Free Software For All Russian Schools In Jeopardy

Glyn Moody writes "Last year, we discussed here a Russian plan to install free software in all its schools. Seems things aren't going so well. Funds for the project have been cut back, some of the free software discs already sent out were faulty, and — inevitably — Microsoft has agreed to a 'special price' for Windows XP used in Russian schools."

Comments

In Soviet Russia

[symbolset]

Free software costs too much? Really?

Somebody needs to explain some things to these folks. It's not that hard: you install LTSP on a server, all the clients boot to the network. Install all the software you want on the server. If instead of (or in addition to) thin client/shared desktop you want an image on the desktop you configure the PXE server to dish an installer image.

Re:In Soviet Russia

[Darkness404]

It depends though. If you look at a lot of (American) schools technology is crap. About 2 years ago I was in an elementary school computer lab with computers still running Windows 98(!) on hardware made for Windows 95. And legacy software wasn't the issue the school just didn't have the funds or the motivation to switch. After all a kid can learn just as well on a Pentium II that takes 4 minutes to respond to mouse input as a Core 2 duo that responds instantly right? Even the small expense of some noiseless thin clients and a powerful server might be too much because until the HDDs are dead, the memory is bad, the CD drives are stuck and the monitor has exploded, they have no desire to upgrade.

Retraining is also hard. Schools (at least in America) generally have a large amount of dead weight. Teachers long past their prime who teach boring classes who are apathetic towards students but who have been tenured and can't be fired without having to fight through the unions. These teachers have no desire to get a new keyboard, let alone an entirely new OS or new ways of doing things. In fact I'm sure a lot of them would rather have paper grades and typewriters. So when the price is $20,000 to switch to Linux $50,000 to upgrade Windows or just $0 to do absolutely nothing, many schools choose the free option especially in lower grades.

Re:In Soviet Russia

[linumax]

Free software doesn't mean no costs. It just means cheaper, and usually only in long term. You have installation, training, support, cost of porting existing applications and data, etc.

Re:In Soviet Russia

[hairyfeet]

Yeah a few years back I ended up giving a bunch of old office boxes to one of my local schools. I installed Win2K along with some basic office software OO.o and the like, and I bet they are still being used to this day. Why didn't i just use Linux? because unless I wanted to be their free admin for the rest of my days I had to install something their "IT" guy understood. This guy was such an old fossil he wanted to know where to input the DOS commands.

Most folks here talk about "Oh, Linux is free!" but sorry, that's bullshit. Yeah the OS may be free, but you ever priced a Linux Guru? Cheap they ain't because there simply aren't many of them. It is a LOT easier to teach a teacher how to go "clicky clicky, next next next" than to deal with a CLI. They know Windows, they use Windows at home, so they ain't scared of Windows.

After trying to give away nice older machines that I'd get given to me on jobs with Linux installed by me I quickly learned that old saying was true "Linux is free if your time is worthless" because i would get called back to service their 'free" machine when they couldn't get the printer to work, an update borked sound or video, etc. In the end it was just easier to wipe the machine, reinstall whatever Windows it had a license for, and then sell or give it away.

So while I appreciate the idea of a free OS for schools, unless they got the money to hire the Linux admins to run it I've found it just ain't worth it. Better to give them a locked down Windows box and just be done with it. Windows admins are cheap and MSFT is happy to give educational discounts to keep Windows in the schools, no different than Apple and my local college.

Re:In Soviet Russia

[symbolset]

Free software doesn't mean no costs. It just means cheaper, and usually only in long term. You have installation, training, support, cost of porting existing applications and data, etc.

TCO for Windows involves the risk of 17 years in a siberian prison.

TCO for Linux involves asking some people to work an hour late one day a week for a few months.

Plugging that into my ROI calculator gives a time to recover investment of... 1.2 milliseconds.

Re:In Soviet Russia

[symbolset]

Most folks here talk about "Oh, Linux is free!" but sorry, that's bullshit. Yeah the OS may be free, but you ever priced a Linux Guru?

I'm feeling my years. My grandmother has quite a few of them on me. It took me an hour to install her Linux over a year ago, and it still works fine. Nothing bad happened. I showed her how to install software and now she's got quite a lot of it. One of these days she's going to ask me to debug her wget scripts. Grandma never did learn to drive but she can MySpace like nobody's business.

Where I'm at Linux geeks are more common than the other kind so they're not expensive. Your mileage may vary.

Windows admins are cheap

Not always, but sometimes, you do get what you pay for. The problem with Windows admins is that you also need a LOT of them. Just techs to clean malware and fix twitchy software is >1% of headcount for some large organizations. IMHO most Windows admins see the internal workings of the machine as a "black box" and they are neither able to nor interested in understanding the lower level of activity that drives the magic blinky lights. Linux geeks are a different breed indeed.

Re:In Soviet Russia

[Gadget_Guy]

Free software costs too much? Really?

If it works out of the box it is not too much, but maybe they have to localise the software into Russian. Given the differences between the languages, that might not be a trivial task. I don't know what software they need - it might include education apps that are not part of any standard distro.

As others have said, there is also the cost of training, both of the teachers who have to use the computers and the IT departments who must administer them.

Re:In Soviet Russia

[symbolset]

Ooh mister smartypants -the teacher did in fact buy the Windows from the government's official vendor at the going rate and he had no way to know they sold him cracked software. Nice try. You have no idea how government business is conducted in Russia, do you?

Re:In Soviet Russia

[ozmanjusri]

I don't think you should have to use a CLI for basic administration. ...with the state of Linux today

WTF?

When did you last use Linux?

Re:In Soviet Russia

[natehoy]

Honestly, I run Mint and Ubuntu and I rarely drop to the CLI unless I just want to get something done faster. The GUI is capable of pretty much everything I've needed to do in the past 2-3 years.

Re:In Soviet Russia

[DJRumpy]

Part of the costs they are looking at is to train everyone to use it. Like it or not, not everyone can just dive right into an OS. For most folks on /. it's easy, but for someone who's intimidated by a PC, not so much. They also have costs invested in current software that will have to be replaced, be that with OSS, or with some pay solution. It takes time (people hours) to replace software, and then time to train on the new software in addition to the OS training.

Last but not least, you have to have a support infrastructure, who will also need to be trained, and the IT folks themselves will need a higher tier to go to when they cannot resolve in house (with the in house support being optional..I'm not sure how a school's IT support works in Russia), which means support contracts.

OSS is great, but it is rarely free for non-personal use.

I would think that once they got over the 'conversion' hump, they would be in a better position, but it sounds like they are struggling with even getting through the conversion itself.

Re:In Soviet Russia

[Narpak]

Grandma never did learn to drive but she can MySpace like nobody's business.

Is that some sort of perverted euphemism?

Re:In Soviet Russia

[symbolset]

This is going to shock you but written English is quite common in Russia and most Russians are multilingual. Also, most Russians are quite adaptable and resourceful - by necessity as they've been more challenged than we have in the west. Some of these teachers built their own schools from raw logs, and they had to do manual labor to get the tools to work the logs. I'm not kidding. After that experience figuring out Linux should be a cinch. In short these are not typically your inner-city career button pushers. The ability of Russians to endure travails without complaint that would wreck our average American polar explorer is legendary - they're almost British in this way.

Localization is trivial. I believe Russian interface is supported in every Linux variant I've ever used. It's just Cryllic alphabet, keywords and fonts anyway. It's not like it's got some fancy top-to-bottom or right-to-left glyph sequence or anything. Lots of Russians use Linux by choice and I'm sure lots of them have figured this out. This isn't Windows: localization has been part of the standard GNU project template for many years.

If they're complaining that they can't do it then it's because they've been paid handsomely to make such a complaint. Otherwise they wouldn't be Russian. Now, who would pay them to do that? And why is anybody listening?

Re:In Soviet Russia

[muncadunc]

The last time I gave Ubuntu a try was last month, having used Linux on and off since Red Hat 5. This time around I made it for a week.
In my case, I had to connect over a PPPoE network to get online. The problem (if I recall correctly) was that while Vista had the dialog to connect, Ubuntu did not, and I had to fall back to a command prompt to get the job done.
Thing is, there may well have been a package that I should have installed to get the functionality. Thing is, you shouldn't have to do that. And if it doesn't just work, people vote with their feet.

I keep checking back on Linux every now and then to see how things have progressed, and on some fronts it looks pretty slick. It's when you try using it for that one thing you really have to do that you realize that it's still an OS made by coders, for coders and whatever coders think users are.

Re:In Soviet Russia

[Arkaic]

I'd say you aren't much of a real Windows admin if all you know if the "click click" side of things. Even a halfway decent PC Tech knows how to effectively use things like ipconfig from a cmd prompt. I just recently did some online coursework for Windows Server 2008. Guess what? There are still PLENTY of tasks that can ONLY be done from the CLI, for managing DNS and number of other things. As much as Windows like to focus on the GUI for the average user, you will never get away from the CLI if you want to use all of the feature for managing a Windows machine. I have to use Windows on my work desktop, and I have always have a cmd prompt window open. Simply because its something faster for doing certain things, than trying to use the GUI.

Re:In Soviet Russia

[symbolset]

I don't know about the GP, but I've never done any command line or text file management of the Debian box I'm typing this on (up about a year now). Until I read your post I hadn't thought about at all but yeah, things have changed quite a bit in the last few years. I still wget on the command line and edit files by hand for programming projects, but for system admin? Not any more. I can't remember how long it's been.

Now, to config a server to give some options to a thousand netbooted clients whether to start various types of thin client, VDI, DBAN, Clonezilla or select from available installer images? That's going to be a text file, but what the heck - you can't do that in Windows no matter what you edit. But xorg.conf or .desktop? I don't even remember the syntax. Are they still on M4 or whatever the heck that heinous syntax was?

Re:In Soviet Russia

[timmarhy]

yes because free software doesn't mean the whole project is free. you have to pay people to roll out the software, train teachers, manage the people doing the roll out and then the support staff after. then there is the hardware and the networking that needs constant maintenance.

your little busted arse network at home is not indicative of how a nation wide system roll out occurs ok?

Re:In Soviet Russia

[fucket]

I thought connecting to a PPPoE network was the router's job.

Re:In Soviet Russia

[muncadunc]

In this case, it was a policy on the part of the building management so they would know who was illegally downloading.

Re:In Soviet Russia

[LordLimecat]

Correct me if im wrong, but if youre setting up a thin client deployment scenario, having to configure the client is a very minor issue because you do it once and it applies to all clients.

Re:In Soviet Russia

[nomadic]

Somebody needs to explain some things to these folks. It's not that hard: you install LTSP on a server, all the clients boot to the network. Install all the software you want on the server. If instead of (or in addition to) thin client/shared desktop you want an image on the desktop you configure the PXE server to dish an installer image.

Ok, stop for a second and re-read what you wrote, but this time pretend you're not someone who is knowledgeable about computers.

Re:In Soviet Russia

[shutdown -p now]

This is going to shock you but written English is quite common in Russia and most Russians are multilingual.

This is simply false. It may hold true for Moscow and a few other large cities (though even then I'm not sure), but most of the country is definitely not multilingual, English or otherwise. There's simply no point in learning it, and whatever schools give you is really basic, and is quickly forgotten for the lack of practice.

Re:In Soviet Russia

[symbolset]

OK, I've reviewed my posts from your reply to the top of the thread and nowhere did I say it was Microsoft's fault. It is an observed fact. It is, and to Russians to whom the blame belongs is irrelevant. They can choose to use free software or they can choose the risk. Microsoft has backed off some for now and so the risk is less, but eventually the risk will return because the software is not free and their Russian channel can never be reliably honest. In the Russian language corrupt government provisioning is so assumed that the reverse must be made explicit. I believe Chinese languages are similarly cynical. The safe choice is to be free forever. Free contains no risk.

If you want to fix the blame on Microsoft for not dropping the suit after finding out that the affected individual was in no way to blame for the piracy, that's on you. I didn't say that.

As to Microsoft's ROI, well, I don't know what to say here. Given the current state of free I can see how they must struggle to prove where they add value - especially when dealing with the malware ecosystem mounted against them which at some accounts is larger than the Windows market itself. I'm sure it's hard to deliver on this nine year old commitment when you can't even get your network software geeks to check their inputs on the most basic service they provide or even read the licenses of the software they publish.

You should probably check the corkboard on the way out of the blog center. I think there's a note there about me. Take your stuff with you when you go or you might not see it again.

Re:In Soviet Russia

[Vancorps]

Well, I use Ubuntu server everyday and its default install doesn't even come with a graphical UI. So I use the CLI for pretty much all administration. For some boxes I'll throw on webmin, for Oracle I'll connect to a remote X-server, usually my laptop but there is a lot of cli there too. Make no mistake, we're talking about administration here and in the administration you expect to use a CLI if you're working with Linux.

There are those of us that appreciate the simplicity of running a few shell scripts for common tasks such as adding extensions to Asterisk but we're not blind to Windows which is inherently far easier to administer. Ease of use comes at a cost so it's not always the right tool for the job, that's why having alternatives is great.

The GNU world likes their small tools and because of this flexibility you'll rarely find a full featured administrative GUI without spending lots of money on time and 3rd party software tools. There is a lot of inherent flexibility but ultimately it means that the CLI isn't going anywhere, nor should it. Even in the Windows world the power of a CLI is finally getting recognized with Powershell. Scripting is the future of administration. Who cares if it's hard to write a script if you only have to do it once?

Re:In Soviet Russia

[Gadget_Guy]

This is going to shock you but written English is quite common in Russia and most Russians are multilingual.

That sounds like a poor answer for a government mandated, national standard for software. "Sorry, but we couldn't come up with a system in our own language." A great loss for national pride! As an Australian, I know that there would be an uproar if our government tried to foist a software standard for schools which used American English, let alone another language.

Some of these teachers built their own schools from raw logs ... After that experience figuring out Linux should be a cinch.

Someone from a thousand years ago could build a school from logs, but that doesn't mean to say that they could understand Linux either.

I believe Russian interface is supported in every Linux variant I've ever used.

That is why I mentioned the part about the education software. It is not just the base operating system that needs to be localised. From the original, original article:

Via Google Translate: By the end of 2009, all school computers will be installed package of free software (PSPO).

Who knows how much of the PSPO was written from scratch or needed to be adapted. I don't know because it is so hard to search the russian pages - the original letters for PSPO actually translate as SCPI.

This isn't Windows: localization has been part of the standard GNU project template for many years.

What makes you think that Windows hasn't had localisation from the start. The Russian version of MS-DOS has been around for 19 years. How else do you think that the teachers already know Windows?

Re:In Soviet Russia

[Captian Spazzz]

Right Click the network manager icon in the top tool bar.
Select EDIT Connections
Select DSL (assuming that's the type of connection your using PPPOE for, but it should work regardless)
Click Add
Enter username and password and any other settings required.
Connect
???
Profit!

Seriously dude I just bridged my DSL Modem and connected using the native PPPOE client in Ubuntu. No command line needed.

Re:In Soviet Russia

[grcumb]

Somebody needs to explain some things to these folks. It's not that hard: you install LTSP on a server, all the clients boot to the network. Install all the software you want on the server. If instead of (or in addition to) thin client/shared desktop you want an image on the desktop you configure the PXE server to dish an installer image.

Ok, stop for a second and re-read what you wrote, but this time pretend you're not someone who is knowledgeable about computers.

Yeah, you're right. Some translation is needed:

1. Put this CD in the server. Click here, enter your password, then tick this box. You're done.
2. Put this other CD in all the other computers. They'll just configure themselves.

You have installed LTSP recently, haven't you?

Re:In Soviet Russia

[symbolset]

I've said this before in this thread so I'll cut you some slack and refer to my other posts. In Soviet Russia manpower is cheap. It's a very top-down management system. People are so resourceful that some of them don't just build their own schools from raw trees, they have to go out and earn the scratch to buy the tools to do so with manual labor or barter. This doesn't just apply to schools - in some ways their space program works the same way. It's terrible to think about what an engineer will do to actually get to perform some engineering. The whole ROI thing does not work in Russia. If people protest that they need Windows it's because they have been paid to do so or incentivised to do so by other people who have been paid to motivate them to protest, and even in that they accept some risk. In most cases these folks are glad to have books, heat, one computer per classroom and a classroom to teach in. This is nothing close to a free market economy. They achieve great things with these constraints because they are well motivated (inspired) and because they hope to bring about progress. On average, they're also bright because being stupid is in their system more fatal than it is in ours and in this case Darwin wins.

Urban Russia is not like this but Russia is vast and Urban Russia is but a small fraction of the schools and those few are even more politically (and unoficially) motivated.

Russians are very adaptable and resourceful in ways you cannot imagine. The difficulty in switching software systems is absolutely nothing to them. It's background noise. Compared to the difficulties of their normal lives outside of teaching it's not worth considering. Some teachers have not been paid their salaries for years and eke by on donations from the families of their students or in barter where they develop value above and beyond their official duties.

Russia is a very different place than you are used to. So no, overcoming the objections you mount are so trivial to them as to not be worth consideration.

OSS is great, but it is rarely free for non-personal use.

Ok now you're just plain lying. There are some OSS solutions that are not also free, but they're so rare and limited as to be unworthy of consideration. How desperate must you be to lie about the plainly obvious? In FOSS not only can the average user download an operating system and 50,000 useful applications for every endeavor, they can do with it what they will whether it's personal or government or corporate use, without the risk of years in a Siberian prison that Microsoft solutions provide. They can install it on a billion machines and the only restriction is that if they make changes and share them outside their organization they have to include the source code. If they build on BSD they don't even have that problem as they can even sell their innovations for a profit and not share the source code. This may sound harsh to you but as an alternative to using your spare time to turn trees into homes for favored Russians who have cash, it's a slam dunk. The fact that Linux runs well on the legacy hardware they're faced with is just a bonus.

It is very un-Russian to complain unless you are motivated to complain by some promised money. Where is this money coming from?

Re:In Soviet Russia

[westlake]

This is going to shock you but written English is quite common in Russia and most Russians are multilingual

In the primary grades?

In outland cities and towns or just in Moscow?

Localization is trivial. I believe Russian interface is supported in every Linux variant I've ever used

Only a geek could think that localization of software is trivial because he has solved - or thinks he has solved - the problem in the UI.

Some of these teachers built their own schools from raw logs, and they had to do manual labor to get the tools to work the logs. I'm not kidding. After that experience figuring out Linux should be a cinch.

Linux as the Siberian Boot Camp of operating systems.

Re:In Soviet Russia

[el americano]

> "Linux is free if your time is worthless"

Why try to make that Linux specific? It's more like, all desktop computers require maintenance. In my experience, Windows computers need more of it. Presumably, the IT guy would not be calling you when he hit a Windows bug he couldn't handle? Well, then the situation is clear, and requires no Linux bashing to justify. He only wanted Windows, and was willing to pay for the licenses. Done.

Re:In Soviet Russia

[symbolset]

I direct you sir to the Wikipedia page that documents 27 "official" Russian languages, 13 "near extinction" languages, and 11 "endangered" languages. . That's not considering dialects or local fluency in the languages of former and recently independent republics.

Russia is a very large country that has a far richer history than the US. A good Russian church has more years of history than our country has. America is not as old as a firmly built Russian manor house, let alone a well established Russian Orthedox cathedral.

American English is the language of global commerce and I assure you it's commonly taught in Russian schools as well as Japanese, Canadian, Bolivian and German schools. My adventures abroad have found no lack of folk to talk to, though I am unfortunately linguistically impaired.

Re:In Soviet Russia

[Katchu]

... Linux doesn't even need to be as good, it needs to be better and easier to use for regular people before they'll make the leap.

Amen.

Re:In Soviet Russia

[shutdown -p now]

Russia is a very large country that has a far richer history than the US. A good Russian church has more years of history than our country has.

I am Russian, not American, and I grew up in what we call "province" (i.e. not in a big city). I speak from personal experience, so don't throw WP links at me, especially when they're so out of context. Sure, there is a bunch of local languages - they're about as relevant in Russia as Native Indian languages are in the U.S. Aside from that, everyone speaks Russian, and most people belonging to minority nations don't speak anything but Russian as well (with exception of Caucasus republics, Tatarstan, and Bashkortostan).

And schools? Yes, they do teach English there, in theory. In practice maybe 1 out of 5 people taught that way will know English well enough, say, a year after school, to actually read a random English text of moderate complexity. Spoken English is even worse, especially understanding it.

Re:In Soviet Russia

[ozmanjusri]

In my case, I had to connect over a PPPoE network to get online. The problem (if I recall correctly) was that while Vista had the dialog to connect, Ubuntu did not

Right click NetworkManager (it's on the Menubar), select "Edit Connections", click the "DSL" tab, then the "Add" button. Follow the prompts for your service provider's settings.

I'm amazed you're being modded "Insightful" for being wrong. I guess it shows just how much Slashdot has been infested with Microsoft evangelists.

Re:In Soviet Russia

[daveime]

This guy was such an old fossil he wanted to know where to input the DOS commands

Yes, because a DOS-box is *so* far removed from a bash terminal, there's simply no comparison.

Re:In Soviet Russia

[symbolset]

Ok. I've got a real person onsite with with real needs. I'm happy to have an opportunity to help, as I'm sure many other slashdotters would be.

How can we help you? Really. If you ask for help here we should be able to provide you with what you need. Think carefully and ask. What do you need? Computers? Money? Software? We can do those things as long as we're sure you're not in league with evil folk.

If you prefer private comms you can reach me at symbolset.com. Any email address will do for the part before the @, as I receive all email that hits that domain.

Re:In Soviet Russia

[mlts]

I have seen both sides of this fence. My conclusion is that this depends on the area of the country.

Here in Austin, there are plenty of top notch Linux, BSD, AIX, Solaris, OS X, and Windows administrators. So, if I were handed the plans for a school computer lab, depending on the concepts being learned, Linux would be just as good as Windows, because the school can always find someone at UT (University of Texas) who is versed in Linux, and can keep their systems running once my task is done.

But, in other areas of the US, I would not do this. I'd give them the Linux option, but I would make it known that in their part of the woods, finding a competent (RHCE level) Linux admin would be almost impossible, and it would be likely the one or two they would find would charge an inappropriate amount. So, I'd point them in the direction of Macs or Windows machines. Historically, Macs and education have gone together, and if Windows is needed, it is just a reboot away. For generic PCs, I'd not just point them at Dell or HP, but *highly* recommend (if they can afford it) that they get the "gold" support plan, so the school admin isn't sitting on hold for 3-4 hours being bounced from script reader to script reader if something does arise.

Re:In Soviet Russia

[bemymonkey]

If all they want to do is run a browser and possibly Open Office, anyone should be fine with Linux... but what if you, say, want to install new hardware? How about a printer? New WiFi card/dongle? Oooooh, how about one of those nifty wireless WAN thingamajiggies?

Or how about clicking the "Update to latest release" button? Tried that yesterday on a Virtualbox VM of Ubuntu 9.04, and after an hour of downloading and installing crap, the VM rebooted and got stuck in an endless loop of flashing text - I'm having a hard time believing that Virtualbox is at fault...

Re:In Soviet Russia

[mlts]

Every single major Linux distribution I have used in the past 5 years can be completely configured from X-Windows. And with UNIX variants, once configured, they stay configured unless someone messes with them, some outside factor (router changed its IP), or hardware changes/failures affect the box.

I am an old UNIX person, so I prefer popping an xterm (or even better, control-alt-shift-F2 for a console TTY) and editing files or using curses based utilities. However, these days, you don't have to know the ins and outs of sendmail.cf (or even sendmail.mc) to have a mail server configured for you by modern day administration tools from KDE or GNOME. I would say that configuring a Linux distribution like RHEL or Ubuntu is just as easy as configuring a Windows box.

And if you are into remote management, Webmin and Plesk can allow you to do a number of sysadmin tasks from your Web browser. Webmin has been around for over a decade, and is a (for the most part) very stable tool. Plesk is a commercial utility that has gotten a good amount of praise as well.

So, don't let the fear of a bash shell stop you from running Linux. You can do an amazing amount of stuff without ever needing to even look at a "$" or "#" prompt. It might have been true about 10 years ago that graphical admin tools were at best good for only general stuff, and at worst, SUID root disasters, but time has moved on, and a lot of work has been done in this field.

Re:In Soviet Russia

[symbolset]

So you guys are down to AC posts now? I suppose that's a win. Moderation works. Most of us have AC discounted to -2 which makes our post invisible to most everybody.

Re:In Soviet Russia

[Krneki]

Why do you need to pay for IT when you have a lot of students with free time? Back in the days we were happy to maintain the PCs in our free time, as long as they allowed us to play games. Just let the students tinker with the devices and they will learn how to use them.

Re:In Soviet Russia

[symbolset]

Linux is more compatible with hardware than any other operating system ever. This is not even debatable.

Microsoft has prevented their partners from opening their APIs to Linux applications to the detriment of their partners and the pace of innovation in many ways. For myself I can find no better example than Parallax, where an open interface would have saved their USB servo controller for wide use but instead they have discontinued it for no reason. It would have enabled robotic control for all forms of Linux and drivers were under way.

Re:In Soviet Russia

[bemymonkey]

That may well be true - however, the fact of the matter is that most of my hardware has problems functioning under Linux. MS may be the big bad wolf here, but they have hardware vendor support, which makes life as a consumer much easier...

I just don't see Grandma picking out her next printer based on whether or not there are working Linux drivers available...

Re:In Soviet Russia

[symbolset]

It's not as hard as you might think. Grandma knows that "HP printers work with my computer". If she ever needs a new printer she'll get an HP printer. She already has an HP printer though (a C6180), and she's quite proficient with using it to upload her photos, scan and print multipage documents, print what she wants and so on. The ink is pricey, but she's happy with what she gets for what she pays. And the Christmas cards she send out are really amazing. She doesn't know that it's network connected and she doesn't care. If I'm ever over with my laptop I can use its wireless to print documents without plugging in to her wired network.

Re:In Soviet Russia

[BrokenHalo]

That may well be true - however, the fact of the matter is that most of my hardware has problems functioning under Linux.

Hmmm. Apart from patchy support of phones (this tends to be flaky even on Windows), I have had precisely two pieces of hardware that failed to work properly with Linux in 14 years.

One was a parallel-port Umax scanner, and the other was a cheapie on-board SiS graphics chipset that never gave me anything better than 16-bit colour. I ran into both of those issues well over 10 years ago, and the kernel has come a long way since. My impression was that you have to try fairly hard these days to find hardware that doesn't work with Linux, especially if you stay away from no-name brands.

Re:In Soviet Russia

[bemymonkey]

So when the salesman tells her that the Canon that's on sale for 20% less is even better and will make her photos look "super-duper-realistic", you're fucked.

I'm not buying it...

Re:In Soviet Russia

[bemymonkey]

Are you serious? Or just jerking my chain?

Let's see... what hasn't worked on Linux (and by working, I mean being able to use all of the core features): Dual Monitor support on a 7800GTX, pretty much anything other than USB on my Thinkpad (no proper scrolling, horribly malfunctioning power management, flaky WiFi, flaky HDMI support, FireWire not working at all), my USB audio interface, my WinMo phone (OK, might be unfair to count that one :P). Sure, these things can be made to work, with an hour's worth of tweaking config files by hand (because the GUI controls don't work, or the settings don't stick after a reboot), but do you REALLY think Grandma's going to do that? Come on... Linux and free software are great, but if you're not willing to invest gobs of time to make it actually work, it's not worth it...

Re:In Soviet Russia

[shutdown -p now]

Ok. I've got a real person onsite with with real needs. I'm happy to have an opportunity to help, as I'm sure many other slashdotters would be. How can we help you? Really.

I'm not "on site" anymore - almost a year in Canada now, and while I do not know where I'll settle down eventually, one thing I know for sure is that I'm not planning to return.

How can you help someone else there? In the large scheme of things, money and other donations can be handy locally in some very remote (and consequently backwards) locations, but on the whole lack of funds is not the issue. This isn't to say that Russia is rich, but it's not quite a third-world country, either. Schools mostly have computers (if outdated), and software to run of them (if pirated), for example.

The real problem is the present socio-political system, and more precisely, the corruption that it generates and protects. You can pour as much money as you have into that bottomless pit - most of it will end up in the pockets of people who run the show (and have much more than enough already). That system is what strangles middle class - it's very hard to run a small business there, because bigger fish will always seek to swallow the smaller ones, and they have plenty of money to bribe the bureaucrats with. Tiny middle class means lower wages for working class (they can only go to big business to work, and their negotiating power is consequently diminished), wrecked economy, and government which is the mix of the worst of oligarchic kleptocracy and tyranny of the majority.

The story in TFA is, to some extent, a case of that - the project may have been started to reap the true advantages of FLOSS in education, but in the end, it always devolves to a cash grab by corrupt government officials and their privileged businessmen friends. Large parts of money were almost certainly wasted like that - it's called "otkat" in Russian, and it's when a government official in charge of a public tender for a particular project will select a more expensive option, because the company backing that option will pay a percentage of its profit directly into his pocket.

By the way, It's also why proprietary will likely win in the end - there is more money to spend there, and therefore "otkat" is larger.

What you, or anyone else outside the country, can do to help that, I truly do not know. The change has to come from within, but I do not see it coming - rather the opposite, things have only been getting worse in the last decade, and seemingly with the silent consent of the majority. Which is part of the reason why I'm out.

Re:In Soviet Russia

[Spad]

If anything, Microsoft is moving *more* stuff to the CLI. Look at Exchange 2007; half the management tasks can *only* be carried out from the Powershell management interface and it looks like they're headed the same way with most of the new versions of their core apps (including Server core, obviously).

Not that it's a bad thing (I love Powershell, having been stuck with VBScript for automating Windows admin tasks for years).

Re:In Soviet Russia

[palegray.net]

I nominate this post as one of the most informative posts ever made to Slashdot.

Re:In Soviet Russia

[hairyfeet]

Wow thanks...I so rarely get to use this in a sentence....WOOOOSH! Way to not read the post there pal! Kinda miss the part where I said i didn't want to be their free admin for life? What should I do, constantly trawl forums for lists of supported hardware and hope like hell somebody doesn't drop any Lexmark printers or Broadcom wireless chips off?

The POINT was it don't take squat for time to show someone how to admin a Windows box. Lock it down, only allow limited users, hell your already halfway home! And then there is the MAJOR hardware issue with Linux. Does this wireless work? What about this printer? Can you tell me RIGHT NOW without looking it up which items on sale at Best Buy, walmart, and Staples work perfectly with Linux? Are YOU gonna rush out there every time a distro update borks video and/or sound?

I've said it before and I'll say it again-Linux is NOT like Windows, but is much closer to a Mac. It works fine IF and ONLY IF, you get the right hardware/software and don't mess with it. But we are talking donated machines? You know...bunches of Dell, HP, Compaq, eMachines, all with different funky ass hardware. Ever try to get Linux working with an Ali sound chip? How about a SiS network/sound/video combo? Just because it works good on the SINGLE box you picked out JUST FOR Linux, or tweaked for a day to get it just right, doesn't mean Linux will work in the situation we are talking about. You are talking apples, we are talking oranges.

And finally yes, I know about ipconfig. The point is this-do you know how many times I have HAD TO drop to CLI in Windows? In the nearly 15 years I've been working I can count the number on one hand. Last was during the Win9x era. Sure it can be faster to just go CLI, but you should NEVER EVER have to. And with Linux it is the opposite...often that will be the first, last, and ONLY answer you get to a problem. Yeah, no thanks. I have no desire to be a free admin for life just to push a "free OS" when I can reinstall the Windows license on the box (so it is free to them) and be done with it. My after sale/give away support costs? Zero dollars. That is the "free" that I care about. But hey, call your local school, I'm sure they'll be happy to have you admin the entire school for free, just so you can "sell" them Linux. Good luck with that.

Re:In Soviet Russia

[hairyfeet]

Because back then, you didn't have these things known as "ambulance chasers". What do you think will happen if little Suzy gets exposed to porn on one of those school machines because some kid has figured out how to load it when they were supposed to be "maintaining it"? Can you say million dollar lawsuit boys and girls? I think you can. another nice thing about MSFT-Blame it on a bug works real well.

Re:In Soviet Russia

[Krneki]

Is it true I have no idea how Joe's mind works.
For me it's simple, teach people how to protect themselves.

But probably it's just me and the old "use common sense" doctrine.

Re:In Soviet Russia

[Bert64]

You have to spend hours getting windows to work with hardware too unless you get an oem disc which is specifically tailored for the machine you're using... Sometimes that involves registry tweaks by hand (which is even worse than editing commented config files)..
On windows you also have to spend hours installing applications, whereas a modern linux distro will automate that process too.

Whenever i've been setting up machines at work, i've been able to get a linux install to a usable state much quicker than people have got windows machines to a usable state for similar purposes.. And on all the machines i've tried in the last few years (various hp/dell workstations and laptops, plus a few home built boxes) there has been a lot less screwing around required on linux.

Re:In Soviet Russia

[bemymonkey]

Hmmm, I can't remember the last time I had to edit the registry to get hardware working properly in Windows... I also refuse to use OEM "recovery discs", because they install so much crapware.

It's just a matter of finding the correct drivers - you don't need to config or tweak very much, because in Windows there's hardly anything you CAN tweak in this regard... if the driver doesn't work, install a different one. Not exactly ideal, either, but drivers not working at all on Windows isn't exactly common these days, as longs as you buy decent hardware. Sure, there's annoyances and bugs, but the core functionality is usually always there as soon as the correct driver has been installed.

I'm not saying that having drivers for common hardware included with the system isn't the way to go, but there needs to be something to fall back on... on Windows, if the drivers from the OS's driver database don't work or just aren't there, you just run an executable downloaded from the hardware manufacturer's site (something Grandma can do) - on Linux, you're SOL unless you can fix it yourself. And even if it's just a matter of changing a line in a config file, well... probably too hard for Grandma.

If you know what you're doing and all your hardware has decent driver support in recent Linux distros, then obviously setting up a machine with one of those distros is going to be a lot faster than setting up the same machine with Windows and a CD full of drivers...

And while we're on the topic of Linux (you seem to be knowledgeable when it comes to Linux) - is there a known problem with Ubuntu installs inside Virtualbox on an XP host eating themselves when you try to use the update manager to upgrade to the latest Ubuntu version? Mine's stuck in a reboot loop as we speak (after the upgrade)...

Re:In Soviet Russia

[HungryHobo]

Boring cheap wireless card in my new PC "just works" with vista but I've spent more hours than I really should trying to get it to work in unbuntu to no avail so I have to string a cable across the house when I want to use the net with linux.

I like linux, I like the philosophy, I just know damned well that it has more issues than a girl who starts sobbing for no apparent reason after a few beers.

Now the bright side of linux is that it tells you when something is wrong, it tells you even when nothing is wrong, it gives you all the details you need to figure out how to fix it, so many details that if you aren't equipped to understand them it worries you.

Which for me is better than the windows version (crash)"something went wrong.... it happened at memory address 3338127612945345345345"
or the Mac version (crash)"nothing is wrong. program? what program? all is well" or if it's really bad *sad face*

but for most users they don't know how to fix a computer, they really don't want to know, they don't even want to know the full details of what's gone wrong because they dobn't read error messages anyway, they're not going to spend an hour reading documentation to get their sound to work again.
And they shouldn't have to.

Re:In Soviet Russia

[mugurel]

My mom has been using Ubuntu for 2 years, and she does not even know what a CLI is.

My mom too! But i'm sorry to say she knows now what a CLI is.

Re:In Soviet Russia

[DJRumpy]

You seem to think I am saying they will somehow pay for the OSS itself. I'm not saying that at all. I'm saying there are other costs associated with switching an operating system outside of the OSS itself.

Re:In Soviet Russia

[MartinSchou]

In practice maybe 1 out of 5 people taught that way will know English well enough, say, a year after school, to actually read a random English text of moderate complexity.

So ... about on par with the US?

Re:In Soviet Russia

[temcat]

You have to spend hours getting windows to work with hardware too unless you get an oem disc which is specifically tailored for the machine you're using...

Bullshit. You just have to have an OEM disc for the specific hardware, not the machine. And you pretty much always have it if you bought the hardware new or can download the driver from the Internet if you got it second-hand and the previous owner didn't give you the disc. With Linux, the driver may not exist at all, may not be fully functional, or may not be built for your distro version, and this happens much more often than with Windows.

Re:In Soviet Russia

[Bert64]

For a server you don't want a gui running because it will waste a significant amount of resources, even microsoft have realised (and poorly implemented) this in windows 2008...

As you pointed out, a full featured flexible server os like ubuntu comes with cli by default because that's the best way to manage it...
There are also hundreds of appliances available with simple web based interfaces, which is far more sensible than having a local gui, and these appliances cover most of the situations non technical people would require anyway.

Re:In Soviet Russia

[Bert64]

Yes, virtually everything these days can be done from a graphical frontend if you so desire, unix has the (false) reputation that you need to use the cli because often the cli is better, and when a clueless user asks an experienced user for help, the experienced user will naturally use the cli.

One of the biggest problems these days however, is clueless users running systems... They have no real experience, no in depth knowledge, have no idea whats going on underneath and only have a surface understanding of the functionality presented by some gui app. These people result in extremely insecure setups which quickly get compromised....

And to make matters worse, these people are extremely plentiful and cheap, so short sighted businesses employ such people who are able to get "easy to use and often expensive" graphically managed systems limping along. Long term they could save a lot of money by employing more expensive skilled staff (higher paid but fewer staff, less costly downtime, cheaper software, more efficient use of cheaper hardware), but most businesses aren't thinking long term.

Re:In Soviet Russia

[Anonymous Coward]

Neither's granny. She's a shitload smarter than you, shillboy.

Re:In Soviet Russia

[AliasMarlowe]

Let's see... what hasn't worked on Linux (and by working, I mean being able to use all of the core features): [list of stuff].

Either you're skilled at picking dodgy hardware, or unlucky, or perhaps you tackled things the wrong way.

Linux and free software are great, but if you're not willing to invest gobs of time to make it actually work, it's not worth it...

Curiously, it's never been an issue for me, and I don't restrict my hardware choices. I also don't regard myself as a Linux guru or expert.
Caldera OpenLinux worked fine on my Dell XPS T450 at home starting about 10 or 11 years ago, and supported all of its hardware, including thinwire ethernet LAN card, 33k modem internet, ATI Rage Pro graphics, HP Deskjet (maybe the HP 720) and HP scanner (I forget which model). This system was finally retired about 4 years ago, although its peripherals were donated to a local school before that.
About 4½ years ago, the beta of Ubuntu Breezy worked immediately and configured all of the hardware on my Sony laptop (which is now 6 years old and running Karmic flawlessly). The wireless LAN, wired LAN, bluetooth, 1920x1200 screen, wireless mouse, etc. were all configured automatically and worked correctly. The HP 4100c scanner and HP PhotoSmart 1218P printer both worked immediately over USB. The only thing I had to add manually was support for the stupid Sony media keys. Before Breezy, this laptop ran SuSE, which admittedly needed more manual setup.
More recently, 64bit Karmic is installed and working on our two no-name desktops, each with core 2 quad, 8 GB RAM, 2 TB disk, ATI4890 with dual screens, wireless keyboard+mouse, Logitech joystick, Wacom graphics tablet, and external speakers. Karmic 32 bit is also on our 5-year-old Dell GX260 with nVidia 9600GT (not used much nowadays, apart from web). The only manual configuration needed for the three desktops was selecting the binblob video driver via the Ubuntu GUI. All four systems had to be told about the network resources (HP7410 printer+scanner, Synology DS207 server, SMC2804 router/firewall) and each other's NFS exports, of course.

I use Windows systems at work; actually I have used Windows since v1, the MS-DOS Executive. In my experience, the investment of non-expert time to get a given functionality on comparable hardware was about the same on successive versions of Ubuntu and on contemporary versions of Windows (2000 or XP). Your experience seems to have been different.

Re:In Soviet Russia

[bemymonkey]

Interesting... maybe I really am just unlucky :P

Obviously there are a lot of cases in which the user has no problems at all, and all the drivers are installed automatically without a hitch, leading to a fully functional system with no setup at all - but what about the cases where it doesn't work? All I've gotten for answers so far are, "Well, it worked on my setups," or things along the lines of, "You're a shill!" (see the first AC reply :D)...

There just doesn't seem to be a one-size-fits-all recipe for solving this problem, other than buying only hardware that's known to be Linux-compatible. Obviously that's also the only solution for Windows, but the thing is that almost all the consumer hardware available already IS Windows-compatible...

Re:In Soviet Russia

[BitZtream]

Admins aren't cheap, lackeys are. You don't need a lot of admins, you probably need a few lackeys to deal with users.

Admins aren't the people dealing with users, those are basic tech support people. Admins automate to the point that they can cover a LOT of administration by themselves.

This applies to any OS, Windows, Linux , or whatever. if you need a lot of 'admins' then you don't have admins.

Example: National cable company, 7 admins with 24 hour coverage, for 3 million subscribers, for every system they run. They are REAL admins. The manage hundreds of machines to server all the services to those people. The use Solaris, Linux, AIX and Windows machines for servers.

However, they have hundreds of tech support people reading scripts to deal with calls from users. Two entirely different things.

2 or 3 admins should be plenty of a school district. 7 or 8 should be plenty for most states. Those are expensive.

The lackeys you need to deal with end users are cheap per person as you can train a monkey to do it if the admins are doing their job. You just need a much higher ration of lackeys then admins.

The problem is, like it or not, Windows is easier to use for a number of reasons if its setup right. You do the same thing with Windows you do with UNIX. Netboot or PXE installs, no admin access for users, good software setups to keep it stable.

The only difference with Linux geeks is the overwhelming urge to think they are different. Most Linux 'geeks' can't debug shit with source so using the 'Windows is a black box' argument doesn't hold true in almost every real world situation.

Re:In Soviet Russia

[BitZtream]

You can automate the install process on Windows as well.

And no one builds PCs anymore unless they want to geek out. You don't buy several hundred machines for a school by buying individual components. You order a bunch of machines from someone and they come with a nice restore disk. Of course, since the machines are all the same you can craft your own in a short amount of time.

You can't compare your home to a large rollout, which is basically what you're doing. Its also a little different educating a family member than it is educating thousands of teachers, other faculty, staff, and students. Most people use Windows, like it or not, there is a cost in switching them to something else. The cost may be trivial and a non-issue for your grandma, but its not for an entire system of users like a school system. Then you have to take into account that FAR FAR more of the software thats going to be used in the school system is written for Windows than for Linux.

If you can't recognize why its more expensive to switch to Linux than it is to pay for a cheap license of XP then you are seriously lacking real world experience.

Re:In Soviet Russia

[jedidiah]

...then such a person is going to run into problems unless they are their own guru.

There is simply no avoiding this.

They will inevitably plug in a printer into Windows before they've installed the driver. They won't notice the red tape or fully realize what it means.

Re:In Soviet Russia

[jedidiah]

> if the drivers from the OS's driver database don't work or just aren't there,
> you just run an executable downloaded from the hardware manufacturer's site
> (something Grandma can do)

No it isn't.

Even if she is, it might be buggy in some way that will scare and confuse her.

Been there. Done that. Did the bailout.

Re:In Soviet Russia

[r_a_trip]

That may well be true - however, the fact of the matter is that most of my hardware has problems functioning under Linux.

Funny how many times I've read that on the net. Yes, your hardware has problems with Linux. Why? Probably because when you bought the machine, you selected it with Windows in mind. Your machine contains hardware selected for optimum compatibilty with Windows. That means that Linux compatibility was an afterthought or not even on the radar. So there are probably more than a few pieces of hardware that lack reliable Linux support.

Strangely, when I plug in hardware it doesn't have problems with Linux. Then again I select it with using Linux in mind. My hardware has good support in Linux. Windows is another thing, but I accept that, because I selected the machine to run Linux and if it can run windows, well, that is just a bonus.

Morale of the story: Hardware Compatibility Lists are still valuable tools to make sure your machine works for the intended OS.

Re:In Soviet Russia

[Alex Belits]

That system is what strangles middle class - it's very hard to run a small business there, because bigger fish will always seek to swallow the smaller ones, and they have plenty of money to bribe the bureaucrats with.

I guess, you didn't get the memo -- in US "middle class" means "all people between about 150% and 2000% average income", in Russia "middle class" means "people who generate income from property but can't manipulate the market through their property".

I can assure you, small businesses in US are thoroughly fucked in all areas where it is possible to run a big business. "Middle class" mostly consists of professionals and middle managers in big businesses.

Re:In Soviet Russia

[MBGMorden]

After all a kid can learn just as well on a Pentium II that takes 4 minutes to respond to mouse input as a Core 2 duo that responds instantly right?

Aside from your exaggeration, yeah, they pretty much can. Too many people focus on learning software by versions. It's a serious problem that I see - people think they know "Office 2000" and when "Office 2003" hits they run like scared children deathly afraid of the new software boogieman.

The truth is that at it's core, learning software is more about learning the basic tasks behind the software. When you understand the things you want to do and the terms to look for, version changes are merely a matter of searching for the new button. Hell even switching between programs (say, from Offfice to OpenOffice.org) becomes pretty simple with that philosophy.

Now, with that said, Pentium II's that are maintained right (ie, keep an image of the computer and reimage it if it gets bogged down) don't slow down with age. People used them and computers FAR slower for all sorts of things - with no 4 minute mouse delays. They were used to do real work when they were released and are still capable of the same tasks. A kid with a Pentium II running any version of MS Office (or OpenOffice.org if they wish) and a web browser is truly all that most kids need for school work.

Re:In Soviet Russia

[hairyfeet]

You have to remember that we are sharing society with two types of mouth breathers- one, the guy/gal that wants to win the "lawsuit lottery" and will be happy to sue your ass off if you give them half a chance, and two, the ones that are so stupid that you have to put "hey moron, open can first!" or they will put an unopened can of soup into boiling water and make a soup bomb.

Which is another reason why Windows works well in this case. The average Joe that you would get on a jury has used Windows, and therefor "it got a bug" is a legitimate excuse for them. They will have never heard of Linux and could easily believe it is a hacker tool that little Suzy shouldn't have been exposed to. And as for the second bunch? Well they have had more Windows viruses than a Bangkok whore, so again the "it got a bug" will equal case dismissed, because they certainly wouldn't want to be held liable for that pron bug they picked up last year.

Re:In Soviet Russia

[hairyfeet]

The problem is which hardware Linux supports, which in my experience is REALLY old shit! Which is fine for the box itself, since we are talking donated machines, although on the low end good fucking luck with those Ali and SiS chipsets, but generally the peripherals that will be hooked to these machines will NOT be "old shit" and there is where you are royally boned with Linux.

Look, there is an easy peasy way to prove my point, just step right up and take the "hairyfeet challenge" and see for yourself. Just go to Walmart.com, Staples.com, and Bestbuy.com, the 3 largest retailers in the USA. Write down all the PC devices on sale or under $100, then go to...lets say Ubuntu forums, since Ubuntu is the most popular ATM. Look up how many devices on sale RIGHT NOW are supported. Go ahead, I'll wait.....You're looking at MAYBE 30%, and that is if you count "support" as an assload of CLI commands that may or may not work depending on whether they have gone from firmware a to firmware f without changing the box (which they do ALL the time)

Believe me, as a PC retailer there is NOTHING more that I would like than for Linux to become a viable contender, because I could lower my costs and undercut the competition. But there is a REASON why PC retailers don't sell Linux, it is because without a stable ABI and a quick and easy way to tell your customers which devices will/won't work without trawling some damned forum (which BTW, they will NEVER do) Linux quickly becomes a support nightmare from hell. With WinXP, WinVista, or Windows 7, it is as simple as "look for the certified for" on the box. Takes the customer all of 5 seconds. I repeat Linux is free if your time is worthless. I get paid a minimum $50 an hour, so it only take an hour and a half of jumping through CLI bullshit to make that cost of WinXP Home worth it.

Sorry, but unless my customers can shop Best Buy, Walmart, and Staples without studying like it was the ACTs, then Linux just don't cut it. And please don't say that bundle bullshit, because unless your last name is Dell that will quickly break you, as there is no way in hell you can match the razor thin margins Dell works on and hardware gets old way too damned fast. I have NO desire to stock printers, wireless USB dongles, TV USB tuners, etc. I sell PCs and Linux blows through my profit margins like you would not believe. And in this case I had NO desire to be a free admin for life just to sell a "free OS' when I could just reinstall Win2K Pro and be done with them.

Re:In Soviet Russia

[commodore64_love]

After trying to give away nice older machines that I'd get given to me on jobs with Linux installed by me I quickly learned that old saying was true "Linux is free if your time is worthless" because i would get called back to service their 'free" machine when they couldn't get the printer to work, an update borked sound or video, etc. In the end it was just easier to wipe the machine, reinstall whatever Windows it had a license for, and then sell or give it away.

Every time I've bought a Windows machine (except Vista) it "just worked". Everything was already installed and operational.

In contrast my Linux laptop is constantly giving me hassle. It's akin to those cheap $30 deskjets - cheap upfront but high maintenance costs. Linux isn't "free" when you have to be paying overtime hours to admins to keep it working.

Re:In Soviet Russia

[bemymonkey]

"Probably because when you bought the machine, you selected it with Windows in mind."

Actually, I buy my machines based on their performance and features. The thing is (with a few exceptions, obviously - Mac-only hardware, other proprietary crap, etc.), no matter what crap I buy, it'll work on Windows. Not so much with Ubuntu ;)...

I don't think I've ever bought any PC hardware thinking, "Geee, I sure hope this runs Windows!" :P

Re:In Soviet Russia

[Vancorps]

I agree, parent poster was just plain wrong when they alluded to no longer needing a CLI with Linux. All of those web-based tools require you to install them from a CLI. Of course if it's a simple LAMP then the LAMP installer with Ubuntu is probably sufficient but who uses a LAMP as a single box? I've never understood that concept which seems to be fairly prevalent in the Linux world. Why would you want a database server and a web server on the same box? Especially with how memory hungry MySQL is.

Re:In Soviet Russia

[BrokenHalo]

There just doesn't seem to be a one-size-fits-all recipe for solving this problem, other than buying only hardware that's known to be Linux-compatible.

Years ago (after my escapades with the cheapie components I mentioned before) I adopted that policy, and it served me well. But in the last 5 years or so I haven't bothered, except for avoiding no-name components. No, I wasn't jerking your chain, I just have a different perspective.

Re:In Soviet Russia

[jthill]

That may well be true

It is easy to believe, isn't it?

Everyone sees it. Some people even admire it.

It does, however, make them unpopular among people who harbor a strong dislike for felons.

Re:In Soviet Russia

[supersloshy]

Boring cheap wireless card in my new PC "just works" with vista but I've spent more hours than I really should trying to get it to work in unbuntu to no avail so I have to string a cable across the house when I want to use the net with linux.

1) Did you try ndiswrapper?

2) You can't blame Ubuntu or Linux in general for something like that. Whenever you install an operating system you are never guaranteed (except maybe by the hardware's manufacturer) if it will or won't work out of the box. Linux is way more out-of-the-box compatible with devices such as printers, webcams, and (IIRC) tablets than windows ever was. Sorry about your wireless card, but nobody ever said it would work right away.

3) Did you try Ubuntu Karmic Koala (9.10)?

Now the bright side of linux is that it tells you when something is wrong, it tells you even when nothing is wrong, it gives you all the details you need to figure out how to fix it, so many details that if you aren't equipped to understand them it worries you.

...

but for most users they don't know how to fix a computer, they really don't want to know, they don't even want to know the full details of what's gone wrong because they dobn't read error messages anyway, they're not going to spend an hour reading documentation to get their sound to work again. And they shouldn't have to.

Oh gosh... This isn't a problem at all. You're making a mountain out of a shoebox; creating a problem where there isn't one, if that makes sense to you. Linux error messages are much more human-readable (at least on Ubuntu with it's Apport system). Not only this, but it (Apport) gives you the ability to report the problem, tells you what will be in the report (optional) and since the code of whatever crashed is most likely Free, a fix is MUCH more likely than otherwise. Nobody ever said reading documentation was a "problem"; it should be obvious for some programs, right? Why aren't you mentioning this as a Windows or Mac problem as well?

Re:In Soviet Russia

[supersloshy]

Forgot to apply quotes the second time... my bad. If you read the parent before this one it should be obvious where the quotes should be.

Re:In Soviet Russia

[quixote9]

they've been paid handsomely to make the complaint. I'm half Russian. And, boy, does this have the ring of truth.

Re:In Soviet Russia

[jedidiah]

If granny can install her own drivers by herself including a download from company.com then
she's well able to check hardware for Linux (or Mac) compatability. It all boils down to the
fact that users are either completely self-sufficient or not at all. They can either fend for
themselves or they will be asking you what printer or camera they should buy.

Re:In Soviet Russia

[jedidiah]

> Can you tell me RIGHT NOW without looking it up which items on sale at Best Buy, walmart, and Staples work perfectly with Linux?

I can't tell you "right now" without looking what products are even worth buying to begin with.

This notion of the "completely oblivious" consumer is simply assinine. You end up with people that don't even know what their own requirements are and whether or not the given device will satisfy them very well if at all. That's not even getting into issues of total long term operating costs and reliability.

I buy stuff based on performance expectations. Linux compatability might not even enter into it ever. I might even forget to check.

"Compatability" is not as big of a bogeyman as it used to be.

Re:In Soviet Russia

[jedidiah]

Yes. I got a good chuckle about the "multiple native languages" remark too.

That whole "communism" thing pretty much ensured that everyone in the ex-Soviet Union spoke Russian and that Russian itself was well standardized.

It's pretty obvious just based on the trivial pursuit level of historical and geographic knowledge. No need to be a professor or know any actual Russians.

Russian was pretty common in the old Warsaw pact too so not only was it a lingua-franca in the Russian empire it served that purpose in a lot of Eastern Europe.

Re:In Soviet Russia

[shutdown -p now]

That whole "communism" thing pretty much ensured that everyone in the ex-Soviet Union spoke Russian and that Russian itself was well standardized.

It wasn't specifically about communism - indeed, communists early on (under Lenin mostly, and it took a while for Stalin to reverse it) actually heavily promoted the use of local languages over Russian.

The real reason is that Russia, under all governments and political systems that it had so far, was (and remains) an empire - as WP defines it, "a State with politico-military dominion of populations who are culturally and ethnically distinct from the imperial (ruling) ethnic group and its culture". And an empire defines its cultural dominion in many ways, including a single common language. It doesn't mean that other languages are deliberately suppressed (though there were definitely periods in history of both Imperial and Soviet Russia when that was the case) - it's just that common language is taught in schools throughout the country, and good command of it is required for any but the least qualified jobs.

Re:In Soviet Russia

[NotBornYesterday]

I don't buy the myth that Linux has poor hardware support. I have a network-connected HP C7280 living in my basement office. It comes with a nifty little Windows-only CD for auto-detecting the printer on the network, installing the drivers, and slathering a layer of HP proprietary crapware all over Windows. The CD is useless. Can't find the printer to save its life. I have tried manual configuration with varying degrees of success, but no XP or Vista box in my house has ever printed to it without major aggravation.

On the other hand, I can tell Linux to go find it, and it does. I can tell Linux to print, fax, and scan to it, and it does.

Various Kodak, Olympus, and Canon digital cameras just work when I plug them into one of my Linux boxes. Attach my camcorder via firewire, and I'm ready to go.

Wireless network dongle? I have a SMC EZ-Connect (G) USB dongle that works fine on Linux with minimal configuration. Actually, the dongle itself didn't need installation or configuration, it was the network SSID and key. Still, as easy or easier than the same setup under XP.

Re:In Soviet Russia

[tuxgeek]

On occasion I have to install windoz to dualboot a machine for the wife, so 1 application (Print Shop Pro, or something of the sort) she needs will be available.
I always hate the task. Just installing the base OS to a usable state takes hours, 480 x 600 default display up to something usable being the problem (installing the video driver being the headache). Then getting the drivers for printers and other devices can take days of reboots and dicking with. Always frustration as I just don't have the time for such as useless OS.

On the other side of the coin, Kubuntu 9.10 took very little time to get up and running on this HP Pavilion dv7 laptop, which was designed for Vista. The Intel 8201I chipset HD Audio produces a hiccup on first boot, but the fix is pretty simple. Not sure if WiFi works, don't use/need it. Other than that just pure sweetness and a pleasure to use. Everything works.

For the record. My review of Vista? POS through and through. I am not impressed. Sure the display is pretty, but the OS constantly nags with popup messages and is very slow from excessive bloat. Windoz always want to get in your way from doing what you want to do. Completely useless OS.

My windoz nightmares as stated above, are from Win2k. Sure it's very out dated, but I can install it on as many boxes as I choose and after days of screwing with will run proprietary software. I simply refuse to buy a one time use OS from the borg.

Re:In Soviet Russia

[von_rick]

We have a printer/scanner at our office from circa 2005 which came with WinXP drivers. Now that we have switched to many of the computers to Vista, those scanners are totally unusable from Vista machines because the manufacturer dropped support for that hardware past XP. The computers running Linux can still access the hardware via network.

Re:In Soviet Russia

[von_rick]

If you want to buy cheap-used-hardware (like digital IO cards or TV tuner cards), finding Vista/Win7 drivers for them is impossible. The source code from a decade ago can still be compiled with Linux to get the hardware to work.

You buy crap when you don't want to spend much for that piece of crap. And the crap that I buy can only work with Linux, because the manufacturers don't provide drivers for Vista or Win7. Now if you are into buying the latest piece of hardware and paying full price because you see the Vista compatible logo at the corner, you have a point.

Re:In Soviet Russia

[Bert64]

Finding the correct drivers is a significant pain...
How does grandma know what type of hardware she has? She might know who made the machine based on the logo on the front of the box, and may even know the model if that's also printed there, but how about internal components? It's unlikely she has any idea what wireless chipset, what ethernet chipset, what video card, what sata controller etc is present... In that respect linux is also much easier, because the information is more readily available (windows just shows the basic device type, eg unknown ethernet controller and the numeric pci ids, if you don't have drivers installed).

As for getting to the hardware manufacturer's site, you or i might have another computer we can use to access that site, but grandma won't if her network drivers don't work.

Also if you install multiple drivers without cleanly removing the old ones, you can have all kinds of problems....

"As long as you buy decent hardware" - also applies to linux, buy decent hardware and you will have more luck and less hassle regardless of what os you use.

Re:In Soviet Russia

[Bert64]

That assumes you're perfectly happy running the same version that came with the hardware, and content to run the oem supplied version which may or may not include lots of other crap you don't want which is often difficult to remove.

Windows often has drivers which don't exist (especially when trying to use older hardware with 64bit windows), which don't work with a given version (many drivers for older hardware were never updated for vista) or may not be fully functional.

Re:In Soviet Russia

[Bert64]

More expensive in the short term perhaps, assuming that the people involved are already proficient with using windows...
However...

Many teachers, especially in less affluent areas of countries like russia are not proficient with any kind of computer system and would need instruction on anything they acquire, having 10 linux systems vs 5 windows systems would be a huge benefit, and they would need to learn something new either way.

Also don't forget that the whole purpose of a school is to educate (not train - thats what you do with animals) people...

The purpose is to educate kids, some of whom will be very interested in the subject and rapidly learn a lot more than the teachers.

Linux is setup to make it easy for people to learn, windows is setup to keep people ignorant, remember when computers booted to a basic prompt and shipped with manuals encouraging you to write programs? not anymore, windows does everything it can to discourage users from learning anything like that, it is designed to keep users ignorant and build a dependency.

In the long term, using linux will be much cheaper for the schools, and significantly beneficial for the students...

Linux also makes it easier for students to use it at home, by lowering the cost of acquiring a working machine... They can use older hardware, and don't need to pay for any software. Many families in places like russia would not be able to spend a lot of money on a computer.

And also using Linux means the school system and its students are not dependent on a single foreign corporation. I'm sure there are russian companies that produce hardware too.

As pro-windows posters on slashdot like yourself frequently point out, competent linux admins are a lot more expensive and less widely available than windows admins... Personally i'd want my kids learning linux so that they can earn more by working in a less saturated market.

Re:In Soviet Russia

[Bert64]

I have such a printer/scanner too, it worked with XP and OSX Tiger (PPC), it doesn't have drivers for vista/win7, or any intel version of osx. Ubuntu supports it out of the box with no hassle whatsoever, it is automatically detected the first time you plug it in and just works.

Incidentally, we too can still print from newer windows/osx systems but not scan anything.

Re:In Soviet Russia

[hairyfeet]

Dude, what planet do you live on? because it sure ain't good old planet earth. here folks go "oooh...Sale!" and pop it in the basket. That's it. No studying, or doing features VS long term usage VS needs comparison, none of that shit. It is just "oooh...Sale!" and in the basket it goes.

And THAT is the reality Linux needs to accept or just quit this 'year of the desktop" bullshit. Joe average will NOT trawl forums, or look up compatibility lists, or spend hours in CLI, or learn to tweak conf files, okay? It will NEVER EVER happen, okay? Not in a million years, not if hell froze over and the rivers collided and the seas turned to blood.

So Linux developers need to A-build for the masses, which means ALL GUI and "clicky clicky" and a little fat penguin on the box at Walmart, or B- stick to servers where there are trained IT staff that LIKE CLI.Because bitching about the "notion of the completely oblivious consumer is simply assinine" is total bullshit. It is nothing but total elitist bullshit. The user is your customer, and they have spoken. they want GUI, they want simple, they want "oooh...Sale!" and into the basket.

That is why Apple has a $1000 entry fee and kick the snot out of the "Free OS" in users. That is why MSFT despite Vista owns 90+% of the desktop. MSFT gets it, Apple now that the mighty Steve is back in charge gets it, Linux? "ClI is leet and better in every way dude!" BWA HA HA HA HA HA HA! Yeah, hold onto that dream pal, and enjoy your 1% market share. And compatibility is a bogeyman? Try 30% support for devices at the big three retailers. if that is a bogeyman, he is a pretty scary mofo. The forums aren't filled with "my device foo don't work!" because compatibility in Linux is hearts and flowers. And don't forget "update foo broke my sound!" yeah I love that bitch. Getting bit in the ass one too many times by that one was what made me give up on having a Linux box on my network. Too damned much work for too little reward.

Re:In Soviet Russia

[symbolset]

Somebody down below posted a link to this document. Here's a relevant clip:

101. The development of an alternative platform to challenge Windows was not the primary objective of Intel's NSP efforts. In fact, Intel was interested in providing APIs and DDIs only to the extent the effort was necessary to ensure the development of applications and devices that would spark demand for Intel's most advanced microprocessors. Understanding Intel's limited ambitions, Microsoft hastened to assure Intel that if it would stop promoting NSP's interfaces, Microsoft would accelerate its own work to incorporate the functions of the NSP software into Windows, thereby stimulating the development of applications and devices that relied on the new capabilities of Intel's microprocessors. At the same time, Microsoft pressured the major OEMs to not install NSP software on their PCs until the software ceased to expose APIs. NSP software could not find its way onto PCs without the cooperation of the OEMs, so Intel realized that it had no choice but to surrender the pace of software innovation to Microsoft. By the end of July 1995, Intel had agreed to stop promoting its NSP software. Microsoft subsequently incorporated some of NSP's components into its operating-system products. Even as late as the end of 1998, though, Microsoft still had not implemented key capabilities that Intel had been poised to offer consumers in 1995.

102. Microsoft was not content to merely quash Intel's NSP software. At a second meeting at Intel's headquarters on August 2, 1995, Gates told Grove that he had a fundamental problem with Intel using revenues from its microprocessor business to fund the development and distribution of free platform-level software. In fact, Gates said, Intel could not count on Microsoft to support Intel's next generation of microprocessors as long as Intel was developing platform-level software that competed with Windows. Intel's senior executives knew full well that Intel would have difficultly selling PC microprocessors if Microsoft stopped cooperating in making them compatible with Windows and if Microsoft stated to OEMs that it did not support Intel's chips. Faced with Gates' threat, Intel agreed to stop developing platform-level interfaces that might draw support away from interfaces exposed by Windows.

103. OEMs represent the primary customers for Intel's microprocessors. Since OEMs are dependent on Microsoft for Windows, Microsoft enjoys continuing leverage over Intel. To illustrate, Gates was able to report to other senior Microsoft executives in October 1995 that "Intel feels we have all the OEMs on hold with our NSP chill." He added: This is good news because it means OEMs are listening to us. Andy [Grove] believes Intel is living up to its part of the NSP bargain and that we should let OEMs know that some of the new software work Intel is doing is OK. If Intel is not sticking totally to its part of the deal let me know.

In short, you're complaining that Microsoft does what it can to prevent compatibility and discourage open interfaces and drivers - as if that's a slam against Linux. Here's the thing: everybody who knows about this should be willing to go to the extra trouble to be free of the abusive relationship this represents.

Re:In Soviet Russia

[jonadab]

> You ever priced a Linux Guru? Cheap they ain't because there simply aren't many of them.

Well, a junior high or high school could almost certainly find some students capable of maintaining it (as long as these are non-sensitive computers we're talking about -- computer lab computers and such, not the one in the office that makes the report cards) and willing to do so in exchange for minor privileges (like, getting out of study hall). But a primary school might have a harder time of that, I guess.

Re:In Soviet Russia

[HungryHobo]

and this is why the general public isn't using linux.

Re:In Soviet Russia

[HungryHobo]

1) Did you try ndiswrapper?

first thing I tried. made it so I could see the network but actually connecting seems to be beyond it.

You can't blame Ubuntu or Linux in general for something like that.

blaming isn't the issue.the issue is that it just doesn't work. I'm a programmer, I like messing around with drivers, working out what's wrong with things etc but it's like a car which needs a mechanic to drive it. You can complain that the roads aren't smooth enough so it's the roads fault that the wheels come off, you can complain that the road builders favour people in another kind of car but at the end of the day you need to be able to just sit in and drive without knowing what's going on underneath and it needs to just work.

3) Did you try Ubuntu Karmic Koala (9.10)?

I have not yet. Has there been much improvement in the support of wireless cards?

Oh gosh... This isn't a problem at all. You're making a mountain out of a shoebox; creating a problem where there isn't one, if that makes sense to you. Linux error messages are much more human-readable (at least on Ubuntu with it's Apport system).

Actually I was describing something that I liked about the Linux error messages.
As for the general public I really do feel that errors scare people.
just a random sample of the first thing kate popped out a second ago:

"kate(6956) KProtocolManager::slaveProtocol: slaveProtocol: "http""

that may make a bit of sense to me and a lot of sense to someone who knows the code but to an average user? "huh, what's wrong there? have I broken something??"
They haven't. I know they haven't. You know they haven't but to them it's just a little note of worry. Repeat for every program they run and everything they do and they either become a linux nerd or run away.
MS turn error messages into a generic "bad thing happened" which is enough for most users. Apple pretend errors didn't happen. To the average arts student this is much less scary than half a page of process numbers, strange phrases and info telling them that the program has in fact started perfectly fine and is working.

it should be obvious for some programs

absolutely. but you seem to be missing the point that the average user is not a programmer. They don't see the point of bug reports and don't know what documentation is unless talking about that manual that came with the PC which they threw away because it was full of gibberish.

I like linux. I like messing with it. I like that it forces you to become more knowledgeable just to use it. but i can admit that it isn't perfect. that it isn't suitable for a lot of people.

Re:In Soviet Russia

[HungryHobo]

I'll get back to you when I'm next home and can check.

Re:In Soviet Russia

[tehcyder]

About 2 years ago I was in an elementary school computer lab with computers still running Windows 98(!) on hardware made for Windows 95.

Call me old-fashioned, but I'd say if you're stuck with hardware made for Windows 95, Windows 98 is about as complicated as you want to get.

After all a kid can learn just as well on a Pentium II that takes 4 minutes to respond to mouse input as a Core 2 duo that responds instantly right?

It may surprise you to learn that fifteen to twenty years ago, people were working quite happily on pre-Pentium PCs, doing real work, and your mouse took about the same time to respond as it does nowadays.

Now, get off my lawn.

Re:In Soviet Russia

[jedidiah]

> or spend hours in CLI, or learn to tweak conf files

1998 called. It want's it's FUD back.

If you want a "good" product, you are going to have to figure out exactly what that is first.

That includes little things like size, speed, resolution and operating costs.

Not everyone shops in Walmart.

Re:In Soviet Russia

[hairyfeet]

THANK YOU! A perfect example of "elitist bullshit"! Thanks ever so much! You DO realize that Walmart is one of the biggest retail chains on the WHOLE FUCKING PLANET, right? That between Walmart, Staples, and best buy you are talking millions of customers, yes? So please, keep up the elitist bullshit. The fact that you can't even buy a fucking printer without trawling a forum doesn't make you elite, it just makes you suck. Oh, 1987 called, they want their lousy compatibility back. oh look, I made a funny!

You know what is NOT funny, and should have you and every other Linux user screaming fucking mad? I can walk into ANY Walmart on the entire fucking planet, look for the OSX Apple, and if I have a Mac I'm good to go. Takes all of 5 seconds, and that don't count the Apple stores. I can walk into any retailer and look for the "certified for Windows" Winflag and any PC in the last 10 years will "just work". And yet Linux has the unmitigated gall to expect users to edit conf files, tweak settings in CLI, and trawl forums, all for the "privilege" of using your "free" OS.

WTF? Are you high? Are you crazy? windows hasn't had to do that shit since Win9x, and Apple hasn't had to do that shit since OSX! That is TEN FUCKING YEARS that users have grown accustomed to things "just working" and you honestly expect them to go back to that shit? The truly sad part is Linux security is quite good, and the KDE and Gnome desktops are quite nice. But without a stable ABI, without a "fat penguin" on the box at Walmart? Well you might as well get used to be a big fat 1%, because that is where Linux is gonna stay. Folks don't have time for that "hobbyist" bullshit, that frankly died out with the Atari and C64. Expecting users to go back to that mess and like it isn't elitist, it is just good old fashioned delusional.

Re:In Soviet Russia

[mikropolip]

I live in Russia, and I'm just obliged to say that you're an idiot. Really. Your understanding of Russia has far less to do with reality than understanding of nuclear physics by an average five-year-old boy. As I can see from your posts, you are one of those "sausage immigrants", the ones that left their homeland not because of oppressions but (figuratively spoken) in a search of more delicious sausages, wealthier life. Now I've got to say something about your ravings: First of all, Russia is a third world country, and as in any other third world country, corruption here is not some accompanying evil, but the part of a peripheral capitalism (google this term!) which is an integral part of most of third-world countries. Second, middle class so tiny that it's equal to say that it just doesn't exist in peripheral capitalism. Third, in Russia big non-governmental business is nearly equally deprived of it's rights as the small business. If you don't understand this, google "Yevgeny Chichvarkin". About "otkat"s and english language in schools you are right.

The change has to come from within, but I do not see it coming - rather the opposite, things have only been getting worse in the last decade, and seemingly with the silent consent of the majority. Which is part of the reason why I'm out.

Of course, it's much easier to run away than to change something! But I've got to warn you, as some clever person said, "the Earth is round and if you always run you can finally end up in the same place from which you've started". I've got two friends that were taken to Canada by their parents as teenagers, but after they've finished schools and University of Toronto, they've chosen to return back to Russia. Now they're scientists here. Why do you think they've returned? - That's because they've got conscience, the thing you lack.

Re:In Soviet Russia

[shutdown -p now]

As I can see from your posts, you are one of those "sausage immigrants", the ones that left their homeland not because of oppressions but (figuratively spoken) in a search of more delicious sausages, wealthier life.

Even if so, why is that bad?

In truth, though, you're wrong. I earned quite a lot in Moscow; considering the difference in expenses, I'm not that much better off here. But you know what I appreciate? That you don't have to be afraid of cops. That cashiers in all shops smile to you. That government officials don't try to intimidate you and show off that they're little bosses. That, when a newspaper posts an article on how, possibly, a local executive of the city administration spent 100K too much on travel expenses in the last 3 years, that executive rushes to write a letter - posted in that same newspaper next week - explaining in detail why and how he spent the money.

I want to live in a country to which I can truly commit myself as a productive citizen and a member of the society, and know that such commitment isn't wasted and is reciprocated. In a country where I could, with good conscience, sign up for military service and know that it serves the better good - or see my children do the same.

Russia isn't such a country today, and I do not expect it to become such tomorrow, if ever. And that is because the people do not want this. I consider myself a political liberal - why is it a slur in today's Russia, used by common people from the streets? More importantly, if they despise me because of my political beliefs, and want their "great Russian empire", so that "everyone is afraid of us", and cheer the latest efforts at empire-rebuilding and antagonizing the free world, if they love bat'ka Lukashenko and Chavez so much, why should I do anything to convince them otherwise? Just because we're ethnically the same? I'd rather go find people whose culture I can share, regardless of my blood and native language - the culture in which "individualism", "freedom" and "responsibility" are core concepts, rather than the one which claims to be centered around vague "dukhovnost", and in practice tends to gravitate towards Asian-style despotism in Western cloths, in all social structures, not just politics.

If you consider me a traitor because I put my beliefs above my blood, then so be it. I do not owe you or the country in which I was born (that one doesn't even exist anymore, in fact) anything. And I have no obligation to stay on a sinking ship when everyone else on board refuses to admit that it's sinking.

Re:In Soviet Russia

[mikropolip]

In truth, though, you're wrong. I earned quite a lot in Moscow; considering the difference in expenses, I'm not that much better off here.

Though, I suppose that salary is not the last thing you've taken in consideration before leaving, even if you in the end didn't get the amount of money that you wanted because of crisis. But I'm not going to speculate on the facts that I do not know for certain. Let's assume that I am wrong at this particular point.

I must ensure you that I'm also against empire ideology, bullshit about "dukhovnost", Mr Putin etc. etc. And I dont think that our political beliefs are fully uncompatible. But dou you know what's the difference between you and me? The difference is that I actually do something to change the situation.

If you consider me a traitor because I put my beliefs above my blood, then so be it.

I don't consider you a traitor. I consider you a conformist. Bacause you run instead of changing something. "People do not want this" is just a lame excuse not to take responsibility. I'm sure that you're enough educated and you are not so shortsighted to think that things change on their own -- of this in human history there have been no cases. Things change when there's enough people that can take responsibility, have enough will to struggle and will to sacrifice.

You think that there's not enough of those people in Russia? -- popularize your beliefs! Have you ever tried? I bet you didn't. Yes, and I am devilishly sure that you dont give a damn neither about what's going on in Canada apart of the things that touch your own ass nor about what's going on in Russia. Neither about some friend of your parents which is now beaten by a Russian cop nor about what purpose Canadian troops serve in Afghanistan. If Canadian troops have got nothing to do with fighting terrorism of civil liberties and have lot's do to with securing CIA control over heroin production, well... who cares?!

I want to live in a country to which I can truly commit myself as a productive citizen and a member of the society, and know that such commitment isn't wasted and is reciprocated. In a country where I could, with good conscience, sign up for military service and know that it serves the better good - or see my children do the same.

You will never trully commit yourself as an a citizen of any country because you don't feel responsible for other people.

I do not owe you or the country in which I was born (that one doesn't even exist anymore, in fact) anything.

I suppose that your ex-countrymen stopped to exist too. Oh yes, you don't owe me anything! And also I have no reason to respect you.

And I have no obligation to stay on a sinking ship when everyone else on board refuses to admit that it's sinking.

Please, don't consider this as an insult, but I suddenly remembered the old adage that the first ones to run from the sinking ship are rats.

Re:In Soviet Russia

[mikropolip]

with fighting terrorism of civil liberties

terrorism or fighting for civil liberties.

Sorry for that.

Re:In Soviet Russia

[shutdown -p now]

You think that there's not enough of those people in Russia? -- popularize your beliefs! Have you ever tried? I bet you didn't.

I've seen what happened to those who did. I considered joining NBP at some point, not because I share their political points, but solely because they're the only ones who actually do something that may eventually work. But it quickly became clear that, at this point, doing that can land you in prison for a few years.

And everyone else is just talking. There's plenty of talk around about how this and that is bad, and how things should be, and how they all should be ashamed. So what? talk doesn't change shit.

I don't consider you a traitor. I consider you a conformist. Bacause you run instead of changing something. "People do not want this" is just a lame excuse not to take responsibility. I'm sure that you're enough educated and you are not so shortsighted to think that things change on their own -- of this in human history there have been no cases. Things change when there's enough people that can take responsibility, have enough will to struggle and will to sacrifice.

I am not willing to sacrifice myself for the sake of a change that may or may not come (especially when it's likely not to come in years - definitely not soon enough for me to see and enjoy it).

If Canadian troops have got nothing to do with fighting terrorism of civil liberties and have lot's do to with securing CIA control over heroin production, well... who cares?!

Oh my, you're a Truther, too. Wonderful.

Anyway, I can assure you that Aghanistan mission is under intense scrutiny here in Canada; I believe the recent polls are, in fact, show that a little bit more people are against it now. Of course, it doesn't have to do anything with that CIA bullshit, and everything with the fact that Canadian troops are supporting a regime that claims Shari'a as the supreme law of the land, executes people for apostasy and adultery, and - lately - is willing to falsify elections.

And yes, I do give a damn about what's going on here - about Afghanistan, and other things as well. You know why? Because there is something worthy of giving a damn about.

You will never trully commit yourself as an a citizen of any country because you don't feel responsible for other people.

Look, if you want to feel responsible for all the "other people" in the world, then what the hell are you doing in the relatively well-off Russia? Why aren't you feeding the hungry in Nigeria, battling corruption in Zimbabwe, or organizing armed revolt in North Korea? Don't you feel responsible for those people?

As for myself, I am willing to feel responsible for people who also feel responsible for myself - so that, together, we form a healthy society, the strength of which comes from individual members supporting each other of their free will.

I suppose that your ex-countrymen stopped to exist too.

They didn't (and neither did the country). But, yes, I do not owe them anything either. You still haven't explained why it should be any different. For all the speaking about people in general, you end up speaking of responsibility and duty to Russia and Russian people in particular. Why? Simply because I was born on a territory which, at this particular moment in history, is claimed by a state that calls itself "Russian Federation" (and like the Holy Roman Empire, is neither Russian nor Federation)?

Please, don't consider this as an insult, but I suddenly remembered the old adage that the first ones to run from the sinking ship are rats.

Yes, rats are smart animals...

Special price

[mirix]

Special price == free || getting paid?

How else can you beat free software?
Not like labour is terribly expensive in RU; So I can't see installing being expensive. Schools should have plenty of bright young hackers to install it too...

Re:Special price

[kiwimate]

How else can you beat free software?

By ignoring costs for retraining on the new OS, retraining on the new applications, headache costs when the specialized educational/academic/back office software doesn't run on Linux, and so forth?

Re:Special price

[Chuq]

I've noticed costs for retraining somehow are never an issue when changing from eg., MS Office 2003 to 2007, or XP to Win7, but are showstoppers when open source software is involved.

Re:Special price

[mirix]

I kind of thought training was what schools specialize in.

A few bucks for a few guys to get the kinks out, and a couple workshops for the CS teachers, vs. licences for the whole country... I just can't see it.

Re:Special price

[sofar]

The problem with this is that due to the exclusivity of linux, linux training is also exclusive, and thus costs are high. If linux marketshare would be 90% or more, the prices for linux support and training will most likely be on par (cost wise) with that of Windows, r better.

That's a largely ignored factor. Throwing linux at a whole nation's education system is the best way to cure the dependency on proprietary tie-in, but the hurdle might be high. The problem is that linux isn't gaining market share even though everyone knows that the windows problem will be solved quicker if linux gains market share early.

Re:Special price

[dbcad7]

Really, the differences between using Linux programs and Microsoft programs are not that great.. Actually I have more problems with the changes from MS Office to the newer MS Office. I'm sure it's supposed to be better and more "intuitive", I just think they have a different meaning of that word than I do.

Special pricing.

[palegray.net]

This is business as usual for governments and Microsoft. The government in question threatens to roll out an open source solution to a large number of machines, problems magically pop up early in the deployment, and Microsoft pitches their solution for next to nothing in upfront costs. Note that the ongoing costs of managing the deployment down the road are virtually never considered, and the taxpayers wind up getting screwed with a "solution" that eats up enormous amounts of money in overhead, future licensing fees, and security issues.

Re:Special pricing.

[value_added]

Well, we don't know whether the government was playing politics, or was honest in their intentions. Either way, it's fair to characterise Microsoft's moves as good business for them, but problematic for everyone else.

By problematic, I'd use the analogy of a loan shark giving you a special rate on a new load to get you past the missed interest payment you missed on your last unpaid loan. Sure it resolves the crisis, but the underlying problems and high costs remain.

And speaking of underlying problems and high costs, the following article is appearing on news.google.com.

Are Microsoft to blame for "hidden" malware costs

Re:Special pricing.

[Beelzebud]

Yes because we all know that open source software never has problems that pop up in deployment...

Re:Special pricing.

[FudRucker]

and to go a step further in your comment, eventually microsoft cuts off the russian PCs from windows update so no more patches to secure all these russian PCs and there is your next botnet collection free to send spam and DDos whoever the russians decide to target.

Re:Special pricing.

[Mystra_x64]

Considering previous CD burning fails I'd call it diversion.

Re:Special pricing.

[palegray.net]

Of course it does. The difference is primarily that you don't get yourself locked into a single platform for years to come that winds up costing a small fortune in licensing fees, and your overhead for managing the systems is lower over that period as well. I've worked on both sides of this equation for over a decade.

Re:Special pricing.

[ThePhilips]

B.S.

I've been expecting something like that from the beginning. MS is quite strong in Russia, has numerous R&D centers, etc.

Maybe, just maybe... Linux is an awful desktop environment to work in and the community that surrounds it doesn't want to accept any responsibility or settle on standards.

You apparently have no clue what you are talking about. The Russian Linux/BSD community would strongly disagree. And they are setting standards perfectly fine as Arch Linux can be easily called national Russian distro. And it it quite close to the top on list of best desktop Linux distros. (Many Russians ISPs were BSD/Linux based from day one - amount of *NIX expertise in Russia is not to be underestimated.)

Especially considering that we are talking about educational sector, all the "Linux is hard" excuses are inapplicable, as thanks to LTSP it is much much more manageable and easier (compared to Windows) to use, monitor and deploy in environments such as school is. And there are literally piles of the educational software for Linux.

Though as I said above, it was obvious that MS would do something about it. It was more question of price, as highly corrupt Russian politicians probably weren't satisfied with initial size of bribes offered by MS. Or probably they were not pro-Putin enough but now amended their ways.

Re:Special pricing.

[palegray.net]

Where was Linux desktop and driver support 10 years ago?

That's funny. Go ahead and install Ubuntu on and given system and watch in utter disbelief as everything "just works."

Oh, what's that? You haven't actually used Linux in ten years? Well, that would explain your stupidity.

Free

[p0rnographer]

In Soviet Russia, free costs money!

Re:Free

[couchslug]

"The Soviet Union collapsed in 1991"

Technically, but I bet on Putin bringing it back more than I'd bet on a feeble few believers in democracy succeeding against the entire history of the Russian people. That's almost as tall an order as teaching Muslims that secular freedom is good for anything but overthrowing governments which practice it.

Re:Free

[Anonymous Coward]

In Soviet Russia, joke misses you!

Re:Free

[iamhigh]

That's almost as tall an order as teaching Muslims that secular freedom is good for anything but overthrowing governments which practice it.

LOL, if not so true. effin brilliant statement. I will use in the future. Would have moded you up but just HAD to make an "in soviet russia" wisecrack.

Re:Free

[jim_v2000]

Oh no, tell me you did not just shit on a Soviet Russia joke....

Someone come take this guy's geek credentials away.

Re:Free

[Sulphur]

In Soviet Russia, joke misses you!

Does it go whoosh as it goes by, or does it sound like a cowboy movie?

Re:Free

[Device666]

In the United (bankrupt) States of Amerika capitalization is government buying companies.

Re:Free

[ais523]

And in capitalist America, you give Microsoft a discount?

Donations?

[Tablizer]

It almost smells like sabotage. I imagine MS wouldn't directly do it, but instead pay people to "keep an eye on the project" with a lot of wink-wink. I wonder if there's not a way to donate to the cause?

I'll take First Post for 200, Alex

[Anonymous Coward]

In this once-powerful empire, software frees you.

Re:I'll take First Post for 200, Alex

[gzipped_tar]

That explains the Soviet collapse. free()ing a non-malloc()ed address. Stupid stupid stupid.

Where can I send disks?

[Yuioup]

So where can I send disks? I'm sure if everybody at the Slashdot community burns at least one disk then we should be able to make up the difference.

Anybody have a list of software which we can download and burn? And the address to send it to?

Y

Re:Where can I send disks?

[mk_is_here]

You're trying to offer DDOS (Disk Delivery Overseas Service) to Russia?

Re:Where can I send disks?

[selven]

But in Soviet Russia they DDOS you.

Re:Where can I send disks?

[Fred_A]

I'm sure if everybody at the Slashdot community burns at least one disk then we should be able to make up the difference.

It's too late, I burned my Vista disk (that came with my laptop) ages ago. And it didn't make any difference. Nobody cared. It just made pretty sparks in the microwaves.

Costs

[Idiomatick]

"Funds for the project have been cut back..."
FOSS should seriously be cheaper to roll out than XP. Windows would have to reduce the price to near nothing... Does this say something sad about the usability of FOSS?

Re:Costs

[Idiomatick]

Agreed. My point was that the roll out costs in FOSS should be similar unless we are deficient somewhere. Working on that would be a good thing.

BTW, whoever modded me troll. It was a question, Sorry for wanting to improve FOSS, way to take criticism jackass.

Re:Costs

[mirix]

True, but in Russia, Last I checked, a decent IT job pays maybe $500/mo. (2-3x more in Moscow).
That's what... 2 or 3 windows licences?

Low'ing price in face of competition not a "trick"

[harlows_monkeys]

Moody says:

Finally, Microsoft has been up to its old tricks of offering special deals for its software

How is that a "trick"? Isn't that what competition is supposed to do--cause vendors to lower price?

We need free books first

[CrazyJim1]

I'm currently working on a video game project I can finish in a couple months that may make me some money so I can support myself and do other more ambitious projects. The #1 project I feel that needs to be done is the freeing up of textbooks in education. If someone doesn't offer a free textbook that is important, we should have a community that rewrites it without plagurizing, and then provide it free of charge. The Internet should be a global library. The old problem with distribution was printing, but that problem is solved. Publishers like newspapers have less importance in this society. The new problem is compensating people who provide free information, but this problem is less of a problem than restricting their information from eager minds.

My theory is that computers can do books better than books do books. We can have multimedia experiences yes, but we're so new at knowing how they help people learn, we don't need to consider them at first. We need to do books, and link a course together by the books people need to tackle to get through them. We can have videos that train people like lectures. We can have LOTS of redudandant passive learning eventually. We can even have live tutors through live chat and email. There is a definite revolution in education looming at the horizon, and I hope that I'm not the only one who sees it because I'm horrendous at being able to accomplish big projects on my own, with no funding.

Re:We need free books first

[Urza9814]

You mean something like wikibooks?

http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Main_Page

Re:We need free books first

[Cryacin]

I hope that I'm not the only one who sees it because I'm horrendous at being able to accomplish big projects on my own, with no funding.

There are very few people in this world that can accomplish big projects, on their own, with no funding.

Re:We need free books first

[abarrieris5eV]

I'm horrendous at being able to accomplish big projects on my own, with no funding.

Pretty much everyone has that problem. If you need some entry level physics or EE or some more advanced materials science stuff maybe I'll contribute one day. Free education is possible, just like you say. At the same time I'd be sad to see the brick and mortar schools go. You can't replace being physically in the same buildings with the same labs for a lot of stuff.

I'll Take Overhead for 600 Alex

[TheStonepedo]

Trebek: This state failed to consider the cost of changing software and training users.
Yakov Smirnoff: What is free market Russia?

Get the hackers involved

[iamhigh]

Offer free use of the bandwidth from 5pm to 7am (or whatever off hours are over there) in exchange for a usable school system. I guess if they must have a bunch of shady sites and scammers, might as well get some education out of it.

In Soviet Russia, spam funds school!

Re:Get the hackers involved

[dunkelfalke]

This one was insightful 5 years ago, but nowadays there is broadband outside of Moscow.

Re:Low'ing price in face of competition not a "tri

[symbolset]

Let's remember the original cause of this Linux migration, shall we?

i see a pattern...

[cies]

i get the feeling its not just microsoft being "clever" in always offering highly discounted versions as a last resort to prevent a free software takeover. it is also governments who cleverly threat to switch to free software (back up by some actual action), on which microsoft drastically cuts price.

i think the same about china for instance. they wanted to put the whole government and education system on their red flag linux. microsoft now gives them windows+office for a couple of euros (or even less i forgot) per machine.

so i suspect free software is used as a threat in order to make microsoft cut its prices. is that a problem? i think it contributes to free software's growth in the end -- but it is surely not as beneficent as the free software actually being used to run on computers.

Jeopardy

[Dan East]

"Free Software For All Russian Schools In Jeopardy"

What sort of jeopardy does a Russian School have to be in to qualify to receive free software? Like academic jeopardy or financial jeopardy? Sounds like a good idea to me! ;)

Fix Once, Run anywhere, anyone?

[Zombie Ryushu]

Why are these Russian computer programmers not making applications to fill the gaps. If there is a bug, why not just fix it? Its Russia, they have tremendous talent for coders. Just commit some coders to fixing bugs, then submit them back upstream to the application distributor. If I can file bug reports, so can they, but I never see them actually do it.

Re:Fix Once, Run anywhere, anyone?

[Tablizer]

Its Russia, they have tremendous talent for coders.

Like everywhere else, gov't budgets are lean right now. This is a long-term investment, as far as learning to work with OSS. But when gov'ts are short of cash, they tend to make short-term decisions.
       

Solaris time!

[Akir]

If the problem with deploying Linux is not having enough trained professionals, why not go with Solaris? OpenSolaris is free, and Sun offers training for it. Don't know if they have russian solaris training, though. Or they could go through multiple other training sources that are available for Linux. No matter how you put it, paying for windows, no matter how low your discount is, doesn't make sense. For chrissakes - if everyone in Russia were running Linux, wouldn't that get rid of the training problems?

Re:Low'ing price in face of competition not a "tri

[aussie_a]

You have to understand, slashdot isn't pro-Linux. Its anti-The Man. And at the moment The Man is Microsoft. Once Microsoft becomes an underdog people will sing its praises as they hate on whoever The Man is of the day.

Microsoft's competitive behavior

[MSTCrow5429]

Horror of horrors, Microsoft is attempting to compete on price with free software!

Re:Microsoft's competitive behavior

[mysidia]

Not really.. it's not robust competition from MS. It's a special temporary deal to try to dissuade them from going to free sw.

Once they're using MS sw, they'll be locked in pretty quickly and can't switch, the price will shoot right back up immediately.

Zero-day holes, poor code from generations back...

[xjlm]

Oh, wait a minute, that's not open source I'm talking about, is it? No, that's the famous 'proprietary' software everyone gets for free. No, that open source stuff isn't even good enough to run the latest worm or virus like certain other OSes I could mention. Or play games for kiddies. Or install your latest piece of hardware you picked up down at WalMart.

Re:Low'ing price in face of competition not a "tri

[shermo]

Maybe yes, maybe no.

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

Predatory pricing is a great example of competition at work.

PS. Can I get some of those windows licenses at that price?

Actually I suspect things are going very well.

[seeker_1us]

Many of us were suspicious from the start that the Russian government was never serious about using FOSS. Rather, it was just a ploy to get MS to drop their prices. Now that MS will drop prices, FOSS is becoming "too expensive" with the trite old arguments about retraining blah blah blah. Government saves face, gets the price on MS software they wanted, and Bill/Ballmer keep their monopoly. Everyone wins, except, of course, the people who use the computers.

Re:Actually I suspect things are going very well.

[petrus4]

Everyone wins, except, of course, the people who use the computers.

No, computer users win, too.

I've just recently largely gone back to XP from a combination of using Arch Linux, and FreeBSD since May. Every time I try and use Linux long term, I inevitably end up going back to Windows, purely due to the amount of sheer misery it causes me. Why?

a) The "community." This is the single biggest issue. As a group, Linux users are among the most toxic, hateful, myopic, delusional, generally vile human beings on the face of the planet. Stallman's cult, and the people defending it, gets really old after a while. The persistent, ongoing hatred of Microsoft is also as pathetic as it is toxic, especially when it mostly consists of arguments which were relevant in 1999, but really aren't now at all.

The icing on the cake here, is the scenario where the FSF's boosters refuse to accept the fact that the only basis for their belief system is pure, raw Stallmanite mind control. The FSF's perspective isn't based on anything logical, or anything that the neurotypical population remotely cares about.

b) Stability. I bet you'd never expect the time to come when a Microsoft OS could claim to be better than Linux in this department, did you? The time has come. PulseAudio (as but one example) is a disaster, and I also had other programs (such as Xine) crashing under Linux when they didn't under FreeBSD.

c) The need to endlessly screw around with things in order to get them to work. This isn't exactly the same as the stability argument above, but it's close. I realised a couple of days ago, that with Linux or FreeBSD, there's an instinctive expectation with me, for something to crash once or twice, and for me to have to tweak it somehow, before it will work without a problem. In Windows, that is never the case. Everything just works.

Those are the three areas where Linux needs fixing. The cult, the lack of stability, and the need for gratuitous over-configuration. Of the three, the cult is the only one which I fear actually isn't fixable at all.

Re:Actually I suspect things are going very well.

[petrus4]

You like the idea of companies using their monopoly to impose standards. You are a power worshipper. You don't care what the standards are or whether others can compete. You are a person who knows his place and wants everyone else to know theirs. One software provider for all.

In my own personal case, every one of these assumptions is completely false. These assumptions are also being made, unsurprisingly, by an Anonymous Coward.

Next.

"As a group, Linux users are among the most toxic, hateful..." I confess you are worthy of the hate. Look to yourself.

How ironic. You've given me an example of precisely the attitude I was referring to.

Free Software For The Windows OS

[westlake]

Last year, we discussed here a Russian plan to install free software in all its schools. Seems things aren't going so well. Funds for the project have been cut back, some of the free software discs already sent out were faulty

There is more to FOSS than Linux.

One of the great strengths of the Windows platform is that it has always been licence-agnostic.

The system never frets or complains when you try to install an app that doesn't meet Microsoft's standards of political correctness.

The Linux distro can make you jump through a hoop or two or three before you get to that closed source app or binary driver.

Windows does like to see a signature.

Which makes perfect sense when you realize that there are thousands of independent Windows "repositories" with names like Download.com.

OLPC ran into trouble because of its "all or nothing" attidude.

The education minister was expected to buy into its bundle of hardware, software, and constructivist philosophy of education without any inconvenient doubts or questions.

When the minister took his business elsewhere there was suddenly room in OLPC for XP and MS Office.

The moral of the story being that it isn't always wise to try to take all the apple in one bite.

You can successfully introduce FOSS into the Russian classroom without trying to replace the whole of the existing Windows infrastructure at the same time.

The competition might even force you to look more closely at the quality of your open source product.

Re:Low'ing price in face of competition not a "tri

[Anonymous Coward]

Of course, predatory pricing involves temporarily selling your product at a _lower_ price than the competition. Linux is free, so unless Microsoft are charging a negative price for Windows, that's not really relevant here. To beat out a cheaper rival like Linux, Windows has to be a superior product, eg by offering better features or being cheaper to operate.

It's really simple.

[blind biker]

Russia is a country where "money talks", and it talks in ways people in the west are not used to. And, Microsoft has a lot of it.

Corrupt officials get the cream and the people get the creampie.

Re: you're very TRUE

[Anonymous Coward]

I am from soviet union country and I was loving reading this post :D.

The problem we faced was that not enough management was done to do complete switching to linux. And those managers in power had no idea about linux.

Free Windows SW is cheap marketing.

[FrankHS]

Microsoft gives the schools free software and Russian students learn to use it. They get the Microsoft propaganda (Lower TCO, innovative, how easy is is to do ... etc). In a few years these students are the experts and will be working in government, industry and where ever. When they are asked how to solve a problem they will usually recommend Microsoft because that is what they know. Now had they been trained on OSS they would recommend that. This is a quite a bargain for Microsoft, even if they give the schools free software forever. If it works for them a large part of Russia will be using and paying for Microsoft software, just like here.

Re:Free Windows SW is cheap marketing.

[ledow]

In theory, you may think you're right.

In practice - by the time these kids get into management, it's unlikely that anything will even be similar. I grew up on BBC Micros, BBC BASIC and a CP/M word processor in school - and I'm only 30. The entire face of computing changes on a regular basis (e.g. the whole Internet thing becoming popular).

Additionally, you go with whatever makes business sense. If MS makes business sense to you, go with it. If not, then don't. It's quite simple. There are no end of dirty tricks, especially in education, but to say that what the students grow up with determines the future is incorrect. What they grow up with determines what they *fix* in the future.

And I'm a complete OSS fanatic. But I work in education. There, the child matters. I use OSS servers and OSS web apps and OSS utilities and little OSS programs. But the bulk of the desktop in a school is proprietary educational software with *no* free equivalent at all because it takes decades of teaching experience to write a good program, it needs to be kept up to date with all the latest curricula (down to the letter) and not overwhelm the user with curricular choices. The only OSS desktop app I've ever got into schools in a big way was TuxPaint in primary schools (because over here it effectively replaces something called RM Colour Magic that's a heap of shit)... and only because it worked on Windows too.

Education is a *completely* different market and you can't understand it until you've worked in it. Backend? Nobody cares. Whether the desktops actually run Windows / Office, nobody cares. But if something they want to pay £5000 for a site licence for can't run (because it saves the teacher 30 mins a day in the course of their job), that's a dead system to them. Percentage of software that is *required* for my current school to operate for this term, which can run under WINE? About 5%, not including Office (which can be replaced with an equivalent).

Re:Low'ing price in face of competition not a "tri

[atheistmonk]

Embrace the decision.. Then extend it... Then...

Re:Low'ing price in face of competition not a "tri

[symbolset]

Here I'm going to just point out that you had to post AC. That's some weak stuff there. You've said some things that are not true and now that you're AC we can't take away from you your credibility with downmods. If you want to make some substantive allegations the least you could do is log in.

In Modern-Day Russia . . .

[saisuman]

Microsoft chooses YOU!

Re:Low'ing price in face of competition not a "tri

[mister_playboy]

Don't like AC posts? Then you should raise your comment threshold, rather than arguing ad hominem.

We need free books? Well, no...

[bradley13]

Sorry, but you are being really naive. There are two reasons free books are a silly idea:

1. Anyone with any motivation at all can already learn whatever they want on the Internet. The information is not neatly in order, with careful examples and consistent explanations, but it's all fundamentally there.

2. Putting information neatly in order, with careful examples and consistent explanations (i.e., writing a textbook) is a lot of work. Writing a textbook from scratch, in a field where you are an expert, takes around a year. Maybe with OSS software, you can earn your living by selling support, but just how do you propose that people earn a living by writing free books? It's not even a one-time investment: books, especially in technical fields, must be continuously updated or they quickly become useless.

Collaborative projects like Wikpedia and Wikibooks help collect some information in the same place. However, they will never achieve the quality of a good textbook (in whatever media) written by someone who needs to pay the mortgage with the royalties. Capitalism: it works, you know...

Re:We need free books? Well, no...

[selven]

For some subjects a book from 1979 is as good as a book from today. This applies especially to mathematics, but also, in the lower grades, to sciences like biology and chemistry. Languages don't change fast enough to warrant a new book more than once every few decades. As for how do I propose that we get people to write free books, look at Wikipedia. It's free and the quality is about the same as Britannica (and it covers far more topics)

Old news

[eugene2k]

A tender for deployment, training of school staff and tech support was already awarded to a Linux company. This happened a month ago or so. They probably won't be able to train all of the staff by the end of the year, but there really isn't much else schools can do: there won't be any federal funding for schools, so it's really either Linux or pirated software.

Re:Old news

[h00manist]

A tender for deployment, training of school staff and tech support was already awarded to a Linux company. This happened a month ago or so. They probably won't be able to train all of the staff by the end of the year, but there really isn't much else schools can do: there won't be any federal funding for schools, so it's really either Linux or pirated software.

pirated software will be the same price, admins for it will be cheaper and much easier to find. pirated becomes a bet, until perhaps someone decides to denounce, or some authority to shake down the place.

Re:paypal from the world: bounties for ru bug fixe

[dunkelfalke]

The problem is that PayPal doesn't work in Russia, they've got their own online payment systems (WebMoney, Yandex Money and so on). While you can convert from PayPal to the Russian online payment systems, the fees are outrageous (about 30%).

Re:Low'ing price in face of competition not a "tri

[Stormwatch]

and if I choose, voluntarily, after having tried the alternatives, to stay with IE instead of Firefox, or Windows instead of Linux, then the /. community should embrace that decision.

I can understand Windows, it has tons of software and all, and moving to a whole different system can be a lot to learn... but IE? Why would ANYONE want to stay with that ugly, sluggish, bug-ridden piece of shit?

Sometimes I feel that there are people on /. who will not be satisfied until there is no OS besides Linux. Ironic, really.

Keep in mind, we're talking schools here. And indeed, I think proprietary software should be avoided in education. You're pretty much imposing your choice of tools on the kids anyway; so why not go for one that will give them FREEDOM - to use, to study, to share, to improve - rather than keep them dependent on any specific company?

HP, Samsung have very good Linux support

[Kupfernigk]

Oh dear. The HP Linux Printing System is excellent, and Samsung's support for Linux allows you to use really cheap laser printers on a home Linux box. Because HP's Windows drivers often involve installing something larger than some operating systems, and because the Windows printer installer really isn't much good (for ordinary users it's only really usable for installing USB printers or connecting to shares) HP's Linux support is real-world better than their Windows support. Of course, if your idea of a printer is some piece of GDI crap from the high street, you may expect problems, not least of which will be expensive consumables.

Re:HP, Samsung have very good Linux support

[bemymonkey]

That may be, but do the people you recommend Linux to (Grandma, father in law, the old lady from next door) know that? I'm just saying that you can't buy the next best printer and expect it to work (at all)...

C ripes, that's simplistic

[nukenerd]

Linux is free, so unless Microsoft are charging a negative price for Windows, that's not really relevant here. To beat out a cheaper rival like Linux, Windows has to be a superior product

Does it not occur to you that Windows might be sold to the schools at a positive price but the idea is sold to the higher officials who make the decisions at a smaller but more focussed negative price?

This whole discussion is a laughable display of naivity. These decisions are not simply made on the merits and cost of Linux vs Windows. Even in the West this does not happen.

Re:Low'ing price in face of competition not a "tri

[Tolkien]

How do you lower beyond free-as-in-speech?

Not for software; for officials!

[sznupi]

I fully expceted this to happen. I live in post-Soviet country, and the two deciding factors in such cases are:

a) will we be able to pretend that we're qualified to learn "computers"? (many IT teachers are total crap; usually they are sport, music, etc. teachers with some loophole or BS retraining course that allows them to "teach" IT; vast majority of people who would be qualified simply prefer much better jobs)

b) how much will be the unofficial financial gain for me? (this doesn't have to mean outright corruption; much bigger problem, on all levels, is that professional qualifications are often judged by "what was the financial worth of projects that this person implemented?" Which ends up in tremendous waste or resources that benefits only those who implemented them originally, and moved on since to...waste more resources in other places)

And my place isn't even corrput so much as Russia, supposedly...

Re:Russian to me

[sznupi]

...in fact, forget about the hookers! (this is Russia, mind you ;p )

Re:We need free books first - California

[white_owl]

We talked about the California free textbook program And there is some followup

Re:Low'ing price in face of competition not a "tri

[hoskeri]

> You have to understand, slashdot isn't pro-Linux. Its anti-The Man. And at the moment The Man is Microsoft. Once Microsoft becomes an underdog people will sing its praises as they hate on whoever The Man is of the day.

I will believe that when I see people supporting SCO.

insert astro.bs ..

[rs232]

'One of the great strengths of the Windows platform is that it has always been licence-agnostic', westlake

as long as it isn't the GPL ..

'The system never frets or complains when you try to install an app that doesn't meet Microsoft's standards of political correctness', westlake

Except with WGA, Microsoft can remotely disable your desktop if it deems it 'unlicensed' and they don't give a toss about unlicensed third-party software.

'The Linux distro can make you jump through a hoop or two or three before you get to that closed source app or binary driver', westlake

Except, a certain software company keeps threatening codec developers with litigation, therefore such codecs have to be supplied seperately. If such a 'closed source app' exist do you mind telling us what it is. And if a binary only driver is available, then that's down to the supplier of the hardware, in'it?

'Windows does like to see a signature', westlake

Microsoft gets to approve what gets installedon my computer. Besides they are now selling a 'crapware' free computer, that's software from third party developers I assume.

"We think we're really unlocking the potential of Windows 7 "

OLPC ran into trouble because of its "all or nothing" attidude, westlake

bs, there was much machinations behind the scene. In fact MS was initially going to join the project to 'help' it get better .. :)

'The meeting begin with a question by Marcelo on wether Microsoft felt the OLPC project would be successful without its involvement '

MS even wanted to get a license for the "open source hardware"

'Remember that a key part of our strategy is to create a situation where even if Nick rejects us for philosophical reasons there is a long and visible history of our attempts to work with them and then we have to ask to get a license for the "open source hardware" and we will make our own offering on the commercial side'

If that didn't work, then they proposed creating their own 'open source' license and naming it "Education Open Source" or some such ..

'I think we should name our new open source license and romance its creation. "Education Open Source" or something like that'

'When the minister took his business elsewhere there was suddenly room in OLPC for XP and MS Office', westlake

You're comments are becoming ludicrous here ..

Microsoft is innocent

[boomman]

I don't believe Microsoft have anything to do with this. As usual here, money that was allocated most likely was partially stolen by bureaucrats, which explains phail. Now if there will be deal with Microsoft, it means even more budget allocation, therefore more money to steal. It is profitable to everyone except taxpayers.

Re:Low'ing price in face of competition not a "tri

[AK Marc]

How is that a "trick"? Isn't that what competition is supposed to do--cause vendors to lower price?

Nope. Lowering prices is usually anti-competitive. If Microsoft offered Windows 7 to everyone for the lowst price they sell to anyone and raises prices no more than inflation, then that's great. However, low-balling to win contracts, then jacking up the pricing after the cost of switching is higher is not competitive. Pricing so low as to be at a loss in order to crush competition is anti-competitive. Just because the up front price is slashed does not mean that the actions are competitive.

A free market requires informed comsumers and lack of regulatory constraints. Microsoft sells things for different prices in different places, and relies on government regulations and uninformed consumers to prevent arbitrage. That's not competitive.

The "trick" is that the practice is illegal. Selling at a loss in order to harm a competitor is an abuse of a monopoly.

Re:Low'ing price in face of competition not a "tri

[AK Marc]

Selling at a loss in order to crush competition is not a fair choice, and it's not a legal action for them to offer that choice.

Re:Microsoft is innocent?

[mrdtr]

Innocent? I'm wouldn't bet on it. Considering Microsoft has come up with "special" pricing for them, leads me to believe that they may not be as innocent as you would like to believe they are.
Also apparently funds have cut from the program, yet then they have money to spend on MS licenses?
Who knows maybe it was just a ploy to get deep discounts from MS?

Re:Must try harder

[ledow]

"And no, you are not a complete OSS fanatic. If you were, then you wouldn't be promoting the alternative."

There is nothing worse in a fanatic that not realising the flaws, problems and let-downs of that which he is fanatical about.

I recognise them perfectly. I've spent *hundreds*, maybe even *thousands* of hours testing OS programs and changing their code to try to suit my schools. The simple fact is that they are too far from a workable solution at the moment - nothing comes close to the £10 program that we can get from an educational supplier (normally written in VB or Shockwave or some such crap) in terms of *educational* content - and the whole point of my and the school's job (teach kids, and making that teaching possible) comes above everything.

I have a school at the moment, on Firefox, Thunderbird and OpenOffice (on *every* machine, including the kid's), with Linux thin clients (at VAST expense to the school because those machines were supposed to be returned but they saw them working once I'd rebuilt them and they then *paid* to keep them, they are not even capable of booting modern Windows but they are *fine* for what we are going to be using them for and very good value). It uses proprietary, freeware *and* Open-Source software. The OS software is heavily customised for our purposes (the school now recognise the advantage of having an IT Manager who can program too).

When I entered this school, it was MS-only, Office-only (still have all the MS licences to cover the entire site!) and they had already completely rejected an entire Linux-based network that had been bought and installed just a few years previously. That's an *uphill* struggle to get to where they are today, and I've knocked out all of their criticisms of the previous system (which was *shit* because of the installation and poor checking of requirements - that *was* a "Linux is cheaper" shop that installed that). I now have the bursar and principal pushing me to move more and more towards OS for the freedom it gives them - they are tired of vendor hassle whenever they want something which (from their own programming experiences many years ago) they know is a one-line fix. Upgrade the entire SQL server, administrative server, and all administrative desktop OS's just because the program that runs the canteen has been fiddled with by someone who didn't understand the impact? No thanks. Even *with* a free-upgrade license to later versions.

It's a private school, money is basically no object, if I wasn't here they'd be on Windows 7 with Exchange servers quite happily by now... the fact is that they "get" open-source now by my evangelism. And it filters down to the staff and kids ("Why has the Internet program changed, miss?" "Oh, that's because the other one was dangerous and could give us a virus and this one we can stop you playing with the options" "AAWWWW, Miss!!!"). And whenever there is a one-line fix that works around the problems of our ISP, dodgy hardware, staff stupidity, or even hardware failure I make sure to mention it and show them and they "get" the customisability and freedom aspects now.

The entire network fails over to 3G and implements heavy traffic filtering if the normal internet connection goes down. They had that in place within 24 hours of getting a 3G device and this was before people started making devices that *could* failover like that. And when it does happen, things filter back down to the desktop systems to make the users aware. They were willing to *pay* for a backup Internet connection facility (for, let's admit it, something pretty much as non-vital as you can get to their IT operations) and were going to run extra leased lines just to have *some* sort of backup but the ISP couldn't do it. Money wasn't an issue for them.

*They* have implemented a freeze on Vista and 7 deployments, not me. They have approved larger ongoing budgets in order to cope with that freeze and continue working. We actually pay *more* for the systems now than the equivalent MS

Russian point of view

[anjolio]

Nowadays we still have a lot of corruption in Russia. Everything is very easy: buying MS products requires a lot of money and nobody will notice stealing couple of million dollars, but open source software (OSS) costs nothing and stealing money becomes more complicated, so people interested in stealing makes a lot of problems for OSS introduction to schools. So, his is not a technical problem.

Re:Russian point of view

[h00manist]

well, well, what would you know -- commercial software encourages government corruption! learn something new every day. i myself have experienced corruption with commercial software - police in developing countries shaking down cybercafes running non-legit, or undocumented, software. i would figure a good scammer could in fact shake down all kinds of companies, since lots of small businesses have no IT person, lots of mixed up software, lost receipts, lost documentation, cd's, etc etc.

windows costs only 2x what linux does

[h00manist]

A CD with Windows and another with ms-office costs about twice the same as one with Linux. Anyway, it's only the local cost of two blank media instead of one. The Linux admin, however, instead of the Windows one, is much more, and can't be obtained for anything near about ten cents... Whether anyone agrees or not, the media is about the actual cost in most places... just don't tell the lawyers.

well, summing up...

[h00manist]

if you *really* want to help oss/linux, participate in getting more software done better. watch out for fanatic people from all sides. just pay attention, compare, analyze. there's lots of work to be done for OSS, no real time to be arguing over whose @#$%!*@# is bigger.