LiMux Project Has Saved Munich €10m So Far

Mojo66 writes "After project savings had been estimated to amount to at least €4 million in March, more precise figures are now in: Over €10 million (approximately £8 million or $12.8 million) has been saved by the city of Munich, thanks to its development and use of the city's own Linux platform. The calculation compares the current overall cost of the LiMux migration with that of two technologically equivalent Windows scenarios: Windows with Microsoft Office and Windows with OpenOffice. Reportedly, savings amount to over €10 million. The study is based on around 11,000 migrated workplaces within Munich's city administration as well as 15,000 desktops that are equipped with an open source office suite. The comparison with Windows assumes that Windows systems must be on the same technological level; this would, for example, mean that they would have been upgraded to Windows 7 at the end of 2011. Overall, the project says that Windows and Microsoft Office would have cost just over €34 million, while Windows with Open Office would have cost about €30 million. The LiMux scenario, on the other hand, has reportedly cost less than €23 million. A detailed report (in German) is available."

Comments

hope it's true

[turbidostato]

I hope the numbers hold water because that would make a great research case (all info has been public from the begining)

Re:hope it's true

[maxwell demon]

Is Munich full of Jews or something?

Note that in Israel, people use more than 90% Windows and negligible amount of Linux. Given that there's probably no place with a higher percentage of Jews than Israel, clearly Windows is the favourite operating system of Jews. Not that it matters.

And don't forget to pay your $699 licensing fee, you cocksmoking teabaggers!

"Teabaggers" refers to Tea Party movement members. Those are the far right wing of the US. Given that even the US left wing is right wing from European view, but Munich is governed by Social Democrats, i.e. left wing from European view, I'd say they are as far from being Teabaggers as they can be (OK, not really; "Die Linke" would be even more left-wing, as the name already tells: It is German for "The Left"). You are so completely off, that's not even funny. Could you not at least have taken the "communist" stereotype?

But maybe it's just that you lack miR-941 :-)

Re:hope it's true

[Runaway1956]

I see several possibilities here.

1: AC is just retarded.
2: AC is a Microsoft troll
3: AC is a racist bitch who needed only the flimsiest excuse to slam Jews.
4: AC is a software salesman in Munich who lost a lot of money to LiMux
5: AC is simply so small minded that he doesn't understand what ten million Euros are worth

Anyway, moving past AC's tantrum, I wonder if the full saving are being reported? What does it cost for anti-virus protection, in an organization that size? Kaspersky, or Symantec, or whoever, doesn't just give away their software to big cities, do they? Other malware protections, like Spybot S&D have to be purchased, unless they are for personal home use. Not to mention that it takes a lot of IT time to cleanse and restore systems that have been FUBAR'd by malware.

The report seems to just skirt around that little issue. It's possible that they are assuming that all of the updated/upgraded Windows computers would have been running Microsoft's own Security Essentials, instead of a third party application.

Re:hope it's true

[Anonymous Coward]

The T.E.A. bagger movement is based on Taxed Enough Already. It is at its heart a tax protest.

Comparing European taxes to American taxes, I don't think there is anyway on God's Green Earth, that Europeans can conceive what they are about. So best to leave that out.

In the long run, say the next two decades as track record is built up, it will be interesting to see how the German experience with Linux works out. Until then, I would reserve my opinion.

Re:hope it's true

[thetoadwarrior]

If they're true Microsoft will whatever it takes to either silence them or make theirs cheaper. Personally I think their lower pricing for Windows 8 should be considered along the lines of dumping already.

Re:hope it's true

[hawguy]

They report has 15,000 Windows upgrades costing 4.2 Million Euros, or 280 Euros each. That is $362 for each office suite. I can find 1 copy of Office Pro for $179, and 3 copies for $350.

Here's the link: http://www.softwareking.com/office-2010-pro.html

Something smells fishy.

Does your figure include Windows + MS office + windows server & CALs (AD, WSUS, SCCM, etc) + whatever else you need to run an all-MS network? You're not going to install 15,000 desktops by buying 15,000 discount install disks online.

Re:hope it's true

[Anonymous Coward]

tomayto, tomahto.

Re:hope it's true

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd bet the München help desk could compete on the European level in marathon once they have supported 15000 individual discount installs for a couple of years.

Re:hope it's true

[xlsior]

Note that Microsoft Security essentials is only 'free' if you install it on 10 other less computers in an organization; more than that requires additional licensing.

Re:hope it's true

[Anonymous Coward]

6: All of the above.

Re:hope it's true

[blind biker]

1: AC is just retarded.
2: AC is a Microsoft troll
3: AC is a racist bitch who needed only the flimsiest excuse to slam Jews.
4: AC is a software salesman in Munich who lost a lot of money to LiMux
5: AC is simply so small minded that he doesn't understand what ten million Euros are worth

I am open to the possibility that he/she is all of the above.

Re:hope it's true

[Anonymous Coward]

That was the price the quoted for Office alone. Servers etc are elsewhere in the PDF.

They are saying they pay way more than retail for a volume license for Office. It doesn't make sense.

Re:hope it's true

[Anonymous Coward]

So many newfriends on Slashdot these days; they just don't see it.
Don't worry retro-troll, I still love you

Re:hope it's true

[allcoolnameswheretak]

+1 Trollslayer

Re:hope it's true

[Anonymous Coward]

Ballmer went there to make a special discount and he really didn't want Linux to succeed. Even with his lowest possible price at the time, Linux was shown to be cheaper (possibly considering M$-related recurring costs (upgrade, antivirus etc.).

Even if M$ prices would be lower now (are you comparing the same versions?) that could be in consequence of someone standing up to M$.

Also, things are not solely judged on purchase price: besides long term costs, there are strategic considerations and security concerns (like the one recently voiced against a certain non-US modem maker).

It looks to me München may be closer to the German way-of-life (e.g. being self-sufficient) than Freiburg.

Re:hope it's true

[dbIII]

The compliance tracking costs alone would not have been trivial for that many MS systems.

Re:hope it's true

[Anonymous Coward]

we have 12k desktops, 1.5k windows servers, systems center, etc. etc and we are no where near that figure.

Re:hope it's true

[Anonymous Coward]

Microsoft's own estimate for software costs on an enterprise desktop is $301/PC annually, plus $126 deployment costs. Who are we to argue with the people who get the cash?

Re:hope it's true

[ozmanjusri]

Personally I think their lower pricing for Windows 8 should be considered along the lines of dumping already.

The marginal cost of an operating system is zero. Competition is pushing OS prices down to that point. That's the way capitalism is supposed to work, and hasn't for the past few decades.

Lower prices are a good thing.

Re:hope it's true

[dadioflex]

The compliance tracking costs alone would not have been trivial for that many MS systems.

Most people won't understand what you mean. Basically once your business is on Microsoft's radar they will assume you are using a complete suite of Microsoft products and if you aren't licensed for what they think you are probably using they'll send you a letter asking to prove what licenses you do hold. This costs money, be it your own time or as usually happens some IT contractors time. In the EU/UK the whole thing is pretty shady, but if you don't comply you risk having it escalated to legal threats. Before you say it, having a day in court is not what most businesses want, particularly small businesses where every hand is essential and where that day in court represents legal fees and lost revenue. You're not going to get that back.

I've avoided using MS products for years. Some stuff I can't avoid. I have no financials/stock control software with local support that runs on anything but MS server software. You can run everything on the server and side-step Windows licenses on the desktop, but pay about the same for the CAL, or whatever they call it now. I hope what Munich is doing catches on. If you're a home user or a mega-corporation you have the choice to by-pass Microsoft and use open source software. Both these markets are served. If you're an SME you're using Microsoft.

Re:hope it's true

[Anonymous Coward]

its obvious you love reading gay porn (including the weird fetish stuff involving feet and toejam), but to prey on somebody's kid... you are one sick fuck.

Re:hope it's true

[Anonymous Coward]

True. But you could have just said "vendor lock-in". Most ppl would understand, since nearly any big player does that.

Re:hope it's true

[Anonymous Coward]

That's nice. Now that figures have been stated, please provide the company name, LOB, and the gravy. Many thanks.

Re:hope it's true

[Anonymous Coward]

don't forget to pay your $699 Linux licensing fee, you cock-smoking teabaggers!

Where exactly the meme was first introduced is lost to the mists of time.

Re:hope it's true

[jimicus]

That's the academic edition, the license precludes commercial use. Had you continued scrolling, you'd have found retail editions which are rather dearer.

The retail editions listed say 3 installs but IIRC that's 3 installs per user, not 3 separate users each with their own PC.

Re:hope it's true

[jimicus]

It already has caught on, but usually in organisations where the end user seldom needs Office anyway because 95% of their works done with some sort of dedicated application.

Re:hope it's true

[shaitand]

"Teabaggers"

You keep using that word. I don't think it means what you think it means.

Teabagging is first and foremost not a political reference but rather a reference to a sex act.

Re:hope it's true

[Anonymous Coward]

> legal fees and lost revenue. You're not going to get that back.

For lost revenue that is probably at least partially true, but in Germany the winning party will in almost all cases have all expenses paid by the losing party.

Re:hope it's true

[WorBlux]

Plus training, plus miscellaneous hardware upgrades, plus admin and install costs.

Re:hope it's true

[RockDoctor]

Given that there's probably no place with a higher percentage of Jews than Israel,

I wouldn't be so sure of that. Depending on if you're talking about "Jews" as "followers of the Jewish religion", or "Jews" as "descendents of people who once followed the Jewish religion, are married to such followers, or have ancestors who followed the Jewish religion.

In the last few months my wife has got into contact with several friends from "the Old Country" who are now living in Israel. While they've managed to immigrate to Israel successfully on the basis of having some family connection with people who are ethnically Jewish, to a woman, they don't give a shit about the Jewish religion.

Yes, I'm sure that this is causing political and social tensions in Israel. Similarly, the increasing prevalence of Russian as a regular language in the country is probably upsetting many Hebrew speakers (certainly, when I was working there, I could frequently recognise Russian being spoken on the street, while I can't speak Hebrew, or recognise it except by elimination).

Cancelled

[Nerdfest]

I thought I heard that the project had been cancelled because of problems in dealing with proprietary file formats (Word, etc). Was that somewhere else?

Re:Cancelled

[GameboyRMH]

You remember right:

http://tech.slashdot.org/story/12/11/16/207227/german-city-says-openoffice-shortcomings-are-forcing-it-back-to-microsoft

Re:Cancelled

[Dupple]

I think you're thinking of Freiburg

http://news.techworld.com/operating-systems/3411884/openoffice-dumped-as-freiburg-plots-return-to-microsoft/

It was on /. but I can't seem to find the story

Re:Cancelled

[GameboyRMH]

D'oh, that's Freiburg. I put Munich in my search Google!!!

Re:Cancelled

[ilguido]

Freiburg != Munich

Re:Cancelled

[anon mouse-cow-aard]

I think he means this: http://linux.slashdot.org/story/04/08/11/1712204/munich-to-go-ahead-with-linux-after-all

Re:Cancelled

[Zemran]

Freiburg found that Microsoft would pay them well not to be a free burg any longer...

Re:Cancelled

[Anonymous Coward]

by GameboyRMH on Friday November 23, @01:28PM
D'oh, that's Freiburg. I put Munich in my search Google!!!

by ilguido on Friday November 23, @01:51PM
Freiburg != Munich

Way to point out the obvious and already pointed out :P

Re:Cancelled

[Tough Love]

Interesting that "frei" means "free" but Freiburg did the opposite of that.

Re:Cancelled

[unixisc]

Munich is in Bavaria. Freiberg is in Baden-Württemberg

Re:Cancelled

[dadioflex]

Open Source software programs like Open or Libre Office and Google Docs in particular deal with Microsoft's proprietary data formats better than Microsoft does. Good luck getting your five year old Office installation to read the latest version from MS. Meanwhile Google et al can cope with it fine. Perhaps not perfectly, but fine. The lesson here isn't that using non-MS software gives a less than perfect experience, it's that using MS software encourages a less than perfect experience. 99% of users demand little or nothing more than MS was offering in the 90s, but they're forced to upgrade because otherwise they can't read the files they're getting from that work colleague with the new PC.

Re:Cancelled

[Anonymous Coward]

And both are in Germany, Europe. Tau'ri, I think...

Re:Cancelled

[unixisc]

By that logic, San Francisco is the same as Salt Lake City, New York is the same as Atlanta and Chicago is the same as San Antonio. All being in America.

Or to extend AC's glorification/rationalization of Geography ignorance, New York is the same as Marseilles is the same as Bahrein is the same as Shanghai, since all are on earth.

I wonder how AC ever finds his way home, since both his home address street and a different street happen to fall within the same city

Re:Cancelled

[sapphire wyvern]

Let's see. Five year old MS Office... this is 2012, so that would be Office 2007 (+/- one year), yeah?

Which uses the same file formats as Office 2010. I haven't heard of any major file format changes for the upcoming Office 2013, (maybe I've missed a story? I don't really pay close attention). And there is a set of free plugins you can download for editing the docx, xlsx etc file types in Office 2003, which is even older.

Of course, the feature compatibility isn't ever 100% complete between Office versions (otherwise, what would be the point of a new version anyway...), but I generally find that as long as you aren't relying on any new features in a document, it'll be largely fine in older versions of MS Office. But perfect backwards compatibility isn't required is it? You've already established that your personal baseline for adequate performance is

Perhaps not perfectly, but fine.

and that

99% of users demand little or nothing more than MS was offering in the 90s

Implying that someone using Office 2003 or 2007 (five years old!) is completely unable to use files generated in the latest version(s) of Office is pretty disingenuous. At least you weren't modded (dis)Informative.

Re:Cancelled

[chrismcb]

older versions of office have no problem reading newer versions file formats. Just like newer versions can read older versions just fine.

Hard to ask this...

[Anonymous Coward]

...without sounding like a shill, but I'm really curious if the end result works just as well. If all your people are are trained on Windows and Office, switching to Linux and OpenOffice will have an associated cost in terms of retraining and reduced productivity while people become proficient in the new software, right? I don't read German, so I have no idea if those numbers are included in the final cost. And I think it's great that they are showing that home grown Linux can be cheaper (for their needs). I'm just wondering what the *real* cost is in the short term.

Re:Hard to ask this...

[GameboyRMH]

Look at it this way, can it be worse than Microsoft's switch to a ribbon interface? (And now brace for tiles...)

Re:Hard to ask this...

[sjames]

Given the changes MS keeps making in it's UI, the retraining costs and productivity losses happen either way. There is a better chance that Linux w/ OOffice won't cause those costs to recur with each release.

Re:Hard to ask this...

[Anonymous Coward]

Ignoring the drastic UI changes of GNOME 3 and Unity?

Re:Hard to ask this...

[Dan667]

and the ribbon interface adds lots more clicks and finding what you need becomes a lot more effort as you have more than one interface to search.

Re:Hard to ask this...

[cgenman]

They're quickly becoming about the same. Linux and OpenOffice on the desktop are still bad, but getting better. Gnome, etc are all pretty trivial to use until you get to things like adding printers, and Open Office is basically Word 2000. Similarly, Windows / Word is fine, but getting worse. Adding networked printers in Windows seems to keep getting harder, and Word keeps adding more and more junk until it's useless. On top of this Google Docs is more than adequate for most tasks, and the multi-user live-document-editing is an amazingly useful feature. That gives 2 solid Windows alternatives.

People don't really need training. The systems are about the same, and the parts that one would need to train for have become so far away from the normal user's abilities that there really isn't a point to training anyone other than your IT people. And your IT people shouldn't have a problem with any of this.

Re:Hard to ask this...

[Zemran]

We are now several years down this road and their people are now far more trained with Limux and OpenOffice (why?) that with MS and Office. The long term benefits are already being felt.

Re:Hard to ask this...

[sjames]

There is a perfectly good option to stay with the Gnome2 interface. In fact, there are two forks of Gnome explicitly to stay with the 2.x interface.

Re:Hard to ask this...

[Runaway1956]

The report seems to address that added cost for switching to systems the people were unfamiliar with. And, as already has been mentioned - people who stayed with Microsoft products have had their own training expenses!

Remember too, that the report addresses relatively short-term savings. Over the course of the next decade, the saving will increase dramatically. The people are going to need less and less training and retraining as time goes on. IT expenses will decrease, probably dramatically, for that reason. Retraining for upgrades will probably remain. You can only estimate those costs if you have a crystal ball or something to predict how Linux and Windows updates/upgrades are going to work out in the years ahead. But - there will be NO LICENSING fees associated with any of those upgrade.

And, if you scroll up to my earlier post, you'll have to consider the savings in virus infections and recovery, as well as the costs involved with leaking protected data, liability, etc. No, Linux isn't the end-all and be-all in computer security, but it's track record is superior to Windows, which should translate into tremendous savings.

Re:Hard to ask this...

[__aaltlg1547]

...without sounding like a shill, but I'm really curious if the end result works just as well. If all your people are are trained on Windows and Office, switching to Linux and OpenOffice will have an associated cost in terms of retraining and reduced productivity while people become proficient in the new software, right?

Of course it would, but there's also a license cost and a training cost in upgrading Windows and Office to stay current. The total cost of Linux and OpenOffice is less. The real difference would show in productivity. If your staff ended up spending more time fiddling with settings and formats in OpenOffice or in Microsoft Office, that could tip the scale either way. But a city ought to have a policy regarding formatting and adhere to a bare style that minimizes the time spent fiddling with formatting and other unproductive work.

Re:Hard to ask this...

[Kjella]

Remember too, that the report addresses relatively short-term savings. Over the course of the next decade, the saving will increase dramatically. The people are going to need less and less training and retraining as time goes on.

I think that's a generous assumption, since most other people use MS Office they'll be constantly training new users, new administrators and figuring out new headaches with hardware/driver compatibility. Here in Norway our biggest OpenOffice poster boy with 20,000 seats (that's fairly big in a country of 5 mio people) dropped it last year and went back to MS Office after 7 years - you'd think they'd be well into the "long time savings" period by then.

Re:Hard to ask this...

[thetoadwarrior]

Open Office and Linux isn't *that* different for what the average person does with a computer. Most people can't remember where things are in Office and have to search or ask. So it doesn't matter if they're asking for Office or open office.

Re:Hard to ask this...

[Mathinker]

> until you get to things like adding printers

Interesting. I never thought that the CUPS admin interface was very daunting. All very "in the browser" GUI-ish.

Getting networked scanning working under Linux (saned) isn't for the command-line challenged. But considering that Microsoft doesn't even provide a competing standard for networked scanners, the situation under Windows cannot be any better.

Re:Hard to ask this...

[Anonymous Coward]

There have been a few interviews with the limux people, and the scope of what they're doing is a little more than just stick linux+openoffice on the desktop and be done. It includes user training too, among such things as close liason with the users and giving them the tools they need, getting-toes-wet opportunities and smooth changeovers. I suspect we haven't seen the end of the savings yet.

Disclaimer: Not affiliated. Tried to but didn't get hired, which is a bit of a pity.

Re:Hard to ask this...

[Anonymous Coward]

You can choose a UI with Linux and the like where there is a minimal (re-)training and support costs. The document templates and possible applications related to those are of course an additional cost. They might have to change their server management organization as well to a more efficient one as they now can. The Windows Server 2012 would make the same transition probably possible as well in the Windows world.

Re:Hard to ask this...

[Anonymous Coward]

it's easier to google what you need to find than look on that ribbon... talk about a brutal interface change

Re:Hard to ask this...

[bfandreas]

This project has been going on for some time. Also OpenOffice's UI isn't that far from MS Office of yesteryear.

Also you don't seem to be aware of the reality of IT workplaces in large organizations. They use custom software. Software built specifically for them. Stuff that doesn't come up when you google for it. They are used to learning new stuff. The Kreisverwaltungsreferat alone propably has a couple of hundred custom software solutions created from scratch and each of it unprecedented.

They are constantly adapting just fine.

Re:Hard to ask this...

[bfandreas]

Forget the retraining argument. It is pure and utter nonsense FUD which always gets thrown around by MS salesmen.

You NEED extensive retraining when you change to a competitor's product.
You do NOT need retraining when MS changed the UI araound. In fact it boosted efficiency.

Also MS Office amounts propably to a third of daily software usage by the average office drone. The other two thirds is custom stuff they propably also didn't get training for. And the reamining quarter is time wasters like Solitaire.

Re:Hard to ask this...

[Tough Love]

Would you care to share with us which 20,000 seat Norwegian Openoffice deployment that was? I hear the Norwegian national broadcasting orporation NRK is moving to Openoffice.

Re:Hard to ask this...

[Tubal-Cain]

Actually, Gnome3 may be even better for office users.
They already make a mess of Windows; I'd hate to see what happens to a GUI that lets them create/delete panels.

Re:Hard to ask this...

[crutchy]

If all your people are are trained on Windows and Office, switching to Linux and OpenOffice will have an associated cost in terms of retraining and reduced productivity while people become proficient in the new software, right?

remember the introduction of ribbons?

what about metro?

at least OOo still uses conventional toolbars

Re:Hard to ask this...

[dadioflex]

Also MS Office amounts propably to a third of daily software usage by the average office drone. The other two thirds is custom stuff they propably also didn't get training for. And the reamining quarter is time wasters like Solitaire.

Difficult to argue with that math, and keep a straight face.

Re:Hard to ask this...

[crutchy]

You do NOT need retraining when MS changed the UI araound. In fact it boosted efficiency.

do you seriously think that ribbons boost productivity?
naaah... there's surely not anyone as stupid and ignorant as that

Re:Hard to ask this...

[crutchy]

Here in Norway our biggest OpenOffice poster boy with 20,000 seats (that's fairly big in a country of 5 mio people) dropped it last year and went back to MS Office after 7 years - you'd think they'd be well into the "long time savings" period by then.

i seriously doubt that the decision to go back to microsoft had anything to do with savings and everything to do with corruption and payouts

Re:Hard to ask this...

[bfandreas]

Well, whenever I walk over to my Coworkers they are playing one of those games. They still get their stuff(mostly) done. So there is no explanation that will keep the space/time continuum intact.

Re:Hard to ask this...

[GNious]

Training and deployment has been in the estimates from Munich from the get-go, and some reports pointed to them being smaller cost-items than anticipated.

Re:Hard to ask this...

[Anonymous Coward]

We're talking about a Munich Public Administration here: These people get trained anyway. Keeping people up to date and relevant is considered as just "part of the cost of doing business". That's one of the reasons why Germany is doing fine, while some other countries are not.

And are you really telling me that the Ribbon experience caused less training need than Office 2003 -> LibreOffice?

Re:Hard to ask this...

[shaitand]

First you have to find the cups interface. I mean I realize that calling a printing system cups is really intuitive to some people but for the rest something that includes the word "print" might be more appropriate and easy to remember. You actually might pick say "Network Print" out of a list without anyone telling you about it and if they did tell you about it, you'd likely remember that "Network Print" was for network printing the next time you needed it.

Even the driver naming is ugly and unintuitive. For many printers there are multiple drivers with no indication of which is the one you should pick. In other places it actually wants you to use these funky path things.

A simple interface is one where it scans the network, presents a human readable list of printers and you select the one you want and it detects and loads the driver for you. There is nothing about that interface that precludes having advanced and/or more options buttons each step of the way. I have seen this sort of interface on some linux distros but sadly they generally don't actually work worth a damn.

Re:Hard to ask this...

[shaitand]

" But a city ought to have a policy regarding formatting"

Indeed and my experience when working with government entities (here in the US) is that they impose their standards on 3rd parties not the other way around. Generally, it is you who needs to interact with the city. The city couldn't care less if you don't get your permits, licenses, whatever. They'll just fine or penalize you if you haven't managed to get the right paperwork submitted in the format they've dictated.

Re:Hard to ask this...

[shaitand]

Which is actually a huge money savings that they aren't even counting. It is far easier to code those sort of custom inhouse solutions for Linux than Windows.

Re:Hard to ask this...

[u38cg]

I find the hostility to the ribbon genuinely mystifying. Excel is (for better or worse) my primary tool, day in, day out, and the ribbon is far more pleasant to use than its predecessor. The quirks of Excel are a far bigger problem than where to click on things.

Re:Hard to ask this...

[Anonymous Coward]

You just described the GNOME CUPS frontend.

Re:Hard to ask this...

[Anonymous Coward]

Last time I checked, adding a printer on Linux (modern Fedora distros) was only the matter of plugging in the USB cable and waiting a few secounds untill the "printer installed & ready" message popped up...

Re:Hard to ask this...

[fat_mike]

Your post is the reason why Slashdot is screaming towards the ground at 5000 mph. You (leftists) think people are generally stupid and that you have a superior intellect. You'll be one of those people screaming for the government to come help you when a disaster hits.

The people that you think are stupid and still managed to figure out the Ribbon, they'll be dealing with problems, fixing them and looking at you with contempt.

Re:Hard to ask this...

[sjames]

When the nice men show up with the white coat, you should really try it on for them.

Re:Hard to ask this...

[Rutulian]

Gnome, etc are all pretty trivial to use until you get to things like adding printers

What the hell? GNOME definitely has some problems, but setting up printers is certainly not one of them, and that's been true for at least 6 or 7 years. Go to System Settings|Printers, click Add, type the ip address or hostname of the printer, maybe answer a question about some optional features that may be present (Duplexer, etc), done. If you are on a small enough network to be able to use mDNS/zeroconf and the printer is advertising itself, you don't need to type in the ip address or hostname, just select it from the list of network printers.

Meanwhile, even on OS X it isn't any easier. And when setting up non-postscript/pcl printers like the HP Color Laserjet 3600, it can be quite a pain, with each version of OS X having a slightly different workaround to make it work.

And Windows...the upside is the driver is certainly available, just download it and click through the installer. The downside, you have to download and install the driver. For the above mentioned HP on Windows 7, that's a 148 MB download, and it installs a bunch of crapware along with it.

Re:Hard to ask this...

[Anonymous Coward]

Buy a Canon. Install the OEM scanner driver from the Canon Europe site and GUI scanning tool. Done.

What exactly is hard about that? Scanner setups using the stuff supplied with Linux distros is a pain in the ass and the drivers are the usual issue. Bought MP459 from a big-box store and everything works for both Linux (openSuse 12.1) Windows 7 and Windows 8 at home. Wireless no less.

Re:Hard to ask this...

[chrismcb]

I don't really know what you like about the ribbon, but chances are many of the features you like and use are not actually indicative of the ribbon, but where simply introduced at the same time. The main problem with the ribbon (at least for me) is a lot of things I used to be one click away, are not two or more. The ribbon is basically a 2 dimensional sticky menu. Microsoft got rid of toolbars and went back to win 3.1 days... that is what is wrong with the ribbon.

Re:Hard to ask this...

[Anonymous Coward]

Unity. App Button -> type print -> click printing
GNOME System -> Administration -> printers
You don't have to know cups to find printer setup. Perhaps you should stop using a stupid old version of [insert least favorite distro here]
I've used Ubuntu for a while now so I'm not sure about fedora, but I plug in a USB printer and it pretty much just works without a bunch of hassle.
And scans the network, lists your printers is pretty much what it does. Linux and MacOS share the same printer system. I don't know what experience you have, but it pretty well contradicts the way most distros I've used have worked for.... the last decade or so.

Re:Hard to ask this...

[shaitand]

I responded to a post about the CUPS admin web GUI. Those aren't the CUPS admin web GUI.

[rant]Your examples do show why Unity is so aweful in a nutshell though. With the Gnome system they click things and eventually find it. With the Unity system they hit the same "what do I do" and spin their wheels clicking forever and never finding what they need. Unity is a major step in the wrong direction. Hey I know, lets take one of the worst disasters from Vista/7 and rebuild our entire GUI around it![/rant]

The thing is all this should be unified by now. The GUI should have a common fundamental backbone menu structure and common configuration and package element design in the way that LSB defined the filesystem structure and the CLI.

Also. This part:

"I plug in a USB printer and it pretty much just works without a bunch of hassle."

Is not consistent with this part:

"the way most distros I've used have worked for.... the last decade or so."

Perhaps you have seen this but this hasn't been true in general. As a general rule the current cheap $40 came out last week HP, Brother, Lexmark, etc inkjet definitely didn't work out of the box 5-6 years ago. I set up a LOT of Linux desktops during that time with no control over what people purchased they bought random stuff off the shelf at Best Buy or Office Depot that sales monkeys conned them into like people do. Laserjets always seemed okay (certainly not always plug 'n play though) although there often weird margin/border issues and multi-function devices needed extra care.

Work has necessitated that I use a windows desktop for some time now but it has been far less than a decade and SMB consistency might have gotten better and USB detection as well. But I didn't have one cherry picked setup that I built or happen to have a single setup that worked great for me. I installed at dozens of homes with diverse configurations and hardware sets. So I got to see things break and especially with new devices they broke more often than not.

SMB network detection was hit or miss, especially on the corporate side and the tools for being the one doing the sharing were poor and generally required me digging into CUPS and/or Samba directly. Printers were not detected automatically on being plugged in. I had to manually run the wizard which just defaulted to a reasonable guess on the /dev entry and then I was asked to select the printer. An option to load a driver from disk was never given. For a network printer, there wasn't consistency. It didn't remember that I was connected to an SMB network. I would again have to enter SMB information to scan the SMB network. On an SMB network with a password changes every 30 days policy printing and fileshares would all break every 30 days because they had individual saved passwords instead of a universal shared SMB credential store and awareness.

Re:Hard to ask this...

[Mathinker]

> What exactly is hard about that?

I cannot know, since your solution doesn't exactly give enough specifics. Why did you even bother to specify the OEM vendor?

I'm kind of curious, however. How does the Canon GUI scanning tool know which of the, say, 30 scanners on the LAN are the 3 scanners which happen to be within walking distance from your computer?

What does it include?

[Ravaldy]

I'd like to see what that includes on the labour side. I've seen proposals before showing massive savings in software purchases but it didn't account for anything else such as expert labour, training for the staff and the headaches and inefiencies that come with changing users world. Obviously once the dust settles it doesn't matter what software you have as long as it does what it needs to do for the business.

Re:What does it include?

[ewieling]

You are correct. Any proposals for migrating to new Windows and Office versions should include training costs. Do you think those costs would be any different from migrating to Linux and OpenOffice?

Re:What does it include?

[Anonymous Coward]

I would think the numbers must include labour and support.If it was purely software, the savings would be much larger.

Re:What does it include?

[Chrisq]

I'd like to see what that includes on the labour side. I've seen proposals before showing massive savings in software purchases but it didn't account for anything else such as expert labour, training for the staff and the headaches and inefiencies that come with changing users world. Obviously once the dust settles it doesn't matter what software you have as long as it does what it needs to do for the business.

I expect that is why the migration to Office 2010 and Windows 7 was included - it would mean that both sides had a boat-load of training

Re:What does it include?

[Anonymous Coward]

Training costs shouldn't be high. The software is most likely similar enough the users pick it up... and those that don't well you'd have the same problem in windows. We pushed an updated "image" via IBM Tivoli systems manager and the start menu was changed slightly. Most people had no issues, for the others well we got a bunch of help tickets from them (because they couldn't find things since they weren't exactly where they were before but we're now more organized)

Re:What does it include?

[Lunix Nutcase]

Why would they have needed to migrate to Office 2010? Office 2003 with the compatibility packs can read and write the newer office formats with the same UI that they would be familiar with. Also, Windows 7 can be made to look like XP rather trivially. Seems they are just inflating the costs of the Windows side to make LiMux look better.

Re:What does it include?

[turbidostato]

"Why would they have needed to migrate to Office 2010? Office 2003 with the compatibility packs can read and write the newer office formats with the same UI that they would be familiar with."

What makes you think they were using Office 2003 previous to this? When this project started they were talking about migrating away from Windows NT 4.

"Seems they are just inflating the costs"

Even if they could manage to stay with whatever Office version they started the migration from, there *will* be a license migration any time in the near future. Regarding windows licensing, "saving" is merely jumping over one version.

Re:What does it include?

[Zemran]

When I introduced my mother to Linux she was surprised how easy it was as she had heard all the scare mongering. You turn it on and get a desktop, like with Windows. You have a menu like with Windows. You click on items and the programmes start, like with Windows. Do I need to go on or do you all get the idea that she thought it was just like Windows except the really big bad difference... click once instead of twice, which she really liked. I went away and a couple of years later she was using Gimp which I had not shown her. She said she preferred Photoshop on the Mac which they had at art school. So eventually she bought a Mac and learnt another system. If a 70 year old great-granny can get through all that and not see what the fuss is about, I think it is time we starting sacking people who cannot.

Re:What does it include?

[inglorion_on_the_net]

There are going to be switching costs no matter which way you turn it.

Maybe they switch to new versions of Windows and/or Microsoft Office. Depending on which versions they switch from and to, this could provide for a similar or dramatically different (ribbon, metro) experience.

Maybe they switch to Linux and/or LibreOffice. Depending on where they switched from and what they switch to, this could provide a similar (e.g. pre-ribbon Office to LibreOffice) or dramatically different (e.g. NT to Unity) experience.

Even if they don't change the software, there will be switching costs, because people will be used to different software than whatever the city would be refusing to upgrade from.

So, really, there is no avoiding switching costs, no matter what you do, and the study's choice to evaluate "comparable technological level" solutions doesn't seem so unreasonable.

Re:What does it include?

[war4peace]

Training costs shouldn't be high.

costs shouldn't be high.

shouldn't

If I had a dime for each time I heard any of these mindless assumptions, backed up by nothing else than a retarded "gut feeling"... I'd probably have enough to buy Oracle, Apple and Microsoft combined.

Network admin: there shouldn't be any outage.
Result: 6 hours outage happens.

Project Manager: there shouldn't be any cost increase.
Result: cost is tripled.

VP: We shouldn't have any issues with this product.
Result: product bombs.

Et caetera.

Look, if you start anything with "shouldn't", you're in deep shit. Research is key and assumption of/preparation for the worst is key to a successful transition. No change is flawless, and if it is, then it's a fucking miracle.

To the point now: Whenever you deal with such a large change (OS+office productivity suite) for such a large number of people (in the neighborhood of thousands) there WILL be a LARGE dip in productivity. Unless they were producing almost nothing in the first place, which, considering we're talking about city administration here, is very likely.

In my company, we did have a pilot project which aimed at switching from Microsoft Office to OpenOffice. The results were... disastrous. Some reasons:
- Support Personnel had to be trained to be proficient in solving OpenOffice issues experienced by users;
- All support documentation needed to be re-created for OpenOffice;
- We had literally thousands of "How to" requests per week, all related to OpenOffice (e.g. "how do I apply the corporate template to this presentation");
- The company specific presentation master template had to be created from scratch (and looked ugly even after a month's worth of work);
- Turned out that almost half of all Excel spreadsheets used by employees relied on macros to automate stuff. Furthermore, many of those macros were designed around integration with Outlook (e.g. automatically send e-mails from Excel);
- When expanding Excel issues to include formulas present in existing files, it all became a fucking nightmare.

At that point we pulled the plug, because the project itself far exceeded the worse expectations in term of costs and time spent (which became additional cost, of course).

Generally speaking, for small companies (less than 10 employees), a conversion is largely painless. But the larger the company is, the less likely it is to switch successfully.

Re:What does it include?

[Anonymous Coward]

Lucky you, last Sunday I had to hand-hold my 71 year old mother through activating a VISA card in her online bank. Essentially just log in, card -> bank card -> activate -> [type info] -> finish. She repeatedly ignored steps, half-finished steps like clicking the login button but not actually logging in, clicked any menu item that had "card" in it and couldn't find her way out of a paper bag. Also her phone was "not working" but it turns out she wasn't pressing the right buttons - even though she'd written down the steps on a piece of paper. She does not read anything that pops up on her screen, just gives a blank deer-in-headlights look when she can't find the button she expects. She's constantly accusing things of being "broke" because she's taken crap notes and can't follow her own instructions - which she usually blames me for not having the time to do properly.

Then again I suppose she's equally lost on whatever platform she's on so it doesn't matter.

Re:What does it include?

[flyingfsck]

My Mother in Law, had very limited schooling, but ran a butcher shop all her life. At 67 years, she had no problem at all with Linux, Firefox, Facebook and Skype.

Re:What does it include?

[bored_engineer]

Too right. I really like the idea of switching to open/libreoffice, but it simply isn't practical. I have several spreadsheets that I use to get data out of Excel and into AutoCAD. I don't think that I can do this between AutoCAD and Calc.

I also wrote a very large spreadsheet that predicts parking demand based on land-use data that breaks when I use Openoffice. I tried porting it over, but one of the functions I used in Excel wasn't available in Openoffice. I started to write a custom function in Openoffice to replace the lost one, but couldn't finish it, because I still had to work with the first spreadsheet. At the time, I was working ~60 hours/week, and I didn't like the idea of working still longer hours to make this function. I gave up.

That said, I don't think that I represent normal users. If all of the templates were in place, I think most users could switch fairly easily. The problem, as I see it, is that I don't want to have to recreate all of the tools I've made with Excel in another slightly incompatible spreadsheet, never mind the partially automated spreadsheets.

I may give it another shot, though. I just discovered that several spreadsheets that handle external files are broken in the switch from Excel 2003 to 2010. Now, my only choice is to abandon the spreadsheets or port them over to the new slightly incompatible spreadsheet. *sigh* Well, at least my time isn't as much in demand in this job as the last one.

Re:What does it include?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd say that there's a good chance her vision's going and she isn't even fully aware of it. I've had relatives lose senses or cognitive functions and they can get by for surprisingly long by a mixture of going through the motions and going through roundabout ways of doing things that don't rely on the things that aren't working.

Re:What does it include?

[dbIII]

but it didn't account for anything else such as expert labour

You typically need less people for *nix systems since there are multiple easy ways to automate a lot of the work. Even a lot of commercial software can be "installed" by just copying a few directories from another machine and then adding the right licence file. There's a lot of stuff you only have to do once which would have to be done multiple times in a Microsoft environment even with their current level of automation (eg. the registry means you have to do proper installs instead of just rsync from another box like in *nix).
For systems with completely free software you don't even have to bother with licence files - a new system can be a total clone of another with just the hostname changed. If the hardware is different it usually doesn't matter and the right kernel modules load - no mucking about installing device drivers like in MS because the drivers are already on the system. I look after over a hundred cluster nodes, a pile of file servers and a couple of dozen desktops and I still have time to post crap on slashdot.

Re:What does it include?

[GNious]

My Mother in Law, had very limited schooling, but ran a butcher shop all her life. At 67 years, she had no problem at all with Linux, Firefox, Facebook and Skype.

So, you're saying she is used to things that are cut to the bone, leaking all over the place, requires intensive work and in no way end-user friendly? :)

Re:What does it include?

[war4peace]

...And for some reason my post above has been marked Troll.
Rogue moderators?
Listen, the same principle applies for any change, so if a company wants to migrate from OpenOffice to Microsoft Office, they'll be in the same boat and experience the same shit. Just so it's clear that I'm not taking sides here.

Re:What does it include?

[stooo]

>>In my company, we did have a pilot project which aimed at switching from Microsoft Office to OpenOffice. The results were... disastrous. Some reasons:
>>- Support Personnel had to be trained to be proficient in solving OpenOffice issues experienced by users;
>>.....

Limux projects explain how they tackled all of these issues.

Have a look :

http://media.ccc.de/browse/conferences/eh2010/EH2010-3784-de-limux.html

http://www.muenchen.de/rathaus/dms/Home/Stadtverwaltung/Direktorium/Strategische-IT-Projekte/LiMux/Dokumente/2012_Juli_London20120709.pdf

Re:What does it include?

[Kam Solusar]

I'd like to see what that includes on the labour side. I've seen proposals before showing massive savings in software purchases but it didn't account for anything else such as expert labour, training for the staff and the headaches and inefiencies that come with changing users world.

RTFA: "Costs that are not related to the operating system, such as staff and training costs, were identically listed at around €22 million (£17 million) in all three scenarios. Overall, the project says that Windows and Microsoft Office would have cost just over €34 million (£27 million), while Windows with Open Office would have cost about €30 million (£24 million). The LiMux scenario, on the other hand, has reportedly cost less than €23 million (£18 million)."

Re:What does it include?

[war4peace]

I'm glad they do. In German. Which I don't speak.

Re:What does it include?

[crutchy]

poor planning, incompetent leadership and management, personal beliefs and politics, etc... of course its always the software's fault

i'm guessing you were in charge

Re:What does it include?

[war4peace]

Actually, I wasn't. I was gathering feedback from users and then I had to put together presentations based on all the data. It was NOT funny, considering our CEO himself was pushing towards OpenOffice.
I never said it's software's fault. I merely point out that a combination of people, process and tools can make the switch very difficult at best. But hey, let's be ironic, 'cause this would indeed help a lot. Pfft.

There's another part here that plays a great deal: what do your customers use? If your customers use mainly Microsoft Office, it's close to impossible to use OpenOffice internally, because conversions between formats are fugly and PDF can only go that far. But for a state-owned organization this may mean nothing, because they mostly provide public services which don't bring revenue, but quite the other way around.

Re:What does it include?

[crutchy]

how many organisations actually communicate using microsoft word documents or excel spreadsheets?

customers don't usually give a shit about the how (ie formulas in spreadsheets and formatting in word)

if you're not using a portable format like PDF you can't be sure how your document will appear to your customer regardless... for example: you send a .docx and your customer uses Word 2000... they won't be able to open your document AT ALL let alone worry about formatting... at least if you send an ODF you can provide a link to a free program to open and print or edit as required. i know there is probably a free reader for docx, but you can't edit, and if you need to send the original document because a PDF won't do it kind of implies that editing by the recipient is required

the kind of arguments you are making are typical of the corporate world, which is why things don't advance much, but luckily there is at least some inertia building towards open standards like ODF, which will eventually drag corporate cavemen like you into the 21st century kicking and screaming :)

Re:Linux may be cheaper

[Anonymous Coward]

Either can cause corrupted data and failed backups, so I don't see how one can possibly be worse than the other.

Stupid to ask it.

[Anonymous Coward]

Since you can't have been Proficient in Windows 7 until it was released in 2011, staying on Windows would have cost you in terms of retraining and reduced productivity while people become proficient in the new software, right?

And yes the figures are included in the costs.

The REAL cost in the short term is -10mil. In the long term: priceless.

Re:Stupid to ask it.

[Lunix Nutcase]

Since you can't have been Proficient in Windows 7 until it was released in 2011,

Windows 7 was officially released in October of 2009. Also it would have been quite easy to have been proficient in Windows 7 prior to release due to months-long the public beta.

Re:Stupid to ask it.

[Anonymous Coward]

Ordinary users do not use betas. DIAF, troll.

Re:Stupid to ask it.

[0100010001010011]

And as much as I 'hate' the new Windows interface it's really not that different from 2000. The Start Menu is a mess but as far as everything else in the GUI, it's still 90% of where it was 10 years ago.

Re:Stupid to ask it.

[Anonymous Coward]

Ribbon, dude.

Re:Stupid to ask it.

[shutdown -p now]

Ordinary users don't use betas, but your typical member of Slashdot audience is not an ordinary user.

Re:Stupid to ask it.

[shaitand]

It is fair to say that bulk of government workers in Munich aren't likely to be typical members of the Slashdot audience or use betas. Also, Linux and OpenOffice were available to use long before the beta.

It really doesn't matter if its theoretically possible to have been proficient in a platform at some date, the only date that matters would be the one that the city adopts the software since the bulk of the staff wouldn't begin using the software until that point.

Re:Stupid to ask it.

[Lunix Nutcase]

Troll? In what way did I troll? All of what I said was completely true.

Stupid to ask this

[Anonymous Coward]

Since you cannot have been proficient in Windows 7 until it was released, if all your people are trained on Windows XP and Office 2003, switching to Windows 7 and Office 2010 will have an associated cost in terms of retraining and productivity while people become proficient in the new software, right?

Re:Stupid to ask this

[Lunix Nutcase]

1) You could have been using it during the long public beta.
2) Windows 7 can be made to look like classic Windows with themes. For the typical office worker this would have been more than sufficient.
3) Switching to Windows 7 does not require switching to Office 2010 as Office 2003 works perfectly fine on it. And all you have to do is install the compatibility pack to get support for the newer Office formats in 2003.

So basically if their report claims that switching to Win7 requires buying new Office licenses then they are simply inflating the costs to make LiMux look better.

Re:Stupid to ask this

[Anonymous Coward]

If you don't feel the need to upgrade from Office 2003 to 2010 then why do you feel the need to upgrade from XP to Windows 7?

Re:Stupid to ask this

[Anonymous Coward]

1) No you couldn't. Companies don't roll out to everyone in their company beta releases of windows.
2) Linux can be made to look like classic windows with themes. For the typical office worker, this would have been more than sufficient.
3) Switching to Office 2010 is required because the docx standard isn't supported in 2003. Keeping on Windows doesn't require not switching to OpenOffice. And Open Office opens different versions of Office documents more easily than Office 2010 or 2003. No need to install any compatability pack.

So, basically, you have to make shit up to make it appear that maybe they didn't need to retrain. Of course, if they didn't upgrade ANY software, they wouldn't have to retrain.

Then again, they would retrain their staff else why did they train their staff for WinXP? Or why would they train their staff on Linux and OO.o if they don't on Windows?

Basically, you're turning round and round and round making assertions MERELY so you can pretend that Windows is cheaper.

Why?

Re:Stupid to ask this

[gbjbaanb]

not necessarily - whilst any business can stick with Office 2003 or 2007, Microsoft tries their hardest to keep you upgrading - for example, if you are on the SA licencing system (ie for bulk purchases) then you must upgrade to the latest version. No option to keep running old version.

Then, of course, most companies will upgrade anyway, like they upgrade from XP when, technically, they don't really need to. Of course they will upgrade to 7 eventually due to security support, but Office has just as many problems that requires security patches.

so - yes, I'm fine with the methodology of counting Office upgrades in this mix. I'm quite curious why its only â4m though - are they really counting all the Sharepoint, OneNote, Groovy, Lync and other Office bits or not.

Re:Stupid to ask this

[marcello_dl]

1. training for public beta means loss of productivity, worker has to switch from a desktop to another; moreover one is unstable, and the other is a public beta :D
Lots of stuff under windows needs new drivers when win version is bumped up...

2. are there xp official themes from MS? or are they coming from serious software houses that can give support? Because, installing binaries from random little software house which can break at any moment is a worse scenario than getting used to the new system.

3. iirc office 03 crashed more often with 7 and couldn't run under 64 bits. After some time it is fixed but workers would have had to deal with the problems.

All three points have a linux alternative coming up as very reasonable. Besides, the whole matter is incomplete: those who use a lot of FOSS know the advantage of controlling a lot more what goes into your pc.

Re:Stupid to ask this

[Runaway1956]

The report made no such claim. The report specifically states that they made the report as realistic and as fair as possible by assuming that the city would have reached the same degree of modernization, had they stayed with Microsoft products.

See, they aren't running ten year old kernels, or six year old office suites. They are running the latest and the greatest of Linux offerings, in today's real world. Fully updated, upgraded, and patched for stability and security.

I'm a bit curious what desktop environments they are running - maybe I'll go do some searches!

Re:Stupid to ask this

[Anonymous Coward]

I have personally found many issues with working on 2003 and 2010. Specifically Accses. 2010 wants to convert and save as the 2010 format which makes 2003 clients unable to see those changesm, basically requiring 2 levels of databases or matching office versions. I have actually been converting some of our business databases to PHP / SQL to avoid the M$ update hell.

Re:Stupid to ask this

[rbprbp]

Because hardware eventually dies, and it will become increasingly difficult to find XP-compatible hardware.

Re:Stupid to ask this

[Tough Love]

I'm a bit curious what desktop environments they are running - maybe I'll go do some searches!

You don't need to search very far. (Ubuntu with KDE.)

Re:Stupid to ask this

[Anonymous Coward]

True, but the same applies to Office 2003 at some point you are going to have to move from Office 2003 - can you still buy licenses for it from MS? If it runs under Win 7 and MS will sell you a copy then you are OK today, but maybe not next year or the year after that.

Re:Stupid to ask this

[crutchy]

mod parent up

Re:Stupid to ask this

[shutdown -p now]

Switching to Office 2010 is required because the docx standard isn't supported in 2003.

It's trivially easy (and free) to enable OpenXML support in Office 2003.

Re:Stupid to ask this

[shutdown -p now]

2. are there xp official themes from MS?

He referred to the Classic Theme, which is the good old flat gray look that's been there since Win95. That's available out of the box in any Windows version up to and including 7 (but not 8), and is officially supported.

. iirc office 03 crashed more often with 7 and couldn't run under 64 bits.

Office 2003 can definitely run just fine under a 64-bit OS, same as any other 32-bit Win32 application.

Re:Stupid to ask this

[shaitand]

1. Not really relevant. The city isn't going to spend a few hours assessing the individual off the record learning of each staff member. They have to work from the assumption that their staff is first exposed to a new version of software when they adopt it (and in most cases this will be true, office workers don't generally run betas).

2. Highly debatable. UAC and forced driver signing alone would have required substantial user support. It also ignores the licensing costs.

"So basically if their report claims that switching to Win7 requires buying new Office licenses then they are simply inflating the costs to make LiMux look better."

Not so. They are comparing EQUIVALENT costs. They likely are running the latest version of OpenOffice, apples to apples compares the cost against running the latest version of MS Office. But they also have a comparison vs windows with openoffice which would not include new office licenses.

Re:Stupid to ask this

[shaitand]

I don't know about the troll but I'm pretty sure the reason Munich felt BOTH upgrades were appropriate is because they are likely running up-to-date versions of Linux and OpenOffice.org so a fair comparison is against the costs associated with running the latest versions of Windows and Office.

Re:Stupid to ask this

[Smask]

I were dual booting my machine at work with CAD and accounting as the reason for keeping the XP installation. MS Office was dumped early on when there were no native support for PDF generating using macros. When I found Draftsight, an AutoCAD clone, the sole reason left was accounting. Fast forward to the day yet another nVidia based product died, this time the motherboard. (The GeForce 8500 died a couple of years earlier. Bad bumps.) After getting a cheap MB the computer was up and running again. Except if I wanted to keep running Windows I had to reinstall it (or upgrade to newer version based on available drivers) or I could keep on running Ubuntu, which I didn't had to change a thing to get it to boot. Decisions, decisions.

I exported the db from the accounting software using wine and went for a web based system instead (FortKnox). The old software ran in wine, but printing didn't work. If I had upgraded to Windows 7, I would have to buy a new large format printer as well because HP dropped support for my old one after XP.

So nowadays I don't have any Windows installations either at work or at home.

Re:Linux may be cheaper

[Chrisq]

But an incompetent Linux admin can cause far worse damage than an incompetent windows one.

I'm not sure that this is right. Certainly it depends on how you measure damage. In my opinion an incompetent linux admin will likely not have a functioning system whereas an incompetent windows admin is more likely to have an insecure system leaking information.

meanwhile...

[miknix]

meanwhile somewhere in redmoon, a chair flies through the air.

Re:meanwhile...

[Anonymous Coward]

I zi wat you did zear!

No, windows incompetently managed is worse.

[Anonymous Coward]

Because your compromised windows system will infect all your other windows systems even if your admin never looked at them.

And, being impossible to self-diagnose errors when the OS is hiding everything "scary" from you, you need to pay a competent Windows admin much more time to fix.

Windows is free only if you don't pay anyone.

Re:Linux may be cheaper

[gstoddart]

But an incompetent Linux admin can cause far worse damage than an incompetent windows one.

What are you talking about?

An incompetent admin on any system can lead to a total outage and a lack of access to your data and software. If your admin re-formats the drives or otherwise renders your system unusable, no matter the platform, you're still dead in the water.

In what way can a Linux admin break a machine more than a Windows admin can?

I've seen the results of incompetent admins in multiple contexts -- and no matter the underlying platform, they can still screw stuff up to the point of being costly and time consuming to fix.

Libreoffice is the challenger

[Seeteufel]

It is a smart decision to invest into Libreoffice. The Libreoffice Development Conference this year took place at the German ministry of business and technology. Behind the scenes several European governments consider to cut costs with huge Libreoffice migrations. Add to that Libreoffice is a European foundation while Openoffice.org is hold back by Americans. The likely solution to the competitive pressure would be that Microsoft goes open source with its own Office suite. The Chinese demonstrated the Europeans with their Kingsoft Office suite how to do it, how to break free from the Microsoft dependency.

Re:Libreoffice is the challenger

[Lisias]

You have a good argument, but I don't agree that going open source is the more likely way out to Microsoft.

I think they'll push cloud computing first (if ever) going to some kind of open source. This way, the suite itself became expendable without compromising the monopoly.

Re:Libreoffice is the challenger

[Seeteufel]

Actually they will open source Internet Explorer first. Simply because it is a giant waste of capacity to invest into a product without direct cash flows. It's not sold and all that matters is the default search engine. Google on the hand virtually got Chrome for free, all taken from KHTML, webkit and quite a cheap investment. Why did they get their browser? Because they could, and their employees develop probably five other browsers as well which were never turned into commercial products. E.g. ever heard of Classilla?

Re:Libreoffice is the challenger

[epSos-de]

More money for local coders is good in all possible ways. Imagine, if every city and every country would do the same. It would be great to be a Linux developer and it would be great for people too, because something tells me that Microsoft is not paying out as much money as developers could get, if they were long-term working for their local administration or businesses, who would buy Linux support and customization.

Warren Buffett was Right

[BoRegardless]

He couldn't understand the long term viability of a software only business!

Re:Warren Buffett was Right

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe he's a rational principled man and forgets it's perfectly possible to live on fools wishing to part with their money...

Re:Warren Buffett was Right

[Anonymous Coward]

Microsoft hasn't actually been a software only business in a very long time.

Re:wow speaking of shills

[Anonymous Coward]

here is one!

Re:Linux may be cheaper

[Jawnn]

But an incompetent Linux admin can cause far worse damage than an incompetent windows one.

[citation needed]
I have mod points but such a mindless blanket statement deserves more derision than just "-1 Flamebait" can convey. The potential for damage is more related to the depth and complexity of the systems, and to the administrator's skill, than the OS on which the systems are built? No?

How do the numbers scale ?

[Alain Williams]

This is nice because it tells us that with a large migration to a Linux based desktop saves about 1/3. What does this tell us about the migrations that will follow or are not so big ? Different factors pull in different directions.

* Munich is big enough to demand that correspondents use file formats that they can support - this is more than about LibreOffice

* The cost software rewrites (special bespoke stuff) could be amortised over many users

* The overall project costs (design, IT staff retraining, ...) could be amortised over many users

* They are pioneers - those who follow should be able to use their blueprint, avoid the mistakes that Munich made

* They were probably getting large volume license discounts on propietary s/ware, more than smaller organisations would have got, so they saved less

What do you think ? What do you say when a customer asks how much they will save ?

Re:How do the numbers scale ?

[Anonymous Coward]

Munich is big enough to demand that Microsoft give them a cheap deal.

They have to demand Office 2010 formats from everyone since Office 2010 changes the formatting on many complex documents that are in earlier formats (i.e. if you insist that this is not an issue, then LibreOffice does as good a job).

Special bespoke software has to be rewritten for Win7 (and Vista and XP and 8)

many users require many users trained. You can't amortize that cost over many users without scaling by that number of users.

What you say is that Munich saved 1/3 in a complete change in a massive scale. And got a bespoke system set for their needs into the bargain.

Re:How do the numbers scale ?

[shaitand]

I suppose it depends. For instance, is this smaller migration taking place in Munich?

You are right, cities have a big advantage, they dictate the formats and others have to comply or can't do business/get fined/whatever. But any business that does substantial work with the city now has a big incentive to do a similar migration. Lawyers, contractors of all sorts, the list of organizations that are primarily bound by their need to interact with government goes on. Munich is substantial, that means there are LOTS of lawyers, contractors, etc meaning that vendors who produce other solutions like document filing systems for lawyers and estimating software for contractors are going to have a large enough market to justify porting. I've seen a lot of these sorts of apps and in most cases they are old DOS applications that have been adapted as little as possible to make them run on the new OS. Porting to Linux shouldn't really be that difficult for most of these apps.

These type of industry specific solutions are generally the hold-up for small to medium business when looking to move to another platform like Linux. If you are a contractor you probably don't really care that much about the word processor the secretary is using. The estimating software that pulls item codes and costs directly from the Grainger, that runs your business.

Re:Linux may be cheaper

[Zemran]

and a competent Linux admin can do far more good than a competent Windows admin (or is that an oxymoron?). So the moral is hire competent people and sack incompetent people.

Re:Linux may be cheaper

[fwarren]

Whereas when you replace him with a compentent Linux admin, the new admin can probably clean up the files in /etc and get the systems going again. Even a good Windows admin can have a problem with trying to clean up strange behaviours with the mystery meat that is the windows registry. That means the windows guy is going to have to do forinsic work on what's on the box, what's its supposed to do, try an capture progam settings from programs that wont run and then reinstall the OS, reinstall the software and then configure it properply.

vi + /etc over regedit any day of the week.

The training costs

[Anonymous Coward]

Looking at the report, the savings come from not having to buy software licenses (~ €6 million) and hardware upgrades (~ €4 million). They have an additional €16 million in the budget with is applied equally to the all Microsoft, LibreOffice on Microsoft and LiMux cases. That money goes to support, customization, trainings and that kind of thing. The allocated budget for each item is exactly the same in all cases.

I think there's an interesting message there: "staying with Microsoft saves you training money" is simply a myth.

Re:Linux may be cheaper

[Em Adespoton]

But an incompetent Linux admin can cause far worse damage than an incompetent windows one.

What are you talking about?

An incompetent admin on any system can lead to a total outage and a lack of access to your data and software. If your admin re-formats the drives or otherwise renders your system unusable, no matter the platform, you're still dead in the water.

In what way can a Linux admin break a machine more than a Windows admin can?

I've seen the results of incompetent admins in multiple contexts -- and no matter the underlying platform, they can still screw stuff up to the point of being costly and time consuming to fix.

Incompetent Linux admins usually show their hands pretty quickly, as you need to be competent to make things function reasonably. Incompetent Windows admins can keep the system limping along for years while data leaks out the back door and productivity suffers, but not enough to point to the admin doing a _bad_ job (because "everyone knows" that managing backups/printers/network shares on Windows just sucks).

LiMux documentation on Youtube

[phrank]

As a munich resident i follow news coverage of the LiMux project from the beginning. About two years ago there was a documentation on TV (in german): LiMux - Freie Software für München
I am not sure, but I think, that guy with pink hair is a Debian maintainer. Probably, such projects succeed or fail with the competence of a few individuals, if they get the required backing. Also this weekend, a Debian bug squashing party is held in Munich.

Muha, Redmond Meme #3

[Anonymous Coward]

"All interfaces different to Redmond contraptions are EVVIIILLL. But if we Redmondians fuck up user interfaces, that does not count. Ribbon is great and so is MS-DOS 2012/Metro".

First hand experience

[Anonymous Coward]

I had the opportunity to experience LiMux first hand from the perspective of an office worker. The software has been very well adapted to the tasks at hand, and the office assistants also seemed content witd the provided tools; I suppose the goog training played a big part. The office assistant I worked with knew she was not using MS Windows, but he did not care as long as email, printing and his document control system were available.

Re:First hand experience

[chilvence]

This is a point that I think is very under-represented. I imagine a vast majority of the work people do on computers is really indifferent to the operating system being used. Most people do actual real life(tm) work, that is simply supported by a computer, where it serves the function of a glorified typewriter for purposes of simple communication. Mac, windows, linux, who cares?

The only trouble is that the people that actually are dependent on a particular system seem to be the ones that shout the loudest, sowing the seeds of uncertainty in people that would not really be that affected by a change. People are prone to waiting to see how other people fare before they jump in to anything themselves, and so no one actually changes, and Microsoft win again at charging people for something that the other guys are giving away for free!

It makes about as much sense to me as jerks who drink bottled water, but then that's another rant...(hint: you have been able to boil your own since the invention of that thing called fire)

And Unlike Win8

[Anonymous Coward]

..you can keep your familiar Windows-style GUI with lots of Linux distros.

Yeah

[Anonymous Coward]

F.U.D. Thanks for a nice example.

now wait

[Anonymous Coward]

...for all the bribes and kickbacks in support of M$ and all the effects of that.

A seemingly meaningless result

[Anonymous Coward]

This methodology sounds very fishy to me. There is no particular reason to believe that using Linux hasn't affected the work flow in truly significant ways (either positively or negatively, we don't know, cause they didn't check). Using an inferior (or superior, depending on your views), product can cost in ways truly unreflected in the budget. There does not appear to be any (and I do mean any) performance checking included in this, so the result is meaningless (unless you take the truly cynical view that the government never does anything worthwhile).

Re:A seemingly meaningless result

[Karzz1]

There is no particular reason to believe that using Linux hasn't affected the work flow in truly significant ways (either positively or negatively, we don't know, cause they didn't check).

There is no particular reason to suppose that Linux *has* affected work flow in any measurable amount. I am assuming that is one of the original requirements of the system; that workflow remain unchanged or improved. What makes you assume that workflow would be directly affected by this switch? If the transition to new software is properly planned and the associated training takes place, what would directly affect productivity?

I don't necessarily disagree with you, but you have not provided anything to back up the premise of your argument.

You Mean

[Anonymous Coward]

..some German Software-Meisters took a part of the money that should have gone to the Masters of Monopoly, Masters Of Cornering Markers, Masters Of selling half-baked crap ? You mean Bill gates can't shaft the people of Munich so that he can "invest" millions into this "philantrophic" projects ? Horrible Indeed !

Re:Linux may be cheaper

[Anonymous Coward]

In my opinion, the competent linux admin will make sure not have a functioning system if it's not secure.

The incompetent one will be just like the Windows one, just good enough to get things going badly.

Linux Can't Bribe

[Anonymous Coward]

..and of course It Can't Kick Back. The severest deficiency of all in the world of business and government.

Re:Linux Can't Bribe

[jc42]

..and of course It Can't Kick Back.

This is about a political/governmental entity, where such things are not called kickbacks; they're called campaign contributions.

(At least that's how it works here in the US, where the courts have fully legalized it. And I've seen a bit of evidence that similar phrases -- translated into the local language of course -- are rapidly being (re)introduced in many other parts of the world. So you need to update your terminology. ;-)

Re:Linux Can't Bribe

[jimicus]

This comes up every time there's a Microsoft/OpenOffice discussion.

Fact is its simply not true. This fantasy of some slick salesman passing a brown envelope full of unmarked £20 notes in exchange for a big order is just that - a fantasy. It just doesn't happen in most of the Western world for two reasons:

  - Retail margins are so slim that they don't allow it.
  - The risks involved in being unmasked as using dishonest sales tactics are too great.

The most I've ever heard of is being taken out for lunch. Not even dinner.

You want to know how to improve F/OSS's position on the desktop? Fine. You need to learn a few things.

  - Humility. If someone asks a question, there's a reason they asked and it's more likely to be "the answer is not obvious" than "they're stupid".
  - QA. If you can't deliver a working feature, turn it off altogether. Don't release something where bits of the software are just fine and bits are known to be dire if you can help it.
      - This doesn't necessarily mean everything has to be perfect. But some parts of open office are frankly beta quality and should never be included in a finished release.
  - Setting reasonable expectations. You tell someone "it's fine for most practical uses but it does have shortcomings; if you run into any let me know because I may not know about them myself", you'll get far more positive results than if you tell them "It's all singing all dancing and will make the tea!" when it patently isn't.
  - Self awareness. If you can't see any shortcomings at all in your product, how can you improve it?
  - Marketing is vital, that's true. But you can't polish a turd - frankly, if any of the big boys like IBM thought it was worth marketing a free desktop with paid consultancy to set it up, they'd have done so years ago. I think it tells you all you need to know that the company that's doing most to get Linux powered devices with a user interface in front of people (Google) is avoiding all the traditional desktop commercial application clones like the plague.

Re:Linux Can't Bribe

[GameboyRMH]

Retail margins are so slim that they don't allow it.

On MS Office, of all pieces of software? LOLOLOL

Re:Linux Can't Bribe

[stooo]

>> But some parts of open office are frankly beta quality and should never be included in a finished release.

You used the obsolete openoffice. Found your problem. Use Libreoffice.

Re:Linux Can't Bribe

[jimicus]

LibreOffice is a lot better, granted. But it's still lipstick on a pig.

Re:Linux Can't Bribe

[stooo]

I think you didn't test it.
Works better for me, at work and at home.

Re:Linux Can't Bribe

[jimicus]

This is precisely the sort of thing I'm talking about.

Instead of asking "why didn't it work?", the first assumption is "it's the user's fault".

Re:Linux Can't Bribe

[nobodie]

Lotus Symphony is an Open Office clone with an IBM GUI (slight mod from Ooo). They do push it as part of the Lotus Suite. It's not a bad product, but after using it the GUI was a little bit "off" for my taste. No real complaint, just didn't excite me as being worth the trouble. But I am not a business, I don't expect support, etc. Still your statement is patently false.

I rate this a "pants-on-fire"

Re:Linux Can't Bribe

[nobodie]

I use LibreOffice in a large American university (as faculty) and interact with MS Office 2010 every day. I never use MS Office, I do use helpful extensions like "multisave" and PDF save, but have never had a problem with interaction. Most people don't know that I am using LibreOffice ( and Fedora for that matter) unless I tell them. Mostly I wait for them to ask what is up with my computer (I don't bother to require log-in on startup and many other security requirements for the W7 computers since no one can figure out what to do with my desktop unless I tell them to pretend it is a Mac;)>)

Re:Linux Can't Bribe

[jimicus]

This is a new definition of "push", and not one I was previously familiar with.

Where are the adverts? Where are the boxes? Where are the agreements with major OEMs? Why is it that if I type "lotus" into the search engine of any major IT supplier, I get nothing back?

That's not "push". That's "do something, anything, to persuade existing customers that the product isn't dead, it's.... er.... pining for the fjords for fear they might otherwise look elsewhere".

Re:Linux Can't Bribe

[jimicus]

I said "Retail margins".

I didn't say anything about the margins Microsoft themselves enjoy.

Re:Linux Can't Bribe

[nobodie]

Because they don't sell it to jerks like you, duh.
Like you couldn't "type it into a search box on a [real] search engine" (not one of those bingy thingies) and found out about it. Quit trying to hide the fact that you either are a shill for MS or you don't know how to use a search engine.

Re:Linux Can't Bribe

[jimicus]

I'm going to pretend I didn't read your offensive tone and instead you wrote it in a civil manner along the lines of "Why do you think 'push' has to mean OEM agreements, adverts and boxes in stores?".

And I would concede that's a very reasonable question. Let's be honest here, the big businesses out there aren't nipping down to their local branch of PC World and picking up a hundred copies of Office.

That doesn't mean advertising is unimportant, but it does mean you need to push the product some other way. Typically, IBM sells to you via a partner - an independent business that has a number of IBM-trained staff on hand and specialises in selling & supporting IBM products. So let's find some of their partners, see if the partner's website is pushing Symphony.

IBM's Partner Locator for the UK is here: https://www-304.ibm.com/partnerworld/wps/bplocator/search.jsp

And pulling the first three partners I find, we get:

Applicable: No obvious mention of "Symphony" anywhere. Try typing "Symphony" into the search box, we find it's mentioned in passing but doesn't seem to have a product page on its own.

Anix: Anix have been taken over and are now part of the Xerox group. Nevertheless, they're still IBM Premier Partners. No mention of Symphony anywhere, punching "Symphony" into the search box gets us precisely zero results.

CSI Ltd: Computer Systems Integration. Nothing noticeable on the website, the search box shows us a link to a company called "The Symphony Group" - not quite what we're looking for.

Never mind, let's try Google. That's usually pretty reliable. Yep, Google finds Symphony. It also finds a Wikipedia article that tells us it's been discontinued.

I maintain my original stance. IBM are not pushing Lotus Symphony.

I recommended a similar solution to my organizatio

[sackofdonuts]

I gave them the number of people and the basic startup and initial costs to move to an internally maintained and supported Linux. There were two gotchas. COTS software not being certified on the in-house Linux platform and having to man an in house help desk and SA staff to maintain the OS. The first was bad the second was the killer. Seems no one wants to pay what it takes to maintain the qualified help to support Linux. Everybody loves the "free" aspect of the OS but then when you show them it actually costs a fair bit of money to maintain it then the interest seems to wain.

Informative? Never heard of Jay or silent Bob?

[dbIII]

"Teabaggers" refers to Tea Party movement members.

Only if you've never seen one of several of the Kevin Smith movies where the recurring character Jay uses the "you cocksmoking teabaggers" line quoted above. You can google what it means if you like. Many of the people in the astroturfed weirdness that was the "tea party" that had started to call themselves "teabaggers" did that and decided they don't want to be called it anymore.

Who trains people to use a WP anymore?

[dbIII]

If you can't work out how to use a word processor and spreadsheet in 2012 then everything about working in an office is going to be a bit of a challenge. Training to use a different word processor or spreadsheet is like training to use a different model of photocopier.
So sorry, you DO sound like a shill because there appears to be no substance to your nitpick, thus your petty little effort to sow uncertainty (ie. *real* cost) has nothing to back it up IMHO.

Why use crap macros when you have real scripting?

[dbIII]

Back in the day (from about 1989 on) I used to do that in AutoCAD alone without a spreadsheet. It has scripting and you can input CSV files. Graphing in MS Excel was crap back then so I did all my xy plots in AutoCAD for one example.

Re:Why use crap macros when you have real scriptin

[bored_engineer]

I wasn't adequately explicit about the data, spreadsheets and AutoCAD. In this application, I use a small program to get the handles of between 20 and 5,000 text items. I then may modify the (text) value of the handles a dozen (or more) times as the project progresses. So, I first share data from AutoCAD to Excel, then different data the other direction several times. I don't know how to do that easily otherwise. Can you tell me more about how you did what you did?

Re:I will never understand slashdot linux lovers

[Anonymous Coward]

OK, dear troll, I'll feed you.

The long answer: read the "Cathedral and the Bazaar" book by Eric Raymond.
The short answer: you don't see the whole picture. Linux involves people too - the whole model is focused on service provision, just that nobody gets to own the code so it can be recycled and benefit more people. If you're so against Linux I would recommend you stop using Google and Amazon as well.. As an aside, the German government has quite a record of sponsoring the public good via Open Source, for instance GPG (a PGP derivative) was sponsored by them, and (AFAIK) the Kolab Groupware was. The result was that many more people benefitted from that public spend than just shareholders - the way gov spending *should* happen but rarely does.

Bonus point answer: if you follow the history of Microsoft and the crap they got up to from monopolistic behaviour to flat out theft (see the Stacker case as an example), that company should have never been allowed to supply any government. What they did to the ISO institute to get MS OOXML "approved" as a standard is a quality example of what an organisation can do when it has the power to buy itself past the rules.

Google and Facebook are getting that way as well with respect to privacy laws.

Re:Why use crap macros when you have real scriptin

[dbIII]

I haven't used a full version of AutoCAD with autolisp since before 2000, so I can't remember the syntax, but I was importing CSV files full of co-ordinates and ultrasonic thickness data with some very simple scripts. I was no expert but it wasn't very hard. Converting drawing entities to milling machine G-codes on the other hand WAS very hard in 1988 but mostly because the codes didn't quite do the same thing on every machine.
Anyway I'm a big fan of doing imports via commented scripts so it's obvious later what was done the next time you want to do something similar instead of trying to guess what each cell in a spreadsheet does that you haven't used in five years.
These days since I don't have full AutoCAD I use stuff like a python module that generates DXF files, or sed and awk.

Of course if MS Excel works for you now I'm not saying don't use it, just don't expect your macro to work with the next release and of course don't expect openoffice to run it either. I've been burnt that way with MS Excel several times. It's probably not a big deal in most places since a machine with an old version of MS Excel probably won't be hard to find in a hurry when the time comes.

Anyway, my point is that if you have consistent inputs you can simplify the workflow by having a script in the destination application do the job if that application has scripting. "Import blah" is likely to be faster and more consistent than mucking about in a spreadsheet and risking human error.

Re:Linux may be cheaper

[shaitand]

It is probably true in general. A competent Linux admin can admin far more systems than a competent windows admin. So the incompetent admin will likely have the opportunity to screw up more systems.

Mac OS X uses CUPS and the CUPS interface

[Anonymous Coward]

And I don't hear anyone complaining about adding printers and whatnot to Apple Macs.

And that simple interface you talk of? Windows doesn't have it.

Re:Mac OS X uses CUPS and the CUPS interface

[shaitand]

Windows? What does windows have to do with anything? I was pointing out shortcomings in CUPS not advocating windows.

To be fair if you use an all windows environment it more or less does have that interface. You run the printer wizard, tell it you want a network printer, it pulls the list of printers from AD, then you double click the printer you want in the list and it loads and installs the driver.

I haven't used MACs in a number of years but in the days of appletalk it didn't work like I described. Network printers were plug and play. In the sense of the original plug and play that only Apple ever realized. You plug your device in and with no configuration on your part the device just works.

Re:I recommended a similar solution to my organiza

[shaitand]

"having to man an in house help desk and SA staff to maintain the OS"

If you require MORE staff to support and maintain a Linux installation than a windows installation you aren't doing it right. Linux requires FAR less manpower to support and maintain. If your installation is large enough to need a help desk for Linux than it certainly would need one for windows.

Granted the Linux staff generally command higher salaries but they can comfortably admin twice the systems and still have plenty of time for water cooler gossip.

Re:I will never understand slashdot linux lovers

[shaitand]

You are making some incorrect assumptions. We love linux because we love working with linux.

You mention Red Hat. Red Hat makes millions on Linux but they also spend boatloads of cash employing people to work on Linux and we all benefit from that work.

The reality though is that vast vast majority of developers do not work for software companies. Developers at major software companies represent only a small portion of paid developers. Most developers work in-house or work on in-house projects as contractors. We use a great deal of open software at the company I work for on our in-house solution. The majority of the time we are indeed simply leeching and we of course avoid having to change those solutions any time possible because we don't want to maintain changes to a wheel we avoided reinventing. But sometimes we fix bugs, find security holes, or simply need a feature enough to justify and we ALWAYS contribute that back. In fact, we'd beg the main project to absorb the contributions to avoid having to maintain them separately.

Good development also means abstracting components of a system. Often that means separate pieces that really don't directly relate to the core logic that represents that value in your in-house solution. If you can tidy a piece like that and open it and get others to use it, you are golden since lots of people will do what we are doing above. If people don't adopt it you aren't out anything.

As for Linux specifically. If you are working on in-house solutions and custom processes the Linux world is much much easier to script and develop than the Windows world. You are right that Linux helps employ admins but I fail to see how employing admins is inferior to employing developers? Linux admins typically have some level of development skills and command salaries comparable to that of most developers due to their advanced skill set and increased capacity relative to windows admins.

Re:I will never understand slashdot linux lovers

[shaitand]

The german government also supports open software by taking an aggressive stance against piracy. That might seem odd to many who support free software and having varying views of piracy as a legitimate form of protest and whether copyright serves a purpose in the modern age but it is true.

The more successful the powers at be are at forcing people to actually pay the high prices for commercial software the more serious the consideration they are going to give to free and open software. What happens when you can't pirate photoshop anymore? Gimp usage goes up.

Nobody cares what YOU think

[Anonymous Coward]

You can't think. Don't try. Linux + Open "SORES" = dead-last place on pc desktops and servers combined and you get these delusional trolls making up stuff.

Re:Nobody cares what YOU think

[crutchy]

nobody even takes YOU seriously, let alone caring about what you think

go fix your buggy code you ignorant noob

What 1M Euros from each city could do!

[mattr]

Unless I am mistaken (tl;dr) each city in Germany seems to be considering gnu/linux separately and much effort is probably being duplicated in the evaluation, training and customization phases. I am curious:
1) Wouldn't savings continue into the future with no need to buy Windows 2015, etc when supported version life ends?
2) Couldn't the second city in Germany use what Munich learned, compare Munich's consideration process to their own situation and save a lot of effort?
3) I don't know what kind of customization is involved, but wouldn't it be the same for say Stuttgart or Koeln?
4) If 1 million Euros of the saved money from each city is put into hiring open source developers to improve the system, that would be a massive boon to the open source world and open source software in general. Is anybody thinking about this? Specifically:
5) What are the chances / how would one go about in establishing a way for all municipal/state governments in Germany or EU for that matter, to pool their funds and make the necessary improvements such as oh I don't know, how about:
- LibreOffice enhancements like fixing pasting of outlines from TextEdit into LibreOffice, making outlines import correctly from LO into MS Word, making templates for Draw for both government and small/medium/large companies, making templates for Calc, Write and Impress, making database templates that work with it all, gathering, organizing and fixing every glaring compatibility issue regarding MS Office interoperability, etc. It isn't rocket science and 50M Euros with some responsible project managers could stomp out all the distracting issues.
- Multilingual video series on merits of free software, TCO, installation, training, submitting bug reports and enhancement requests, writing software.
- Make a global clearing house for software/services wish list, and how to resolve issues on various distros site, so the wheel doesn't get reinvented all the time.
- Make a global support and development job site that helps local developers

Re:Linux may be cheaper

[Karzz1]

vi + /etc over regedit any day of the week.

This. A million times this.

Loss of Productivity

[Anonymous Coward]

What about training costs and overall lack of productivity. I sincerely doubt they saved anything.

Howto switch

[stooo]

Little howto migration to Libreoffice/Openoffice (source : limux)
Step 1:
- install oo on all computers of the large organisation
- MS Office still default
now, each and every employee can open, edit ODFs and PDFs

Step 2: (at different speed for each subgroup)
- train people
- convert templates
- avoid use of incompatible macros, convert old macros-loaden excel stuff progressively
- set ODF as default format for all work documents
- keep MSoffice for some special cases intricate macros, special plugins. Very small percentage of users.

Step 3:
- remove MS office on all but the special cases workstations

Simple.

Re:Howto switch

[war4peace]

Yeah, on paper. And your theory has at least 20 problems when translated into practice. But, you know, it doesn't matter. It looks FINE on paper.

Howto

[stooo]

Little howto migration to Libreoffice/Openoffice (source : limux)
Step 1:
- install oo on all computers of the large organisation
- MS Office still default
now, each and every employee can open, edit ODFs and PDFs

Step 2: (at different speed for each subgroup)
- train people
- convert templates
- avoid use of incompatible macros, convert old macros-loaden excel stuff progressively
- set ODF as default format for all work documents
- keep MS office for some special cases intricate macros, special plugins. Very small percentage of users.

Step 3:
- remove MS office on all but the special cases workstations

Make your 'code' what you said it ought to be

[Anonymous Coward]

Instead of 3 line noob lego block no error handlers weak "code".

* You know it's true, lol, & your "ReAcTiOn"? Man... totally Priceless...

As to "no one caring what I say?" you certainly seem to.

APK

P.S.=> Truth is what it is - truth! Just like how MY code works, everytime, bulletproof & bugfree for me, 100's of times now vs. trolls such as yourself - you saw it 5x this week, yourself, lol...

... apk

Re:Make your 'code' what you said it ought to be

[crutchy]

at least i know why your dodgy hosts program needs 64 bit with 10g ram just to hold all your "cool" hand-coded and nooblish excessive exception handling functions... god knows how many runtime bugs are in it (lucky for you delphi at least highlights the lines that won't compile, else you'd be totally screwed)

As to "no one caring what I say?" you certainly seem to.

you're funny

Re:Linux may be cheaper

[crutchy]

vi + /etc over regedit any day of the week

slashdot quote of the year?

Re:Why use crap macros when you have real scriptin

[crutchy]

I use a small program to get the handles of between 20 and 5,000 text items. I then may modify the (text) value of the handles a dozen (or more) times as the project progresses

was i the only one who thought dxf + shell script when reading this?

Re:Why use crap macros when you have real scriptin

[crutchy]

...and draftsight to show the dxf of course :)

step in the right direction, but...

[Anonymous Coward]

This is certainly a step in the right direction (e.g. away from Microsoft), but how did they manage to spend 23 million euros developing and deploying a Linux distro? Even rolling a distro from just the kernel and ignoring the GNU half of GNU/Linux (for some reason) you'd expect to maybe pay a small group's salary for about a year (assuming a minimalist utility distro and/or the ability to at least study existing GNU tools). Let's call that five guys at 100k a year each, so we've totaled 500k in development costs. Deployment requires a five minute seminar for employees to handle installation themselves and one IT guy to set up automated configuration scripts to handle the various inevitable unique office foibles, and to handle general maintenance. So in total we have 500k spent and an ongoing 100k/year expense for maintenance of the systems. Where did the rest of the ~22 million euros go? Further, why didn't they just use an existing free distro and build whatever customizations they needed on top of it? With all the free tutorials online already, that option would have cost nothing