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German Foreign Office Going Back To Windows
vbraga writes "The German government has confirmed that the German Foreign Office is to switch back to Windows desktop systems. The Foreign Office started migrating its servers to Linux in 2001 and since 2005 has also used open source software such as Firefox, Thunderbird and OpenOffice on its desktop systems. The government's response to the SPD's question states that, although open source has demonstrated its worth, particularly on servers, the cost of adapting and extending it, for example in writing printer and scanner drivers, and of training, have proved greater than anticipated. The extent to which the potential savings trumpeted in 2007 have proved realizable has, according to the government, been limited – though it declines to give any actual figures. Users have, it claims, also complained of missing functionality, a lack of usability and poor interoperability."
Let's blame the report rather than being introspective about real usability problem with Linux.
I can't see how anything could possibly go wrong.
On topic, this situation seems to be a chicken and the egg. Until a lot of people are using Linux, switching from Windows on a mass scale isn't feasible.
Switzerland and Spain are doing great with OSS in government. What makes linux a bad match for the German Foreign Office? Or what are they doing wrong?
We have scanners and printers running no problem in our office on Ubuntu. Why exactly does he mention having to program printer and scanner drivers?
They might have a legitimate problem but from the information presented it sounds like poor excuses when someone asks for the exact figures and he responds with the need to write drivers. It sounds like something Microsoft would say from their "get the facts" campaign.
I am sure that with the money they spend in Windows licenses, they could have bought new compatible printers and scanners. Come on, most high grade, networked all-in-one printers and scanners are compatible with Linux.
... the cost of adapting and extending it, for example in writing printer and scanner drivers ...
Why are they writing their own drivers? As a sizable buyer of equipment (the government, not the single department) they could simply tell HP and other vendors that the government will only be considering equipment that has Linux drivers.
While it's very likely that Microsoft-addicted users complained, I am absolutely certain that no resources were spent on "writing printer and scanner drivers", thus making the whole claim untrustworthy.
Someone has to be investigated for corruption -- IIRC, in Germany it actually something that matters.
Contrary to the popular belief, there indeed is no God.
right... it's much easier to be interoperable when everyone is running the same (MS) crap... morons, that's not interoperability....
as for writing printer drivers, well, their fault for not selecting a manufacturer that makes sure it's hardware is compatible, such as HP
We still have some staff members using typewriters. I shit you not.
Never underestimate just how reluctant people are to change.
Especially when there is no incentive to do so.
And you want them to work harder to learn something that does the exact same thing except its cheaper for you.
And you expect them to get the same amount of work done different system.
And you cut their pay.
And their money isn't worth as much anymore.
And they could probably earn more as a bar tender.
Ways to make a change feasible.
Rule #1: If it doesn't make sense to the person doing the work to switch ie. no discernible benefit your screwed before you even started.
Rule #2: Build solitaire directly into clones of word and excel.
Rule #3: Build facebook games directly into all office apps.
As the article states, the reasons given are implausible. More likely, the move is politically motivated.
FTA:
Henning Tillmann, a colleague of Oliver Kaczmarek, the SPD MP who raised the question, and a member of the SPD executive committee's web policy discussion group, told our associates at heise Open that the government's response was not satisfactory. "The reasons given for the return to Windows are implausible," says Tillmann, "We need the figures."
It sounds more like a change in IT leadership to me.
moi
is not that they're moving back to Windows, but that they're moving back to Windows XP. I could understand it better if it were WIndows 7. Although they'll inevitably upgrade at some point, it seems a lot of hassle to go back to an inferior operating system for a transitional period.
The reason I think Windows 7 would make more sense than XP (aside from all the support and security issues), is that Windows 7 really does offer something that neither KDE nor Gnome do which is a very simple and easy to manage environment. I like both Windows 7 and my KDE desktop running on Gentoo. I like Windows 7 because it is really slick. I like my Linux box because it's powerful, has all the tools I need to do advance things I like to do. The trouble is that someone like me is an edge case. I wouldn't want to see KDE or Gnome attempt to emulate Windows so much that they lost the powerfulness that I like about them (KDE more than Gnome is my preference mind you). But similarly, I think you couldn't fully incorporate the power of Linux into Windows 7 without losing some of that slickness and simplicity. There seems to be a natural divide between the two where either attempting to bring in the qualities of the other is likely to spoil some of the good stuff. And unfortunately the German FO users are going to be the sort of users who want slick simplicity, rather than crunching power. I say unfortunately, because Windows will cost them more.
Aide-toi, le Ciel t'aidera - Jeanne D'Arc.
That's funny, I'm typing this on a Linux system because it gives me what I want. See, I can use anecdotes as evidence too!
Evidence of what? I don't see any non-personal claims in SocietyoftheFist's post other than "desktop Linux was never going to happen" (which so far is quite correct).
Nonsense. Modern desktop Linux like say Ubuntu do just about everything an average Joe is gonna want from a Windows or Mac machine. The real issue is people become overly fond of their apps/interfaces/polish/brand names/conveniences of their familiar (windows/Mac) machines, and refuse to subject themselves even to the tiny mental effort needed to try out a new system/way of doing things.
And as the poster below comments how people in some other ("developing") parts of the world people are not so stubborn in refusing to adapt, the reason being that they probably don't get so attached to their known systems.
I'm from Latin America. And honestly, most Linux users here use it for not having a choice (no money for a copy of Windows or by imposition of the work).
And I must make it clear: The problem is the Linux desktop , not the Linux server. The server works perfectly, but the desktop depends on much more than a good kernel to be useful for the average user.
Religion: The greatest weapon of mass destruction of all time
It's all down to how much your time is worth.
If your time isn't worth much then spending all day fiddling with Linux systems to get things working is OK.
If you're a big government then paying admins/consultants to fiddle with machines rapidly becomes very expensive.
In my own experience of getting ordinary people to use computers, Linux computers needed a lot more fiddling then Windows machines. I suspect the German government is finding out the same thing.
No sig today...
To be fair, that applies to most people in most areas of life; people like the things that they're used to, that they know how to use and don't have to spend ages thinking about.
Or are you saying that if I took your Linux machine away and gave you a Mac instead, you wouldn't find it annoying that not all the apps were the same and that things didn't quite work the way you wanted them to? I know I find it annoying when I switch between OS's and something I'm used to isn't there anymore.
Linux as a desktop doesn't do everything I want it to, so I still run Windows; as a server, on the other hand, it does everything I want it to for some tasks, so I use it and where it doesn't, I use something else that does.
Microsoft staff + vendors posting as AC in 3...2...1...
Just as people who work on Open Office or Ubuntu or Django or anything else that isn't produced by Microsoft will also post on Slashdot, sometimes logged in, sometimes as AC. What's the problem? You're implying that anyone saying something positive about MS or their software must be doing so because they have a financial interest. That isn't so. For example, if I had a choice between using MS Excel 2010 or Open Office, I would certainly choose Excel. If I have a choice between running Apache or IIS, I will certainly choose Apache (unless I need some particular integration with IIS by other software). Many of us here discuss things as they are, not because we have some absurd allegiance.
Aide-toi, le Ciel t'aidera - Jeanne D'Arc.
What follows will look like flamebait from a troll to anybody who wants to ignore the truth, but if the situation is ever going to improve, all of us who use Linux and want it to succeed need to stop ignoring reality. Linux users need to learn to take criticism properly. The simple fact is that for most non-geeks, Linux sucks (I have been using it for years and my business runs almost entirely on Linux, but even I find it almost more trouble than it's worth). If the end user has a problem with Linux, the proper response is to say "wow, we need to better understand the users and we need to fix these problems" rather than posting hostile messages on the web (not saying your particular post was hostile, but it often happens when people complain about Linux) that accuse users of being stupid, or posting responses to cries for help that amount to "RTFM!" or "use the force, read the source!"
You ask "what doesn't CUPS support these days?", and I say: all but one of the printers my business uses, and support for that one is flaky..... and why should I need one of the worst applications ever written (CUPS) anyway? I dare you to setup a PC with Linux and CUPS and then ask your parents to do something important with it. Odds are, they'll get frustrated and give up without ever getting a single page out of the printer. If they ever have to add a new printer, they'll never succeed. It's a clumbsy, non-obvious pile of junk that has a non-intuitive user interface. Printing in Linux simply stinks; half the time you get blank pages, or pages of garbage ASCII characters instead of the nice output that any idiot can get from Windows or a Mac with a couple of mouse clicks. No average PC user thinks of firing up a web browser and entering a raw IP address into the URL line to get at the printer controls. In Windows, it's very easy to setup, control, and use printers. In Linux, printing appears to be an after-thought that was quickly hacked-in under extreme schedule pressure with the user interface being setup through the web browser because it was quick and easy for the programmers.
Linux audio similarly sucks (can we please have a single standard programming interface that supports both open- and closed-source applications equally well?!?!?!, scanners suck too (Sane was a good first try.... ten years ago). Have an all-in-one scanner-printer unit? Odds are you'll have troubles. The nearly religious fanaticism for "open" code is only making things worse.... I have nvidia cards in most of my systems and use the nvidia binary drivers (they work and make the Linux boxes every bit as good as any windows box for our custom in-house cad software) but now new Linux distros insist on including crappy open-source nvidia drivers and making it hard to use the good binary drivers from nvidia! Why? Was it because there was no way to make both options easy? Nah, apparently just because some jerks appear to have decided that "open" did not just mean free and open code shipped with Linux, but that actual hostility to non-open code was to be encouraged. When we upgraded some systems and ran into this issue, we had to waste a bunch of time spelunking on the internet trying to find the solution (why did we even have to look? adding support for the new drivers, even as the default, should not have made the newer Linux release even harder to use than a previous release for people who need the closed drivers) That just does not fly for end users, no matter how happy (in an obnoxious "my way or the highway" sense) it might make some coders with an open source purity test complex.
Maybe the Germans needed to add an app to some desktops. In Windows land, you stick an installer for the app on the machine, wait a few moments and you are ready to roll. In Linux land, you might get a tarball or RPM, stick it on the machine, find that there are 5942 dependency issues, you need 3 hours with a high-speed net connection to download and patch everything, need to change compiler versions, need to update glibc, need to update the Kernel, nee
So time spent fiddling with a Windows system is somehow magically free?
I don't care why you're posting AC
In other words: They are able to do their jobs now with what they have and you want to "help" them continue doing their jobs by making them learn something new.
I made money modernizing offices, and the attitude you have shown is counter-productive.
The number one error that office managers seem to make is buying a PC with a word processor and a spreadsheet program and installing it on each employee's desk. After which they instruct the employee to learn how to use it, and quickly go to their superior and brag about how they modernized the office. The mistake being that no effort was made to understand why the employee was so productive, and giving the employee a general purpose tool to replace what they were accustomed to using. This results in the employee having to learn something new "to make someone else's job easier" and the employee "knowing" that the office manager is trying to make himself indispensable by introducing something into the workplace that only he understands.
In one of the offices that I "modernized" there was an employee that used a typewriter to keep up with the inventory. It worked flawless for him, and since the trucks arrived very early in the morning, he had all workday to do the tallies. He would white out the totals and add new truckloads to the bottom of the list, cross out the truckloads that were no longer at the warehouse, add up all the numbers, and put a new total at the bottom of the list. He would then make photocopies of his "master list" and send them to the other office workers. He did this every day for the past 15 years, and he was able to do all this quickly (much faster than I thought possible). I was able to "win him over" by creating a specialized spreadsheet application that allowed him to continue to work the way he was accustomed to, and he saw that the instantaneous totals made his job easier. The key was to make the software conform to the worker.
Today I see the reverse being done. Terminals that had forms that the data entry clerk could quickly fill in are being replaced with window machines running software that don't even come close to being the same thing. Worse I've seen terminals being replaced by windows machines running terminal emulators. This shows a lack of thought by IT. No wonder employees despise them. Of course IT people are accustomed to windows, so they don't see why the employees are so problematic...
I did this all in the 80's when personal computers in the office were new. I'd thought people would have it easier today.
These comments are my own and do not necessarily reflect the views or opinions of my employer or colleagues...
+1.
OS platforms are tools. Much like hammers and screwdrivers, one tool does not fit all. Pick the best tool for the job, move on. Ideology be damned. Hammering nails with a screwdriver just because of some religious devotion when you could get the work done far quicker with a hammer is retarded. In the business world, that sort of shit will get you fired (eventually).
There are things that linux (or bsd) do very well. There are others that they don't (and often these are areas where Windows or OS X excel). Work out what you want t do then choose the appropriate platform. Much of the time this will result in a mixed environment.
I run: Windows, OS X, Linux, FreeBSD. Just because you have a hammer, doesn't mean everything is a nail.