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Swiss Canton Abandons Linux Migration
An anonymous reader writes "The Swiss canton Solothurn has put a stop to their ongoing migration to Linux. [Original, in German.] The project started in 2001, and has been under harsh public criticism ever since. The responsible CIO resigned this summer. Solothurn plans to convert all desktop computers to Windows 7 in 2011."
but it seems like this migration was rather ill prepared...
Reading through the issues, it seems they didn't actually stage and test this before deploying it. Typically, in real IT shops, that's what you do. Development, Staging, Beta, rinse, repeat, certify it, freeze it, and then production.
It sounds like that just slapped that shit app in there and didn't look at the how it was slamming the database. You can't change the database. You have to change the application. Which is quit a big deal without programmer's.
Methinks none of those monkey's have ever done this before.
Do not try to read the dupe, thats impossible. Instead, only try to realize the truth
What truth?
There is no dupe
If there was no new bad news, you simply made yourself which one:
How many more years will slashdot have an off-by-one error on your Score in your profile?
From the article:
Delays in the implementation, immature software, eaten employees...
It's no wonder Linux never got off the ground, if employees have to fear being eaten, then there's something seriously bad about the implementation.
Although I'm hoping this is just a Google Translation error, but seeing how many billions of dollars Google has to refine its programs, I'm doubtful that this is anything but a perfect translation.
My condolences to the employees who were eaten by Linux.
As much as I love Linux, it is nice to see a government who will do what the majority wants than what a niche minority lobbies for. Or perhaps it's nice to see a society that fights for what it wants, rather than a government where anyone who is against the corporate overmind is unimportant.
Of course, this is Windows 7 (and therefore Microsoft) that we're talking about. I'm certain ConsumerWatchdog doesn't honestly count as a public critic, so who is to say the same thing hasn't happened here. Dammit, I hate watching the fruits of the powers that be without getting a real glimpse of what's going on under the hood of the beast.
Ah, I hate being a conspiracy theorist, and I could probably throw out how corporations have rotted this world for their protection, and how the majority means nothing as the Dollar is king. Bow down to the almighty dollar who's at the top, and where are you?
But who is to say that happened here. I am just a rambler.
"Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds"
Yeah, it clearly shows that OSS cannot compensate stupidity from the planners, and that it is very easy to put the blame on Linux instead.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
Let's not automatically assume that's because Linux really isn't ready for desktop use - or that there's corruption going on.
A major transition like this is hard. Linux doesn't have anything like Active Directory for the desktop (Anyone who suggests you use something like Puppet is living in another world. AD comes with policies ready to go, all you need to do is tick the necessary boxes and you can be reasonably sure that when you tick the box, it'll actually do what it says. Writing and debugging equivalent configuration for even a tenth of that in Puppet would cost a lot more in man-hours than all the Windows licenses you can shake a stick at). There's no realistic replacement for the combination of Outlook/Exchange. (BTW, I can't remember the username but every time I post something like this one of the authors of Citadel comes out of the woodwork and suggests I check that. Terribly sorry, but I have. No offence, but I don't believe you've used a properly administered Exchange installation if you honestly think Citadel's a viable replacement.)
I haven't even considered the possibility of custom-written software which was intended for Windows and will require re-writing. Wine doesn't cut it when your suppliers' response to any query is going to be "You're running under what?!"
Add to that the fact that a lot of people don't really know how to use their computer - they just know to click on the "button on the left" or "third one from the right". Even very subtle change will cause such people no end of trouble, and even if you're in a part of the world with at-will employment you can't sack them because otherwise you'd be sacking 20% of your workforce. I'm not even remotely surprised to learn that someone's tried a migration and messed it up.
The thing that does surprise me is that the same desktop users who will call the helpdesk every 15 minutes with a Linux desktop will almost certainly not object anywhere near so vocally when they're put onto Windows 7 and an upgraded Office suite. Part of me wonders if you'd see different results if you took Ubuntu, changed the boot and login screen to say "Microsoft Windows 8", re-branded OpenOffice as "Microsoft Office 2009" but left everything else as a normal Ubuntu install.
http://babelfish.yahoo.com/translate_txt
Oops, maybe not. Now. "angefressene Mitarbeiter" ="corroded coworkers". Has a nice ring to it, though.
It looks as if 2010 really is the year of the Linux Desktop! At least, compared to 2011.
Local maxima etc.
"The agriculture ministry is not in charge of Gundam" - Japanese ministry official.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Build the policy is a one-time expense. Windows license costs are eternal.
Plus I HIGHLY doubt that, for anything other than a small business, the cost of writing the AD policy would cost more than the CAL never mind the other licenses needed.
Plus, and I really mean this, what AD policies are required. Really. I want to know, because it seems like the AD policy thing is rather like the CGI brouhaha where early on, people thought "this CGI stuff must be really complex and smart!" merely because it was jargon laden and they'd never done it. The opposite of the "anything I don't understand must be easy to do".
So, really, what AD policies are there that are so complex and why are they there (I could understand some policies that are required because without them Windows could be an attack vector, cf virus scanning on Linux).
"Yeah, this story is pretty self-explaining... good work FOSS!"
Yes, this story is pretty self-explaining... but I question what does indeed explains.
It's almost a meme around here that "joe sixpack" simply doesn't pay attention to computers but here it seems there has been a strong campaign in press against the migration from the very begining as if it were a sensible issue for general public.
And then, this project has been cancelled when internal polls show that only around 10% of users -and it seems "end users" are implyied, not sysadmins, were dissatisfied and 80% were satisfied with the new environment (I'd bet that's and expectable turnaround for *any* environment change).
One should ask himself if there might be some kind of pressure from "other vendors with deep pockets".
It's obvious too that has been some managerial mistakes that, as such, could be an expected source of problems no matter what the migration path were as, per instance, towards Windows 7 instead of Linux. There has been problems that tough counted on the negative side of the migration seem indeed to be more on the side of the lackings from the preceding environment (like a closed database that ends up being difficult to transition -heck, that's why you are migrating: to avoid things like that to happen... from then on).
All in all it's an enlighting example... mainly about how carefully the "soft side" of a migration towards open source should be managed. As in "be prepared to withstand attacks from the older stablishment trying to regain its lost power -and licenses" or "people will take the problems with a Windows to Windows upgrade as a non issue -it might be because the name doesn't change, even if most of the environment so does, while in a Windows to Linux migration everything and the kitchen sink will be Linux' fault no matter what so you'd better choose very carefully your stakeholders and make sure they feel involved as a driving force".
By the way, any new news about Munich?
..Is obviously the one where you can pay 500$/hour consultants to do it for you, not where you need marginally better trained IT staff, management and funding.
I know I could do a much better job at most things but nobody would want to live kingdom. But still they are idiots.
For those who prefer a quick human translation over a state-of-the-art Google Translate result, here is what I gleaned from the article. German is not my first language; corrections and other improvements welcome.
Short summary:
- The project wasn't going well from the beginning
- The project definitely failed, but you can't entirely blame that on Linux
- Lack of organizational talent definitely played a role in the failure
- In a survey, about 80% of employees stated they were satisfied with the new environment, 10% complained about issues they thought would be resolved over time, and only 10% were really dissatisfied
- The media played a large role in the perception of the project by eagerly latching on to every bit of bad news about the project
Partial translation, paragraph by paragraph:
Nine years after the decision to migrate the computers of the Solothurn kanton to Linux, a radical reversal has come today: all desktops will be converted to Windows 7. Did Linux fail?
The project wasn't a great success from the beginning; those who followed the media must have gotten the impression that it was a sequence of failures and bad luck.
Problems during the migration, software than wasn't ready yet, angry employees who set up a homepage to vent their frustrations and who couldn't get any work done because of Linux - all of this suggests that tax money was being spent on a project doomed to fail. And it has failed now. But to blame it all on Linux would be short-sighted. When you look further, you will see that many factors were responsible for the failure.
The decision to convert to Linux came in 2001. The goal was to have completed the conversion by 2007. However, that goal was unattainable, because some invitations to bid were only sent out in 2006. The choice for the Scalix web interface wasn't a good one: even in June, the webmail interface lacked a task list and some of the comforts of native e-mail clients.
Many special applications could not easily be replaced by Linux solutions. This was compounded by problems with the Konsul database employed by the kanton of Solothurn for editing council decisions: the data file of this Windows software was not so easy to migrate. Project Ambassador was meant to allow interoperability with OpenOffice.org et al, but was postponed until end 2010 because of performance problems. As a result, none of the council members worked with Linux systems.
An internal inquiry among employees showed that about 80% of them were satisfied with the new environment. Ten percent complained about "childhood diseases" of the software, and only 10% were really unsatisfied. But that is still 100 employees, and they were a very vocal minority.
The Swiss media seized every opportunity to bring news of even the most insignificant frustrations in the kanton: a temporary printer problem that was solved quickly became "lasting printing problems". Quotes from employees who claimed to work more productively at home than at the office were gladly printed.
If there wasn't any bad news, the media simply manufactured some. When the state attorney's office held a conference for attorneys in 2009, they neglected to prepare a Windows system for displaying the PowerPoint presentations. The kanton police, who, according to the Berner Zeitung had "successfully defended itself against Linux" helped out and saved the attorney's office from embarrassment. Of course, there are many things you can blame on Linux, but lack of organizational talent of the conference organizer isn't one of those.
Please correct me if I got my facts wrong.
I guess the bright side of this article is that it shows how badly tied up you can become without realizing it. At least now they know they are screwed, and perhaps they'll learn to be careful with new things they implement in the future.
Who are these people?
By the way, any new news about Munich?
Last time I checked only 2000 out of their 14000 computers had been migrated to Linux.
http://lmgtfy.com/?q=swiss+canton
Let's face it: If you do not have a clue hot to do an IT strategy and how to implement it, then Windows can at least give you a semblance of success. Not that anything will run well or cost-effective, but it will run. (For now at least.)
With Linux , you actually have to know what you are doing. It is not really that hard, but some understanding is non-optional. Solothurn made a number of really bad and really obvious mistakes. I am undecided whether this was due to intentional sabotage of the effort or due to incompetence. I suspect a combination of both.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
I'm sad to say that I, as a die-hard AIX/Linux/Mac fanboi have had to recommend migrating healthcare applications to Windows servers, and testing with Windows clients. This is because the healthcare organisations who will look after the applications in three years time at the end of the project, will not have the skills, enthusiasm or experience to run anything that isn't Windows.
I accept that for most people, the desktop is and will be Windows. For some, who don't need encouragement Windows will always be anathema, and all flavors of unix, be they GNU/Linux, AIX or Mac (other versions are available) will be preferable and worth any effort required to use instead. I bet I could have fixed any and all problems that these guys came up with, but when you are faced with users who are baying for a particular solution, rather than establishing what their requirements are, it is a lost cause.
omnomnomnomnom
Sounds as though you can't successfully migrate to Linux if you're badly organized. But maybe that IS a big problem for Linux.
People used to complain that you couldn't use Linux on your desktop if you were dumb. The advantage of Windows was that, although it might sometimes fail badly even for experts, it would generally work okay even for idiots. Pat yourself on the back all you want if you're sure you're not one, but idiots are a big market, and a product that lets them outperform their idiocy is a tremendous thing.
Maybe the Linux desktop is safer for idiots nowadays, but it sounds as though the Linux ecosystem as a whole is not. And maybe this reflects a basic problem with FOSS in general. A million smart volunteers are good at lots of things, but how good can they really ever be at idiot-proofing?
Maybe 6 months?
I have been using Linux for my desktop since 1992 with no glitches whatsoever.....
and again.....
Why is Linux NOT ready for the desktop ????????????
No, thats what SL is like...
I'm always surprised of how this things are implemented. They usually _start_ with a bang and public announcements and trumpets and all. That is, before they have done anything. When you see something like that, you know they are going to have lots of problems, simply because the people that thinks that way (first let's make a big decision and a big press conference) usually cannot think in the way needed to solve the very difficult problems that arise in big migration.
IT systems have become very complex things that pervade our work and private life. They have evolved for decades to adapt themselves to peoples' needs, and people has changed too to adapt to the IT systems. Windows has been part of that mutual evolution for many years now, and Linux hasn't. That's the elephant in the room that nobody speaks about. Linux won't be able to compete with Windows till it has many many years, not of existing, but of being widely used (even in special locations like call centers and so), after it.
For doing migrations I'd recommend the following guidelines:
- Gradually is the thing. Start with localized users, preferably new people that haven't got used to the old system.
- These new users have to get a good experience. If you cannot make it happen for a couple of desktops, sure you won't be able to make everybody switch.
- Provide comparative advantages to the new users. Things like putting big screens in the Linux systems will make other people wish they had been migrated.
- Everything you use should work in both systems. If something cannot (Outlook/Exchange, custom apps, Access databases) then you have to search for an alternative or replacement. If no alternative exists that is good enough, you better forget about the whole idea.
- Even if everything works in both systems, when you set up something new (database or anything) make sure it works a bit better in the Linux than the Windows systems.
- Set no end date for the migration. You are going to keep Windows for a long time, so don't fight it. Gradually is the thing, remember.
Rome taught me patience and assiduous application to detail. Virtues which temper the boldness of great, general views.
I can't read a lick of German, but I work with people who can... So I got a rather quick verbal translation of the article...
These guys basically steamrolled the users onto Linux without doing an adequate evaluation of their environment and without following through with a solid beta program. I'm sensing this *could* have been successful if they'd been more organized about it.
I speak from experience as a guy whose been responsible for a somewhat medium sized (several departments in a large corporation) migration from windows to Linux.
The first thing you do is you go talk to your users and figure out what they're doing for a job and see if Linux actually will work in their environment! If they spend all day writing VB applications that interact with a SQLserver database... Linux probably won't be a good fit.
The next thing you do is go and recruit some beta users who are willing to be guinea pigs. Then setup a system that'll work for them. Be prepared to sit in plenty of offices and debug issues. After the kinks have been worked out and they've been happily working for a week or two... convert a few more users... rinse, latter, repeat. It might be that you'll get all the kinks worked out and you can do 20 people at a time.
A few things you need to consider even before doing this...
* Authentication... is each machine going to be an island? Most corporations really frown on this... are you going to tie them into Active Directory? Setup a NIS bridge? Things to think about..
* Home Directories... Where's their home dir going to reside? In my case, peoples home directories hang off a unix machine running NIS / Samba, so that wasn't such an issue...
* Printers, etc.
Also remember that your users will never give you the full truth... invariably you'll get a call because [insert obscure scan/printer/web cam] doesn't work.
Another thing you need to be able to do is concede defeat in some cases. In each department I've got probably ~20 people who didn't want to switch. Either they didn't want to switch or there was some compelling reason that they couldn't switch, be okay with it and move on.
So this migration had nothing do with Linux not being suitable for the desktop, this was a IT failure.
Yes Francis, the world has gone crazy.
According to TFA, 80 percent of the workers were happy with the new system, 10 percent cited "temporary problems" and only ten percent were downright unhappy.
Quoth:
[...] it is nice to see a government who will do what the majority wants than what a niche minority lobbies for [...]
You, Sir, have a strange notion about majorities and niche minorities.
Or you are a Microsoft shill in disguise.
The real reason is that Anonymous Coward is not ready to use a Desktop.
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
I can understand that they failed if they were trying to use Scalix. It bills itself as an open source version of Outlook but it ends up being worse. When I tried it the clients frequently lost their connection to the server, it was extremely slow and it sometimes had random mailbox corruption! Plus it uses a loathsome 'commercial open source' model where all the good stuff is closed.
Website too slow, did not wait.
better days ahead.
fuddles already said it in his depopulation speech (really just a small step from"we just want to make great software"); if you can pay for your subscriptions, you can stay alive....well....sort of.....maybe.
But unfortunately, that is precisely the rhetoric that the OSS community is accused of brandishing all the time. The bottom-line is people do not care about the principles of freedom of code and other Stallmanisms when they are at work (which may come as a surprise on Slashdot). There are certain applications for Windows that just don't have a replacement on Linux yet, period. I'm sorry you can't argue with that fact.
I know the beauty of Linux/OSS is that anyone can write a replacement app - but I am a molecular biologist with a research grant. I find it easier to purchase the Windows license (which is usually in built in the cost of the computer anyway) and the 5000 Euro worth of licenses I need, than to hire a Linux coder or write the programs myself - it costs more in hours that way. And I'd rather be doing molecular biology , which is my job and expertise, than to be figuring out the innards of the Linux kernel (OSS means I can). To be honest, Windows 7 is rather well-done in my opinion and that makes the move to Linux even less lucrative.
I believe this is the case in every situation where there is a organized system already in place and the computing has to merge with the existing framework - such as the bureaucracy at a city department, or a research pipeline.
Entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem.
If the next guy really sees no alternative other than to migrate everything back to Windows 7 again and pay Microsoft forever, that person is even more incompetent. The point was to save money, and now that the system is ready the other guy wants to ramp up costs again? What a joke.
Replacing windows with Linux using centralised authentication isn't that easy. We tried it recently where I work where we run both Linux and WIndows 7. This meant it had to be AD.
Using ldap for web services was easy enough as was getting win 7 desktops joined up. The hard part was getting Ubuntu machines on the domain...
The first thing I tried was likewise-open which I had a number of problems with. We eventually settled on winbind which worked incredibly well for a samba file server joined to the domain, but for desktops it wasn't ideal. If the domain controller became inaccessible for whatever reason, the whole machine would freeze up even with cached credentials turned on. The other caveat was user's inability to change their domain passwords from Linux. Well.. it was possible but whenever they changed their password, both the new and old passwords would still work. (see http://wiki.samba.org/index.php/Samba_&_Active_Directory#password_changes) It was also impossible to force a user to change their password, it would fail constantly.
If I weren't so determined I would have likely just gone with Windows 7 for ease of use despite the extra cost. There is one more commercial product I need to try and that's centrify. Fingers crossed.
I had "another trouble with the penguin".
I find it easier to purchase the Windows license (which is usually in built in the cost of the computer anyway) and the 5000 Euro worth of licenses I need
I did my MS in chemical engineering focused on quantum chemistry / molecular simulation / molecular modeling / "nanotechnology". In my field the mainstays all run on clustered supercomputers running some form of Unix: Gaussian (which has a Windows version too), DL_POLY, VASP, MOPAC, Cerius2, ... Even the visualization tools often were Unix-only requiring an X11 server. Though some of the grad students wished for more Windows packages, it was pretty much a given that doing real work in quantum chemistry means learning to love Unix.
I'm curious: which Windows-only packages are hot in your field?
Yeah, it clearly shows that CSS cannont compensate stupidity from the planners, and that it is very easy to put the blame on Windows instead.
Even if the baker has no more croissants, will the system with the trademark penguin almost made responsible Bader resulted in this conversation continues," the newspaper quoted the person responsible for the migration.
Fantastic. AI has finally progressed to the point where it can create spontaneous Cantona-isms!
I did some small and medium business migrations towards FOSS software and I can attest that it's not easy.
Key factors I've encountered are: users have a bad predisposition, they always prefer windows because they (think they) know it, they have it in their home computer, notebook and phone, and they don't want to make the effort to learn another system; there are custom developed apps that not always are easy or at least economically feasible to migrate; there are software that are probably easy to migrate but you lost support if your server is not windows, and you are setting yourself in a position where you will be blamed by any problem a computer could ever have, related or not to FOSS.
In my experience trying to perform a 100% migration is not very easy not desirable: except in very restricted environments, every non trivial system will always be made up of heterogeneous OSes and apps. Because of smartphones, laptops and embedded systems, that mixture is pretty much guaranteed these days. So it's better to move early the back systems: replace mail servers, file servers, databases, printservers, backup systems, http and ftp servers, LDAP, routers, firewalls... and make sure they work and are appropriately configured.
Then deploy OOorg to _windows_ WS, perhaps with Firefox and Thunderbird (I always though that the Thunderbird developers would be looking at Pegasus Mail, sadly they weren't). That way your users will be familiar with the apps and then changing the "desktop" will be more easy. Change the users WS OS progressively, change first the WS of the more "advanced" users and try your best to show the deployment of the "new" system as a privilege; if you can, change the OS and put a new WS for it, or at least a new or bigger monitor.
Important factors in success and collaborative users is to provide them with compatibility: you're migrating, the rest of the world no. So you have to make sure your users can communicate with the external world: not only OOorg has to open xls and doc files; they _need_ to chat in the msn network, watch videos on youtube, and so on. Those are as much as important as to be able to do the work if you want your users supporting you.
Be careful choosing a X environment: the popularity of Ubuntu these days hides the fact that it can be obnoxious and overcomplicated for end users. A smaller, lighter and more orthogonal desktop environment (like XFCE) could be better.
Don't try for the new environment to mimic "look and feel" of windows: it's far more irritating to encounter subtle and minimal differences in behavior that to face a complete different approach. Most users spend 90% of they time in two or three apps (mail, office suite, some custom or enterprise app) and they simply don't care about anything else.
Your ultimate goal is to be asked to install "linux" on their home boxes or laptops. That will happen when they feel comfortable and familiar with the new system.
Seriously, the Swiss screwed up. It happens. Get over it, learn the lessons there are to be learned, and move on.
Lesson 1: Don't announce you're going to move everyone, and it's going to happen by X date. Not everyone is going to switch, and X is a variable, not a const.
Lesson 2: Some things take longer to "work with" than scrapping. The town council database app is obviously one of those.
Lesson 3: Stop with the stupidity of using a web interface for almost everything. It doesn't work. It p*sses people off (or as the article says, get them half-eaten). Get devs who can also code with qt or wxwidgets or java or tcl/tk or whatever.
Lesson 4: Sell to your users. Make it a privilege to be part of the transition. You want people b*tching and moaning about not being "upgraded" to the new linux desktop, not the other way around. Marketing 101.
Lesson 5: Provide effective feedback channels, so that people don't feel they need to set up a web site just to complain because you aren't listening.
But if you had read the article, it didn't mention a single such application which was a problem. The main problems were:
* An extremely bad choice of the free email system (it explicitly said that other systems existed which would have provided the missing functionality).
* A proprietary data base (and unfortunately they didn't even choose one of the major ones). There are definitely good free databases; moreover there are also closed source databases running on Linux.
* Mistakes which were completely unrelated to the migration being blamed on the migration.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
1. Vector NTI (DNA manipulation)
2. All confocal microscope drivers and analysis software
3. Origin Pro (statistics and graphic with interfacing for Matlab and Labview
4. Bitplane Imaris (3D analysis on biological samples with a patented,proprietary and the only non-heuristic deconvolution algorithm)
That said , yes , our cluster runs Linux too. We just run whatever works best for a particular application (isn't that what it should be like, rather than insisting on one kind or the other?)
Entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem.
As for March 2010:
Everybody is using Firefox, ThunderBird and OpenOffice
3000 out of 15000 workstations are using Linux
all other units of the City Council started the migration to Linux in 2009
Or perhaps never know. I find that many of the "All Linux all the time," proponents have no real enterprise experience with it. They use it at home, of course, and they may have set it up for a small scale office. From this, they figure that means it is ready for the enterprise. It does everything they want, and they can't see any reason it wouldn't work...
Well one of the things Microsoft is extremely good at is enterprise support tools. As you noted, Active Directory has no peer in the open source world. Anyone who says "LDAP!" or "Puppet!" is really just saying they've never used those things in an enterprise environment (FYI our environment is cross platform Linux/Solar/Windows so we DO use them and I know the pain that is involved).
Well guess what? Having tools that make your job easier and faster is worth money. Savings on license costs can be offset by increased staff time requirements. If the amount of time it takes to deal with problems rises with a Linux setup, that means that it costs more, and you have to factor that in. You can't just point to the licenses and say "We are saving $50/computer/year (or whatever software assurance costs) look at how much we are saving!" You have to consider what the costs to support the system are. Save $1 million a year in license costs, but require $3 million a year in additional IT costs, you have lost money.
None of this is to say that Linux can't operate in a large enterprise, just that it need to be looked at carefully, and objectively. You can't just say "Ya that tool is just like this, it'll work." You need to evaluate if it really does everything you need, and if not what the costs will be in making it do so.
To try and draw an analogy it is something like the difference between Linux and Cygwin. You can't just install Cygwin on Windows and say "There, just like Linux for programming!" It might be in some cases, in other cases it might need additional work, in still others it might not work at all. Sure it is "POSIX on Windows," but that doesn't mean there aren't any gotchas.
Yeah, it clearly shows that CSS cannont compensate stupidity from the planners, and that it is very easy to put the blame on Windows instead.
No, it doesn't show that. Maybe a future story about their problems migrating back to Windows will, though :-)
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
Whatever reason they had, in 2001 they decided the desktops they had (I'm assuming Windows) were not up to the task. In a way, from all the problems we still have today in Windows, it can be said the M$ OS wasn't working for them (Windows was not ready for the desktop, in current parlance).
Would it work with Macs? Should they revive OS/2? I think it's pretty clear the only alternative was Linux -- back then and now.
Well, suppose it didn't work and they now return to Windows?
The old problems will return, too, and they can expect a lot of higher costs forr which the taxpayer will have to pay; also, as recently discussed, Windows licences are for use, not ownership. Which means: no matter how much one pays to M$, one does not get to own the software, even in its closed version.
IOW, M$' TCO is infinite.
If it all works out well (even if not considering the viruses, worms, DRM etc.), there will be a bitter aftertaste of not being able to cope with change, a self-perception of powerlessness and a need to pay because of such incompetence.
To see if in the next 3 years they report a massive increase in the number of malware infections.
Never forget that for many people in Europe things that are done for the greater good are viewed with suspicion and often disdain.
I'm all for a nice user friendly (are we allowed to say that anymore) version of Linux for the proles, but when will it be better than Windows - or when will it replicate Windows (without the several hours of waiting around)? I would love this to happen. But MS still has the edge of, oh let's use a car analogy: Windows is like a budget family car (in the 1960s!). Gets you where you want to go but if you want it to work well and last a long time without problems you need to be able to get under the hood and do some tinkering. If not expect to bring it in to the shop and have some experts fuck it up for you. Ubuntu is the same - except - if you don't know what you are doing - you are bringing that second hand heap over the border to get fixed by people who speak a different language and are really hard to find.
OS X just works. It does. Really. For the average user it is like a breath of fresh air. Linux is still like a wonky version of Windows. I'm no fanboy. It is just a fact.
http://www.acetonestudio.com
We have a 20-yo confocal that works with OS2 Warp.
Perhaps they should have gone with Nokia E7 instead.
It's said to be the best business device Nokia, or anyone else, has ever produced and comes with the touted ability to create PowerPoint slides on the go
Android will get there soon enough, and then we'll see these devices replacing Windows desktops, first sales and management then marketing then operations, then everyone else.
I'm curious: which Windows-only packages are hot in your field?
Microsoft SQL Server 2008.
From what I can gather, the problem is largely the attachment of their existing, custom business systems to proprietary database management systems and environments. They weren't in a position to get these business systems off and over to any other platform, Linux or not. There's a chance they've painted themselves into a corner now in that they might not be able to migrate to Windows 7 all that easy either.
Are there any successful Linux migrations out there?
"Yeah, this story is pretty self-explaining... good work FOSS!"
Yes, this story is pretty self-explaining... but I question what does indeed explains
So did I, but for a different reason:
"Open Source - News For The Enterprise" is the only source for the story.
Everyone else I found searching Google just repeats the tale as told on Slashdot, as if it were the gospel truth -
and not merely an argument for the defense that exonerates Linux and the Open Source app of any and all responsibility for the debacle.
Powerpoint kills meetings dead.
It also has shiny templates so the incompetent can flash images and text without actually disseminating any useful information. See Edward Tufte for more information.
Altium Designer.
The girls in the secretarial pool say they just can't get their job done without Clippy!
Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
(If you want to help, please vote my comment up. Thank you.)
Mr Kurt Bader, who led this project, certainly would have done some things differently in retrospect. He is actually a good and competent guy though with the courage to promote (F)OSS in Switzerland.
The problem with Linux and (F)OSS in Switzerland is manifold:
- Microsoft has a strong lobbying group in Switzerland that figuratively "bought" several members of the parliament (even members of the socialist party, e.g. Mrs Pascale Bruderer, who worked for Microsoft Switzerland for a couple of years)
- Microsoft's tentacles even reach out to the Federal Council (Microsoft has strong ties to the current President of the Swiss Confederation, Mrs Doris Leuthard)
- Mr Stefan Meierhans, Swiss "Preisüberwacher" ("Mr Price", chief of one of the Swiss antitrust authorities), is a former PR expert and lobbyist of Microsoft Switzerland. He was appointed by Mrs Doris Leuthard (surprise, surprise).
- A couple of days ago, Mrs Leuthard announced the establishment of a new eEconomy Board organization that is supposed to offer IT advice to the Swiss government and its related organizations. The appointed chief of this organization is the current CEO of Microsoft Switzerland, Mr Peter Waser. Other representatives of big US closed source software vendors are part of the board, but not a single representative of a local open source software company. Original story.
So, is anybody surprised that (F)OSS is having a difficult time in Switzerland?
Further points to think about:
- In Switzerland, the cost of labor is high compared to other costs (hardware, licensing fees) that typically occur in software projects
- From a costs point of view, Linux has mostly advantages when labor costs are relatively low and hardware and licensing costs relatively high
- The Swiss government hasn't fully understood yet the importance of
-- open document formats (trust, reliability, sustainability, openness)
-- open source software (security, trust, sustainability, creates local jobs instead of sending most of the added-value overseas)
Call to action:
It's a shame how the US closed source software industry is lobbying in Switzerland and even more how easily many of the Swiss politicians and members of parliament fall prey.
Please help promoting (F)OSS in Switzerland by complaining here:
President of the Swiss Confederation, Mrs Doris Leuthard
former President of the Swiss parliament, now member of the parliament, Mrs Pascale Bruderer
Preisüberwacher Mr Stefan Meierhans
eEconomy Board, led by the CEO of Microsoft Switzerland, Mr Peter Waser
or here (list of the most important Swiss parties):
CVP, a major conservative-catholic party (party of Mrs Doris Leuthard and Mr Stefan Meierhans)
FDP, a major liberal party, in about what the "republicans" are in the US
SP, a major socialist party, in about what the "democrats" are in the US (party of Mrs Pascale Bruderer)
SVP, a major conservative party
GP, the greens
GLP, a small green-liberal party
PDA, a small socialist-communist party
EVP, a small conservative-protestant party
SD, a small conservative party
Thank you for your support.
A bit like states in the US. The real question, to my mind, is WHY DOES A CANTON HAVE A CIO?
If you're going to spend money why don't you just buy a damn SBS and use AD?
The GP did use AD. Re-read this quote from the GP, my friend:
This meant it had to be AD.
If that doesn't convince you, read this quote, then read up up on the description for the likewise-open package.
The first thing I tried was likewise-open which I had a number of problems with.
If the GP wasn't using AD, then what the heck were they doing using a tool that provides "authentication services for Active Directory domains"?
All well and good, but don't forget that Joe /six Pack's clever uncle / brother in law invariably uses Windows and is the go to person when it come to not being able to open a zipped virus on a formerly healthy computer. Please don't give humans too much credit for basic intelligence. It just isn't there.
http://www.acetonestudio.com
3...2...1....
They should have split the blame on GNU/Linux :P
There's a few things that people like to do with their computers that Linux isn't very good at. You can manage, you can find alternatives, but there's still always going to be some tasks that are easier or more effective in other systems. Remember the '80s, where all desktop publishing had to be done on a Mac because there simply wasn't adequate software for the other platforms? Or the '90s and early 2000's, where that was repeated with video editing?
For an enterprise situation, particularly one where the management wants to micromanage what people can and can't do with their systems, it's simply easier to do everything on Windows. That doesn't mean that Windows is a better platform, or that it's not possible to do everything on Linux, but enterprise Windows has a lot more money being poured into its development, and a lot of good has come out of that. Modern windows is quite stable (especially as compared to the 9X kernels), and from an enterprise perspective, management, especially when dealing with large networks, is simply easier and cheaper on a Windows system.
When the tools/management ability exist in Linux to make deploying a large network as hassle-free as it is for Windows, then you'll start to see more enterprises making the switch. Unfortunately, the extra man-hours needed, as well as the extra pay rate needed (a good Linux admin is rare, a competent Windows admin is a dime a dozen) make it prohibitive for enterprise to deploy.
We are a Windows/Solaris/Linux shop and central authentication and management is a big problem. Using an AD as the backend would probably have been easier, but our UNIX guy would not accept any situation where Windows was the core of the system. So we use LDAP. However OpenLDAP was not at all suitable for the purposes, Sun Directory Server, which is free but the servers it runs on are pricey. It is also no longer available from Oracle so we are going to have to consider what to do. That then required the use of IDsync, which wasn't free, as well as a good deal of custom programming. The current solutions works, and has an LDAP server and AD that are sync'd to each other, but are running separate and one can continue if the other fails.
It also means that management of the two kinds of systems is totally separate. Other than logins, which are of course global (the whole point of the system) and automounting storage, nothing else is shared management wise. Windows is managed through the AD, Linux through Puppet, at least when Puppet works (it is rather problematic). Solaris is more or less all central, no apps on individual systems, only central apps because of management problems. Windows is per system, of course. We have different support people who deal with different domains of the system.
At any rate it works, but it was not easy to make work. Also none of this deals with migration, this is side-by-side support. I wouldn't even want to think what it would take to try and support some of the things done on Windows on Linux instead. It would NOT just be "Oh use OpenOffice instead of MS Office," never mind that even that would be problematic (OO doesn't do everything MS Office does).
The problem (conveniently illustrated by the below) is that your Windows software, is not under your control. You're a sharecropper, and if the people making the software go away, you're shit out of luck.
You say it works well, but without the internals, you think it works well-- until it blows up. You think it works well-- because, likely, you don't know enough computing to alter what's inside the black box and make it work better.
P.S. "Whatever works best" "for a particular application..." is a warning-bell phrase :)
Yes, this story is pretty self-explaining... but I question what does indeed explains.
Perhaps it illustrates that even Linux can't make up for poor planning :)
"The second saddest thing about the Swiss is that they think they combine the creativity of Italians with the organization of the Germans; the saddest is that in reality it's the other way round."
-- Oscar Wilde
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
I say, it works well because I can use my experimental cross-checks for the software to know that it does the job well. Very often we use our own knowledge to see if that results look correct - the standard sanity check. There is some commercial software we don't control. But we do often build our own devices (mostly specialised microscopes) and accompanying software, and work closely with vendors for other devices. Technically, we don't control the software, we are the customers and beta-testers, so to speak. I think that the place I work at has enough physicists and engineers to know a thing or two about computing - we haven't found a reason yet to go in hyperdrive about OSS.
Entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem.
I was curious about this, so I asked a friend who is natively multilingual in German and English. Here is what he had to say:
Which is funny, because from a relational database standpoint MS SQL Server is mediocre. I won't say it's *bad* because that depends on what you need. It has two big advantages: its integration into Microsoft's tools, and the fact that its not sold by Oracle, the company with the most evil salesforce in the universe (at least since the demise of Cabletron). I once went to a meeting with some Oracle sales managers where we discussed possibly changing our product's support policies to Oracle only. The Oracle "people" at the meeting seemed friendly enough, until I realized they were all freshly dead zombies.
In any case, regarding the mediocrity of SQL Server, a mediocre known quantity is often a good choice for projects. While databases play a key role in modern systems, most projects are not database-centric, but rather UI and external system interface -centric.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
1. Vector NTI (DNA manipulation)
2. All confocal microscope drivers and analysis software
3. Origin Pro (statistics and graphic with interfacing for Matlab and Labview
4. Bitplane Imaris (3D analysis on biological samples with a patented,proprietary and the only non-heuristic deconvolution algorithm)
You have to admit that that is not a typical setup - I imagine that the typical desktop they were providing had a more mundane combination of applications.
Expectable? I suspect most PMs who specialise in migration projects would think all their birthdays had come at once if they got anything close to those numbers.
'Twere ever thus:
And let it be noted that there is no more delicate matter to take in hand, nor more dangerous to conduct, nor more doubtful in its success, than to set up as the leader in the introduction of changes. For he who innovates will have for his enemies all those who are well off under the existing order of things, and only lukewarm supporters in those who might be better off under the new
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
That is exactly how it works in the corporate world.
You submit bugs and pay Microsoft for support. Then they fix their product and sale it to someone else with all the bug-fixes.
So i don't see your point.
Free-software = Free but may pay for support, free upgrades.
Nonfree = Initial purchase, pay for support, pay for upgrades.
WHY DOES A CANTON HAVE A CIO?
What exactly are you complaining about? You don't think a State Government here in the US doesn't have enough IT infrastructure and equipment so that it needs someone looking over it so that there's an overall strategy for service delivery? Usually, entities as small as counties here in the US are responsible for delivering enough services that the IT needs of each of these become relatively significant. Someone has to make sure that departments talk together and, hopefully, standardize so that one could achieve enterprise discounts for them (and, no, I'd usually rather not have Joe Schmuck from the IT department handling that sort of negotiations). Do you object to the label "CIO"? I tend to agree. The adoption of "corporate" titles for "governmental" jobs cheapens both, as they have distinct constituencies. However, it seems that for purposes of compensation, there needs to be some sort of titular compatibility, so what else is one to do?
That is all.
Any positive opinion towards an M$ product should not be tolerated
Slashdot is not an open discussion about technology. Could we possibly get an IP ban for the parent as well? There must be an easier way to get rid of these dissenters.
Apparently they like their OS like swiss cheese---FULL OF HOLES---------LOL
"All well and good, but don't forget that Joe /six Pack's clever uncle / brother in law invariably uses Windows"
That's exactly one of my points: that they *DON'T* use "Windows". Specially for the untrained eye, almost the only thing in common between "Windows 3.11", "Windows 95", "Windows XP" and "Windows 7" is the "Windows" tag -and even for systems operators the changes are anything but trivial. About the same can be said of productivity software like Ms Office.
Despite of this, on their minds, XP->7 seems to be no migration with no training involved while XP->Gnome (and I say "Gnome", not Linux, since the end user in a coporate environment all that "see" is the desktop environment, not the underlying OS) is an almost ubeareable burden. Any IT guy can tell that from the point of view of the people "merely" using the desktop both changes are about the same.
I think we should point that as a magnificent success of Microsoft marketing.
It's an interesting problem, and having worked in a physics lab before I can understand a lot of the points you are making. However, I suspect that if you were to team up with other molecular biologists to create the software you need it would cost you all less money over all. Probably a lot less money since R&D costs (of which development costs are only a portion) are usually less than 10% of the operating costs in a software company. And since you are in a very specialized field, a few research teams are shouldering the entire cost of development (plus marketing, distribution, management overhead, profit, etc).
The thing is, I totally get the point that you'd rather be doing molecular biology than writing software. However I further suspect that there are some people who wouldn't mind writing software (possibly as a sideline). It is probably in your best interest (both from a financial point of view and a control point of view) to encourage that kind of development. Surely you can't tell me that you would rather not have the ability to modify the software, even a little bit. Like I said, I once worked in a physics lab and I know that people in labs would ultimately like to be able to tweak everything.
So I get where you are coming from, but I don't quite understand why you prefer the status quo. Even if you don't hire someone directly, sometimes it only takes encouragement for someone (maybe even in another lab) to start a free software project. And it needn't be the whole kit and kaboodle. Probably there are some small opportunities you can take advantage of, while strategically working to control your own tools.
"Everyone else I found searching Google just repeats the tale as told on Slashdot, as if it were the gospel truth - "
That's interesting too. How is it that even before starting the migration there was a strong campagins against it on general media and now, after its failing there seems to be just one side talking when one would suspect those that campaigned against it would trumpet it an give their overall point of view too?
Is it that only the open source advocates are airing their POV disregarding the critics or is it that once the job's done the powers that pushed the critics prefer to remain silent knowing that their critics wouldn't stand critical-eye scrutiny?
I'd expect some more info coming in the next days if only from the "why you shouldn't touch open source with a 10 foot pole" Microsoft marketing engine.
Can't seem to get sound working in Ubuntu on a desktop with an nVidia GT 240 w/ HDMI. No sound is a huge deal breaker.
And for some reason I appear to get more screen real estate under Win 7. I guess it's the top bar. Using Firefox in Ubuntu it's just something that is noticeable and irksome. And I can move the top bar, but it seems out of place anywhere else. And I can hide it, but the hide functionality doesn't seem to work well if you are clicking things at the top of the screen while in Firefox.
Tell 'em they can either keep their current pay & switch to the less-costly-to-deploy&operate Linux LTSP, OR
they can take a 25% pay-cut to pay for the licensing, electricity, anti-malware, anti-virus, & excess-managment required to maintain the proprietary-system-of-systems.
Let THEM choose...
(:
I did chemical engineering as well (BS not MS). What you are referring to is a very specific type of modeling, which requires a lot of computing power due to the modeling of all the atomic interactions etc. If you are using a cluster of computers or even super computers, you will need to know UNIX or some variant in addition to some console/X11 programming. As an example, AMD donated about 18 rack mountable servers to one of my professors to do protein in cell membrane modeling. They ran linux and the program that the professor wrote.
A large chunk of chemical engineers in the field work with hysys (windows program; if they are doing processes) or some other proprietary programs depending on the industry. Now take into account the relative size of molecular biology graduates versus the chemical engineers. Chemical engineers are dwarfed by the sheer number of biology and molecular biology graduates, and most havent ever touched a unix system. The software companies will create and market software for those people, which will be windows. Specialized software for specific applications will use Unix if it is required.
Looking at it as a whole, I would say that windows is usually more utilized by a majority of people for applications that are used more frequently. Smaller segments (compared to the whole), such as yours, would need something like Unix, that is why you use it.
I know it's not the best explanation but the way to think about it is this: You use linux, but you don't represent the majority. The majority use windows programs, are trained on windows programs, are productive using them. A good IT plan would have that at its core.
To some extent I agree with you; However, if we take this as an opportunity for learning lessons, that says that clearly there weren't enough clear good practices in the Linux community which would guide them away from this.
Another lesson is probably that there's lots of space for consulting companies which have experience in rescuing such migrations.
Another lesson is that data migration is a pre-requisite for application migration which is a pre-requisite for OS migration. Big bang conversions are extremely difficult.
The correct way to think about this is that we (F/OSS people) failed to get a customer. That happens; most deals don't come through; but this was close enough that we should take a "lessons learned" session and try to work out how to do better next time.
=~ s,(.*),<sarcasm>$1</sarcasm>,g if any_point_you_wish();
At least MS SQL Server can tell the difference between '' and (null).
Comment of the year
Whoever rated this post as a "troll" post didn't read it and has no idea at all about the situation in Switzerland. I assume that was maxwell-demon.
I can confirm that all things written in the post are true. Obviously, some people can't live with the truth. That's sad.
If the Slashdot community can't distinguish between good, true comments and bad, wrong ones, I'm out of here as I have better ways to spend my time.
True. On the other hand it has the least orthogonal trigger language of any commonly used RDBMS, and has an absolutely dreadful parser that can't be trusted with unusual cases (like bound variables in subqueries) and is unusually restrictive about the use of column aliases. These are issues that don't matter to most MS-SQL users, who really like the integration with the MS tool stack.
On the other hand, the Oracle peculiarity about '' and NULL although aesthetically ugly, has almost no practical importance.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
Let's be honest, with Linux you save money but with Windows you focus on what you really want to do, since even if somebody doesn't know how to use Office, they are looked upon as ignorants. When you deploy OpenOffice, those "ignorants" have the excuse to pass the blame on you. So sometimes, especially when it comes to government deployments and lazy employees, it's just better to stick with Microsoft or whatever the common cultural denominator in technology is.
Uh, UNIX $HOME was for thousands or tens of thousands of desktops. I fail to see why "With AD you can do this to thousands of desktops" is a killer feature.
Really.
After all, if you have 10,000 desktops that are all different, you're going to have a shitstorm for either Linux or AD.
If you have 10,000 desktops and about four roles, then your 10,000 desktops becomes four. And AD doesn't make a difference.
"-Group Policy applies to OUs, Sites, Domains, and (after 2003/GPMC) allows you to do security group filtering."
And security group filtering is WHAT when it's at home?
Limited run processes? Group execute.
Web access restrictions? If you're on a properly segmented LAN, then your DHCP can give you all the locality needed.
If you need per-user restrictions, yes, that's available in writing to a ~/.mozilla file.
"-User John is in the Call Center department. He needs certain rights locked down on the machine. You create John's AD user, throw them in the call center OU, and they'll get all the policies applied."
Why didn't John in the Call Centre department not have the rights locked down? And rights for WHAT? Access to printers? Again DHCP and default kprinter profiles sort all that out.
Really, you're just using jargon that you've read in the blurb for AD and why it's so leet.
"-Later on, John is moved to the Sales department. Sales has a different set of policies, say, his machine is more open and lets him customize it a bit more, he needs certain software,"
a) if you're on a different segment, or the machine is named with a "Sales" moniker, then agan DHCP can sort all that out.
b) if the user moved jobs not place, then again, the user gets a default profile written since effectively he is a new John, this one working in Sales.
"he needs a different company homepage,"
WHY? He's moved DEPARTMENT, not EMPLOYER.
Shit, this is the problem I have with AD fluffers. Making shit up that I have NO CLUE why businesses need to do it, merely that they CAN do it, so they do.
That's if they even do.
" requires different browser security zones. You simply drag his user to the new OU, reboot his machine, and he's good to go."
And ~john has a different ~/.mozilla setting, done when he changed job. Reboot after setting it up and he's good to go.
The cost of windows licenses may be tiny compared to other costs, but when those costs include the support for the desktop, and the CAL to let the desktop access, say, email, printers and shared disk, then the licensing cost for the desktop is still huge.
"But trying to deal with it as a corporate desktop with the whole 3 year upgrade cycle? Unless you are willing to shell out for workstation class hardware for the entire place every 3 years the headaches probably wouldn't be worth it"
Can I call bullshit on this one?
Ta.
What the HELL is the problem with desktop class hardware on linux? 1995 wants their complaints back...
No, we want our OSs to run the applications we want to use. That's not on Linux.
:D
So make up your absurd little jokes. Guess who's losing the game?
Just keep on sucking them Linux dicks and act like you're fighting the good fight.... we'll keep making progress and ignoring your cunt bitch asses.
On the other hand, the Oracle peculiarity about '' and NULL although aesthetically ugly, has almost no practical importance.
Sez you. I've seen tons of Oracle databases that are forced to use a surrogate value for '', since the language DB has no support for it. I mean, true, the workaround is there, but it's one of those "why should you *have* to work around it?" things that drives me batty.
But the software stack thing is true, too. Regardless of the DB quality, I'd rather stab red-hot steel spikes into my eyeballs than work with OracleApps again. Ugh.
Comment of the year
Most of what is written either sounds fairly typical for Microsoft (they've been caught harassing other countries in similar ways before and were also caught bribing officials regarding the ISO standardization of their proprietary format, and their behaviour with regards the anti-trust verdicts in the US and EU has been.... questionable at best). I could be wrong, but I suspect that some have marked the parent post down because the style makes it look more like an attack ad than a considered post. Way too many people are trigger-happy with the moderating. There are also people who abuse moderation points to score political points, knowing damn well that too few people metamoderate to catch it and there's next to no consequences.
However, ripping away the presentation and looking at the actual detail, the substance seems sound and credible. I couldn't tell you if it was a factual statement of what happened, but I can tell you that it would not in the least bit surprise me. Open Source advocates in the EU (especially) would do well to see if any government-level Open Source projects there show evidence of corruption - the media LOVES corruption scandals, and the EU has shown it has no opposition to large quantities of free money from Microsoft fines.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
The problem (conveniently illustrated by the below) is that your Windows software, is not under your control. You're a sharecropper, and if the people making the software go away, you're shit out of luck.
For this to be a remotely convincing argument, you need to present a somewhat realistic scenario in which it might happen.
You say it works well, but without the internals, you think it works well-- until it blows up. You think it works well-- because, likely, you don't know enough computing to alter what's inside the black box and make it work better.
The same is exactly true of OSS software. To the end user it's a black box, and if they need help with the internals they have to pay someone else for that help.
Hmm....
From the above comments:
1. The customer is a fool
2. The deployment team is a bunch of morons.
Slashdot conclusion:
We don't like the customer.
We don't like the deployment team.
Our product is perfect as is.
We will wait for a new customer and new deployment team.
Would-be-commercial developer's conclusion:
We can't choose our customers.
We need customers' money to survive.
We have to educate the deployment team or provide our own one.
It is our fault that morons can't deploy and use our product.
All our engineers to be switched to 60 hours-per-week schedule until even morons can deploy and use our product.
Yeah, it clearly shows that OSS cannot compensate stupidity from the planners, and that it is very easy to put the blame on Linux instead.
My interpretation is that a decision to go OSS was made without properly determining if the needs could be met with OSS. Linux and OpenOffice were certainly not ready for the desktop in 2001 (I won't debate whether they are now). This started with a pet project with a lofty idea of moving them to Linux, expecting that it would lower TCO. It was poorly planned and implemented. The OSS software they chose didn't actually meet their needs.
So the new CIO comes in and decides to stop pouring money down the hole, and implement an industry standard email system and desktop environment. The sad thing is that the users will get to experience another transition that may or may not go as smoothly.
Remote administration on *nix systems is so easy that it astonishes people that come from an MS Window background. Also your desktop admins are typically also the server admins since you no longer need a dedicated mail server admin to keep MS Exchange boxes from falling over.
That means time savings so you need less staff. I look after a mixed environment of 120 systems and have to spend a disproportionate amount of time on the 25 MS Windows machines - but I still have time to test out new software. In a similar MS Windows shop there were four of us putting in a lot of overtime. Now I don't make close to twice what I did when I was one of four people, what does that tell you about the expenses in those two cases?
Also since there are few licence costs (and the commercial software we use has floating licences) that means you can have spare machines lying around to be swapped in when something goes wrong. Try asking for an extra MS Exchange licence to do that and see what accounts say. It's also easy to keep desktop machines configured identically so that you have a spare desktop machine you can swap over to the user in minutes - no $1000 or so in extra licencing costs for a spare machine.
I other words, the "extra expense" tactic is a pre-emptive lie where MS salesmen are attempting to accuse other platforms of something that is true on the MS platform. It's childish and quite disgusting.
The computers are only there to do tasks. If that task requires software that only runs on one platform then you use that platform. If not you use whatever gets the task done with the least hassle and least expense instead of a stupid pissing match where supporters of an upstart system built on the principle of being just good enough to be sold makes wild claims about the others.
Antivirus subscription costs alone clearly point out the lie.
"Exchange is basically a pop3 service. Hardly anybody uses Outlook's calendar and nobody uses SharePoint. Companies are having the worst time attempting to shove that down employee throats. Sticky notes are way better."
Our organization stretches across North America, and we use Outlook, it's calendar, and Sharepoint. Now, while the thousands of employees that make us up still might qualify as "hardly anybody", I doubt we're alone.
We migrated from Lotus Notes, and let me tell you, I'm much happier.
I don't know how you get the idea I did it. Anyways, the Slashdot moderation system doesn't allow to moderate on a story you already posted on, so I cannot have given that moderation. But I can assure you, I wouldn't have given it even if I had been able to.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
ignoring the fact that at the time he arrives, the hole is already mostly filled.
At least that's what I get from the article.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
Kinderkrankenheiten: Growing pains.
http://barrapunto.com/ - News for nerds, en español
Here's some news about Munich.
"Here's some news about Munich."
That's from last March. I meant something a bit more up-to-date.
As for interacting with other agencies, I've been using a Linux desktop since it was available. For at least the past 10 years I've sent files to Windows people and they have never known the difference. I've also fixed Excel files that Windows, even Microsoft themselves couldn't fix. I just brought it up in the Linux spreadsheet program, saved it and it was ok again. Didn't lose a thing. It did complain that it had a Character 0 in the file where it didn't expect it. To me Microsoft shouldn't have thrown the whole file away just because of that. I was the last ditch effort. The guy was about to cry. He had been working on that spreadsheet for 3 weeks and it had saved it so he deleted his backup. Me - No problem.
I'm curious, what program are you using that is available only on Windows? In the past it seems to me they were only available under Linux or Unix. Most scientific stuff is under Unix/Linux. When I see Windows trying to do a Unix/Linux job I ask about it. Often the scientists complain about it. Crashing, losing data, etc. It just isn't up to the task. Sometimes they will even tell me that they were told to use Windows by management. I felt long ago that Microsoft should sell their OS and move all their apps to Linux. That would really make a lot of sense.
Our office had all kinds of fun dealing with the migration from MSO 2003 to 2007. Some of the biggest annoyances had to do with how the two file formats and apps handle color very differently. Things that were blue in 03 were suddenly pink or orange or something else in 07. Plus, most of the simple colors everyone was used to in the 03 dialogs (like "red" as #FF0000 or "blue" as #0000FF) are hidden away in "advanced" subdialogs in 07. And why? No one can figure out why, unless it's simply change for change's sake, or some further attempt by MS to justify making people upgrade.
And I'm not even going to go into how 07 (mis)manages bullet and numbering formats...
Cheers,
"What in the name of Fats Waller is that?"
"A four-foot prune."
Interestingly, we never hear any news stories about how annoyed people are to switch to the next version of Windows.
The one time I have transitioned a business over to Linux was when their attempt to move to Vista failed horribly (a software limitation to how many computers could be connected to the server at one time). After spending hundreds of dollars, and still running against one brick wall after another ... I reminded them that Linux would have solved their problems for a couple hours of my time. I set them up, and they have been happier than larks for the last 2 years.
I'm not a bird, I'm a super-advanced flying stealth dinosaur!
I know it's not the best explanation but the way to think about it is this: You use linux, but you don't represent the majority.
I was merely curious, not pushing any particular agenda. In my day job now it is largely HTRI and ASPEN which are both Windows programs.
While I agree that the majority of engineers and scientists don't use supercomputers, I can say that very very few supercomputers run Windows -- the TOP500 lists only 5 such supercomputers. If you are doing any serious work in the high performance space (nuclear, molecular, weather, ...) you are going to be seeing a lot of Unix(-like) systems.