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Secret EU Open Source Migration Study Leaked
Elektroschock writes "For 4 years MEP Marco Cappato tried to get access to the EU Council's 2005 open source migration study because he is a member of a responsible IT oversight committee in the European Parliament. His repeated requests for access were denied. Now they have finally been answered because the Council's study has escaped into the wild (PDF in French and English). Here is a quick look. It is embarrassing! Gartner, when asked if there were any mature public Linux installations in Europe, claimed that there were none. Michael Silver said, 'I have not spoken to any sizable deployments of Linux on the desktop and only one or two StarOffice deployments.' Gartner spread patent and TCO FUD. Also, the European Patent Office participated in the project, although it is not an EU institution."
Someone needs to pull a John Stewart/Jim Cramer on Gartner. These guys spread so much BS, yet continue to be considered an authority.
Mod me down if you want, but Linux needs to go "full retard" in order to reach the masses. Essentially, a 6 year old and a 96 year old need to be able to use the system. If they can't, start over.
No mature public Linux installations in Europe? Either Gartner has chosen to mislead, or they have used some definition of the words public and mature that I don't understand. And people still take notice of what these guys say?
Exceptions are like STDs. You really don't want to catch the ones you can't recover from.
Can you call this cab driver up and ask him a few more questions? Like, which stocks to buy, what the capitol of Ontario is, and what tomorrow's winning lotto numbers will be? Thanks!
Isn't there an EU action for fraud, if Gartner was a contracted and paid consultant to the EU for this study? I'd love to see an American company get financially shitcanned by the EU. Not just fined but wiped out.
I thought folks had realized by now that the accuracy and the lack of bias of Gartner was well... suspect?
More interesting is the assertion that releasing the document would have been damaging to Microsoft on account of the special contracts that Microsoft has with delivering Office for the EU parliament IT.
XP is virtually inside W7.
So MSFT has to support it. Now, where is the point to migrate to something called windows?
Then, what are the mature Linux installations in Europe?
Sue Silver for fraud; also he has a conflict of interest because he is a self-declared Windows tool and Linux is the main competition (sorry, Mac users.) Finally, never ask an all-business BA+MBA for technical information. You will only get statistics.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
I'm in no way trying to defend Gartner and his study, but I believe there is a huge difference between Linux adoption in 2005 and now. Some slides from the pdf linked in the article suggest that major portions of the study were made even earlier, in 2003. Of course basing any technology-related decisions on such a outdated study is another matter...
I love it! Here's our infamous "Gartner" group in prime form. FTFPDF, we see that they are predicting the arrival of WinFS anywhere from late 2008 to early 2010.
Now, anyone who's been around as long as Gartner knows that Microsoft has been promising this "feature" since Windows codename "Cairo," which was announced in 1991, and publically demo'ed in '93. There was a lot of hope that it would be delivered in NT 4.0. That's roughly 16 years folks. WAY more time than they had to develop Duke Nukem Forever, and it's just a _file system_.
If you want to talk about basing your corporate purchasing decisions on "features" like WinFS, then all this slagging off on Linux as not being "there yet" is directly hyporcritical, now, isn't it?
Acts 17:28, "For in Him we live, and move, and have our being."
I'm pretty sure that Google and Yahoo have some data centers in the EU... and likely many other companies do too. Gartner is being deliberately obtuse, IMHO.
C|N>K
* Linux will be less expensive than Windows because StarOffice/OpenOffice.org can be used instead of Microsoft Office.
* Linux is free.
* There are no forced upgrades.
* Linux will require significantly less labor to manage.
* Linux will have a lower TCO than Windows because of available management tools.
* Applications will be inexpensive or free.
* Hardware can be kept longer if Linux is used, or older hardware can be used.
* Skills are transferable. - Gartner
davecb5620@gmail.com
Well racist troll or not I feel compelled to point you don't know what you're talking about. I'm native of the UK, currently living in Spain, and I can tell you your cab driver doesn't know shit.
Since it joined the EU Spain has received massive investment from the EU, which it has used to modernise in all sorts of ways and has gone from a stagnant low GDP economy to being one of the leading economies in Europe.
The UK on the other hand has benefited greatly from having to take on a modicum of human rights law from the EU which its leaders (and popular press) have hated but IMHO have been a huge boon to human rights in the country. Of course the UK government is doing its best to trample all over those rights still but are repeatedly slapped down when they over-step the mark.
Gartner also made the case that EU governments should not abandon open standards, but rather redefine open standards by removing royalty free use. Thats basically tossing the success story of the Internet out the window and still using it as branding name for the new EIFv2 "European Interoperability Framework" See EU-commission pages at: http://ec.europa.eu/idabc/en/document/7728 and a post about it here: http://bosson.blogspot.com/2009/05/stealing-free-from-open-standards.html
They are already doing that, with some success. Of course windows being bundled with new computers and incapability of running win32 apps (and i am not talking about office) are other pieces of the puzzle for which, i believe, we have to wait a little longer.
We learn from history that we learn nothing from history - Tom Veneziano
'As an example illustrating this fact, the Commission officially uses "Linux RedHat Enterprise Version" in its "x86" (also called Intel-compatible architecture) based servers. The fees for "RedHat Enterprise Version" are actually more expensive than those of other proprietary alternatives'
davecb5620@gmail.com
Cab drivers are notorious complainers. So are Spaniards. Put them together, and well, you should already know what to expect.
What your international relations expert - I mean cab driver forgot to mention was that:
1. Spanish currency went from being a bit over half worth half of what a dollar is worth to being substantially more valuable than the dollar. This isn't the EU - it's the Euro, which is rapidly becoming the world standard for currency. Costs went up in some cases, but their currency finally has a respectable value.
2. Now any European can legally move to and work in any European country. Pretty fucking cool if you ask me (I am a Spanish citizen and an American citizen)
3. Other shit that I really don't know because I'm no expert either.
All I'm saying is that your cabby was a belly-aching complainer and left out the most significant changes that Europeans witnessed with the formation of the EU.
Indeed, you should never try to fuck linux, nor any other OS residing in your PC. This is what happens when schools stop their sex ed programs people.
I am the lawn!
No, Linux does not need to go "full retard" (Really, is that the best you could come up with?). Windows kernel is no more "user friendly" however it does have a host of helper apps that makes the OS useful. There are groups that are trying to integrate expected features and helper apps to make linux useful and these have had some success. However the issue isn't linux, it is the application developers.
To develop for OS X or Windows developers know that users expect certain UI standards, certain ease of use and most of all a very standardized and easy to use installation system. If I look for a Windows app and the file ends with ".exe", I'm 99% sure it will run without the need to compile it. If it ends in .msi it will also install OK. On a very rare occasion I may need to track down a ".dll" or driver. However my limited experience with Linux (limited because I can't find the software I need) has been that while the Ubuntu and other versions are beautiful, chock full of neato features and generally work, finding new software is at best an adventure and at worst ends in frustrating failure. Grandma doesn't want a .zip file filled with source and headers that she has to compile (and neither do I since I'm no longer young and single with all the time in the world on my hands).
Get developers away from the idea that Linux is a great technical sandbox and, get developers onto the idea that all software that requires a user interface also must have pre-compiled binaries and a UI that meets common UI standards and the rest will take care of itself.
for over a year now, I must say I agree. Sadly, linux is not mature.
In the times pre windows nt/2000, yes, linux was more stable and had far better up time. But after windows 2000 came out, stability was greatly improved and is simply a non-issue these days.
When that happened, linux lost its strong point and the direction where it's going. A few weeks ago, Mark Shuttleworthd said "Linux must not be just better Windows" or something like that. That of course, is wrong. No matter what you want linux to be or not be, it's just a freaking OS. It deals with scheduling processor time and resources, and IO (and sadly, there's a IO bug in kernels after 2.6.18 that still hasn't been fixed IIRC). Anything more than that is not linux any more. It's either gnome or kde or whatever.
What I really care about as the user is that the os can run my software of choice. For example, MS office is my software of choice. I prefer MSO to any other solution I've seen. Specifically: i also like the look and feel of office 2007 (and since MacOS is forcing me into something else, Mac is off my OS list). Now, should linux run my app or should linux provide "an alternative" to any single pice of software there is? Dear god, speak about reinventing the wheel).
I currently use linux (or should I say Gnome, since linux really doesn't matter that much) because Vista has a really really REALLY stupid memory management (I don't understand what's the point of prefatching software you MIGHT use and then swapping programs you actually do use. I mean, how brain dead is that??). I like having multiple desktops (hello MS it can't be THAT hard), love powerful shell and SSH integration into nautilus.
But the more I use linux (Ubuntu in case you are interested), the more unhappy I am. It's the little things, like, keyboard not processing input on dual screen when there's no window open on that desktop. And configuring / changing (external) display configuration is simply broken. And high IO really brings system on the knees (even surfing is not possible while writing to a CD). Firefox is sloooooowwww. No exchange client. No out of the box AD integration. And so on and on and on.
It's really strange. Currently, there's no desktop OS i'd like to use. I don't get why people are sooooo amoused over mac os. I've tried it but didn't really liked it (yes, i'd prefer windows). On the other hand, MS doesn't know wher to go with Vista/7, but they don't implement a simple virtual desktops and tabs in windows explorer (yes, I'd buy 7 for these simple features).
Based on my experience I agree with gartner, windows is the better choice for EU's cuncil IT environment.
Sorry to be a grammar/spelling Nazi, but you misspelled Vista.
Probably. But they DO cover more services. Bare MS licensing gives you not much more than the OS. Now add IIS support, Exchange, Office in every machine, etc. RHEL gives you an OS plus e-mail server, web server, directory server, virtualization, and all the free goodies packaged in RHEL. ALL WITHIN SCOPE OF THE SUPPORT CONTRACT.
Three of these are NOT myths.
1) Linux is free, that is true. Free in the sense of freedom, rather than money.
2) There are not forced upgrades - is anyone forcing you to upgrade Linux? You can make your own distro for your company only and YOU decide when to upgrade. You are free to do that. (Look (1))
3) Hardware can be kept longer - this is true, because you can customize your OS to your hardware. However, requirements of userspace software may force transition.
Ubuntu? Really? Try clicking the "system" option, then "Synaptic Package Manager". As you would've found had you paid any attention, you click the pretty box for the software you want, and your system installs the precompiled binaries along with any dependencies. No files (not even the equivalent of a .exe or .msi) required.
Your description of installing software on Linux is one way to do it, but it has not been the only way and certainly not the easiest way for a very long time.
To fight the war on terror, stop being afraid.
Feel free to chime in guys:
"It's from Gartner, so it is wrong"
Yes, this is a repetition of what I'll always say when talking about a Gartner report. But obviously it hasn't been chanted enough.
And yet linux fanboys mod me troll. Do as you are pleased, but that's precisely what's wrong with linux. Point to a problem and you are either a troll or you can "fix it yourself". Like, you know, GIMP USER INTERFACE STILL SUCKS. But developers surely know waaaayyy better what's good for the user.
As far as the MS Office issue, Linux can run your app via Wine or Crossover Office. There are also alternatives with varying degrees of quality.
It seems like a lot of your difficulties (No exchange client, no AD integration) have more to do with expecting Linux do things like Windows does when sometimes it doesn't. And sometimes there are ways of doing what you want to do that you just haven't learned about yet.
I am officially gone from
Well, at least the city of Munich: http://news.cnet.com/Munich-fires-up-Linux-at-last/2100-7344_3-6119153.html
I am sure, though, that there are others.
I forgot: The Linux desktops were not in place in 2004 and the report seems to refer to that year.
What did they expect?
You're unhappy with Linux because you're making the fatal mistake of trying to live a Microsoft life with a Linux based OS. It's like deciding you like nautical life so you buy an airplane. I had the same problem when I switched from windows 98 to Linux. I used XP along side Linux for a while, but eventually Linux (more acurately, POSIX) felt oh so more right and sensible than windows. Now, if it isn't POSIX compatible, it's a weird niche system to me. If you can let go of all your windows-isms and microsoft-isms you can be much happier with your computer. You can't constantly compare the two OSes, either. You'll never be satisfied like that, especially if you're really used to the first OS. It's like watching a really great movie many times and then years later watching a remake. Even if the remake is fantastic and new and has all the elements of the old that you like, it'll still be different. It will still feel like a shameless copy that doesn't quite work the way you want it to. You'll expect a line from your favorite character only to hear something different. Does the fact it was different from what you expected make it a bad line? Probably not, but it still leaves you a bit disappointed. I guess my point is to leave behind all your preconceptions about what an OS is and how it should behave, if you truly wish to switch to Linux--or any other OS for that matter--and be happy with it.
Okay, enough bad analogies.
Skiffy is Spiffy, but Ort is tort.
Outrageous! Single or limited function desktops (for example, data entry) Err, we are talking of modern day distributions of Linux, not some random software made by a random person for Linux!
The only thing that can be found out (about how this "information" was discovered) is the amount of money M$ paid to get this to be said!
If it's unelected then how come I will be choosing who my Member of the European Parliament will be from a list of candidates on June 4th? Do you even have a clue or do you base your entire knowledge of a union of 27 countries on the ill-informed complaints of one fucking taxi driver?
you're not a troll, you're just too lazy to read manuals ;)
We use AD authentication out of the box for our Linux boxes and OpenChange is making progress towards an Exchange MAPI client. MS Office (if you need it) runs easily under CrossOver Office.
This is not that Linux is not mature, this is that Linux is not what you want.
Ok you people! Now anyone may call me troll, racist, animal hater or anything worser. But I'm really fed up with people like this one. It is the very same song since the old 90's. And it is one of the reasons why I haven't been here for years.
Now, I have to confess, this is a never ending story - brawling all over what 6 year, 30 year, 90 year oldies may or may not able to use Linux. No one is going to give up.
But I think there is a way... The TEST!
Let a chimp try to use both systems. Really, Sincerly it would be interesting to see what will come out of such thing. Whatever it will be, it will be funny and damnly embarassing, I believe.
To be honest, if it's not in the add/remove app then you can only expect a certain percentage of users to be able to find it. With that said, google has introduced people to the concept of trying multiple searches with different keywords to find what you're looking for (amazing!) so more and more people are probably able to use the search field in Synaptic all the time :)
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
And I thought, "Yeah, why do we let that asshat continue? He can't even manage his own personal economics, much less an entire nation's." John Stewart does need to skewer Geitner on national TV, but that'll never happen because Stewart is just a cog in the leftist media's Yes Man machine.
As a side note, what is with gay men craving another man's poop on their dick, or an ass full of ball juice? That's just sick! Seriously, it was correct to originally categorize homosexuality as a mental disorder.
And the beauty is that you just described the complex way of doing it. If I'm no power user, I can just select "applications", "add/remove" and pick what I want.
Try doing that add/remove trick using what I believe in Windows is called the "control panel", and if I remember correctly it doesn't even give you a list of programs to install; you have to scrape around for something called an "exe". Will Windows ever be ready for the desktop?
PS. We seem to see a lot of these comments about the insurmountable difficulty of installing apps in Ubuntu. A subtle troll doing the rounds, surely.
At least have the decency to insult Europeans in English rather than American.
I know the truth and I know what you're thinking
A. ) there are no "free goodies", you paid for them as part of the support contract.
B. ) what real reason is there to pay for a support contract through RedHat? What am I gaining (and I am being 100% serious) over installing the software without support?
Why would an Open Source Migration Study be secret to begin with?
Apparently, it is not obvious to a lot of people that they can just use an installer.
They are extremely accustomed to surfing the web, downloading exes, going to shops, buying cds.... it just doesn't occur to them that installing software could possibly be as simple as just a few clicks.
What's up with the endless Linux is better chatter, specificaly Ubuntu? it's simply not so. I can't use dial-up without hand rolling a configure script and that is only after getting the package from Debian (for Ubuntu) of Wvdial on s second computer with internet access, this problem has existed for years in Ubuntu, lets see, sound is broken, and my graphics card is only partly supported. Gee, and is it really free? I pay for the disk cause I don't have broadband and then I pay for the upgrade, which usually fails anyway. What business owner, 96 year old, or 6 year old will use this. Answer, none, unless they are geeks.
So basically, you are saying that because Microsoft doesn't support Linux, Linux is not mature.
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
Don't know why you were marked as a troll, the EU is a sociaist dictatorship and your taxi driver is right.
To everyone who marked parent down; the people who were mostly responsible for forming the EU were all Nazis - this is recorded history not conjecture. Also the majority of decision making all happens in secret as the article hints at, the elected part of the EU, the Parliment, is so irrelevant it is almost pointless.
"Gartner, when asked if there were any mature public Linux installations in Europe, claimed that there were none."
Looking at what happened to Peter Quinn who didn't want to deploy open source but just standardize on document format it is no wonder they couldn't find any.
I wouldn't brag about it either if I knew I would lose my job and bring my company into a lawsuit.
Who is that dumb?
No kidding, why should people ignore the fact that Firefox is dog slow compared to its Windows counterpart? It it not an perception, it is a fact; a fact that has been discussed even on Slashdot itself. Characterizing this as a wish to hold onto "windows-isms" and "microsoft-isms" or to something akin to a movie remake is simply a cop-out.
If something is broken it should be fixed, not ignored.
You are totally misinformed but you speak as if your blatant ignorance isn't painfully obvious.
Are you by any chance an American?
Google "flash install" from the Linux PC. It's the first result, Adobe's page will detect your browser and OS type and present you with multiple installation options and step-by-step instructions. On Ubuntu, use the .tar.gz file.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
well obviously we need to still work on things and developers need to make sure multiplatform programs work equally well on all platforms. I said differences should be ignored only if you want to go with one OS or another. if slow firefox is a deal breaker for you, go with windows. I don't see what the problem is.
Skiffy is Spiffy, but Ort is tort.
But the more I use linux (Ubuntu in case you are interested), the more unhappy I am. It's the little things, like, keyboard not processing input on dual screen when there's no window open on that desktop. And configuring / changing (external) display configuration is simply broken. And high IO really brings system on the knees (even surfing is not possible while writing to a CD). Firefox is sloooooowwww. No exchange client. No out of the box AD integration. And so on and on and on.
Many of the complaints you list here I think are valid, because I'm using Ubuntu Linux as well and I have found myself thinking the exact same thing. Specifically, all of the trouble with X.org and dual-head, the high IO, and the slow firefox all resonate with me. None of these are enough to make me go back to Windows though; overall, Ubuntu offers a much better experience for me than Windows.
Mac OS, on the other hand, is very intriguing. Unix-based (FreeBSD, specifically), and yet has 110% hardware support. A thriving ecosystem of free software available (much [most?] of it ported from GNU/Linux). Overall, it seems like a pretty attractive target. There are just two things that really really prevent me from using it: the UI, and the culture. The UI I find to be bloated and ineffecient, and the culture feels quite closed. Until Apple opens up their OS and allows me to install it on non-Apple hardware, and stops bricking jailbroken iPhones, I just don't see Apple products as something I want to use. Better to target Ubuntu, which is technically very close, and properly philosophically aligned.
Oh, and as far as getting MS Office working on Ubuntu, apparently you can get it to work under Wine:
http://www.programmerfish.com/roffice-2007-in-linux/
I haven't tried it myself, though, so your mileage may vary.
I agree with your comments but I'm the opposite. I feel windows requires specialty software to handle mundane tasks. It's irrelevant what system I use I just need access to my letters, emails, notes, etc. With windows I seem to have to constantly worry about what software I run and what version I'm using. On Linux I just worry about the file format...
I have to agree that there are still maturity-problems. I have been using Ubuntu since "edgy", and each version since then has contained at least one annoying bug - a bug that would not be fixed until the next version.
For example, with "jaunty" I have at least three bugs related to pulseaudio that shows up on a daily basis. And a new notification-system that is so far from being ready that I would not even consider it as beta. These things were working fine in "intrepid"
With "intrepid", Evolution was more or less unusable due to some cache-bug (deleting the cache-folder resolved it for about a week at a time). Not a problem in "hardy" and fixed in "jaunty". This version also made Java-applications with a GTK interface so slow they became unusable (I used a few on a regular basis). This is still not fixed.
Before that, i experienced regressions with windows that would move on restart, windows that would refuse to open om my second screen, crashing media players, crackling sound and a few other annoyances - everything stuff that were working in the previous version.
And not to forget, this frequently requested feature has not been fixed in over six years!
But in my opinion, the sum of the pains are about the same with Windows and Ubuntu - so I'm sticking with Ubuntu and buy some beer to relax with for the money I save.
Very insightful.
"The likes of Facebook and WhatsApp are free to those whose privacy is of zero value."
As you can imagine, I am in no position to say which one, but a well known bank is running an internal call centre in Linux exclusively.
Those are several hundreds of workstations (I think around 500). Not servers, desktops.
The same and other banks's Engineering teams are constantly evaluating the feasibility of long Linux deployments in desktops (the server battle is over, people stopped laughing at Linux in the datacentre long time ago).
It is a matter of time before companies begin to openly talk about Linux desktop deployments as they do about Windows ones.
Having migrated only 1,200 out of 14,000 computers to linux by 2008 doesn't seem like a great example.
Dual Opteron < $600
But she is no technologist neither.
At 70 she is happily using Ubuntu, her first computer ever.
Anecdotal I know, but I think that test is frankly done and dusted.
Linux has now to convince the slightly more sophisticated user, the one that may want to find an application for specific purposes beyond the traditional office oriented ones.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
Windows Media Player does not play MP3 files by default and I believe you don;t have a CD/DVD burner out of the box.
Lets start from the point where the systems are configured equally for the most common tasks and see how systems fare from there.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
If you can let go of all your windows-isms
.
Allright, I can let go of "Windows-ism". What I can't let go of is the fact that if I run Linux, and, rest assured, after many ours doing things the "Linux" way, my printer still only works half-assed at best, just like my scanner. My webcam doesn't work at all, and as for WLAN, well no comment. STR is completely broken, STD only works occasionally. Configuring X to properly drive at least two of my three monitors was an unspeakable pain in the ass, while I didn't get the third to work at all. And mind you, this was after hours and ours spent in forums and tweaking bloody config files. Activate by a couple of clicks? Ha ha. The biggest joke in there is the screens and resolution config dialog that pretends to actually be able to configure those things. Well, NOTHING HAPPENS if I click the buttons- I don't give a f...ing damn about the reasons why, this is simply not ON in anything else but alpha software! And I still don't get 3D desktop effects if two monitors are active. Only if I disable all but one, I get wobbly windows. Wow, it almost works, but sooner or later, the window decoration disappears or some other thing happens over which the FOSS fraction would shit their pants in joy if this was Windows.
The whole windowing system is so sluggish I feel ported back 10 years. I can watch windows being drawn one by one and scrolling in Firefox is a joke. Flash breaks predictably. Nautilus hangs regularly for no apparent reason.
You're asking for a fixed version of Windows. Sorry, buddy, but Linux never advertised itself to do something like that.
You act as if the world switches based on what you say. "Oh, now Windows doesn't suck, I guess I'll just wipe my entire Debian/Ubuntu install and swap right back over, even though it was working fine." Oh, and "Oh, the GIMP interface is terrible, and even though I can touch up my pictures just fine without much effort now that I learned where the fucking buttons are I'm going to go buy Photoshop."
Get a grip, dude. People like what you don't. Live with it.
Support. I have had network performance problems running RHEL on DL360G4s which RedHat solved after a week. The new patch was then tested, commited and served through RHN - complete with driver patches delivered upstream. I have seen communities work just as commited (postfix is one), but RedHat gives you this on all the software it ships. This is a guarantee that you can present to your customer.
Even more seriously, RedHat backports security patches onto a given stable set of software. This is tedious work which I am more than willing to compensate someone for.
Lastly - it is actually important to inject money into the OpenSource model. This in turn lays the fundament of solidity which is crucial for letting us play with OpenSource in a business environment.
And yet linux fanboys mod me troll.
Like, you know, GIMP USER INTERFACE STILL SUCKS. But developers surely know waaaayyy better what's good for the user.
What's funny here is that you're either a subtle troll, uninformed, or willfully ignorant. Not everyone agrees that the GIMP user interface sucks - and that's not just a developer viewpoint. Every time GIMP is mentioned, you get entire subthreads on this. Are you trying to generate another such thread or are you truely unaware of this?
i'm not completely sure how true your comment is (as in, whether you work for gartner ;> ), but i'd like to comment on something.
(and sadly, there's a IO bug in kernels after 2.6.18 that still hasn't been fixed IIRC)
would you mind linking to a kernel bugzilla report on it ? as a linux user i would be quite interested in a progress on such a seriously sounding bug, if only to upgrade once it's fixed.
No exchange client. No out of the box AD integration.
right. because microsoft provides native groupware and lotus notes clients and integration in novell edirectory.
Rich
Nationalism is not Racism.
Contribute to civilization: ari.aynrand.org/donate
> WTF and HTF do you reason with these kinds of people?
You don't. No one likes evangelists, even if they are right. (You can make an exception in case there is some kind of bodily danger involved, but using Windows, at least in the home, typically doesn't fit that.)
Do you also constantly remind your acquaintances who are smokers about the dangers of smoking? I used to make that mistake but understood eventually and now limit myself to doing it about once a year, per smoker.
Just take a deep breath and think about that saying which talks about changing the things you can fix and accepting the things you can't.
Linex Project started it's implementation back in 2003, in 2004 I assisted to the Internet Global Congress in Barcelona and the Linex guys showed off how cool did it performed in Hospitals and Schools.
If Gartner isn't showing, it isn't about the date, as said, the Report is from 2005.
In 2005 I could tell you:
- Linex ---> Extremadura's public buildings 1.1M people, the first ones to do so in Spain, everybody is copying them in Spain, (44M people)
- Guadalinex ----> Andalucia's Copy of Extremadura (South Spain), for public administration and schools, at least.8M people
- Network of Catalan public Schools and Universities (all servers in schools run Linux, all desktops have Dual Boot in all public
educational buildings population 7M people)
- Marenostrum supercomputer (got TOP10) in Barcelona, 100% Linux on Z-Series.
- All the (radio)telescope stations in Gran Canaria (NASA, ESA, etc...).
- CERN. The most expensive scientific experiment EVER, all Linux, even desktops.
- Munich City
Well, looks like they didn't even tried a google search to do this report....
Linux is far more mature than most other oses in the market for servers, that is a fact: Used by Nasa/ESA/Roskosmos/Japanese Space Agency and China.
Everybody in space uses Linux!
Also almost every R&D laboratory!!!
CERN is using Linux since 90's. They are smart guys with limited budget (50% techies, 50% scientists), so, they prefer investing money in experiments rather than in minesweeper.
In the server side, Linux is one of the most mature operating systems, only challenged in some areas by *BSD and OpenSolaris.
Windows, Aix (before 5), HP-UX, all they suck, promise, I worked with all them. They all include "advanced features", but all they have big holes in their design/performance/scalability.
In the desktop market, what do you call immature?
I can think in millions of crappy and unstable software in ALL DESKTOPS, without caring the operating system at all.
Let's be fair. What is the "default OSX" and "default Win" setup? does it include something more than a Solitaire and a minesweeper? does it even include drivers????
For me, plugging a new hardware, let's say a printer and needing to perform stupid actions, clicks, looking for CD's, browsing the internet, disabling an antivirus and rebooting a machine....
Damn, that sounds really stupid to me!!!! Is stupid equivalent of mature? I don't think so...
95% of network printers use PostScript or PCL as input format, and Lp/IPP protocol for delivering the jobs. All these are standards in all Unix environments. Mac fixed this point when they released OSX with Cups integrated, redmond guys are still wondering what to do when a new hardware gets into their hands...
What is stupid is needing to create a full new driver for something which is almost the same as your neighbour's, just because the operating system don't let you do so.
If do you compare that to Ubuntu 9.10, come on, Ubuntu rocks. Out of the box you have a load of nice and stable applications. It's true you can take a complete tour at all them and, after 1 month trying, you'll find something "inaccurate", ok, install the equivalent software in a Vista and tell me later how much did you paid and how long did it took to crash your box or loose your files.
> it just doesn't occur to them that installing software could possibly
> be as simple as just a few clicks
I wonder if this is partially because of the "free" == "copyright infringement" == "criminal/infection danger" propaganda the content industries have been pushing everywhere?
I like having multiple desktops (hello MS it can't be THAT hard
They had a "PowerToy" that does this, but because of the cooperative nature of window management in Windows, window order cannot be retained when switching back and forth. DWM/Aero Glass could fix this but it since the average user doesn't have more then 3 applications on their taskbar (according to some MSFT study from a while ago) anyway. I doubt this is something high on their list.
keyboard not processing input on dual screen when there's no window open on that desktop
Err, what? Tried to file a support request on Launchpad for this? It sounds like something trivial.
And configuring / changing (external) display configuration is simply broken
Unable to reproduce.
And high IO really brings system on the knees
Sounds like a broken south bridge. I had a Fujitsu box with a horrible VIA chipset that was slow on any OS. WinXP/Ubuntu didn't matter, everything would be snappy until the HD was busy. Other chipsets do not exhibit this problem. A (S)ATA add-on board could be a cheap fix for this.
No exchange client
Did you even try clicking that mail icon on the top panel? It works rather nicely, someone can just covertly add an appointment to my calendar with a reminder - in Outlook - and it will just show up on my desktop on the given time with the given message. It sort of freaked me out when that first happened, but shit it does.
No out of the box AD integration.
likewise-open is pretty neat. It will even warn you that your password is about to expire and let you change it right there and then. The free/libre version is in the repositories.
Somehow I doubt you'll find yourself at home in Windows Server 2008 R2. POSIX on itself is rather meaningless for a user. As a developer, it would make porting software somewhat easier but for xp/vista/7 you'd still be stuck to win32 or cygwin.
Becoming childishly hysteric when realizing that there are multiple powers on this planet - yes, that smells American.
Want to hear the voice of GOD? cat
Excuse me, but Linux is mature, it's only Microsoft being not mature, so they won't sell a Linux port of Microsoft Office.
But as a paying customer, you might want to ask for Microsoft Office for Linux. If there is enough demand, Microsoft might consider porting MSOffice to Linux.
On the other hand, it's not so hard to see how the sentence "your averge diaper-headed cafe bomber that you find driving around a cab in NYC." could be construed as racist. I, for one, doubt that the poster is referring to white anglo-saxon protestants, and I can also see how the terms 'diaper-headed' and 'cafe bomber' can be construed as negative.
What unelected government? You mean like, the last 8 years of bush?
The whole ecosystem of GNU/Linux is not mature.. that is for sure
Lets not talk about the fact that Linux does not have any standard API for drivers (which is a problem) lets only talk about the GNU user land.
OpenOffice simply sucks. It is not at all a product I will use. Lets take one simple example of Copy and Paste within OOo applications Calc and impress (which is far from being impressive). If your table has merged cells (rows and columns) it cannot copy from calc to impress the way it is in calc.
Now the animation part of impress (repeat animation does not work, yes if you export the same presentation FROM OOo to PPT, it works. The bug that is sitting there from 2.4 to 3.1.
You cannot export/print the graphs in calc. you need to copy and paste them on another sheet, adjust the paper and print.
If you are saving a 10 Meg or greater file. You are take a coffee break after ctrl+S.
I can go on for 1 hour for OFFICE SUITE for Linux that 70% linux dudes use. I can talk for another hour with Gimp, krita, kvio. Video editing anyone??
In short, linux is not ready for prime time unless the userland becomes good. For this rather than having 1 million alike applications, you need to work on one.
Sounds like you have some serious video card driver issues. Are you by any chance using the free ones instead of the proprietary ones?
Ubuntu? Really? Try clicking the "system" option, then "Synaptic Package Manager". As you would've found had you paid any attention, you click the pretty box for the software you want, and your system installs the precompiled binaries along with any dependencies. No files (not even the equivalent of a .exe or .msi) required.
Your description of installing software on Linux is one way to do it, but it has not been the only way and certainly not the easiest way for a very long time.
Amen!!!!!!
Sounds like you meant to link "Linux is NOT Windows".
And if you don't have access to the repositories (behind a restrictive firewall that requires NTLM auth) you can download the .deb packages via HTTP and double click on them. Synaptic will open and install the package as if it downloaded it. I should imagine that this will work with most .deb packages but I've never tested it. Linux has several graphical systems to automate installations, Synaptic is just one of them.
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
Ubuntu? Really? Try clicking the "system" option, then "Synaptic Package Manager". As you would've found had you paid any attention, you click the pretty box for the software you want, and your system installs the precompiled binaries along with any dependencies. No files (not even the equivalent of a .exe or .msi) required.
Your description of installing software on Linux is one way to do it, but it has not been the only way and certainly not the easiest way for a very long time.
Synaptic huh? lets see there's libsexy, libfuse, libsqlite, uh... power user?
Perhaps the "Add/Remove Programs" button is what you're trying to advertise?
Of course this study is funny. Not so different from what people, afraid of change, tell each other on the bar about the great risks of open source.
And what consultants who are afraid tell, have to tell, about open source solutions. To protect their income when selling or supporting property software that runs on... What will their income be supporting open source?
But still, I don't think a massive migration is a good idea. It is somewhat a stupid question. You do these things of course step by step.
I have a 4 year old Granddaughter that uses Fedora. I have a friend's Mother (88) who uses Fedora with no problem and like it better than Windows.
I have several "Joe Six-Pack kind of friends that now use Linux and as long as it is set up to run their porn. They love it.
Now please no more bull shit about 6 year olds and Grandma's can't run Linux. They can. Age has nothing to do this it. Being so narrow minded that you can't see past the marketing is why you can't use Linux.
The real truth is most of the people I have met that say they can't use another operating system are either too stupid or too narrow minded to use anything else.
I know nationalism isn't racism (although actually they are very often strongly intertwined).
But "your averge diaper-headed cafe bomber that you find driving around a cab in NYC." clearly is.
The problem with that is not all software is, or will ever be, present in your specific particular repository. Until Linux adopts actual standards for packages that will be made compatible with the existing package managers, until Linux users and developers are free to easily install software they want from any source, and Linux takes a huge step towards freedom and away from proprietary business tactics when it's the developer projects themselves that should be getting the attention instead, will users and developers finally truly be enabled to use Linux how they see fit. I want to easily run any program and any version of any program that I want to, not be forced to compile it or hope that someone else does it for my locked-in distro. 9 and 95 year olds can't compile, and every distro and developer can't and shouldn't have to compile every version of every program for every version of their distro. Until the community realizes that, and in turn the companies crap themselves and realize they can't get away with that kind of lock-in in order to drum up attention for themselves, Linux will remain fragmented and it's adoption slowed.
Just think, once actual important Linux standards become adopted, like packaging standards, you'll have hundreds of additional mirrors that you can add if you'd like to, AND be able to easily download and install packages from websites! (You know, actual installation packages, that integrate with your OS, as opposed to having to deal with regular compressed binaries that involve more fiddling.)
Promote true freedom - support standards and interoperability.