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Spain's Extremadura Starts Move To GNU/Linux, Open Source
jrepin writes "The government of Spain's autonomous region of Extremadura has begun the switch to open source of it desktop PCs. The government expects the majority of its 40,000 PCs to be migrated this year, the region's CIO Theodomir Cayetano announced on 18 April. Extremadura estimates that the move to open source will help save 30 million euro per year. Extremadura in 2012 completed the inventory of all the software applications and computers used by its civil servants. It also tailored a Linux distribution, Sysgobex, to meet the majority of requirements of government tasks. It has already migrated to open source some 150 PCs at several ministries, including those for Development, Culture and Employment."
...to realize the obvious
Thats nice I still don't understand why my tax's are spent on OS license only for the users to login to web applications
Linux supports kerberos so authentication is not a problem its down to choices and management
what would be interesting would be what applications they need to run... is there a list somewhere ?
regards
John Jones
... Ballmer: he stopped putting money into getting the facts campaigns. Without them, how else can an autonomous region survive?
With so much stuff running remotely through web interfaces, operating systems matter very little.
http://michaelsmith.id.au
Take as many as you need, they're free.
The Windows 7 GUI feels more polished, especially in the area of app installation.
Something tells me you haven't used Linux for a very long time, if ever...
"I've got more toys than Teruhisa Kitahara."
Reminds me of what the trainers at work said.
Sit a linux admin and a windows admin in a room together and tell them to walk away from their mail exchangers for 2 weeks. The linux admin will be indifferent and the windows admin will visibly twitch, snap, and kill everyone.
Oh the stability of windows products.
O.o
That's a nice, well used, and wrong chestnut.
Incredibly, the only real data to back up such flimsy assertions comes from companies that have, by amazing coincidence, received money from Microsoft. Purely for something unrelated, naturally.
The fact is that Linux is considerably more flexible to configure and deploy than Windows. It also does not come with huge complexity of auditing license compliance (yes, there are some companies that offer Linux support license; no, they are not like Microsoft's licensing complex). So if you are a lone administrator using your home computer or keeping up a small office, Microsoft may come easier to you (largely because that's what you've used growing up). Once you get to something larger, all these handwaving assertions start to break down.
It is a very convenient propaganda tool, because intuitively many people can agree with it, based on their own experience of working on their own computers. So people don't question it as much as they should.
Overheard in front of MS Surface display at local MediaMarkt:
"Varför finns det ingen skärm på den här skärmen, bara ikoner? Hur fan kan man hitta något på det här sättet?"
("Why is there no screen on this screen, only icons? How the hell do you find anything this way?")
I suppose he's never seen an ipad then.
Well the 'FACT' is due to M$ greed and their upgrade policy, windows and office support costs a packet, each and every forced upgrade cycle. Windows can and often is a nightmare to support, auto upgrade has to be disabled just in case and then manually done. Document incompatibilities in between versions needs constant support. Reality is, due to the simplicity of administering a Linux system (the windows registry sucks dead dog's dicks, why, why, oh why the fuck why) with text file configuration, a competent Linux administrator can get a huge amount done in a very short time, pay twice as much to often get ten times the work done in the same time.
PS you pay more for better skilled people, so what you are really saying is that Linux trained system administrators are better skilled then windoze admins (having contracted out both I can guarantee on average that is true). In fact often those Linux admins are far better at administrating windows systems then your typical windoze admin.
Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
One way of looking at this is that governments would be insourcing, rather than outsourcing, their OS needs. You are right - on the Linux side, support does cost money. On the Windows side, ultimate obsolescence and upgrades are what would cost money. Since these computers wouldn't be used to play professional games (just the simple ones like Mines, Network and so on), the hardware can be as old as it likes (as long as it's still reliable) and since the governments would now be rolling their own distros, as did Munich or Portugal,
The hard lesson came to these guys w/ XP - they can either continue running an unsupported OS (in terms of bug fixes, antivirus & so on) or they can cough up €€€ in upgrading to Windows 7 (might as well go directly to Windows 8 if they are doing it NOW, and add whatever utilities they need to get back the start menu). Or they could bite the bullet this one time, switch to Linux (where they'd have the option of rolling out their own distro), and then maintaining a software division to write whatever apps they need, particularly ones in their native languages. Even the last sounds like good news for governments, since everywhere, governments like to expand and have more things to keep them busy, and ergo, more jobs for their voters. I just see win-win-win-win-win in all of this.
I used to work for a state government agency -- more than ten years ago. Anyway, I was given a computer to use, a login for various things, MS Office to type stuff on, and I was completely forbidden to install anything. I suspect for large entities, including governments, ease of application installation isn't really an issue because the users aren't going to be doing the installing.
Anyway, I left the state and opened up my own business. At first I made copious use of open source because every penny mattered, and then later just because it was familiar to me and worked fine. I can say that for basic word processing and spreadsheet work -- like what 99.999% of what anyone actually does, Open/Libre Office has been just fine over the years (daily frequent usage). In fact, I don't even know how to use most of what LibreOffice offers because in reality, it doesn't matter -- I'm not a book or magazine publisher. I just need to write letters, envelopes, and certain industry specific atypically formatted documents, but nothing a background image, center, bold and italic can't handle.
Recently I had to install windows (7, in a VM) for a special project and I had no choice about this. This is the first version of Windows I've had in a decade (I'm a Linux and OS X user), and you know what, at first it was fucking hard to use. Not because it's actually hard ... but because it was unfamiliar. Except, after a few hours or so with it, it sort of clicked and it's as easy as anything else. Just like in my office -- the assistants all use OS X machines, and every new employee goes through a little reorientation with the computer if they aren't OS X familiar, but after a few days, nobody notices (except the total idiots, but it's a good test because it has been well proven to me, that if you can't translate the task from one icon to another, you probably belong in a job where you can listen to music all day and make coffee). Anyway, after a few days, they just use it and do their work without difficulty. I suspect that most people will be able to do the same thing, especially if the IT guy is the one doing all the installation and then telling them "to do that, just click on this icon right here ..."
What changed under Obama? Nothing Good
Yes, but then again, once you have things settled and working properly, you rarely ever need support. Unlike some other proprietary OSes, where things are constantly breaking, a Linux machine always works unless the hardware fails.
I have lived such a transition. Before, Windows machines would break all the time, and people in support were always overwhelmed. Now with Linux in desktops, after a small period of shock from users because of the change, its boring and very rarely support is ever needed. People also tend to stick to their work, since they can no longer try/install random malware of the day.
You are also forgetting, support for free software can come from anywhere; you are not tied to a single vendor. And i mean real support, such as, "i need program x to do y, can you change it?"
Chaining yourself to a single vendor is business suicide; and a loss of sovereignty to a foreign corporation from a government perspective.
Once you break of the chains, you will never want to go back.
Artix
Your Linux, your init.
each and every forced upgrade cycle.
If Microsoft could force upgrades, why are so many systems not running Windows 8 yet?
So is the plan for an organization to move to an Open Source OS, never have an upgrade, and then the users can complain how old the system is?
No, in the instances companies and organisations switched from Windows to Linux the support cost went _down_ not up. There's plenty of good reasons for that, like the ability to not only remotely log into such machines, but also the ability to script that. Or the idea of a package manager where you can do updates of _all_ your software automatically. Or the idea that all configuration is stored in text files which are trivial to edit and fix if something goes wrong.
One if the more extreme examples is currently seen. Microsoft dropped support for Windows XP... without providing a successor. Now many companies are faced with switching to Windows 7 only to be faced with the same problem in a few years. If Windows XP would have been free (as in speech) software, they could have just gradually replaced parts of it with newer versions, making the change gradual instead of abrupt, maybe even keeping some parts for compatibility.
Free Software isn't dependent on single organisations or persons. Just look at Ubuntu. If you don't like Unity, switch to Xubuntu or Kubuntu. If you don't like Shuttleworth switch to Debian. You'll have (more or less) the same software on all of those, but you have a choice.
"In fact often those Linux admins are far better at administrating windows systems then your typical windoze admin."
That's actually something I refused to believe. The most "modern" Version of Windows I've used was Windows XP, and I even barely did anything with it. Yet recently I was working with someone who earned his money fixing Windows. We ran into a fairly trivial problem, the owner of some files was set wrong so you couldn't access it via the network. The Windows person didn't know how to fix it. I had to look it up and found the way to do it. (believe me it's absolutely counter intuitive, you need to enable something in the dialog where you set how file listings look like)
I always find it hard to believe that there are people working in IT on Windows systems out there knowing even _less_ about Windows than I do.
This is old news - in these pages itself, the first time they started on it was 2006 [slashdot.org], and last year, too, there was another story [slashdot.org] on their experiment here. Extremadura, Munich and Portugal happen to be pretty unique/ahead in this regard - do a search on their stories over this experiment.
Except the current Portuguese government decided to start replacing some of the machines running GNU/Linux with Windows. There were even some problems in the transition of the government website infrastructure, because the new Microsoft solution could not serve as much client requests as the previous Linux-based one, leading to a massive downtime which lasted weeks [1].
I don't want to speculate but most probably the new team assigned to manage the government website did only have knowledge on Microsoft technologies, so the old previous system had to go.... This is a shame because they did it during an Economical crisis, wasting money on Windows server license keys and all other associated costs which they did not have before (since it was already running Linux).
[1] http://exameinformatica.sapo.pt/web/exameinformatica/noticias/internet/2012-04-04-sistema-de-redundancia-do-portal-do-governo-nao-funcionou;jsessionid=7AE120CAF45F6309EC0DB51D0D8E70D5
A user needs no source code afterall.
Here's how I explain it to people: "Free software" comes with the blueprints so that you can hire anyone you want to make improvements.
Here, take a few of these. <p> <br> <p> <br> <p> <br> <p> <br> Take as many as you need, they're free.
You bastard, you didn't give him any closing tags! What's up next, a sneaky "complete electronics starter kit" with only male and no female connectors?
Using this argument without facts to back up why one solution costs more than the other can indeed be wrong. However, by itself it applies just fine. I've seen situations where an organization had 400 windows desktop computers and 200 Linux workstations. Both were used by end users, both had no admin rights for those end users. about 150 of the 200 Linux boxes were used by users that also had a windows machine. About 50 Linux machines were used as the only desk top computer. This implies that all critical systems like time management, e-mail, word processing and such were perfectly doable on the Linux machines. The entire windows support team, including servers, was about 30 FTE. The entire UNIX team had 2.5 FTE working on desktop support and about 10FTE working on servers (several hundred of them, several different OSes, doing 24/7 HA stuff). In this situation, the efficiency of the UNIX team was much bigger than that of the windows team. Given the fact that both had licenses on the desktop machines and the linux machines had significantly faster and more expensive hardware, in the end, the cost of both systems per desk top was more or less equivalent. In the end, the finance picture is much more complicated than just looking at support or license costs. In the end you select which system gets things done and is future proof for the most competitive price. Sometimes that is windows, sometimes it's not.
I was promised a flying car. Where is my flying car?
Microsoft didn't provide a successor to Windows XP that is compatible with device drivers that were designed for Windows XP. All three successors that you mention use the Vista driver model.
So that they control their own destiny. Rather than pay gobs of money to RHEL or Canonical, they could hire their own (preferably local) software developers (thereby providing jobs, which is a big vote getter) and have them do exactly what they need from their own IT. In case of mainland Europe, localization would be a big plus, and then other customized applications that the governments would need, they could pay those people to write. Yeah, they could do that on Windows as well, but the moment Microsoft goes from things like .NET to whatever the newest programming fad is in Redmond, they could be out of luck when the next version comes out. With FOSS, they control the destiny of their software - when (and if) it has to change, and all that.
For lower level changes, like kernel updates, or other changes in the distro at Red Hat, Debian or Canonical, they could perform those if their engineers determined that they needed it, but in case they don't, they're simply staying w/ an old version of something, which is why forking the thing to begin w/ makes sense. It also gives them a base platform on which to build all their applications that they'd need. It could be the basis of what gets installed in their government schools, and establish a base from which to attract developers from their population. Heck, if it became good enough, they could even sell it to anyone willing to pay (FOSS does allow you to sell their software).
When it comes to people doing grunt office work, there are two broad categories of worker.
In group 1, you have people who learned how to use MS Office ver X on Windows ver Y at a community college. They don't get how it all works, just know they click this or that. But, as soon as they end up in front of a different version of Windows or Office, they no longer know how it works and need someone to point to what they click in the new version. It's just as easy (or hard) for them to go to a new version of Office as to LibreOffice, because everything they do they do by rote.
In group 2, you have people who have a basic intuitive understanding of how software works, and can figure out how to do what they want without handholding. These people have the capability to adapt just fine.
So really, the joke is on you thinking Win 7 is the end of the need for training. Put your secretary on Win 8 and if she is a category 1 user, watch her head explode. Unless you are just going to use Win 7 for the next 20 years, training will happen, like it or not.
What changed under Obama? Nothing Good
Actually, the deal w/ TiVo was that they locked down the flash memory device that stored the code, even though it was published as per the GPLv2. Issue that RMS had was that Freedom 3 of GNU - the 'right' to improve the program i.e. change it, was prevented by TiVo as a result, even though the GPL itself was not violated. TiVo had a good reason to do that - had they left it open, anyone could have re-coded it so that the output went not just to the TV screen, but also to, say, an mp4 or a divx file, which could then be downloaded on one's computer and finally find its way into YouTube and other sites. Such a move would have made TiVo run afoul of content providers, and pretty much ended their participation in the deal that got TiVo its success.
Linus, unlike Stallman, is not anti-business, and therefore doesn't have a problem when businesses do what they have to while using Linux to ensure their success. He was pretty happy for TiVo, and has in recent years pretty much distanced himself from the FSF due to their more shrill posturing. Also, RMS treats anything that goes on a ROM as a circuit, and the GNU principles don't apply there. In other words, had TiVo put their stuff on a mask ROM and shipped it, he wouldn't have had a problem, even though the effect would have been almost the same. TiVo uses flash so that in the event that they do need to do a firmware upgrade for any reason, they can. Again, the reason they don't allow their customers to do it are many fold, but the biggest one is that they would run afoul of the content providers if they did.
Stallman's printer problem is solved by the GPL, but that would have happened even if the GPL didn't have the copyleft clause in it. The copyleft clause is what kills it for a lot of businesses. It costs money for someone to write the software - money that can't be recouped if the first wave of customers just give it away to anyone who asks under the 'help your neighbor' ideal. As has been rehashed here many times, that works for some situations, but not most, and by taking away the ability to practically recoup one's total expenses, the GPL makes itself amongst the least business friendly of licenses.
No way does anybody in their right mind actually believe that anyone going to contract a developer to build drivers for components in their decade old PC.
I was referring to external peripherals such as an EPROM programmer or an expensive CNC mill.