natural' way!" begin. But who do you think has spent the most on usability studies? Who's studied how people like things presented, the most? Nerds should deal with the UI / machine layers and UI practitioners should tell us nerds where to place the buttons and window trimmings.

How much damage has Linux gotten from Gnome-pushers? "I hated Linux" is so unfair if you haven't tried any other DE... /end of rant

Re:Gnome: Logical but not Practical

[dylan_-]

OSX does it exactly the same way...I think Apple probably did some usability studies at some point...

Re:Gnome: Logical but not Practical

[hab136]

OSX does it exactly the same way...I think Apple probably did some usability studies at some point...

If you're talking about Yes/No dialog boxes - no, they do it differently.

Instead of "Do you want to save the changes? Yes / No / Cancel" you get "You have unsaved changes. Save / Don't Save / Cancel". All of your choices are verbs. This avoids monstrosities like "Click Yes to do xxxx, click No to yyyyy", which I've seen in numerous Windows programs (Microsoft Access comes to mind).

From: http://developer.apple.com/documentation/UserExper ience/Conceptual/OSXHIGuidelines/XHIGControls/chap ter_18_section_2.html
"Button names should be verbs that describe the action performed--Save, Close, Print, Delete, and so on. If a button acts on a single setting, label the button as specifically as possible; "Choose Picture...," for example, is more helpful than "Choose..." Because most buttons initiate an immediate action, it shouldn't be necessary to use "now" (Scan Now, for example) in the label. Don't use push buttons to indicate a state such as On or Off (where it would be more appropriate to use checkboxes).

Re:Gnome: Logical but not Practical

[dylan_-]

If you're talking about Yes/No dialog boxes - no, they do it differently.

Instead of "Do you want to save the changes? Yes / No / Cancel" you get "You have unsaved changes. Save / Don't Save / Cancel".

That wasn't what he was talking about. Apple doesn't have "Save / Don't Save / Cancel", they have "Don't Save / Cancel / Save". That's the ordering Gnome uses too that he was complaining was wrong.

Re:Gnome: Logical but not Practical

[Brandybuck]

The ordering itself is irrelevant. One way isn't any more correct than the other. That's the tree that GNOME keeps missing the forest over.

I sometimes wonder how much better GNOME would be today if all that energy spent arguing over button order was spent instead solving real usability issues.

Re:Gnome: Logical but not Practical

[natrius]

If you're talking about Yes/No dialog boxes - no, they do it differently.No, Gnome does the same thing.

From the Gnome HIG:
"Label all buttons with imperative verbs, using header capitalization. For example, Save, Sort or Update Now."

Re:Gnome: Logical but not Practical

[zsau]

If you're talking about Yes/No dialog boxes - no, they do it differently.

Differently from Windows and KDE yes, but the same as Gnome (which is what's at issue here). Gnome and Mac OS X both use verbs, not Yes/No/Cancel, and both have a sensible button ordering (default choice where you eye is mostly likely to be next, and in a constant location).

Mod parent stupid

[thepotoo]

That one never gets old.

What is this, the next generation of Solviet Russia jokes? Come on.

Re:Mod parent stupid

[Gregory Cox]

In Soviet Russia, fire warms itself using YOU!

Webdav for one, is so broken in Gnome

[Anonymous Coward]

I haven't been able to access my university's WebCT from Gnome at all for the last three years or so (tried from various flavors of Debian, Ubuntu and Fedora). It was a breeze in KDE using Konqueror. That was one of the main reasons I changed to KDE. Even developers on Nautilus's mailing list aren't sure where the problem is; its webdav access works in some sites and not in other. Maybe they can just take a look at Konqueror's code to see how it handles webdav links to get a hint.

I wish that you would not do this

[Anonymous Coward]

As one who has contributed to KDE and will be again shortly, I hate it when others put down GNOME (or the others). They each have some interesting ideas and have contributed to our success as well.

Re:I wish that you would not do this

[PitaBred]

You still can't get around the fact that GTK is a horrid, ancient, creaky toolkit that is extensible not by design, but by elbow grease and hacks.

British Pounds in Alabama?

[Grishnakh]

Why is the city of Birmingham, Alabama paying for software in British Pounds? Oh wait...

Re:British Pounds in Alabama?

[Anonymous Coward]

I think exactly 0,7 with an SD of 1,1 readers laughed at that joke...

Interesting Comments On Usability

[segedunum]

...and usability problems with the original Gnome interface. At one point, realising that most of the usability issues were attributable to Gnome, which had taken three months to configure, staff ripped out Gnome and replaced it with KDE. The new interface was up and running within a week.

I thought usability was Gnome's strong point? Time to re-evaluate perhaps? I've done some small trials of Gnome and KDE with some office works and they all seem to come down on the side of KDE. Whether it's because there's more Windows-like functionality in there, I don't know. Additionally, you also have to remember that system administrators need to use it, and when they are on the phone with a user they need to be able to ask the user to do things, such as with the printer interface........

Re:Interesting Comments On Usability

[julesh]

I thought usability was Gnome's strong point?

Just my personal opinion, which is all you can really give here: no, it isn't. If anything, I'd say GNOME's strong point is its slavish obedience of the directives of so-called usability experts. The fact that most people seem to struggle to use it should tell us something: a lot of usability experts don't have a clue what they're talking about.

Re:Interesting Comments On Usability

[Brandybuck]

I thought usability was Gnome's strong point?

No it's not. GNOME has a lot of people who call themseves usability experts, and have managed to fool two distros into thinking they're usability experts, but they're not really usability experts. These are people who've read an essay by Rankin or part of Apple's HIG, and now think they know everything.

This article should be a wake up call, but I predict that after denouncing Birmingham as an abberation, it will be back to business-as-usual in GNOMEland.

Re:Interesting Comments On Usability

[segedunum]

If anything, I'd say GNOME's strong point is its slavish obedience of the directives of so-called usability experts.

That's what I was sort of politely trying to say ;-).

Vendor lock in logic.

[cabazorro]

Cust: ..and the 4th service pack did not got through, something to do with key management?
Vendor: Ah! let me tell you all about the suite tools an licensing for the 2007 roll out.
Cust: Well, our budget is thight. We have a team working to port part of the application to Open Source servers.
Vendor (smiling): Do you have ANY idea how much is going to cost?
Cust: Well, the actual numbers are a big point of contention.
Vendor: I'll save you the agravation, IBM? Oracle? they have R&D and D stands for deep pockets, get it? But I'm here ready to offer you big discounts for the all our upgrades, you know that if you don't upgrade right now, you'll have to pay FULL price once the contract expires, right?.
Cust: (sight).
Vendor: Now about those licenses...

Re:Vendor lock in logic.

[GigsVT]

That sounds exactly like every software salesman I've ever dealt with. I don't know how those guys sleep at night.

People claim lawyers are sleezy, but lawyers are nothing compared to sales. I've never met a software sales person I liked. Ever. I've met lots of them too.

Re:Vendor lock in logic.

[Abreu]

Software sales? Bah! I work in the tourism industry and I really don't know evil sales tactics unless you have gone to a timeshare presentation in the last couple of years.

Re:Vendor lock in logic.

[Abreu]

please replace the second "I" with "you" on the comment above

[Hit the damn preview button Abreu!]

---

Well, anyway, to make this comment less useless let me tell you that during a timeshare presentation, the sales staff will very likely:

1.- Make wildly extravagant claims about the capabilities of the membership in question.

2.- Make every effort to get you drunk before you get to see the contract.

3.- Appeal to your ego or even subtly insult you if you say it's too expensive. (In one case, a salesperson turned to the guys wife and asked: "Why did you marry such a cheapskate? He doesnt want to take you on vacation!")

4.- Gosh! some will even flirt with you if you are of the opposite sex (or if they think you're gay).

All of this, and much more, in order to get a sale.

Re:Vendor lock in logic.

[richlv]

mmmm. cool. drinking, flirting...
reminds me about bofh articles regarding salespersons.

Applications good, OS problematic

[tnk1]

The one thing I noticed, which is going to be important for any initiative like this is the fact that people in this pilot still had real trouble with the Linux distro in terms of making it easy for non-technical users to use. The actual FOSS winner here was the applications, not Linux.

Of course it shows that actually making Linux the centerpiece of your FOSS change is looking at the problem from the wrong angle. If you make applications that people don't need to install a new OS to use, and then make sure that they get used to them under XP or whatever, then the move to Linux is almost a no-brainer. Why? Because once you have apps that work well on Linux and XP, the fact that Linux distros are free (or much cheaper) means that the bottom line is on your side. Microsoft can drop its XP licenses to 58 quid and have that work while you NEED MS Office. But once you no longer use MS Office, then 0 quid beats 58 quid. MS can't compete. And wouldn't that be a nice change?

Of course, even at the price of free, badly developed OS user interfaces will stop Linux from being adopted. Everyone knows non-technical people fear Linux. And honestly, I don't blame them.

MS's committment to making a friendly OS is mediocre, but at least it exists and they have a product. Granted, being a monopoly has allowed them to force people to learn to deal with the rough edges that exist, but truly, Windows is a genuinely usable system for a newb. Not great, but its good enough. The Linux community really needs to get behind that effort, even to the exclusion of adding new features, if necessary.

It may be true that Linux needs to have a superior UI to beat out MS's mediocre monopoly UI, but what of it? Linux does nearly everything in a superior manner to Windows.

Or it can continue to be simply a server OS, and well, that's just fine too.

Typical media report: clearly false

[iabervon]

It's remarkable how much that gets reported turns out to be unquestionably false. We hear reports of cows with accents, and it turns out that all of the quotes are from people who were mostly directly contradicting the story, but said a few things that could be totally rewritten to suggest support for it. We hear about school districts allowing text message slang in exams, and it turns out that this is entirely reporters extrapolating from schools not flunking students who make spelling mistakes when writing correct answers. We hear that women use 3 times as many words as men, and this turns out to be directly contradicted by every study actually carried out, from major academic studies to curious people handing tape recorders to a pair of people and then counting.

I hardly think it's surprising any more that successful completion of a project is reported as the project being scrapped. It's almost surprising that we didn't get reports on the recent election of the Republicans keeping control of both houses of Congress for another two months.

Galaxy, meet Koha

[SgtChaireBourne]

Birmingham should look at Koha, since one of the problems listed was with the Galaxy library system.

I could go for pages about how library system vendors are generally pretty shady and do an awful lot to keep unwitting customers locked in. All kinds of song and dances come forth. However, it all comes down to the buyers (libraries) not wanting to take the time to find out 1) what they are paying for, 2) what they ought to buy and 3) what they are actually getting. Libraries often end up as a result in a position where the vendors dictate the terms conditions and pricing. Many don't even bother to fulfill the contract since rarely does anyone ever check up on them anyway. A little technobabble will dazzle the one or two brave souls that try.

If Birmingham wants to go whole hog, then they can move to Koha. The makers of Galaxy will be as uncooperative as they can get away with, but they would do that with any threat of migration to any other vendor anyway. There are many ways, few easy, but doable to extract the contents of a library system, even against the vendors will.

If nothing else, Birmingham can look at Koha and see how it meets their needs. Many use it not because it it open source, but because it has the funcitonality they need. All library systems suck, they just suck in different ways. And Koha has quite a few technical advantages over the closed source varieties. However, being open source is one of the stronger non-technical advantages. It means not only that small changes can be done in house, but that larger changes can be outsourced to those that have time, interest and experience. BTW simply threatening to evaluate Koha can bring significant consessions from their current vendor.

Netboot

[Anonymous Coward]

done.

Re:Netboot

[ajs318]

If they're running Windows 3.1, which we can guess is what came on them, they probably don't support network booting. Or maybe they do, but in order for that to work they will need to have a BIOS extension EPROM installed on the network cards (ever wonder what that 28-pin socket on all those old 16-bit network cards was for?) which almost certainly is no longer available; chances are the card maker went out of business and left no trace. Or maybe they still exist (perhaps in name only, having been swallowed up by a larger company) and are still vigorously defending their copyrights.

On the upside, a simple network-booting machine requires only a case and PSU, a modern all-in-one motherboard, a processor and 1GB of RAM -- no drives, CD, hard, floppy or flash; so they're cheap as chips to build (assuming you have a still-serviceable monitor, keyboard and mouse) and have almost nothing to go wrong with them (once you've got your head around setting up a TFTPboot server). You put / in a RAMdisk, and mount the important stuff like /usr, /bin, /lib and /etc read-only over the network.

But, as I've already mentioned, that's very un-Windows-like thinking, and it goes against what a lot of people have already been taught.

Gnome vs KDE? Toss 'em both!

[bzipitidoo]

Gnome and KDE are both big, bloated, and slow. I have a lot of older hardware, and have spent some time hacking on Slackware 10 and 11 to set up an environment that's far from perfect but good enough. Knoppix will tell you it just can't run KDE in a measly 64M of RAM.

A 4G hard drive is a bit cramped these days, so I've been experimenting with Reiser4, but who knows what will happen to that file system now, and "bzexe" (gzexe using bzip2 instead of gzip), and installing as few packages as possible while still having crucial "killer apps" user software, that being Open Office, Firefox (with Java and Flash), GIMP, xine (no luck with gxine) with codecs for viewing wmv stuff, xmms, a PDF viewer (xpdf), and GAIM. And gphoto2 for digital cameras. Solved printer setup problems by getting an HP with an ethernet interface and using HPLIP. (USB printers in Linux are a huge pain.) Can scan that way too. Learned of jwm from Puppy Linux, hunted around for a file manipulator like Windows Explorer and settled on Xfe, and I hacked agetty and the startx script to make login automatic. No display manager pigging out on resources that way.

Automatic mounting of CDs, DVDs, USB memory sticks, and all the varieties of flash memory is still a problem. I thought I had that solved with Submount (that's right, not Supermount), a relatively tiny daemon and kernel patch, but it doesn't seem to be maintained anymore. (Yes, I'm using the very latest kernels-- don't believe that about 2.6 not being suitable for low memory environments, I've run it and X on 48M and had 20M of RAM free according to top.) Instead, there's a movement towards HAL/dbus/ivman which are way way WAY larger. Don't have anything equivalent to Add/Remove Programs, or Settings (except CUPS printer management web page), and some other things are missing, but it works.

So, yeah, KDE, Gnome, or "hack it up yourself" all have their points. Only recently did Xubuntu pop up on my radar. Lot of the lightweight distros, like DSL, economize too much on the desktop.

unix techies are expensive?

[paniq]

unix techies are expensive? you're aware that if oss catches on at this rate, you'll get unix monkeys a dozen.

Re:unix techies are expensive?

[Ajehals]

Without being too harsh - the barriers to becomming a MS qualified Tech are monetary not skill based, and being an unqualified (but competent) MS tech requires less in-depth skill than a similarily capable *nix admin.

In short, there wont be as many *nix tech's because it does actually require a decent amount of understanding into what is happening within a system to administrate a *nix implementation successfuly. Windows is just too easy to administrate (A point in its favour if "out of the box" configurations are enough for you.).

Re:unix techies are expensive?

[paniq]

sure. but don't forgot that you're sampling one point from a curve. the more interesting question is what kind of derivation you have. i can not see open source software declining. i can not see the salary for unix admins rising. why should i care about this one sampling point then? it's outdated the moment you say it.

Re:unix techies are expensive?

[Ajehals]

My point is that if you are going to look at TCO for a *nix based system, or rather one element of it, the cost of staff to administrate it, per member of staff, that cost is going to be higher. This is because getting a decent *nix admin is more expensive than getting a decent windows admin - and generally you dont need decent windows admins.

However if you step back you will find that that one *nix admin will be able to administrate many more services and applications than a single Windows admin (Exchange administration on windos vs a postfix/imap solution on *nix springs to mind - where you might need 2-3 Exchange admins plus a server admin against one server & mail admin on the *nix side... always depending on the organisation of course).

What I have seen and found is that the staff pay element in TCO for *nix systems is only an issue when you dont take into account the capabilities of both *nix hardware and qualified staff, or when you are in a mixed environment that is light on *nix implementations (say just a few webservers. but dedicated staff because the windows teams cannot handle *nix administration well - or in addition to their existing role.).

Personal experience suggests that TCO for an organisation using only FOSS is about the same as for an organisation running Windows for the first year and then dramatically drops. Not to mention that on the linux side you get a complete system - including mail, file storage, print storage, security, backup solution etc... without the additional licenses and support agreements. But hey, since when did a single oppinion or the experience of a single person suggest a trend :)

- excuse the spelling -

Re:unix techies are expensive?

[paniq]

"My point is that if you are going to look at TCO for a *nix based system, or rather one element of it, the cost of staff to administrate it, per member of staff, that cost is going to be higher. This is because getting a decent *nix admin is more expensive than getting a decent windows admin - and generally you dont need decent windows admins."

yes - but i'm claiming that the decent *nix admin will be cheaper in the future, since the number of admins will grow.

all in all, i agree with you, i'm just saying that the number of reasons to build on OSS will increase, and the "TCO" (which is BS made up by Microsoft alone, by the way) decreases.

Re:unix techies are expensive?

[richlv]

windows is easy to manage for somple solutions like a couple of separate machines. it might take more time (reinstalling after some mysterious problems or virus outbreak or whatnot), but most actions at this level are braindead.
once you get to something more advanced, actual skills, which usually involve a lot of clicking around, knowing way around registry (yuck) and even scripting with windows native solutions (ouch...).
such a skillset is not either common or cheap - actually anybody with even mediocre _knowledge_ about windows systems costs quite a lot of money to hire.
the imagination that windows experts are cheap and easy to find is stimulated by hordes of clueless monkeys who pretend they can handle problems.
it's quite interesting to see how persons like that are trying to do the same in linux world - with the power given by linux/gnu/whatever tools they break things with surprising ease and skill, making it a painful jorney to find out "what happened now".

Re:unix techies are expensive?

[ajs318]

Yes, but the point I was making is that it looks cheaper just to scrap Windows boxes when they "break" than to employ someone who knows how to fix them. Paying for a good Windows technician (who can actually do all the registry and scripting black magic) comes out of IT's budget. Paying for a brand new computer for Laura in Hay Char because the cheap "Windows technician" you hired doesn't actually know how to fix it properly comes out of HR's budget. The bigger the organisation, the more departments there are, and the thinner the cost of the incompetent Windows "technician" is spread. Since the top brass are computer-clueless (otherwise they'd never have been using Windows in the first place), this is generally accepted as Just The Normal State of Things.

The reason you can bluff your way around Windows is that nine failures out of ten are random, beyond anyone's control (which is fully to be expected when writing low-level software against a closed-source OS with inadequately, and at times downright wrongly, documented APIs). So rebooting will apparently "fix" nine problems out of ten. This doesn't mean that Windows is "easy to fix"; it means it needs fixing more often than it should.

When software is written against an OS with a properly-documented API -- and API documentation doesn't come much more proper than the real, live source code -- it's almost bound to be more stable. The only thing that can break it is a serious foul-up on the application developer's part. If the application is a popular one, developed as Open Source (and thus subject to many levels of independent scrutiny), or the application is Closed Source but the developer is plentifully-resourced (e.g. Sun, Oracle) then there is much less risk of random failures happening.

Fewer than one in ten failures on Unix / Linux systems are random, so nine times out of ten rebooting will not fix anything -- and a bluffer will quickly be found out. Fortunately, there is usually meaningful information in any error messages (which probably were put there by a real, live programmer for their own benefit during the testing phase) that may turn up; so it's possible for anyone with a logical mind, good reasoning ability and the merest smidgen of luck to work out from first principles what's up with the bloody thing. (Someone who has never been a serious Windows user is at a distinct advantage here, from not bringing any baggage of inapplicable preconceptions.) And if anyone else has ever had the same problem before, chances are they will have written it up on some message board, wiki or blog somewhere.

Re:unix techies are expensive?

[Ajehals]

Fisrt off TCO is valid - if you know what the TCO for a sytem is / will be you can budget correctly - and plan for upgrades etc.. - in short you have some sort of financial stability. Microsoft just skew figures regarding their software, - much like every other software or services provider...

Secondly the problem with *some* companies is that they dont plan long term - so if a system appears cheaper in the first year, that is what they will use, - two reasons for this 1) It looks good in the short term and the board will be happy, plus the person responsible may have moved or beed promoted / sacked before the benefits of their decision are realised (so someone else wil get the credit for it - or even worse they will appear to have made a poor decision - that cost too much money...). 2) Tehy have seen many many products that claim; "...the cost to change is high but then it drops and you will be laughing all the way to the bank..." but then it turns out that the initial costs are high and that the TCO is also just as high or not very different from the origional system.

Of course there are also those who believe that having the "latest" and "best" is required - and strangley IT managers / IT directors seem to see Microsoft as "Best". (Just after bespoke software (something like the difference between buying a tower block to put your head office in and having one built to spec...). For these guys pointing out that the *nix systems are as close to bespoke as they are going to get (in reality most "bespoke" systems are based on something COTS like anyway) sometimes helps"!)

Anyway - not disagreeing with you much either, but hey - thought I'd say.

This is such FUD

[MSFanBoi2]

"Oh, and the report's figures were based on the special rates that Microsoft gives Councils just to make sure the short-term budget look worse -- £58 for a Windows license as opposed to the normal £100."

The ACTUAL quote is:

The council gets a steep discount on Windows licences through a broader Education SELECT licence arrangement, paying £58 for a Windows XP licence compared to roughly £100 for OEMs. "Accounting for corporate instead of Education SELECT licences would have added nearly £50,000 to a Windows upgrade project," iMpower found.

Most corporations, companies big and small don't buy OEM licenses for Windows for goodness sake! They USE a Select Enterprise license! Why? Because it saves them MONEY.

I LOVE the amount of half truths some people use to bash Windows/Microsoft.

Re:This is such FUD

[Anonymous Coward]

Learn to read your own quote, sunshine: "Accounting for corporate instead of Education SELECT licences would have added nearly £50,000 to a Windows upgrade project" I love it when people use non-truths to make themselves sound perceptive and intellectually vibrant.

60% unless you're not trying

[Anonymous Coward]

You'll get 60% that way if your not trying. Some places get up over 90% discounts depending on how stubborn they are and how plausible the threat of moving to FOSS is. Uppsala is one example of getting over 90%.

It sounds clever, until you realize that the discount is simply an investment the vendor is making and that it expects to earn all that money back, and then some, in the future. And you can bet that each round, it will be harder and harder to move either systems or data...

The cost of proprietary applications

[Sloppy]

The council couldn't afford to pay Galaxy's developers to port it to Linux

See where you went wrong here? You bought non-portable software, and also it was proprietary, so you were locked into doing business, in a world full of millions of programmers, with one entity in order to get the maintenance that you wanted. See all the IT workers whining about having a hard time finding a job (i.e. people you could hire very cheaply)? You can't use them. You don't get to take advantage of the market. You didn't get to request bids on the porting job.

Oops. Now is where Birmingham's IT people will have a real chance to show their where they are on the Wisdom-vs-Stupidity scale: are you moving toward phasing out this dead-end application? 10 Years from now, will you be able to use whatever platform you want to, or will one application developer still be making that choice for you, while also getting to charge whatever they want for maintenance without having to worry about pesky competitors underbidding them?

Re:The cost of proprietary applications

[kwilliam]

You nailed it there, brother!

Companies should team together to pay developers to make open source products for them, instead of buying proprietary software and paying for it again, and again, and again...

Strategy 1: Pay to develop the software, and get infinate copies, or
Strategy 2: Don't pay to develop it, and pay for EACH copy.

At some point, maybe they'll realize Strategy 1 could be a lot cheaper.

Good or bad ?

[Mathness]

Henchman runs into Ballmers office.

Minion: Sir, sir! I have some good news and some bad news.
Ballmer: Stop breathing in my direction, and give me the bad news first.
Minion: Evans say they will "significantly increase" its use of open-source software.
Ballmer picks up a chair and advences towards the minion.
Sweating minion: Sir, wait. You haven't heard the good news yet.
Ballmer: This better be good!
Minion: The council will use SUSE.
Ballmer flops down into the chair and laughs loudly *evil pinky*

What?

[derEikopf]

They use Pounds in Alabama???


<_<
>_>

Really Lame

[Eric Damron]

How many people buy Windows and then expect to "make money" directly from that purchase?? Answer: None.

You may use GPL'd code for free (as in beer) and because it's free (as in speech) you can modify it to exactly fit your needs and share it with others with out the license cops breaking down your door and hauling away your computer equipment.

No...

[Eric Damron]

Some people will never "get it" because some people don't want to. You are one of those people.

Your sig speaks volumes about your lack of understanding as well as your zealotry against Linux. I'd call you a Microsoft butt-boy but that might get this otherwise insightful post modded down as a troll.

Re:No...

[Anonymous Coward]

Spoken like a true Linux zealot.

It's all about settings

[johnfink]

I'm about 90% into a complete changeover from Windows to Linux in my (rather geeky) home. I have to say, I can see how Gnome can easily cause a great many problems to the CLI-phobic. KDE's 'Control Panel' thingy is far from perfect, but at least it covers most everything, and it's all in one place. In order to do things in Gnome (like xorg.conf settings), I find I need to actually go into my /etc folder and start vimming.

Gnome needs a Control Panel - something an average user can understand, and with a minimum of effort, change everything from display resolution to mouse accelleration to kernel modules. Forcing users to change things manually is where you crash your systems (I know this much). If you keep it all in the GUI, you maintain control over the settings, and you can make sure any changes are sane before implementing them. But if you hide the settings, the user has no choice but to muck around on his own, and then complain to all his coworkers that Linux is strictly for geeks.

This is not Apple. You can't assume the user won't have to change settings, because the hardware is nothing approaching uniform.

Re:It's all about settings

[JoshJ]

gconf-editor is exactly what you're looking for.

Re:It's all about settings

[Intron]

man gconf-editor

NOTES
              This tool allows you to directly edit your configuration database.
              This is not the recommended way of setting desktop preferences.
              Use this tool at your own risk.

Gnome vs KDE

[dcam]

FTA:
At one point, realising that most of the usability issues were attributable to Gnome, which had taken three months to configure, staff ripped out Gnome and replaced it with KDE. The new interface was up and running within a week.

And let the flame war begin.

TCO hype --debunked! Up yours, Microsoft!

[KWTm]

I couldn't help laughing out loud at the concept of TCO (Total Cost of Ownership) being soundly slapped over the rump. The reason that "Neutral And Independent / May Bill Gates Live Forever" studies show Linux having a higher TCO is because of the up-front retraining investment needed. Microsoft portrays it as a steep, unworthwhile climb. But simply by doing the trial, Birmingham went over the hump already, and is already on the downhill slope where they can sit back and recoup their costs for years to come.

Interviewer: So, Linux cost you more?

IT guy: Yeah, we had to learn stuff all over again and reconfigure everything. We blew so much money on that!

Interviewer: So, I guess it's a no-go for Linux, and you're going back to Microsoft?

IT guy: Are you kidding me? We already spent so much on Linux --why would we want to throw away everything we worked so hard for?

Bravo, Birmingham, for going through with the trial. I hope the word gets out --the bogeyman of TCO is what is keeping companies and institutions from taking the plunge.

It's funny - Laugh

[ratboy666]

"If new-desktop designers want to have something people use (rather than just scratching their own itches a dark corner somewhere) then they are implicitly going after windows desktop users by definition."

People standing in the middle of the road look like roadkill to me. -- Linus Torvalds

typo

[anand78]

"IBM to run nine proof-of-concept open source trials designed to mesure the cost-benefits" Must have used an Opensource Word processor to spell "measure" as "mesure"

Free beer

[Anonymous Coward]

What is this crap about free (as in beer). What is this meant to imply ? Highly taxed, expensive, fun, pissy - what ?
Whenever I see a sign for 'free beer' it always has appended 'tomorrow'

Re:Gnome vs KDE? Toss 'em both!

[dylan_-]

Well, you're probably done now, but last one I installed on a 64MB machine was VectorLinux. It's slackware based and I seem to recall the lightweight desktop used IceWM with Rox filer. Worked well. Worth investigating anyway.

What many have been saying all along....

[jotaeleemeese]

From the report:

"It appears that OpenOffice provides a satisfactory equivalent to Microsoft products for those using basic or intermediate functionality,"

I hope this and other studies put to rest this one.

The software is free.

[jotaeleemeese]

In the sense you are implying (but it should not be btw).

But you can't force people to learn, mantain and modify the software for you for free.

That has associated costs.