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Munich Has Saved €4M So Far After Switch To Linux
New submitter Mojo66 writes "Mayor Ude reported today that the city of Munich has saved €4 million so far (Google translation of German original) by switching its IT infrastructure from Windows NT and Office to Linux and OpenOffice. At the same time, the number of trouble tickets decreased from 70 to 46 per month. Savings were €2.8M from software licensing and €1.2M from hardware because demands are lower for Linux compared to Windows 7."
Linux is better, faster, and more stable. Just the savings on support calls alone would be enormous.
They saved a lot of money because everyone quit. Have fun in the stone age freetards!
Sir may I politely ask what rock you live under.
Get rid of that office shit and replace with Vim and Emacs. :) :)
"Also in the bill were included training costs and costs of migration" FTFA
The transition from Windows XP and Office 2003 to Windows 7 and Office 2010 has enormous training costs associated with it. I would not be surprised if the training for the Linux setup was less, if the kept the basic look and feel. And a wash if the didn't bother.
Learning HOW to think is more important than learning WHAT to think.
It can't be that high considering the interfaces are basically the same between office suites, or windows and a linux desktop. Lets be honest here most people on windows just know what icons they need to click to start office anyways, which is monkey level training.
It says it does take that into account. No numbers are actually displayed, nor time displayed (is he calculating into the future, how far into the past, etc), and there is a 2.8 mil not taken into account for optimization and testing.
Still, a savings of 1.2 mil is a pretty good start.
According to the translation, yes it did. I'd guess that there was some hardship in moving some of the core services, but maybe not... If there were *nix editions of most of the software that the city used, then maybe it wasn't so bad.
I'd like to see what the transition plan was, how long it took, and what software blocks stood in the way. Kudos though to them for saving some cash on something that appears to have improved their reliability.
You would be really surprised how much of this can be mitigated if your sysadmins and support staff already have a Linux backround of some sort. One person with 5 or so years of experience customizing a specific Linux distribution can virtually eliminate amost all of the cost of training for the transition for the rest of the staff simply by creating and deploying some common desktop software and related customizations to make it "more like Windows."
Yes RTFM
Now watch all the rabid Microsoft zealots come out foaming at the mouths.
That's ok. If we don't argue about this, we'll argue about something else.
And these days, it seems like it isn't the MS zealots that come out foaming anymore anyway. (If I say more, I'll be accused of flamesturbaiting.)
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
Training? Ahahahaha, ohohohoho, eehehehehee.
Purely from an office drone's perspective (all software proselytizing aside), training is the bogeyman. The vendors bring it out to scare the customer, but it doesn't exist. It "costs" eleventy billion dollars! Nobody will know how to do anything if you don't buy training!
But big offices make big changes all the time, and they don't *really* do squat for training. They might gather the group around a conference table and click through some slides, and tell everybody that Joe has used the program before and they should ask him if they're having trouble.
Hooray, you wasted a day watching powerpoint and you got a photocopied certificate that you get to scrawl your own name on!
How many offices have gone from something, to Lotus, to Exchange, to Google... etc.? And it's not just email infrastructure. Your billing system as a consultant might change every few years; your code management system as a programmer might change. Your document control system might change. The way your network space is apportioned, the way you print; any number of things can change depending on the way the wind blows in management.
And then, you top it off with planned obsolescence: remember going from Office 97 to Office XP? And then to the new craziness of Office 2010? A little old lady secretary wouldn't be any more confused by moving to Open Office... and she's not getting any training when MS Office 2014 comes out and scraps everything she knows for touch-screen inspired insanity!
Even universities, where you would expect old systems to soldier on for far too long, seem to do that kind of thing in less than 10 year intervals. And the employees who you would expect to get some "training" (office staff, geezer professors) don't--they complain, they suffer, and then they figure it out ;-)
Repetition does not transform a lie into the truth. - FDR
Does it say what the total IT budget is? Hard to say what the number means without context.
(Sorry, I'm not getting the translation.)
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
(original AC here)
Thanks for the info, and for being more polite about it than some of the other responses. Been having problems with random sites all day and couldn't get the translation to load myself.
Why? Competition is good. Even if you think microsoft makes decent products this gives you a sense of how much the competition compares and if it's cheaper, well MS needs to come out with cheaper.
The question with all of these things is whether or not employees are just working on personal laptops instead of linux machines (I've seen that happen a few times, and that's a very serious problem), and whether or not they have any productivity changes. They might, they might not. Depends what they're doing. Saving money on licencing isn't the same as saving money. If you have 10 000 computers (as per the article) but you reduce productivity by even 1% you're worse off with linux than windows since to make up 1% is 100 people, which runs about 10 million euros.
TCO is a hard thing to calculate. It's pretty obvious that you can save money on licencing using linux, and probably training as well (no microsoft certifications). The hard part is measuring employee compliance, the cost of non compliance (this is a big issue where I am, where the IT guys are very pro linux, so about half our staff just do all their work on personal equipment, since it's a university department that's not a huge problem, but for a corporation or a city that could be problematic), and productivity gain/loss. You'd think that in this day and age, when everything is on the web and a web service that most of this wouldn't matter too much productivity wise, if not a productivity increase by not being able to waste as much time with crap that isn't work related since you can lock down linux more easily.
What are they actually using in terms of special apps? I suspect most of it are web-based eGovernment applications, perhaps accounting (SAP?), on top of OpenOffice. The GNU/Linux applications involved are all very stable by now, so this seems like a reasonable decision. The press release actually mentions an increase in workstations from 1,500 to 9,500, and a reduction in system malfunctions. I don't think it is plausible to have either 70 or 46 actual support tickets, as suggested by the description here. That doesn't make sense given the number of machines involved, whether they're running Windows or GNU/Linux or whatever. Besides, the PR compares the modern-day GNU/Linux installation to Windows NT. Seriously? (PS: Was it the German foreign affairs office that changed back to Windows recently, due to general user unhappiness?)
ok, you can start by not posting as AC
Then we can start discussing your hatred of monkeys.
It doesn't even include a study of productivity. The report seems to be done from a pure IT angle, as if IT weren't a tool to achieve goals.
The Cloud - because you don't care if your apps and data are up in the air.
As always the most important benefits of open source software is not highlighted. It is not always about the money saved. The more important issues are: Peruvian Congressman's Open Letter to Microsoft
It can't be the norm that government's IT infrastructure is depending on a foreign firm, with is subject to foreign laws. Especially with laws like the Patriot Act in place and laws like the SOPA and PIPA in discussions.
http://www.mueller-public.de - My site http://www.anr-institute.com/ - Advanced Natural Research Institute
That's GNU Emacs, please.
That's Germany right there! ;)
If you do something well, you don't have to do much support.
Maybe this is the amount of tickets that are created that the help desk aren't able to resolve over the phone?
> Does that include cost of training and transition? Curious what the cost of the changeover was and how long it will take to recover that investment.
It should not IMHO.
> If the change itself is expensive, but the savings of Linux is high, that is a good argument for building with Linux from the outset.
Agreed.
And that's why I consider migration costs (e.g. training, transition, among others) to be Windows costs.
In other situations, it's pretty clear to everyone that if one loses time with an incorrect procedure, one should never complain when adopting the correct solution -- for costs of the bad work are to be assigned to the previous way of doing things. So, moving to Linux because Windows was considered bad implies costs which are related to Windows not Linux.
A clearer example might be given by analogy with units: learning to use the meter is costly for those who are used to inches, feet, miles etc. Nonetheless, such costs are not related to the International System of units, but rather to the current "foot" based one.
Not all corporate computer training sucks. Not all of them are power point flip throughs.
The kind I consider the most effective are the ones where everyone has a computer in front of them and go through step by step exercises with sufficient time allowed for people to actually complete the provided task. They also provide a class book that shows the exercise step by step so that when they are done with the class, they can take the book and repeat the exercises back at their desk.
Even from a support position, I saw value in attending some of those classes just so I would know what the users have been taught and are reasonably expected to know.
But how much have they lost?
love is just extroverted narcissism
Does that include cost of training and transition?
Have you seen Windows 8?
The jump to Linux from 7 is shorter.
Keep beating that dead TCO horse. We know you're lying.
--
BMO
Where is Florian Mueller?
Oh Florian, do you remember this?
"Linux violates 283 U.S. software patents," said Florian Mueller, software developer and adviser to the chief executive of Swedish open source firm MySQL,
Such bold words back in 2004. Such brave effort in trying to get Munich to abandon the plan.
It's 8 years later. Where is the "death by a thousand lawyers," Florian?
--
BMO
You're right; I was being a little hyperbolic, for humor's sake. Heck, I taught a pretty mean Outlook class to a bunch of little old ladies. I wanted to talk about sorting and mailboxes; they just wanted to know how to put background colors in their emails =)
But not all corporate computer training is good, either, and my experience has definitely been defined by the bad. I've got a whole folder full of those baloney certificates, and don't get me started on "mandatory online training." You know, the kind where you click through a powerpoint, guess "C" for all of the answers on the multiple choice test, and then get to go back and do it again once you know the right answers.
Most of the things that I hear about the potential cost of retraining a workforce to use (insert Linux, Google, etc here) seem like they were estimated using the same math that the local news uses to give a half-smoked joint a street value of thousands of dollars.
Repetition does not transform a lie into the truth. - FDR
Or what if you let the employees work on any machine they want as long as the workflow is the same? I was impressed by the effort taken to allow users to bring iPads to work and use them if thats what they want. The trick is you dont let them choose their workflow or applications, you deliver those.
Every time I read Dave Richards blog I am at first astounded at how much they get done with so little money, and then ashamed that I call myself an IT professional. http://davelargo.blogspot.com/
What people in business, and government are beginning to realize is that software is not a scarce commodity.You cant use it up, but you can add to it.Once they realize that their business is not IT, its, well, doing business, contributing code doesn't make their competition any better, but just improves everyone equally.Additionally, with open software, all the dialogs and desktop items can be customized to suit your particular workflow. Linux + Open Applications + open standards are an awesome combination.
Here are some recent videos showing the Linux KDE desktop in action. It is extremely fast and powerful, it beats Windows 7 hands down.
Quick (default) desktop applications overview, aslo intorducing new Calligra Office suite:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QNGMDnh6I0M
Extended applications - Cantor with Octave backend - MATLAB replacement:
http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xem3wd_octave-calculations-in-cantor_tech
All available at no cost this April.
The idea is that moving towards a newer version of windows and office with pretty severe usability changes would incur similar effort anyway, although perhaps less-so on the administration end. That pretty much calls into question additional training requirments if you're pre-ribbon, unless you're relying on your staff to be using newer tech at home.
The Imperial system analogy brings up an interesting point, actually: People don't like change. It's why someone who likes XP and Office 2003 may just plain reject the 'ribbon' look of Vista/7 apps/office 2010... Which explains why xp marketshare will continue to be high for quite a while.
Same with the imperial system - unless absolutely forced, we aren't going to change to another system. Especially one with no tangible benefits for us.
You will always need to install the latest patches and latest hardware drivers no matter what OS we are talking about.
In the case of Linux, installing the latest official nVidia drivers (instead of the garbage open source drivers) will make a HUGE difference in performance.
by that argument the much larger windows ecosystem + software + knowledge base for training is and awesome combination. Which it is. That's why they continue to retain market share.
Bring your own device has its advantages. But it poses problems too, especially at public bodies. Did your employee leave a p2p app running? Who is liable if they start uploading bioshock from your network (we got a takedown notice for bioshock when precisely that happened a few years ago at a previous university). If it doesn't get taken down who is responsible? What happens if an end user plugs in a machine with a virus on it, or has a machine which is stealing 'secret' information (whatever that may be, in our case thats student grades, student medical info, and student ID's)?
Also, I wouldn't count on (or want) most businesses to contribute code to open source. It's not better for them, it costs money they aren't getting paid for, generally they don't have staff for it (IT isn't the same as development, in fact they are almost completely separate things).
they should update their database. i found this on Bing so it's legit for sure.
> UPDATE GetTheFacts savings=-999999999 WHERE vendor != "Microsoft";
> SELECT vendor, savings FROM GetTheFacts;
Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
They replaced Office macros with something more portable self developed. They however still use Office products at all, which is something I cannot understand. I guess they have people who cannot use LaTeX or troff.
Of course you save money when switching to Linux, since then you suddenly have a system you can actually own and control. They can precisely control what their systems will or wont do. You can even fix a Linux system when its broken. (Apart from re-installing) Plus since Linux distributions typically detect hardware on startup (to some extend) you can have a single image for many different hardware configurations.
Plus everything is easily scriptable and designed to fit together. Something that Powershell promises, but won't be able to keep, since old software needs to be adapted for it.
There are of course more reasons, such as Win32 apparently being end of life and Microsoft trying to get rid of it. (It's already out of Windows8 for ARM, probably the first non-x86 plattform to run Windows on, without Win32, Windows NT for Alpha came with an x86 emulator to run Win32 software) And software moving to .net? That's not going to happen. There are a few new projects which use .net, but nobody ports software to that platform, not even Microsoft.
There _are_ tangible benefits, but we're a bunch of whiny punks. "Oh dear god, we'll have to learn to left and right shift in base 10, won't somebody think of the children?" I loathe having to change base every 5 seconds. Regardless, the "United States Customary Units" are defined in SI units anyway, why not skip the middle man?
There is a documentary about the project in German. Unfortunately, there are no subtitles yet. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BisjArTTdhA
Adobe Flash has seen to the 10 year limit. A P4 2.4GHz running a stripped down version of Debian and Midori can no longer play basic YouTube videos.
Perhaps you're doing it wrong. I have a 1.7GHz laptop from 2004 which works fine (runs Xubuntu 10.04). It can handle most stuff on YouTube or Vimeo smoothly enough, including 480p and 720p videos (but 1080p is stuttery). Its built-in display is a 17" 1920x1200 with Radeon Mobility 9600 as the graphics chipset.
Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. - Voltaire
these days, it seems like it isn't the MS zealots that come out foaming anymore anyway. (If I say more, I'll be accused of flamesturbaiting.)
True, their numbers and ardour are greatly dimiished. They seem to be about ready to admit deat. Still, Microsoft has a few nasties left in its bag of tricks, and at no point seems to have equired an ethical spine.
Have you got your LWN subscription yet?
We are currently migrating 4500 seats from Office 2003 to Office 2010. You will certainly not be surprised to hear that this migration costs us a lot and the next migration is coming, windows 7, and outlook, and, and, and, and.
Years have passed and I've seen Firefox in various versions still fail to auto-upgrade on Debian, Ubuntu ... With browser bugs/exploits becoming a bigger issue, have they finally managed to fix that? Or is relying on apt-get upgrade viable nowdays even for such critical (i.e. short-term) fixes?
"I love my job, but I hate talking to people like you" (Freddie Mercury)
It has been a desperate struggle for all in the computer business to come up with the least usable software ever! Apple had a good long run with their 1 mouse button because options just give users options. MS for a long time stayed with its tried and tested "crash more often then the stockmarket" while Unix just had to rely on making even the manual an arcane command line.
But then stupid users tried to improve. Apple was forced to accept that with the PC, users could always just buy a multi-buttoned mouse! Can't have that Jobs said and have the word iOS, to get rid of not just right-click but double click in one go.
Aha! MS said, we can beat that, behold, the RIBBON, a beautifull piece of AI that ensures whatever command you want, you won't be able to find it.
Oops, said Linux, we started to lag. Quickly, upgrade the desktops so that whatever one you pick, you get the worsed ideas ever combined in a buddy alpha package!
But unbeknown to all, queitly working away were the OpenOffice people, show casing just how utterly evil you can get with opensource code... TADA! The text editor with NO USER INTERFACE AT ALL! MWAHAHAHAHAA!
Even Nintendo who gave us the handheld you got to move to control the game but hold still to be able to see can't top that.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
"It doesn't even include a study of productivity."
We are talking about government here..
In DDR Germany the system tells you it is done well, and you don't need support...
I clap to this as a German. Munich is one of the richest cities in the world and their success is the prove of concept for other German cities.
One of the reasons for them to use open source was the need to be transparent to the public and independent from foreign governments.
Thank you so much Munich !
Is it command-line based now? that would explain the drop in new trouble tickets, nobody knows how to file them anymore.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
i wouldn't ask, he probably also believes the world is 6000 years old and thinks we rode dinosaurs for fun.
"The hands that help are better far than lips that pray." - Robert Ingersoll (1833-1899)
That may be your US experience. Things are done a bit more professionally in Munich.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
This is realistic. Remember this is a uniform desktop, and well-educated staff. Not the US+MS situation at all.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
According to various articles on Phoronix.com, the 2D functions of the Radeon OSS driver are quite good these days. So stuff like windows managers runs fine - good for an office desktop.
But 3D is still far behind Catalyst in terms of performance. The benchmarks on Phoronix.com show this on a regular basis.
C - the footgun of programming languages
- Monthly supply of toiletpaper? ...
- The cost of buying new pencils?
- One year of Microsoft license maffia money?
-
Did Munich make sure that everybody has an uniform desktop environment, whatever it is - KDE, GNOME, Enlightenment or whatever? That the only apps that are installed and used are IT approved apps? And put restrictions on what employers can do - like no rebuilding the kernel, changing the DE (if there happens to be a selected one for their use) and things like it?
Also, if Munich has settled on a certain environment, they should stick to it, and not accompany changes that it goes through, be it KDE 4 -> 5, GNOME 2 -> 3 or so on. That's the only way they eliminate future training involved in migrations.
As one of 350 users of OpenOffice in our institution, I can declare that "training costs" and "migration costs" are usually blown out of the proportions = enlarged by contractors.
We have only two IT jobs, and they had two courses and two weeks of intensive phone support for users. After that, all 350 workers used OO with no problems, even those who did not use MS office before.
...change explorer.exe to what exactly? KDE? Gnome? XFCE?
Goodbye Slashdot. You've changed.
If I read TFA correctly from the google translate, they slashed a third of their IT costs total, despite adding 1.500 more clients. That's freakin' awesome! :)
systemd is not an init system. It's a GNU replacement.
>Why? Competition is good
But cooperation is better.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tit_for_tat
You're like that OAP driving the car. Never ONCE been in an accident. Caused HUNDREDS, but they're not visible.
And what does being fluent in Linux have to do with running Windows 7? Would you accept "how can someone fluent with Windows 7 not manage to install and set up a Linux system?"? No?
"I'd rather just learn how to be smart and stay safe on the net"
You're not. You just live under the aegis of ignorance: what you don't know doesn't bother you.
Just wait...if they had upgraded from NT to XP and XP to Windows 7 and Windows 7 to Windows 8, I bet their savings would have been much, much higher.
The honest answer to your query can be summed up on one word: Registry.
The registry needs to be read completely before every boot. Each update or change can create a later entry in the registry that overrides the earlier one, therefore not only does the registry grow, but it has to be read in its entirety in case an earlier setting were overridden.
The registry also doesn't clean up after itself when uninstalled (even for windows system program installs), therefore leaving a little "present" for you in the registry.
Another problem is Windows default virtual memory. IT SUCKS.
For a start, it's an ordinary file. OK, that's an overhead compared to Linux's swap partition, but it means you can change the values later on without having to reorganise your disk.
HOWEVER the real suckage for the virtual memory is the default "let windows manage it". It now expands and contracts the space used on disk for virtual memory which means the file is made bigger and smaller over time. Meanwhile, OTHER programs are writing, deleting and changing files on disk which ensures that what used to be contiguous space for VM is now occupied with some other programs files, and the gaps left by the removal of files elsewhere will be used by Windows to extend the VM.
This ensures that the fragmentation of the VM area becomes a huge problem over time, not even solvable with defragmenting (since it can't move the VM disk blocks which are already fragmented).
What compounds this from suckage to SUCKAGE is that Windows is extremely swappy. It will move stuff out to disk because it hasn't used those pages for a few seconds (OK, exaggerating) and frees up the space, whether it needs to have spare pages or not. I suspect this may be to reduce memory fragmentation, if windows has as shitty a memory model as its VM one. Therefore a problem with VM file fragmentation is not possible to be avoided: the VM fragments WILL be used.
For both these reasons, even if your windows box is pristine and unviolated by either unwanted programs or virus infection attempts, as time goes on, your computer WILL slow down.
But for MS and the retailers, this is a benefit to them: you will buy a "faster computer" with a "new, faster OS" and find that compared to your old machine it IS a lot faster. They have sold you something and pocketed the profit. And some of that speed increase was not because of the OS or hardware upgrade, but because your pristine windows has a clean, small registry and no VM fragmentation yet.
NOTE: I believe one problem as well is that IE writes a lot of crap both to the registry and swapped out to disk, since without using windows on the internet and setting either no VM or a fixed size VM the machine lasts two or three years before getting as slow as it used to in 6 months, even when the only difference is just not connecting to the internet.
Not from infection but because IE shits all over both the VM and the registry when it loads internet pages.
Nearly every company has customized stuff that is mostly built upon VBA or Visual Basic. I use Libre at home but have no idea if automation could be done like in Office (let alone how much time and money such a transition would cost). I don't think there are many stand-alone, secretary-ish workers left that need zero customizations, but I could be wrong.
Another issue is the incestuous tie-in Microsoft has with other specialized software such as CAD. Specifically, some very core functionality in Autodesk Inventor requires Excel be installed (Libre need not apply). Still not sure how that's legal.
I'd like to see some sort of extensive interview with the implementation team, to hear what they ran into in terms of hardware, software, and operational barriers.
What were the expected problems, and how did they solve them?
What were the unexpected challenges?
Were there any expected challenges that turned out to be non-issues?
Training an entire cadre of windows-adept office staff to switch to Linux?
There have to be some interesting and educational stories there, useful tlo a broad range of people: from the corporate IT staffer deciding if she's willing to start this crusade, down even to the small home user that's trying to see if it's worth it to re-educate his entire family.
Really, it would be a fascinating debrief.
-Styopa
Maybe the support system is a command line tool that nobody knows how to use ;)
but I can't believe any organization only has 70 trouble tickets in a month for 7,500 machines, regardless of the OS that is running.
Yea. I call bullshit on that one.
I'd expect 70 tickets per day in hardware issues alone, let alone software, let alone new software.
I love to see echos of the old religious wars. Bless you for raising them.
Do what you can, with what you have, where you are.
The bloat in the Windows universe is crazy. You need faster and faster hardware to stay even with system response times. And the paradigm shifts MS has undertaken to trail Apple in "hip, cool" have nullified the "standards" argument.
By contrast, I'm typing this on a 7-year old laptop running Ubuntu. Still as snappy as the day it came out of the box. Still does everything I need and then some.
And many's the time in my consulting career that I've revived old systems left for dead because they could not run the current version of Windows, by installing Linux on them and configuring them so regular users could function.
That's a major cost savings. If you can continue to function without constant re-purchase of hardware when older systems continue to perform, why wouldn't you?
Do what you can, with what you have, where you are.
You can buy 386, 486, 586, 686 based computers "brand-new" still; and they can fit into a 4" square by 1" box even! They can/do have gigabit network connectors and don't have any moving parts if you use a SSD (where 4 gigs is more than enough for the local system and a clean Linux build)....
I'm working with a 1.5ghz 686 based system right now with all the above specs that is just a little over 2 years old and it works PERFECTLY! No fans so no noise, heat is dispersed into the case itself, 1Gb Networking, 2gigs of ram (more than enough considering all work is done on the big boxes in the back room)... (mine is a slightly bigger case since I have a PCI Card for a Dual Monitor NVidia card.) Cost, a little under $1500.00 and I expect this box to last me 5-10 years easily.
As for "wear" on the SSD, we customize the distribution so that /var and /tmp are actually Ram-Drives (and part of /var a server filesystem for updates), and /home is mounted from the servers so that SSD pretty much goes to sleep once the user starts the X11 tunnel (which for most users would be the default when they login (so they are actually running from the big boxes in the server room)). I'm betting the cut in the budget for the power consumption alone for a large installation would make this a very good deal! (75W warts for these boxes versus 400-800W PS for the Windows desktops x {large installation of users}).
It's not that people are bad at remembering passwords. It's that people are bad at remembering different passwords for different things.
For instance, I tend to have a simple password that has a combination of special characters and characters. I use it wherever I can. But some places force me to do what the GP was describing - sometimes I'm forced to include numbers, sometimes I'm forced to include special characters, sometimes special characters are not allowed, sometimes I'm forced to have a mix of lowercase and uppercase. As a result, my password in American Express is different from that @ Ameriprise, which differs from other places.
Work is something else, altogether - I don't maintain the same password system as I do personally, since there have been times I've had to give it to a colleague due to urgency issues. In my last job, there was the requirement that the password changes every 2 months and couldn't repeat the last 3 passwords, so what I'd do was to make it the company name (slightly modified) and then appended numbers from 2 - 9 each time, and kept cycling them. That was not a problem, except on the day I'd have to change it. But I never made any support calls for that reason.
I do agree w/ the GP that having strict requirements on passwords is lame. The onus should be on the owners, and if someone is stupid enough to put his/her kid's/spouse's/girlfriend's/boyfriend's name as his/her password, the system should let him, but make him responsible if someone guessed his password right and emptied his account of $5000.00.
That is why large companies have automated password reset these days. Last I worked for was by voice recondition — Please say “Angelika — Betina” to reset your password. What a fun. But it worked.
Except you cant control the windows ecosystem. You cant modify or make better the software you use. I have consulted for groups that spend an equal amount of time talking about licensing and working around the vendors forced upgrades as they do getting work done. Contributing to open source is exactly what they need to do, the point being that my 10 hours of time to add a feature that everyone in the world can use is easily offset by the millions of hours others have already put in. Case in point, we coded a connector to a file type for a specific application. That code was accepted back into the the much larger then us project and now hundreds of people are using it in their work
Do you allow access to 'secret' data? Nothing anyone can do be logging into our environment would cause that. If that was the case, then just giving them a computer would cause that. Virus? How is an app that I make going to deliver a virus? These are thin client delivered applications, these are methods that keeps my network traffic separate from yours.
I take it you are in a windows environment. Shifting your way of thinking is the first step.
Not sure why I got marked flamebait and you didn't, you didn't even read the full comment before choosing to be insulting.
I just wondered what they estimated the cost of the transition to be, because if the cost of a transition to Linux and re-training people with firmly set habits can be shown to be substantially higher than the cost of starting with Linux and training those people initially, that's a good argument for using Linux from the start. Which is what I said already, if you had bothered to read the entire thing before going into rant mode like a goddamn kid.
I guess because I didn't frame the statement in zealous praise like a disciple of Saint Jobs praising the next iPhone, I had to get attacked, right? Shit like that is no better than the Microsoft shills, except they at least get paid to be twits while you're being one voluntarily.
Fuck. I like using Linux, but I hate dealing with its users sometimes.
Because in the Microsoft world, training for Windows is always assumed to be Zero for any arguments from the Windows boosters. And that people cannot adapt to anything new.
When we all know that's an out-and-out lie on both ends.
That's why you got modded lamebait.
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BMO
I never said anything about Windows training being nil, nor did I say that people can't adapt. That may be the MS PR line, but it didn't show up here until you (not I) said it.
The only thing I said is it is likely easier (and cheaper, due to less wasted time) to start everyone in Linux than it would be to retrain people and change existing processes. Same thing would be true going the other direction, but there was no reason to even mention that. Why would someone want transition a Linux shop to Windows? A sudden urge to throw away money on software licences?
You're basically saying I rightfully got modded flamebait because I suggested this made a good case for skipping Windows entirely and not giving Microsoft money. I thought you were supposed to be advocating Linux here.
Also, in response to the previous question, since I'm calmer: yes, I've seen Windows 8. It's an abomination that makes Unity and GNOME 3 look good, and the multi-monitor support is awful. I don't know what the hell MS is thinking there. It's starting to look like the KDE (my DE of choice) and Xfce devs are the only ones with any sanity left. That's a totally different rant, though.
€2.8m licensing+€1.2hardware =€4m. So no retraining costs migrating to Linux then?
I run Linux Mint at home & cygwin is a permanent fixture in my windows work machines, just in case anyone wondered about my motives.
Well, sorry for being so insulting...
I took your original question about training and such to be trolling because it was covered in the article even if not a specific number. This goes to TCO.
Microsoft has done a lot of FUD about TCO especially with their "Get The Facts" campaign which revolved around, at best, exaggerated "facts." Their entire assumption is that hopping from a system that is currently being used is too expensive even if the destination is free.
And some of us are hair-trigger sensitive to it after seeing their lies for years on end (and their shills on here) and I went off on you on that last line in my first reply. I shouldn't have.
So anyway, that's my explanation for reading too much into your original message.
With regards to Windows 8, I have run both the Dev preview and Consumer Preview and I find Metro completely unusable on a desktop machine with a keyboard and mouse. And the business of switching between two competing GUI paradigms basically at random (traditional desktop vs metro) to be a nightmare in usability breakage.
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BMO
I shouldn't have snapped either, broke my own rule about rereading and not being annoyed before posting, so I ended up being pretty rude. Sorry about that.
Yeah, I remember that campaign, but I wasn't even thinking about it at the time. The way I see it, no matter how expensive a transition is, if you stick with it long enough, the 'free' part will win over Windows licences. Especially at the prices MS charges.
I just couldn't load the article that day, so I was trying to find out if they mentioned it anywhere, or if it had been mentioned in the past somewhere.
As for being sensitive, I guess I just miss most of the bullshit so I don't expect to hit the panic buttons on other people. I hear about things here and there, but it doesn't usually hit me personally, so I just get a laugh out of it. Debian's been my primary OS for years, so I'm in a happy place where I rarely have to deal with Windows. :)
I can't wait for the fallout when Win8 hits, though. I've only seen the consumer preview, but that was enough. The desktop mode feels broken and switching to the fullscreen metro shit is jarring. God help you if you have to do any work on that.
When Win8 starts making its way to people's new PCs, I'm going to be sitting here in KDE laughing. Everyone mocked KDE for 4.0, but who's laughing now? The KDE users, that's who! >:)
Ugh. I wish I could remember the pass to my slashdot account now. I usually don't comment but once every few months so I never cared, but I kind of miss it, and I'm too stubborn to give up on it and start over.
When Win8 starts making its way to people's new PCs, I'm going to be sitting here in KDE laughing. Everyone mocked KDE for 4.0, but who's laughing now? The KDE users, that's who! >:)
Anyone who likes KDE can't be all bad. 4.8 is just awesome.
Ugh. I wish I could remember the pass to my slashdot account now. I usually don't comment but once every few months so I never cared, but I kind of miss it, and I'm too stubborn to give up on it and start over.
You /can/ have Slashdot mail you a new password.
I know this because some jerk tried to reset my password the other day. Slashdot even gives you the IP of the person trying to reset it in the email.
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BMO
The problem with mailing a password is I signed up a long-ass time ago (5-digit UID) with an email address from a local ISP. Since then, I've moved half the country away and the ISP merged into another one. If I can't remember the password, I'm pretty sure I'm just screwed.
My fault for forgetting the password, I know. I got busy, didn't visit slashdot often, then completely forgot about it for a while. Came back and realised I couldn't login anymore. I try logging in every so often to see if I can remember what the password was, but so far I've had no luck.
And yeah, KDE is awesome. I hated KDE1/2 (used afterstep and windowmaker back then), but 3.5 was just good, and Debian didn't push KDE4 out until 4.2 or so, so I missed the pre-release buggy phase there. All said, KDE's been an awesome ride for me, and it's only been getting better. They seem to get it - configuration shouldn't be removed, and different form factors require different UIs - while everyone else is losing their goddamn minds (Win8, GNOME3)
Actually we're in a half linux half windows environment. Realizing that, in 10 years, not one of our employees or students has contributed a single line of code to linux or an OSS productivity project was a good clue that wasn't a selling point.
I'm on the windows side of things, because I'm a game developer mainly, and an IT guy on the side, and well, no one writes games on linux. PS3 games that run on linux, written in visual studio, android, written on windows. But that's beside the point.
When you realize that contributing to open source is mostly outside the skillset of employees, most of whom are at the level of needing to have .exes blocked, you'll realize why OSS doesn't ,mean anything to most employees. If you want to meaningfully contribute to OSS you need people who know how to actually write code, design code, etc. most people don't. In fact if they try, they'll do more harm than good, and waste time. There's a reason most big OSS projects are actually built on code from big outfits (intel IBM etc.) For them it's worth the investment. For a 20 person shop that sells widgets not only is contributing a waste of manpower resources but the idea that you can somehow magically 'customize it' to suit your experience is going to lead you to having to re build your whole IT infrastructure later when no one has a clue how to use Libreoffice or Linux. Which is what tends to happen, in fact, I'm helping a migration right now, because some jackass got the brilliant idea that their shop should all be on libreoffice because it's free, but equations and fonts aren't cross compatible with word docs all the time, and almost nothing prints the way you expect it to, so guess what? I'm not re-writing major portions of software to fix their problem, I'm getting them a sharepoint server, and MS office, because they know how to use it, and it works with clients. Using OSS is mostly for computer nerds, writing OSS is for programming nerds, those are perfectly legitimate markets (including servers at small outfits). But most people are neither of those things. When you realize that you'll start actually increasing clients productivity.
>I know this because some jerk tried to reset my password the other day. Slashdot even gives you the IP of the person trying to reset it in the email.
really? oh my goodness, thats terrible! at least you have their IP so you can report them to the department of homeland security! all the more reason that all traffic on the internet should be directly traceable to a user (whose identify has been registered with the government).
unless you're fixated on a low user number like a lot of the losers that feel the need to register on this site, you can simply re-register. or continue to post AC, that way the most pathetic of said losers have no way to continually subject you to their superior intellect and people skillZ.
don't sweat it. this guy is a one-trick pony, and this is it. he hops online and acts like a cock to people too far away to punch him in the fucking face for it. the best part is when he calls ACs cowards.
It's not so much the low UID as it is the sentimental value. That's the account that feels like mine, even though I haven't had access to it in years, so I occasionally try (and fail) to remember the password to see if I can get access again.
Hell, I could have made a new one and used it "temporarily" while trying to remember the old, but it's never been a high priority. I typically comment so rarely that it's easier to just comment AC. This thread has been an exception - probably more comments from me here than I've posted elsewhere on the site in a couple years.
cool if you know the hotkeys, useless otherwise
Hey don't blame me, IANAB
Same with the imperial system - unless absolutely forced, we aren't going to change to another system. Especially one with no tangible benefits for us.
yeah who needs less futzing about with strange multiples ... what *would* humankind do with all that extra time? If it weren't for the imperial system (whichever highly fucked up version you prefer) humans wold have developed superluminal travel and be having sex with 3 breasted blue babes from Amazonia (no i don't know wtf I'm talking about).
At the very least there would probably be one extra probe rolling about on mars. Death to anything that isn't metric (except ocean wave height and time measurement).