Valencia Linux School Distro Saves 36 Million Euro

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Valencia Linux School Distro Saves 36 Million Euro

Posted by timothy on Sunday July 27, 2014 @10:04AM from the oh-no-big-deal dept.

jrepin (667425) writes "The government of the autonomous region of Valencia (Spain) earlier this month made available the next version of Lliurex, a customisation of the Edubuntu Linux distribution. The distro is used on over 110,000 PCs in schools in the Valencia region, saving some 36 million euro over the past nine years, the government says." I'd lke to see more efforts like this in the U.S.; if mega school districts are paying for computers, I'd rather they at least support open source development as a consequence.

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I'd be careful of these stats by Anonymous Coward · 2014-07-27 10:13 · Score: 2, Informative

The region of Valencia has the highest debt of all Spain and has been part of many corruption scandals usually involving stupid expenses, like an airport nobody uses and has cost the citizens millions. Now they claim they are saving money. Yeah, right, only after firing the whole public TV sector in order to save millions. TV sector which coincidentally started to reveal the corruption *after* they were fired, but not while they were being pampered by bribes...
1. Re:I'd be careful of these stats by ruir · 2014-07-27 20:12 · Score: 2
  
  One does not need to be the brightest bulb to understand TV reporters have salaries akin to football players for some very odd reason.
TCO by rsilvergun · 2014-07-27 10:13 · Score: 3, Insightful

At the risk of being modded troll I'll ask if anyone knows the TCO on these Linux roll outs. If Spain has lower tech wages it might be much lower than Windows, but in the United States at least there's tonnes of cheap Windows IT gurus but if you want someone that can admin your Linux boxes you'll pay through the nose. Google Docs and other web apps might be changing that though, at least until you hit college.

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1. Re:TCO by cheesybagel · 2014-07-27 10:32 · Score: 5, Insightful
  
  From my experience you need less Linux sysadmins to begin with. Its easier to do remote admin. So the TCO numbers Microsoft claims are usually bullshit.
2. Re:TCO by thesupraman · 2014-07-27 11:10 · Score: 5, Informative
  
  This.
  Most Microsoft TCO analysis involves:
  All equipment being re-purchased to use linux, and then replaced at the standard windows replacement rates, which is BS.
  All administration staff to be assumed to be windows trained but zero knowledge of linux, but are retained, and consultants bought in to run linux
  All microsoft user end software to still be supported (outlook, windows web frontends, databases, office 'apps', etc), requiring additional complexity and many many retained windows servers and workstations.
  Basically they create a horrific hybrid solution required to support any and all historical solutions, keep all the baggage from windows they can, then point out that it costs more.
  The fact is that any reasonably well planned transition is just that - a transition.
  And the savings are clear and obvious, as more and more locations are finding.
  Hell, even the savings of transitioning backend servers to Linux, and frontend software to OSS, while retaining windows for users, are huge.
3. Re:TCO by LordLimecat · 2014-07-27 12:04 · Score: 2, Insightful
  
  I agreed with everything until here:
  
  And the savings are clear and obvious, as more and more locations are finding.
  This reeks of "Linux is the hammer for every problem" thinking. What if they require Quickbooks server? What if they have tried alternatives, but indicate that they need Microsoft Publisher, or Excel? I have heard all three of these before, and they make me hesitate to say "screw what you think you need, we're changing everything because FOSS!"
  Sometimes its feasible. Sometimes you're just creating headaches and big sunk costs of conversion for no real reason.
4. Re:TCO by Culture20 · 2014-07-27 12:32 · Score: 4, Interesting
  
  This is a mistaken belief. Windows is actually pretty easy to mass-admin remotely, even with built-in windows services (not relying on SSH). But... Windows admins who know how to mass-admin boxes remotely usually get paid as much as Linux admins. Usually because once they've gotten to this point, they've gotten *nix under their belt.
5. Re:TCO by FatLittleMonkey · 2014-07-27 12:49 · Score: 5, Informative
  
  Good point, thesupraman forgot one additional MS TCO assumption:
  "There's no ongoing transitional costs from Microsoft upgrades."
  Microsoft only compares with a stable Win/Office environment. But often these transitions to Linux/FOSS are made in the face of a major Windows/Office upgrade. So the comparison is "Transition to FOSS vs Transition to different MS-ware".
  
  --
  Science is all about firing a drunk pig out of a cannon just to see what happens.
6. Re:TCO by Ol+Olsoc · 2014-07-27 14:50 · Score: 2
  
  Posting AC because this will elicit knee-jerk responses..
  tl;dr: The world runs on Windows, and the school does a disservice to the students by not preparing them for reality.
  And will forever, until the end of time. Just like MS-DOS.
  Congratulations, bringing biblical style circular arguments to the world of computers.
  Windows is the gold standard because it is the gold standard because it is the gold standard. World without end, amen.
  
  --
  The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
7. Re:TCO by sjames · 2014-07-27 18:28 · Score: 2
  
  The savings remain clear and obvious, they just can't take advantage of it. It does give them a real measure of the cost of sticking with those apps.
8. Re:TCO by Retron · 2014-07-27 18:36 · Score: 2
  
  It's actually nowhere near that, at least in the UK. (Disclaimer: I work in a school in the IT department).
  The actual cost is based on the number of full-time *staff*, not pupils, and the rates are far lower than the $1000/year you quote. This gets you Office, Windows, all the CALs you need, SCCM and lots more besides. You still have to pay for server licences (Windows and SQL), but they're deeply discounted.
  I don't know what it's like in the States, but in the UK school sysadmins (or network managers, to give them their more usual titles) will be on salaries of around £16K to £30K - or $27K to $50K, more biased towards the low end rather than the high end of the wage bracket. Or, at least, that's the going rate down here in the far SE of England. In our case, that involves using VMWare products, such as vSphere and ESXi, in addition to the various Windows servers.
  NB, I got into this by playing games, as an earlier poster mentioned - it's a common thing to use Windows at home for games, as I did over 20 years ago, then start networking PCs, move on to running a home server or using server products on a home PC and so on. I made the jump with Windows 2000 (when I was at Uni), as Microsoft kindly sent out CDs of their server products to anyone who asked. Yes, they only lasted for 180 days unless you tinkered with registry files, but it was enough to ignite the spark. These days of course pupils and students get the full thing from Dreamspark.
  I don't have an MSCE. Never saw the point of them, I prefer academic qualifications as it shows you're capable of learning anything rather than a specific method of one vendor's products. I'd never rule out a move to Linux, but for now our Microsoft-based network is serving us well.
9. Re:TCO by ruir · 2014-07-27 20:13 · Score: 2
  
  And there are no antivirus costs for *every* workstation and *every* server.
10. Re:TCO by hawkinspeter · 2014-07-27 20:14 · Score: 2
  
  My experience is the opposite of yours with installing Windows/Linux. I've found that ghosting Windows installs requires that the hardware be virtually identical. Having a different disk controller, or switching between ATA and AHCI modes usually causes blue screens and failure to boot. Any modern Linux distro, however can quite happily run even by putting the installed hard disk into a completely different machine.
  
  --
  You're a temporary arrangement of matter sliding towards oblivion in a cold, uncaring universe
11. Re:TCO by aaaaaaargh! · 2014-07-27 21:00 · Score: 4, Interesting
  
  The goal of school education in computers is not to prepare pupils to use commercial software and become better consumerists. They already know how to use commercial software anyway, most of them even better than their teachers. What they lack and need to learn is the fundamentals of how computers work, how operating systems work, what safety and security means (especially online), and the basics of programming. In a nutshell: No, Windows is definitely not needed or desirable in schools. To be fair, iPads and Android tablets are even less useful, because it is almost impossible to teach programming on them in a fruitful way.
  I'd even go farther and state the obvious that commercial software packages should be banned in public institutions entirely when there is an acceptable free substitute for them.
  To give a typical example of how Windows computers are used in such environments, our institute at a public university in Europe has dozens of +5 years old PCs that are overloaded with tons of viruses and trojans and the crappy paid anti-virus we're using fails to detect them. The machines have become even slower after they had to be upgraded from XP to Windows 7 recently. I've test run Ubuntu on one of them for years and it worked better and faster in each and every respect except compatibility of LibreOffice with Word (which is broken intentionally by Microsoft, but strange enough it also breaks routinely between versions of their own software). The tax payer is paying huge fees to Microsoft with no benefits at all - and you have to check your USB stick for viruses each time you've used one of those machines.
12. Re:TCO by hawkinspeter · 2014-07-27 22:15 · Score: 2
  
  It's a shame you didn't persist as most boot/grub errors are generally quite easy to fix. Most of the time, you can boot from CD/usb stick and repair the grub install within about 5 minutes.
  
  Still, if you don't want to use it, use something else. Choice and competition are good.
  
  --
  You're a temporary arrangement of matter sliding towards oblivion in a cold, uncaring universe
13. Re:TCO by jabuzz · 2014-07-27 22:19 · Score: 2
  
  Problem is that in the U.K. school I.T. is for the most part appalling. I work in I.T. support in the University sector and I see for first hand the difference between that and school I.T. that my sister has to suffer as a teacher as I supplement the rubbish I.T. support with actually useful support that is not a bunch of lies and half truths.
  The difference is that pay rate of the staff involved. The university sector pays significantly more than the school sector for the same skills, easily Â£10k more. I know I have read job adverts for school I.T. support and would not bother applying for the money they offer.
  To put it succinctly "pay peanuts get monkies" and Â£16k for a I.T. admin is going to get you a monkey that is only capable of doing the bare basic desktop support tasks. If you do get lucky and get someone capable of more they will quickly move on because you get better pay elsewhere.
14. Re:TCO by Lumpy · 2014-07-27 22:32 · Score: 2
  
  "but in the United States at least there's tonnes of cheap Windows IT gurus "
  No we do not have many "gurus" we have a lot of poesurs that THINK they know something about windows and PC's in general and can fake it well enough in front of people that dont know to keep their jobs. but they are NOT Guru level by any stretch of the imagination.
  The Windows Gurus that are really good at their jobs command the same salary as linux guys. No matter what Guru level means you get paid a lot. Everyone not getting paid a lot are not even close to Guru.
  Want an example? Look at the morons all working at best buy, They can barely use a mouse.
  
  --
  Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
15. Re:TCO by pla · 2014-07-27 22:52 · Score: 4, Interesting
  
  From my experience you need less Linux sysadmins to begin with. Its easier to do remote admin. So the TCO numbers Microsoft claims are usually bullshit.
  
  You have thought about that in terms of doing machine-by-machine maintenance. A large school district has a similar topology to a large enterprise corporation - thousands of systems spread out over dozens or hundreds of sites, with dozens or hundreds of different user-types grouped by function, having various seemingly-arbitrary blocking and auditability rules, and possible liability for certain types of breach, etc.
  
  For maintaining a farm of identical servers, I agree with you completely. For maintaining Grandma's desktop remotely, I agree with you completely. But for maintaining an enterprise desktop environment, Microsoft simply has the best tools for the job. Linux AD-via-Samba quite simply doesn't even come close for the convenience of centralized GP maintenance, and has aothing anywhere near the convenience of drag-and-drop group-based software installation (though Linux does have non-stock application deployment packages available, like Puppet, that partially fill that last point). Linux has nothing even remotely like (W)SUS. And those two alone count as complete showstoppers when it comes to minimizing the number of people required to maintain a large network.
  
  I love Linux, I use Linux, but Linux at the enterprise scale amounts to a non-starter.
  
  Of course, the biggest irony here, school districts don't tend to use Windows, either - They loooove them some Apple products, which have all the same problems described above, plus the pricetag (not saying Apples still cost more, but they don't come free). So in that sense, yes, I can see how Linux would save school districts a hefty chunk of money; at some scale, however, you'll find that switching to MS would likely save money vs the overhead of sys/net ops and helpdesk staff.
16. Re:TCO by Retron · 2014-07-27 23:32 · Score: 2
  
  It's nothing to do with pay, more what managers expect from their staff. Some schools are happy to put up with poor infrastructure and so on, while others, such as the one I work in, pride themselves on offering an up-to-date network for the students. (We skipped Windows 8 though, sticking with Windows 7 x64 - and getting old educational programs working with that was no mean feat!)
  You won't have any problems around here recruiting tech support staff for £12 to £14K. I was effectively running the school network on a salary of £17K last year and I wouldn't describe myself as a monkey. Far from it, unless you count administering Exchange, AD, creating build images, SCCM etc as monkey work (which is isn't).
17. Re: TCO by gomiam · 2014-07-27 23:44 · Score: 2
  
  No. Unfortunately they usually don't. I support a university campus and I'm tired (not really, but it gets boring) of being asked for copies of university software by students for whom there is no licenced copy available. The reason? The teacher will be accostumed to using that software and doesn't even consider changing to another.
  Mind you, I'm not even talking about changing to Linux or some open source program. I'm talking about students (teachers too) persistently asking for Windows XP-compatible software to be installed in their Windows 8 computers when we aren't allowed to do it and asking for us to help them when the magically appearing copy of our licenced software doesn't work with their computers' Windows 7 or 8</semi-rant>
  So no, they usually don't know better: they stumbled upon the software (or were taught to use it by someone who already used it) and never looked back. I have even had teachers tell me (because some licenced-software seller told them) that the costless option I suggest is worse when the licenced version is the same software with some useless extras bolted in (and yes, I mean useless extras because they can be substituted with standard Windows software).
18. Re:TCO by Rutulian · 2014-07-28 15:59 · Score: 2
  
  (though Linux does have non-stock application deployment packages available, like Puppet, that partially fill that last point).
  You're kidding right? In addition to Puppet, which is a relative newcomer, there has been Satellite (http://www.redhat.com/products/enterprise-linux/satellite/) and Landscape (http://www.ubuntu.com/management/landscape-features) among others (Suse has one too). Where do you think the distros make their money? Now you may have meant there is no free application deployment and management software, but last time I checked Windows Server was definitely not free. If you need free, though, you can roll some scripts fairly easily, wrapping things like Kickstart with custom repositories (yum or apt) and services like Cobbler or Spacewalk (which Satellite is based off of), rsync, cron jobs, and ssh (for remote execution).
  
  Linux AD-via-Samba quite simply doesn't even come close for the convenience of centralized GP maintenance,
  I don't know what you are trying to say here. Why would you manage linux machines with a Samba domain? If you want the same functionality as AD on linux, FreeIPA is the most mature project, and it can integrate with AD via cross-realm trusts in the latest version. So you can manage a mixed Windows/Linux environment with the same core infrastructure. If instead you meant Samba as an AD domain controller for Windows, Samba4 is (mostly, 95%) a drop-in replacement for Windows Server. There are a few features missing, but you can provision and manage an AD domain via Samba with ease.
Will they invest any of the savings in Linux dev? by Anonymous Coward · 2014-07-27 10:26 · Score: 2, Interesting

Will they invest any of the 36 million Euro savings in Linux development or are they just free loaders?
Not everything that shines is gold... by Lolaine · 2014-07-27 10:39 · Score: 5, Insightful

First of all: Valencia is the most indebted region of Spain in relation to it's GDP (and second in monetary value) . Having spent billions on ill-fated projects (F1 track, Americas Cup, Arts and Science City) that have failed to meet economic returns. The former President resigned over corruption charges, Majors being investigated for contract mishandling and enrichment, a former governor in jailed this same week, etc... No thing that comes from this region is out of suspect.
This said, What it is commonly spoken about these projects is that they do not exist to leverage libre/opensource software on the school. They exist to praise regionalism of the different autonomies(regions) of Spain by local politicians, so, instead of viable ecosystems, they become second-choice-dual-boot-distros that exist to fill the pockets of several local companies (distro makers, maintainers, call-centers, certifiers...) that do literaly nothing contributing to the communities they get their software from.
Also, every region spent millions on creating their own distro, duplicating efforts (which is a clear indicator that it is a national-regionalist issue rather than a techno-economical one). If Extremadura has it distro, Andalusia also wants it and Valencia too.
Moreover, I put in doubt the claim that a somewhat high amount of Euros were saved whatsoever because educational licensing is usually done on a gubernamental level and not on a seat level.
So, this is only one more sample of PR-BS for me.

--
------- The last Sig. got fired.
1. Re:Not everything that shines is gold... by paugq · 2014-07-27 21:28 · Score: 3, Informative
  
  In Valencia, they have actually replaced every Windows, Microsoft Office and any other non-FLOSS software with LliureX. It was done last year, when Microsoft threatened to take legal action after the regional government failed to pay for Microsoft licenses. LliureX had been languishing for years before that, after a huge hype, excitement and first deployments about 10 years ago.
  Had Microsoft not threatened to take legal action, Linux would not be in use today. Thank you, Microsoft!
2. Re:Not everything that shines is gold... by CronoCloud · 2014-07-27 23:41 · Score: 2
  
  They exist to praise regionalism of the different autonomies(regions) of Spain by local politicians
  What is up with that? Here in the states no one would even think of doing something like Californi-ux or Tex-ux, or Illini-ux. If some school district or state school administration wanted to switch to Linux they'd just choose edubuntu, or CentOS and be done with it. Why roll their own when they're perfectly suitable distros out there already.
Re:Will they invest any of the savings in Linux de by Skarjak · 2014-07-27 10:40 · Score: 5, Informative

The very first line of the summary says they're making available their own custom distro. So they're obviously not free loaders. FFS, I know that most people don't RTFA, but at least RTFS before bitching.
Re:Will they invest any of the savings in Linux de by cascadingstylesheet · 2014-07-27 12:14 · Score: 4, Insightful

Will they invest any of the 36 million Euro savings in Linux development or are they just free loaders?
That's an odd perspective ... you can't have it both ways. If you want the freedom of the GPL, then you get ... the freedom of the GPL.
cheap shot by Anonymous Coward · 2014-07-27 18:10 · Score: 3, Funny

> This is a mistaken belief. Windows is actually pretty easy to
> mass-admin remotely, even with built-in windows services
Just ask anyone running their own botnet!
Re:Will they invest any of the savings in Linux de by paugq · 2014-07-27 21:29 · Score: 2

There are/have been several Debian developers in their payroll: Jordi Mallach, Miquel Gea and others.