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Munich's IT Lead: 'No Compelling Reason' To Switch Back To Windows From Linux (techrepublic.com)
"The man who runs Munich's central IT says there is no practical reason for the city to write off millions of euros and years of work to ditch its Linux-based OS for Windows," reports TechRepublic. Long-time Slashdot reader Qbertino summarizes a German-language article:
Karl-Heinz Schneider, lead of Munich's local system house company IT@M, goes on to claim, "We do not see pressing technical reasons to switch to MS and MS Office... The council [in their recent plans] didn't even follow the analysts' suggestion to stick with using LibreOffice." Furthermore, Schneider stated that "System failures that angered citizens in recent years never were related to the LiMux project, but due to new bureaucratic procedures..." and apparently decisions by unqualified personnel at the administrative level, as Munich's administration itself states.
Libre/OpenOffce perhaps, GIMP for sure, and KiCAD a little... but they aren't that bad. I have used very expensive software that was no better... OrCAD for instance (whatever it is called now, Xilinx's toolcina etc..Visual Studio crashes on a whim...
The cost of buying computers over the last decade adds up to a bit no matter what you put on them.
Do you rejoice when you get an email about an upgrade of the vending machines in the company cafeteria, or do you worry about the new machines not carrying the kind of soft drinks or candy bars you're used to? That's basically how a typical office worker feels about computers. Spend a week working helpdesk and you'll understand that very very clearly.
That's why when you manage a large pool of workstations you want the bare minimum that users need to do their work, and why you want that bare minimum to be set in stone. Otherwise you're just annoying users and adding more support tickets to your queue.
lucm, indeed.
Whenever I read stories like this, ie. Windows vs. Linux vs. OSX vs. it seems to always be from the perspective of the implementers or those looking to make a point about whether it can be done. Why not offer choice?
If you use Microsoft office, you put a straitjacket on your system. Not compatible with OSX version of Office, no software at all for Linux.
Choice is nice, but why choose the most limiting OS and Office Suite? I run LO, and my Mac shows the same as my Windows shows the same as my Linux shows the same.
That's why I use it.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
Usually the people who complain that software B is hard to use have been using software A for 10 years and B is just different enough to throw them off constantly.
Business people live and breathe Excel. They know what they are doing.
I've seen plenty of evidence that they don't.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
The trouble is that Microsoft don't like their users to have choice. They bake-in proprietary features and incompatibilities that prevent users from sharing documents and files across operating systems or going outside their software walled gardens. How many prosecutions against Microsoft for anti-competitive practices will it take to convince you? They don't want their users to have choice, they want their users to be stuck with using their products and services and unable to easily switch to others.
I can see that for people whose jobs are doing stuff other than ICT will see the transition from one OS and office software to another as a problem. It's one transition, once. Anyone who's experienced Win10 can attest that it's so different to previous versions and that they've changed around MS Office so much lately, that the learning curve to switch to Linux is comparable. So why not? Also, there's the privacy issues with Win10 (Microsoft calls their key-loggers and spyware "telemetry") that all governments should be wary of. Keep your privacy and control with Linux as well as save a few € in the process.
Usually the people who complain that software B is hard to use have been using software A for 10 years and B is just different enough to throw them off constantly.
Exactly. I made the transition from Microsoft's suite to AO and LO almost seamlessly. I had to look up some things in their spreadsheet, but that might have taken up 15 minutes. since then. On the other hand, fixing documents from Windows to OSX was a regular part of operation, I probably spent months overall.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
Apparantly you are wrong, https://www.google.com.au/sear... leads to https://ask.libreoffice.org/en.... Wow that was really so hard.
Next step in this story should be a in depth investigation of why the new incoming politician pushed so hard on this apparently with zero consultation with his IT staff. Most probable, M$ paid them a bribe (campaign contribution) to push it, so the arse holes at M$ could use if for marketing purposed and the stupendously invasive POS windows anal probe 10, dies a slow grim death.
Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
Maybe you're moving your mouse around too rapidly. The telemetry service cannot keep pace!
at said, open source software is great until you have to use it. OpenOffice, GIMP, KiCad...all needlessly convoluted.
I can see that with gimp. It has one of the worse interfaces for any software that I have seen. I don't know about KiCad as I have never used it. Openoffice is several years out of date. Do they still maintain it?
Libreoffice 5.x+ is what you want to use. 4.x and below I always seemed to have issues interfacing with the rest of the MS office world. Not so with 5.x+ and above.
I read at +2. If your post doesn't reach that level I will not see or respond to it.