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City of Turin To Switch From Windows To Linux and Save 6M Euros
jrepin writes: The municipality of Turin in Italy hopes to save 6 million Euro over five years by switching from Windows XP to Ubuntu Linux in all of its offices. The move will mean installing the open source operating system on 8,300 PCs, which will generate an immediate saving of roughly €300 per machine (almost €2.5m altogether, made up from the cost of Windows and Office licences) — a sum that will grow over the years as the need for the renewal of proprietary software licences vanishes, and the employees get used to the new machines.
Well, the MS lock-in may just be starting to fray enough to make a difference.
Makes a lot of sense, but I bet they end up saving way more than 6M euros
... and will switch back again in a few years, at a net cost of E12 million.
http://arstechnica.com/busines...
(Yes, I'm trolling, but desktop experience for the average Joe really is a problem, no matter how many excuses we Linux folks make.)
A entire brand new PC capable of running Linux, LibreOffice, web browser, and typical programs that the average office worker or bureaucrat needs.
Hell, you might even be able to buy a smart-TV for $300 that can run the same items.
Microsoft either better cut their prices or give out free XP upgrades, unless they want to be upgraded out of business.
You didn't do your research, huh? They're not actually going to go back to Wind'ohs.
The Amarri pray for god, the Caldari pray for profit. the Gallente pray for peace, but the Minmatar pray their ships hol
They shouldn't bother with XP upgrades, period. Let the dinosaur die already.
The Amarri pray for god, the Caldari pray for profit. the Gallente pray for peace, but the Minmatar pray their ships hol
Munich may be looking to pick up a bunch of Windows licenses on the cheap...
#DeleteChrome
headline should read "...at least 6 million Euros"
they get their number from the license fees **only**
think about the savings from tech support & maintenance...
then think about how much could've been saved the the US government had done this 10 years ago
then think about how much of our tax dollars have gone to M$ or their subsidiaries just since 2000
Thank you Dave Raggett
but I have to say: "Try A Different Distro"
http://www.debian.org/CD
Politics is Treachery, Religion is Brainwashing
hopes to save 6 million Euro over five years by switching from Windows XP to Ubuntu Linux in all of its offices. The move will mean installing the open source operating system on 8,300 PCs, which will generate an immediate saving of roughly €300 per machine (almost €2.5m altogether, made up from the cost of Windows and Office licences)
€6,000,000/8,300 = €723 Euro per machine. Subtract 300, up-front (OS/Office) = €85 per year savings, after the licenses.
Let's say the average city employee makes €40,000/year (I have no idea what they make, but assuming one employee per workstation, those workers are about 1/4 of the cities annual budget of €1,266,000,000)
So, the half a day's wage saved (€85) per year isn't a big deal either way - either they are happy with the open source systems and they make out, or they go back to proprietary software and spend a couple of days wages, if needed.
And why does it need to be all or nothing? People should use what makes them most productive... within the support capabilities of the IT staff. Out of 8300 workstations I wouldn't be surprised if a large share of them could get by with basically running a web browser, but for those who need Windows or MacOS to get their work done, so be it.
This issue is a bit more complicated than you think.
Do all 8300 employees need individual desktops? This is not a software development company, and those machines still need to be managed, maintained and replaced. Keep big depos of $250 chromebooks where anyone can get one for temporary or permanent use at office or home. Then return when done, as still working or broken. No IT costs, as data is in the cloud.
For heavier use, provide computer labs with a choice of platforms, so if someone really needs to work on the latest version of Office or Photoshop, they can.
And of course, anyone who is expected to work on computer for hours every day, or handle sensitive data, should get a laptop/desktop of their choice with reasonable price constraints. Savings from all the other use cases will more than pay for the luxury.
From TFA:
... which will feature open source guru Richard Stallman ...
Will he show up?
Cue the fanbois: ....
1) Its too compilcaded
2) It doesn't work with microsoft stuff 100% perfect, even though microsoft goes out of their way to be incompatible with everything (including their own software) so HORROR!
3) Its just a trick to get a better license deal (WINK WINK).
4) The US should bomb Italy or Europe or something for not buying Redmondware and supporting the NSA back doors.
Or, you know, the city of Turin is just fed up with virii, bsod, high license fees, NSA back doors, and found a more robust, cheaper computing experience. I know the city I live in went to Google Docs. Sure they only save about $8 million in the first year, but they are expected to save about $12 million per year after some of the 'locked in' licenses expire.
Europeans seem quite forward thinking when it comes to OSS. I found it interesting that a game I play and run servers for Xonotic has WAY more European based players than North American and they prefer the games because its OSS.
by TheSpoom (715771) Uncaring Linux user here. I have nothing to add to this but please continue. *munches popcorn*
Replacement memory, batteries, HDD's for the 20% that approach EOL from overuse around this time, plus the labour to clean out all the fans. If they didn't factor this in, half their fleet's going to be dead within 3 years. This can still be a venture of savings, just not what they expect.
Then you've never worked in an enterprise environment that uses it. You'll have a ton of tech support and maintenance costs with Linux. You not only have all the regular user shit, people who can't figure out how to use their computer, administrative stuff, etc. However I've also observed that a good bit of the stuff in Linux requires a lot of sysadmin work, scripting and such. We do Linux and Windows in our environment and we certainly make Linux work on a large enterprise scale, but our Linux lead spends an awful lot of time messing with puppet, shell scripts, and so on to make it all happen. A lot more than we spend with AD and group policy to make similar things happen in Windows.
Licensing savings are certainly something you can talk about savings for, however you aren't getting out of support and maintenance. That is just part of running an enterprise. The question is what would their costs be, compared to Windows? that is likely to vary per environment.
Maybe 6-10 hours of staff time. What I mean is you have to factor what your people cost you. If someone costs $50/hour when you count in salary + ERE (meaning payroll tax, benefits, insurance and all other expenses) then 6 hours of their time costs $300. So, if your transition wastes more than 6 hours of their time, it is a net loss.
You always have to keep that cost in mind when you talk about anything: What does it cost your employees to do? This is the same deal with old hardware. It can actually cost you more money, because it takes more IT time to support. Like if you have an IT guy whose salary + ERE is $30/hour and you have them spend 20 hours a year repairing and maintaining an old P4 system that keeps failing, well that is a huge waste as that $600 could have easily bought a new system that would work better and take up little, if any, of their time.
That is a reason commercial software wins out in some cases. It isn't that you cannot do something without it, just that it saves more staff time than it costs. That's why places will pay for things like iDRAC or other lights-out management, remote KVMs, and so on. They cost a lot but the time they save in maintenance can easily exceed their cost.
Just remember that unless employees are paid very poorly, $300 isn't a lot of time. So you want to analyze how much time your new system will cost (all new systems will cost some time in transition if nothing else) and make sure it is worth it.
Yeah, managing 8,300 Linux desktops and user accounts requires nothing more than a couple shell scripts...
Ken
Well since you asked so nicely.
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.
All of the composited Linux desktops are also rather sluggish. I still have not heard a compelling explanation, why this is. Even a simple window minimize zoom animation gets choppy on low-end hardware. Get an Atom netbook and compare MATE/Cinnamon/GNOME/KDE/Unity (so basically any composited desktop with animations) with Windows, and the experience is worlds apart. There is something wrong with the graphics stack (compositor, X.org, kernel drivers?) which no one wants to admit. However, at the same time, a single OpenGL context (such as a game) usually runs at great performance under Linux.
For an unsustainable model, it sure has worked well for a very long time. You should let the millions of people using Libre Office, Firefox and Linux for year after year know that it's not working.
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A few sysadmins with ssh plus puppet or one of dozens of other similar system management tools. They don't even have to be paticularly experienced since this is now a very well travelled road.
There's probably a few clusters that big being being managed by single sysadmins. Just because managing that many MS windows hosts with a bastard child of LDAP requires a lot of time doesn't mean it's going to take a long time with other platforms. With enough of a budget and a few recent graduates I could have rolled something like this out in 2004 let alone 2014 - as could have many others.
That's pretty well it with stuff like puppet. Welcome to the 21st century where cluster computing methods have hit the desktop.
Early days and not built for speed - so try something like e17 instead of the newer proof of concept stuff.
We've done everything we can in our Active Directory network to overcome roaming profile issues. Even with folder redirection, you have a huge fat ntuser.dat for prone to corruption. Users' home folders on a server, with discrete text-based configuration files would be a dream.
Did you know that in 2014 you still can't safely put risking profiles on a DFS share?
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
I believe that a lot of Windows users (including administrators) simply don't understand anything beyond the personal computer. They just don't understand a world in which one can sit down at another machine, log in and continue working just like they had sat down at their regular workstation. It's an alien concept to them.
The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
Yes they do, because ergonomics require decent keyboards, screen and mouses. They may not need fat clients and would be off just as well with thin clients, but laptops or that form factor do *not* replace desk top systems since they still need the keyboard, mouse and screen and will essentially be used as a desktop almost all of the time.
They need access to their individual applications and data too. While it may be possible migrate all those to web applications or some client-server model, I doubt Turin has managed to finalize that sort of thing yet. Most EU cities have over a thousand custom applications that often run on antiquated proprietary systems and they will still have a burden of those for a long time.
Getting people the cheapest computer possible sounds like an easy way to save money, but in the end the price of the hardware is only a fraction of the costs and often the extra costs incurred by buying cheaper will make it more expensive. Starting with migrating just the desktops to linux and running the proprietary cruft on things like Citrix servers will save them a lot of money without a significant down side.
Oh, because they're not running windows, they can probably use their older systems a bit longer too, if electricity costs don't make it cheaper to upgrade anyway to more energy efficient devices.
I was promised a flying car. Where is my flying car?
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Thanks. I'll run some benchmarks against Windows 3.0.
MS only supports English properly. Europe has dozens of different languages that are all supported very well by Linux. This is a major item for most people.
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
Yup. Plus the fact that Linux requires much less support.
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
The company I work for has a number of workstations close to that of the one represented in TFA, in the 5 digits. Instead of forcing such a radical change down everyone's throat, they went about it step by step, over several years, and it's still ongoing.
They started by gradually replacing several critical programs with web apps or frontends, killing off IE6 with "please use firefox" prompts for good measure. This part was met with only some token resistance by the users, mostly because of a couple of glitches that where promptly fixed. After the first couple of months, general opinion was that the change was very positive, especially because of how cumbersome and hard to use the old apps (some over 10-20 years old) where.
The next phase was replacing Office, and it came with a huge backlash. The chief complaints where not so much about OpenOffice funcionality (along with some "it's *UGLY*!"), but about compatibility with MS generated documents. As of yet, it has been impossible to take MSOffice away from the "higher-ups", as any single minor UI or functionality change is bitched about as if it was a sign of the Apocalypse. Coupled with the long standing tradition of "sending down" 2-slide ppts, it was a huge mess.
It's somewhat better now, as PDF has become the standard for operational documents, and xls or docs are glossed over to make sure nothing's horribly broken.
Some areas (notably, reporting and analysis of KPIs) still rely heavily on excel features. Work is being done on that front, not so much because of the OSS push, but mainly because of the nightmare levels of voodoo in macro and VBA scripting involved. One hears talk of chicken blood and other dark rituals several times a week, which is how frequently something breaks.
There's also a couple of critical windows-specific programs that haven't yet been replaced, but when that's done in another year or so, pretty much any OS is a viable pick. Though definitely not an easy change, it can be done in small steps and with minimal disruption. YMMV, mostly on how dependent you are on MsOffice...
...open source guru Richard Stallman...
I am familiar with free software guru Richard Stallman, but who is this other guy with the same name?
Geology - it's not rocket science; it's rock science
Of course they are being paid. OSS maintainers work for IBM, HP, Red Hat, Canonical, Debian, Oracle, Novel... and a few even work for Microsoft.
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
I suspect the poster isn't aware that there are good quality Linux management solutions, in the OSS space, which are equivalent in features (still working on maturity) to Active Directory including policies and the like.
Go look at FreeIPA from Redhat.
tora
Munich, Turin --- Linux
Any other cities with a u and i in it? And would it work the other way, with i and u? /Simon
The cost of office per year compared to the cost of employing a single employee is tiny even more so if they are a civil servant with a juicy pension entitlement - when I was in charge of the tech at a small 10 person company I reckoned it cost us less than £50 a year per person for office and xp
I just talked to a guy from Microsoft, and they find this a revolting Turin of events.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
looking at the results of the city of Munich's progress in ditching windows as evidence that
How many Microsoft shills are there who read Slashdot? I ask, because I keep seeing the same tired arguments over and over again that don't seem to make any sense or have already proven wrong.
Their world is eroding, and soon they will have only their denial left.
Soon the sole joy in their lives will be their triumphant "See! I told you so" when any vulnerability is exposed in Linux.
It is not only possible to get along perfectly well in a world without Microsoft, it's actually better. I don't have Office document incompatibility between Mac and PC versions, and in general, I spend a whole lot less time just getting things to work. Libre office documents work seamlessly between platforms Mac and Linux. Driver support has actually become better in Linux. I spend more time doing my work, instead of just being happy I got the computer running.
Installed user base doesn't seem to make my computers run any better, maybe it does for the shills.
Somehow, when I think of the shills, Macbeth comes to mind:
"To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow,
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day,
To the last syllable of recorded time;
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!
Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player,
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,
And then is heard no more. It is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing."
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
No, the OS is perfectly fine thanks. And don't tell me you don't know about XFCE or LXDE.
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
I live in Valencia, and I never see a public offering for desktop software. Why all our money have to go to microsoft and not to Canonical (I'm not sure another company is offering desktop OS)? As some have noted on their comments, an associated cost for jumping to linux exists, as there are cost associated to any software version upgrade, and also IT administration derived costs, but if the public offices switch for OSS, and the lawmakers force to use it on schools, it will be easier for the next generations. A lot of teachers defend using MS Office "because is what companies use", but why I have to pay for a license for my daughter to do her homework?
I remember when the Redmond faithful used to go on about needing Windows to get "real work" done. My work must not be real because I can do it on Windows, Linux, Mac, Android and iOS. I find myself using my Android tablet more and more for work and all my social media promotions.
The operating system is becoming less relevant every day. People are choosing devices, not operating systems.
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
One of the things that drove me to open source initially was the asinine closed source model which prohibited you from seeing what was running on your computer, and the endless red tape of Microsofts licensing boodoggles which made it even more difficult to maintain the system, such as by using Live CDs and such for recovery, which is much more flexible on Linux as your not bound by so many restrictions on how the US can be used. People deserve the freedom of reading the sources of software they run, and being able to modify them. its the only way to control your computer rather than it control you
Many people bring up the issue of programmer pay. I do want programmers to be paid, the best would be a donations based model where it is open source, and the developers benefit from donations. In addition, the fact is, a lot of the money people spend on Microsofts crap doesnt even go to computer programmers. What is Bill Gates net worth again? Microsoft is still a near monopoly on desktop which allows Microsoft to exploit both programmers and consumers to benefit some elites who quite honesty are not worth more than the people who work at McDonalds, but instead milk the monopoly that was handed to them by IBM and then seek to exploit their workers to grab more of the profits for the elites who are not worth what they are paid.
For a start, Ubuntu is a high-memory distro, because it tries to be everything to everybody, simple to install and use, and as automated as possible.
Blow it away, install Debian 7 with lxde, and you'll run the entire thing in nicely in your 512MB with room to spare.
"City hall" in German is "Rathaus" Kinda explains a few things......
The fact is that 99.99% of what we use PC's for can be done on Linux, in fact 99% of the server room can run on Linux with out effort. It's time for Microsoft to admit we don't need them.
Well that's the MS side with a bastard child of LDAP and a few issues to work out. Stuff is a bit more mature on other platforms - entire home directories on NFS, let alone profiles, were probably pretty safe in 1990.
From 2009! FFS! I didn't even know Mint was that old! So an experimental thing in a brand new distro had a bug five years ago that others failed to reproduce - you reposting that tells us a shitload more about you than anything else. What motivated such hate of linux that you are willing to embarrass yourself that much to run it down?
Because I come across glitches like that all the time.
Fair enough - why don't you try something worked on more recently than 2009 like e17 and see if you can find some glitches in it instead of in a proof of concept toy composited desktop?
As for your sig, even e16 in 1998 was more "ready for the desktop" than MS Win7 was when it finally came out with some similar features.
The city of Turin became interested in upgrading to a more secure IT infrastructure after they lost 4 million dollars through a traffic jam...
The article says the city of Turin is planning to convert their ageing PC fleet to Linux. Hardware problems will be the inevitable result.
Ubuntu GNOME running in Classic is not terrible.