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Munich Plans New Vote on Dumping Linux For Windows 10 (techrepublic.com)
An anonymous reader quotes TechRepublic:
The city of Munich has suggested it will cost too much to carry on using Linux alongside Windows, despite having spent millions of euros switching PCs to open-source software... "Today, with a Linux client-centric environment, we are often confronted with major difficulties and additional costs when it comes to acquiring and operating professional application software," the city council told the German Federation of Taxpayers. Running Linux will ultimately prove unsustainable, suggests the council, due to the need to also keep a minority of Windows machines to run line-of-business software incompatible with Linux. "In the long term, this situation means that the operation of the non-uniform client landscape can no longer be made cost-efficient"... Since completing the multi-year move to LiMux, a custom-version of the Linux-based OS Ubuntu, the city always kept a smaller number of Windows machines to run incompatible software. As of last year it had about 4,163 Windows-based PCs, compared to about 20,000 Linux-based PCs.
The assessment is at odds with a wide-ranging review of the city's IT systems by Accenture last year, which found that most of the problems stem not from the use of open-source software, but from inefficiencies in how Munich co-ordinates the efforts of IT teams scattered throughout different departments. Dr. Florian Roth, leader of the Green Party at Munich City Council, said the review had also not recommended a wholesale shift to Windows. "The Accenture report suggested to run both systems because the complete 'rollback' to Windows and MS Office would mean a waste of experience, technology, work and money," he said... The city's administration is investigating how long it would take and how much it would cost to build a Windows 10 client for use by the city's employees. Once this work is complete, the council will vote again in November on whether this Windows client should replace LiMux across the authority from 2021.
A taxpayer's federation post urged "Penguin, adieu!" -- while also admitting that returning to Windows "will devour further tax money in the millions," according to TechRepublic.
"The federation's post also makes no mention of the licensing and other savings achieved by switching to LiMux, estimated to stand at about €10m."
The assessment is at odds with a wide-ranging review of the city's IT systems by Accenture last year, which found that most of the problems stem not from the use of open-source software, but from inefficiencies in how Munich co-ordinates the efforts of IT teams scattered throughout different departments. Dr. Florian Roth, leader of the Green Party at Munich City Council, said the review had also not recommended a wholesale shift to Windows. "The Accenture report suggested to run both systems because the complete 'rollback' to Windows and MS Office would mean a waste of experience, technology, work and money," he said... The city's administration is investigating how long it would take and how much it would cost to build a Windows 10 client for use by the city's employees. Once this work is complete, the council will vote again in November on whether this Windows client should replace LiMux across the authority from 2021.
A taxpayer's federation post urged "Penguin, adieu!" -- while also admitting that returning to Windows "will devour further tax money in the millions," according to TechRepublic.
"The federation's post also makes no mention of the licensing and other savings achieved by switching to LiMux, estimated to stand at about €10m."
...Afford! If selling out to Microsoft is cheaper, then so be it.
Time is what keeps everything from happening all at once.
Microsoft put together a huge infrastructure in MS Learning to teach people to use and support their software. This meant that while you had to pay more to license their software, it was relatively easy to find people that could use and support their software. Because it's more challenging to "grow" people who can support open source software, their services have never come cheap. The most expensive part of any IT deployment is the geeks - reduce the cost of that (by prioritizing the creation of training material) and the cost of licensing your software really becomes a secondary concern.
Wonder if they can cut some type of privacy deal with MS to not slurp so much data from their machines. Even the LTSB version reports back to MS way too much info (even when you try to turn it all off!). Windows 10 has become a privacy nightmare for end users. Munich would be much better off sticking with Linux since they've already made the initial investment. The next step would be a plan to migrate from the legacy Windows apps over to open source based alternatives.
As much as I am a vocal Linux supporter, the fact of the matter is that Linux has no comparable turnkey Office, Exchange, and Sharepoint killer.
Oh yes, there are comparable applications - but none of them work together in an easily managed way.
Until something unified and stable can actually compete with the ease of setup of Microsoft's office suite, Linux has no hope here.
So it looks like we'll be stuck with Windows Server and it's regular RDS server dropouts, printer spooler issues, DFS shares disappearing, and random Windows hangs for a long time into the forseeable future until someone can do something about it.
READY.
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It can't help that modern Linux distros have become such a shitshow. By that I mean the Linux and open source software ecosystem undergoes totally unnecessary change very rapidly. Often this has made the user experience worse, and it makes it harder to use and support Linux.
Some good examples of this are GNOME 3, systemd, PulseAudio, NetworkManager, and Firefox. They are examples of change for the sake of change alone.
Debian is a good example of what happens at the distro level. For much of its existence it was a stable OS, even if somewhat slow-moving at times. What you learned today could often be applied next year, if not several years after that. When there was change, it was done gradually and in a way that avoided disruption.
But Debian has taken a turn for the worst over the last several years, with things like systemd and GNOME 3 disruptively forced into the distro very rapidly, and even against the wishes of the Debian user community. Problems with such software have effectively ruined Debian for many users, especially long-time Debian users who came to expect a very high level of stability and reliability.
While some people claim that moving to a niche distro like Devuan, or Slackware, or Gentoo is an option, the reality is that such distros don't really provide a better experience. It's much more effective to move to an OS like FreeBSD, where its developers and maintainers have shown that they won't make radically disruptive changes on a frequent basis.
I can't blame organizations from moving away from Linux today. Modern Linux distros are nothing like typical Linux distros were a decade ago. Stability and sensible change have been thrown out in favor of hipster-oriented fads involving radical and disruptive change without much, if any, benefit.
Linux's problems are much more foundational than that. Linux still doesn't have a good desktop environment, even after two decades of trying.
GNOME 3 has been a colossal disaster. KDE is too bloated. Xfce has stagnated. The various niche environments and window managers provide a shoddy and woefully incomplete user experience.
Windows and macOS both present a far superior desktop environment for users to work within.
Linux not having any good productivity apps ends up being irrelevant when there isn't a viable desktop environment to run such apps within!
But then I just stopped using the "incompatible software."
For most of my needs, I found new software that was compatible with the new OS. For the rest, I either replaced it with my own software or just dumped the need. After a few years, I did eventually purchase another windows machine, but it was only to drive hardware that required interfacing with Windows. I rarely boot the Windows machine up now too... Since I have had it MS decided to move all their functions around between Windows 7, 8, and 10... it's just annoying.
Munich should take the same approach. If they keep the crutch (Windows) around, their staff will never be able to fully commit to the new OS. They should completely ditch Windows for 5 years and let the shit hit the fan. Then, after 5 years, then can bring it back in a limited capacity if they really need it.
In all likelyhood, they just need Windows to run some other clunky piece of accounting software written in VB that probably needs to be modernized anyway.
To be fair, bloat is really only an issue when it has a discernible negative impact on productivity. KDE works just fine if you have enough RAM... typically 32G or more, but I will agree that it's definitely not for smaller systems.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
Could you not use something like Citrix Xenapp (as an example) to stream the non compatible apps to the linux desktops, instead of changing the OS? This would kind of be the best of both worls as you can keep your free open source desktops, but run the business line apps you require that work on windows?
Translating from German: "The right people have been greased, this will not happen again"
The issue is when you have multiple office users and computers, and printers, and applications which only run on Windows.
That's when user and computer management and application support gets to be a real problem. You won't notice these issues as a home computer user.
Bag on Active Directory as much as you want, but there's nothing comparable in Linux. I've deployed OpenLDAP before - but holy shit I wouldn't want to have to manage that by hand on a daily basis.
Windows server is more manageable. That said, it is a flaky POS and I wish it would die.
READY.
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Linux and open source software ecosystem undergoes totally unnecessary change very rapidly. Often this has made the user experience worse, and it makes it harder to use and support Linux.
This is so spot on. There are some parts of Windows, especially on the server side e.g. the Service Control Manager or the RRAS admin console that look EXACTLY the same as they did in 1999. Why you ask? BECAUSE THEY DON'T NEED TO FUCKING CHANGE. They are "done" and the only changes are to fix bugs.
If this was Linux these dialogs would have changed 6 times by now, because OSS developers prefer to fuck with things to feed their creative brains rather than focusing their energy on fixing bugs. Why? Well you can consider OSS developers are not being paid and in many cases are volunteers. You can't criticize or fire them since they're doing it for free. New design is more fun than fixing bugs which everyone will agree is boring. QED. So what you have is a constant influx of new features / requirements creep and moving shit around in the UI for no good reason while legit bugs never get fixed. The best example of this is Firefox and we all know why.
In commercial (proprietary) software you're typically working to a list of requirements and churning through them. Going off and doing whatever you feel like? You're fired. There's a lot of guys in Bangalore right now working for Intel, MS, IBM, etc doing boring as fuck work fixing bugs and software maintenance. It's a job, it pays the bills, they go home after 40 hrs but bugs get fixed.
In the OSS world this model is completely inappropriate to their development philosophy. It's apples to oranges.
Now if you'll excuse me I need to restart Firefox because of the fucking memory leaks.
It's my own observation that when most people are asked about what features they *really* depend upon in Office that are simply not present in the most comparable alternatives for Linux, the #1 answer seems to be simple full compatibility with MS Office itself. While the free tools for Linux can open and edit MS Office documents, often subtle formatting differences get introduced that can rather radically change how the document ends up looking, and this is, understandably, undesirable in many cases.
Mind you, this isn't even an issue when you and all of the people you may need to share such documents with are both using the alternative software in the first place. Considering the software is free, there's no real reason why this could not be done.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
Linux has no comparable turnkey Office, Exchange, and Sharepoint killer.
Nobody knows what Sharepoint actually does, so there can't possibly ever be a Linux version of such system. On a more serious note, the line of business software, whatever that might be for Munich is clearly the problem. If their client variability is an issue now, lets see just how bad the situation becomes when they want to "mobilize" their workers. Their problems just don't disappear by standardizing the clients.
So Linux adds some dumb audio drivers, whereas Windows changes it's entire UI that makes even GNOME 3 look good. So you say, that Metro UI is for home users and not servers? Well, GNOME 3 and PulseAudio aren't for back office servers either. Your Red Hat server is going to run the same software from 10 years ago most likely, whereas Windows is bad at doing this.
You will often hear the Windows guru say "have you tried shutting it off and turning it back on?" Yes, sounds like a joke but it happens. But you don't hear that from the Linux guru.
You're right, the Linux guru knows that systemd might keep the server from booting for some fuckall reason if he power cycles it, and it's on with the shoes and coat at 3am as you're off to the data center.
Sharepoint is an alternative file system, largely inspired by the web. Hyperlinks and embedded documents as opposed to "folders" and "files".
The biggest advantage of SharePoint in this regard is the ability to add additional "signage" or markups to assist the user in understanding the nature of the data in a particular file.
KDE works just fine if you have enough RAM... typically 32G or more, but I will agree that it's definitely not for smaller systems.
Well, just tap that FUD keg and let the swill flow.
KDE works just fine on 4G or less. Often much less. 99% of Linux desktops have never even heard of 32G. Your statement is so bogus I seriously wonder what your purpose is posting it.
Windows 8, windows 10... suffering. Change not just for change sake but also with more instrumentation to spy on you, to advertise to you. Ultimate goal is that we pay a monthly fee AND we have to put up with commercials to use our own computer.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
The MS headquarter is in Munich. The new mayor of Munich is a great fan of MS who always wanted to end LiMux. While the LiMux made some mistakes by not including employees in their process, the Accountability Office determined that the move back would be a waste of money and time. Anyway, Schleswig-Holstein, the most northern state of Germany, us going for OSS.
Nobody copied that ribbon thing on Microsoft and LibreOffice works cross platform, something that is the cause of the cost on Windows now.
It's all the cost of cross training people to Windows that's the big overhead, and that cost needs to be loaded on the Windows side, since its a Windows cost.
PC sales continue to decline (7.3% yoy), its now selling less than 1/8th of Android device volumes sold. You can pretend that isn't important, but the world is moving to tablet devices and Microsoft isn't winning.
Can you imagine someone heavily invested in Microsoft IIS? What a joke they are now, Microsoft server share is nowhere.
We should always consider the TCO and not the sticker price.
At the office we pay roughly $2,500 per hypervisor per year to run RHEL virtual machines, plus a ton of extras (they like to licenses useful things separately, a la Oracle). VMWare license not included, of course.
Retail price for the Microsoft equivalent, Windows Server DataCenter, is a one-time $6,000 fee and that includes Hyper-V, which is nowadays more or less comparable to VMWare. And nobody in the enterprise world pays retail with Microsoft, there's always a huge discount for ELA.
Bottom line, if you want support, Windows is less expensive than RHEL.
I think Oracle Linux is slightly less expensive than RHEL but then you just get CentOS + Oracle drivers so it's not really the same product. Not sure about SLES but I doubt they're cheaper. Last time I checked Ubuntu was $1,500 / yr, but then who wants that in their data centers I wonder.
lucm, indeed.
https://systemd-free.org/
There's openRC if you really hate systemd that much. And I would just stick with XFCE and ALSA since that's all you need basically https://sourceforge.net/projec... here's a base installer if you think you have to install then remove systemd.
what you end up with are 50,000 geeks all with completely different ideas of what a desktop environment should look like and going off and creating YADE (yet another desktop environment) instead of working together to make the one, true DE better and more usable.
I think that's a strength, not a weakness. Look at Ubuntu; they had this horror called Unity that was basically the Apple philosophy on Linux, a one-size-fits-none GUI that "knew better" than its users and wanted to have a similar experience for everyone, and it has been a huge failure.
You don't succeed in life by adapting your model to be a clone of the competition. You succeed by embracing your identity and providing a real alternative, not a discount runner-up.
As long as people can install free software and customize it the way they want, the Linux desktop is a winner. Let Microsoft worry about market share, who cares.
lucm, indeed.
MS but huge efforts into wiping out all that office tools knowhow in the past decade and now it is debatable how much you can trust that they don't try to do it again.
the thing is, MS had good solid experts on refining the basic rules of interaction, double click to select a word in the early '90s, how the windows behaved and so forth, including what was interactable - even switch to having a taskbar and a button labeled as Start needed no new basic training. all the features of the text editor you knew where to find - the applications came with solid built in help tools - and the interaction remained the same for advanced users.
they have dialed it back a little bit with windows 10 compared to windows 8, which was so bad that it made necessary in the first time since 1990 to retrain office personnel for a new operating system in the companies that were too stupid to upgrade to it(it offering no benefits to any business users over windows 7).
currently microsoft throws still that out good research with windows 10 install procedure even - clearly separate paths are not marked as clearly separate paths but instead another is just a word and another is clearly marked as a button(the purpose is to increase the number of people creating new online ms accounts, which is not necessary to use windows 10 but they do make an effort to _not_ be clear about that).
add all the walking backs on having all the applications friendly for font size choosing and all that to the mix with metro apps, the dialed back enterprise control functionality, the options that are supposed to shut down call home, the random upgrades/updates that can do all kinds of breakage and well... the ms option has to be goddamned cheap to be cheaper actually and a lot less predictable in expenses. you cannot know when they decide to switch off support for old hardware and roll out the upgrade on exactly that hardware they no longer support.
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
Meh we've had endless discussions and none of the scenarios were really more cost-effective. There's too many packages and products licensed differently, we don't have just one type of workload.
Anyways both the RHEL and MSFT licenses are peanuts compared to the obscene Oracle and IBM licenses. When we get SQL Server on RHEL I will personally fly to wherever the fuck Oracle have their headquarters to take a piss on their logo.
lucm, indeed.
This story encapsulates, with startling economy and elegance, everything that is wrong with our alleged Western "civilization". (The thing that Gandhi, when asked, said he thought "would be a very good idea").
Apparently expensive software costs less than free software. That's the basic truth here. Of course it is all dressed up with frills and furbelows: maintenance costs, training costs, blah di blah di blah.
But the fundamental assertion is that expensive software costs less than free software. And people believe that! Not so surprising, perhaps, in a world dominated by marketing, advertising, and political campaigning.
In a world where the authorities can utter such a startling piece of imbecility, "experts" can be found to support it with an impressive array of "facts" and "figures", and credulous multitudes can be found to believe it... how can you ever hope to accomplish anything honest?
"Aus so krummem Holze, als woraus der Mensch gemacht ist, kann nichts ganz Gerades gezimmert werden".
I am sure that there are many other solipsists out there.
Windows not likely to run a software from 10 years ago? Are you from some kind of a parallel universe? Windows backwards compatibility is legendary. Windows 10 is able to run most software written for Windows 95, but it is often very difficult to get a package from Debian Jessie running in Debian Stretch.
"It's such a fine line between stupid and clever" -- David St. Hubbins, Spinal Tap
And this attitude - why would user even need x - is exactly why Linux on desktop will never happen.
"It's such a fine line between stupid and clever" -- David St. Hubbins, Spinal Tap
Windows 10 (32 bit) runs Word for Windows 6.0, which was written for Windows 3.x.
Claus
And I forgot to mention the ribbon bar interface change where some functionality was completely lost for 6 months before I figured out how to do it again because it had been so well hidden.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
Because Microsoft never inflicted Windows Vista and Windows 8 on the world. They didn't destroy a stable Office interface with the disaster known as the "Ribbon". Windows is totally stable, and immune to the whims of GUI designers looking to make their mark. /sarc
Seriously, this is a disease that affects the entire software community. However, Linux gives you the tools to minimize the problems. Granted, you won't escape SystemD easily, but Gnome is actually easy: choose a more stable desktop, like xfce. I've been using Xubuntu for ages - any changes to the desktop have been minor. There are a few hiccups in getting things configured, but even those hiccups have been stable for a long time.
I think the mistake that Munich has made is allowing such a large set of Windows computers to exist. This means that they are essentially maintaining two complete infrastructures, requiring two sets of administrators, support personnel who have to cover both worlds, etc.. They haven't ever finished their migration, and that is the real problem.
Enjoy life! This is not a dress rehearsal.
The answer is easy: exclusively use Linux clients. For those cases where Windows is needed keep a handful of VMs around that run Windows. This case also shows that the common claim that for every Windows app there is an equal Linux counterpart is false. It further shows that the Windows ecosystem made it impossible to switch to alternatives because there are none.
You are not correct:
libreoffice is written in C++. There are some JAVA plugins, but they do not relate to the GUI. I find libreoffice quit snappy, but format conversion to word is lossy and some features (e.g. track changes) are not as mature as in MS word. MS Word on the other hand is a nightmare that everyone has gotten accustomed to.
Moritz
There are so many pieces of software that are Windows only. You really have no idea of how entrenched it is.
Well all I know is that it feels as clumsy as hell when I open a large spreadsheet. Macros usually don't work. I guess I made the assumption it was java based because I've never seen a native application that slow.
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
Bah, ha ha ha. Ha ha HA! Ha ha. ....... HA!
Oh man. That's the best laugh I've had all morning. Christ on a crutch Dunkelfalke, I got software from Windows XP SP3 that won't install on Win 7! And don NOT tell me this is an anomaly because some of this is Adobe software. Supporting software at my job is like walking through a minefield because I NEVER know what I'll get with Windows. Linux is a breeze in comparison because I can control the libraries.
Maybe you are one of those techs who just pushes a button and hopes for the best. Good for you. I can't do that with Windows, not if I want to keep my job. Every day I need to take great pains in order to ensure my users can do what they did yesterday -- with the exception of the ten Linux users who never complain.
The city of Munich has suggested it will cost too much to carry on using Linux alongside Windows, despite having spent millions of euros switching PCs to open-source software... "
It's the typical problem in software regarding how to account for costs. It's the eternal battle between CAPEX vs OPEX. It is always cheaper to dump all windows licenses and install whatever happens to be the Linux distro of the day (CAPEX, sorta). It is quite another when it comes to the cost of operations, finding people who can use the software, training, familiarity, etc.
No matter what Linux distro you pick, it requires a lot of elbow grease to put it to a place where non-tech users can actually use it to get work done. You do not need that with Windows even when you factor out security risks, viruses, etc (And a lot of that get filtered out if you slap something like Citrix on front of it.)
I've done most of my development on Linux (and before that Solaris, HP and Irix, hell, even Vax in the day.) I prefer that (most of the time) over doing development in Windows. But for day-to-day non-programming work (or for media consumption or for, say, clerical/financial work). Sorry, Windows.
That's just the gist of it. The year of the Linux desktop never came, and (unless something radical happens), it never will.
Hey good news, SQL Server /is/ available on RHEL.
https://blogs.technet.microsof...
20K linux + 4K windows? You should be running 500 windows PC's (server) at the most for legacy in an virtual machine environment. Possibly virtual terminals for workstations. You need programmers on your staff and not web developers.
How were those apps not moved to Windows terminal servers a decade ago?
Sure, there may be a handful of dedicated machines that run industrial control products, but those are in a separate support silo, just like the Ricoh photocopier doesn't count as FreeBSD desktop.
But this brings up one very good point - Linux doesn't have a lobbying arm and politicians on the take, so where politicians are involved it's not the best place to push for FLOSS solutions.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
1) MS has been attacking this from the start. Every Linux misstep is amplified and scrutinized with a double standard.
2) Massive multinationals have more power than most governments and outlast political careers.
3) Early adopters pay an additional price; even at a higher price, Open Source is a long term game. Commercial is a perpetual subscription to a 3rd party's short term game, on their terms.
4) THE TREND IS TO THE CLOUD even MS is going that way! Internal services (indoor cloud?) also.
5) When everything can run in the browser (and most government software should) it doesn't matter what OS you use. So why pay for the USA to copy all your data and raise your security threat?
Democracy Now! - uncensored, anti-establishment news
For what it's worth, Munich's LiMux is running an ancient linux desktop - which is part of the problem and part of why (some) users don't like it. A more modern desktop like Linux Mint would probably be better received. And systemd has fuck-all to do with it, haters. As noted above, the servers are probably running RedHat. And, in fact, Munich's desktop is probably so outdated that it doesn't run systemd either.
That said, the fact that Munich had to decide on a desktop to use - and that desktop is now more or less orphaned software now isn't a good thing. If Munich's needs required a frozen, non-standard Linux desktop in order for everyone to run the same apps, that's gotta be a point against it. Then again, these folks were early adopters, and endured a long, painful learning curve. If they weren't facing political opposition (and bribes) to switch to Windows, they could probably migrate to a newer generation Linux desktop that works much better than what they're using now.
But ultimately, the sad state of affairs is that, unless an organization has bitten the bullet and learned how to live without Windows desktop applications - i.e., they have gone with web-based apps for almost everything, Linux is not going to fit the bill for them. That said, there is a lot they can do to move in that direction. And tying themselves to the full suite of Microsoft stuff isn't it. So, switch to Windows on the desktop if you must - for those few 3rd party Windows apps you're still dependent on. But use LibreOffice - or if you must, Office 365 or Google web stuff. And use PDF for distributing documents. Or bite the bullet and make plans to migrate to a full web infrastructure with Chromebooks on the desktop. And if you can't do any of that, well, all is lost. But bear in mind that new organizations don't have the lock in that you do. Fine if you're a government that isn't in a competitive situation, then it's just a waste of money - but that's nothing new for governments. Businesses need to remain competitive, and new ones don't have to drag along a ton of Microsoft baggage.
Posted from my Android phone. Oh, I can change this? There, that's better...
I just finished 30 years working for a municipality (Calgary) with about 12,000 desktops.
We were mixed DOS/Mac at first and when the IT department finally admitted that they were not toys, and that their beloved mainframe was dying at last, they took over PC IT from the departments, and immediately insisted on getting rid of Macs because of "one environment".
It was always about "support costs" and "total cost of ownership", a number they never actually had to calculate. They also never had to prove it was cheaper to do everything their way - but as a gross measure, our costs never went down. Not even on a per-PC basis.
We always had Unix, from when you had to have a workstation to run drafting software. Because IT clung to the mainframe to the bitter end, it was the engineering department Unix server room that took over running servers (this was happening around 1996, with the 1997 handover of Hong Kong to China imminent, when the joke was "will it actually be Hong Kong that takes over China" was big - in our shop, it really was a bunch of drafting-support staff that took over the server room!) We also ran all the E-mail servers on Solaris because 'e-mail' was "an Internet thing" and all corporate E-mail until then had been IBM PROFS. Finally a few Windows servers were allowed to provide Outlook, but only after Windows 2000 Server got decent. Everything else is still Unix.
Unix support staff were NOT hard to find for a large server room. Windows server staff that could support a LARGE installation were rarer! MS courses turn out lots of guys that can run a dentist's office but very few that can run a city.
After all support went to IT...there was no actual support, except re-installs. They re-install the software, they re-install your whole machine, but they. will. NOT. come to your machine and help you with your difficult spreadsheet. None of the alleged "support" staff understand any of our software except for basic MS-Office apps they themselves have to use (and, as mentioned, the won't come help with that, either). But for any special office software of the type that the article speaks of, departments have to drum up their own local "power users" for support, who by the way are discouraged from it by IT and certainly given no passwords or special access.
And for that matter, what does the client even matter to IT? They hate clients. All business software that can possibly be moved to web apps for easier admin, has been. It would run on Android just as well.
So I just don't see what the big deal is. Here's an experiment: Offer, gasp TWO alternatives with internal costs that match the actual support costs of each choice, then let your customers choose which desktop they want.
"KDE works just fine if you have enough RAM... typically 32G or more"
KDE works just perfect on 4GB RAM.
I know: that's what my desktop has. And it also runs quite a bunch of services without problems.
nothing wring with xfce you should see mint or manjaros versions of it.
This too. I've been running it on my home workstation, my surface pro, and my workstation at work. I have yet to see it stand up and try to sell me something. Windows XP far more likely to do that than windows 10 has been.
I find that people that bitch about windows 10 are not the ones that are actually using it. Most of them are simply spouting off some rumor they read on some back ally website.
I read at +2. If your post doesn't reach that level I will not see or respond to it.
I noticed that to on my surface pro when I first got it. Lots of tiles hawking things. I removed all of them and put in my own tiles for my own apps. Haven 't seen an ad or had one of them try to sell me a think.
So, yes I will concede that you do have a point. A new install of windows 10 will happily offer you some shit to buy. But at least it isn't as bad as some android apps I've seen which seem to think that my devices sole purpose is for them to try to sell me shit.
I read at +2. If your post doesn't reach that level I will not see or respond to it.
Have you ever TRIED openoffice or libreoffice?
Yes, I have. I've been using both since the started out. What you say was true back in the early days, and I believe they where java applications then. At least openoffice was.
Simply not true of libreoffice 5+. I actually prefer to use Microsoft office but there have been many times that I've had to resort to using libreoffice. Once I adjusted to the different look and feel, I find that libreoffice is perfectly applicable replacement for 95% of what people would do with MS Office.
I read at +2. If your post doesn't reach that level I will not see or respond to it.
32G of ram costs only about $350.... and is quite far from the most expensive component in a computer. A modern MB and CPU can each cost much more than that.
You are comparing apples to oranges here. I bet you build your own rigs. To people like us, we don't look at $350 for 32G as a unnecessary expense. We consider it a wise investment because our personal rigs are going do so much more than a typical office workers machine.
A typical office workers machine is going to be reproduced hundreds if not thousands of times across a corporate or municipality environment. That $350 will add up to be a ass load in that environment. That is why most of these machines only meet the bare specs required to run the OS and get work done. Usually 4 to 8 GB.
I read at +2. If your post doesn't reach that level I will not see or respond to it.
Have you worked in the enterprise world? It's never about pointing fingers, it's usually about senior management wanting to align their IT portfolio with Gartner's magic quadrants.
Also at the moment Postgres is almost never in the support matrix of big vendors, it's always Oracle/SQL Server/DB2. So even if the app you buy for a gazillion bucks use JDBC and could technically run on Postgres or even Paradox, the solution wouldn't be certified by the vendor.
It's not a lost cause, though. Many big data platforms use Postgres by default (ex: Ambari) and vendor like Hortonworks make it more acceptable for the suits. Red Hat also helps, since they support it. But those are still minor players in the big chess game of enterprise database rackets.
lucm, indeed.
AC said: I didn't realize anyone liked the ribbons. I know I'm not anyone's demographic. I actually like gnome 3, win10 (enterprise anyway), and unity, but I mostly use windowing systems to separate my terminals from my graphics. Buttons and menus are icky. Is it the speed of recognition that the ribbon helps with? I don't use applications that way, just keyboard shortcuts which ms helpfully hasn't changed since long ago.
I think ribbons are supposed to help new users because they are "intuitive".
One person's "intuitive" is another person's "How the hell do you do this simple task? Where is the button?"
They help at first but at a tremendous cost once you gain skill. It's like having training wheels on your motorcycle --- and they never ever come off.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
Are you not an native english speaker?
When I say, "the ultimate goal"... I mean that microsoft has revealed in bits and pieces that their very long term goal is a subscription model. Like cable TV. They also gather a lot of information and send it home. Some of the type of information they gather is used to inform advertising. Based on the path other programs have taken, they will charge a subscription and then sometime after that embed commercials in your windows experience. And then after that commercials from 'select' business partners. Of course, there will be a premium subscription with no commercials (which will change later to "fewer" commercials).
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
> Nobody will pay for Office when open source office suites are free.
That just hasn't happened though has it?
The deal here is that if they 'need' to keep 4000 windows PCs around, they are as easy to manage as 20000 PCs. The license cost is negligible next to the setup, the admins and the tin.
So the don't 'need' the Linux PCs at all. If we could get rid of the last 4000 windows boxes, things would be different - that's where the problem lies, in the long tail, not the bulk.