"Munich Officially Drops Windows, Adopts Linux"
- Thread starter Wunderchu
- Start date
Wow, so i guess all their employees are gonna have to be trained. I've never used Linux, what's the main difference anyway? Remember, i'm not a programmer.
I don't think the management in Munich care about opensource. I really expect their looking more at cost. Yes Linux is free, but they will still spend a heap of money on third party support, consultancy, and so on. They could just as easily move to mac, or solaris (which used to be big for CAD, scientic workstations) just as easily of the price was right.
london-boy said:
since most of them use Office Suite, you can get the taste of it by downloading Open Office.
transition is .... non-existant.... my mom, who is 65 and has worked on M$ forever had to use my comp a week or two ago and she had 0 ( nada, none, no at all....) problems when working in Open Office....
most (if not all) Linux distros use Open Office, so...there you go....
personally i will NEVER pay for M$ Office as long as there is Open Office, which BTW is now in 2.0 beta and is really really nice to work with....
Just wait till your mom has to do something non-trivial like attach a new printer, setup fonts in X or change resolutions, or add a new driver. Oh yeah, I can see my mom running XConfigurator/XConfig/etc
The Linux desktop is terrible. OS X shows you how to layer a very nice, easy to use desktop on top of Unix. Linux makes a nice server OS and a nice embedded OS, but as a desktop OS for the everyday non-technical user, it is the worst of all possible worlds.
I've been using unix for the last 15 years, and all unices cept OS X (and maybe NeXTStep) fall flat on usability.
The Linux desktop is terrible. OS X shows you how to layer a very nice, easy to use desktop on top of Unix. Linux makes a nice server OS and a nice embedded OS, but as a desktop OS for the everyday non-technical user, it is the worst of all possible worlds.
I've been using unix for the last 15 years, and all unices cept OS X (and maybe NeXTStep) fall flat on usability.
Killer-Kris
Regular
DemoCoder said:
That may be a problem in the mom/grandma scenario, but not for the office workers. If they need something installed, a support person will do it.
So yeah, put Mozilla, and OpenOffice on those machines and I bet if you swapped them over night, most everyone would come in to work and just go about business like usual with out even noticing.
You brought up your mom and Linux, not me. Sure, medium to large companies have IT support and HelpDesk, but guess what, it costs more to run desktop support for Linux because a) you have to get rid of all your MS support people and hire linux qualified people and b) Linux admins/techs by and large don't have a history of creating a culture tailored to supporting other people. That means procedures, standards, and corporate distributions must be created where none existed for Linux desktop before.
Open Source exists for developers to scratch an itch or to boost their rep. The attitudes of many power Linux users is that anyone who doesn't know how to do something should RTFM or they are an idiot. Ease of use? LOSER! You should just look at the help newsgroups or IRC channels sometimes.
I don't see why you want to bring OpenOffice on Windows into this. The original article is about replacing 14,000 Windows installations with Linux. The cost savings ain't gonna materialize, and trying to setup techsupport for 14k Linux boxes and associated problems isn't going to be easy.
Many large companies don't even upgrade from NT4 to 2000 to 2000 to XP, or even Service Packs, because it generates (invariably) a huge number of trouble tickets and causes more trouble than it is worth alot of times (modulo hotfixes) The belief that Linux will solve this issue is pure naivete'
The cost of Windows is an insignificant fraction of the support cost of a corporate user.
Open Source exists for developers to scratch an itch or to boost their rep. The attitudes of many power Linux users is that anyone who doesn't know how to do something should RTFM or they are an idiot. Ease of use? LOSER! You should just look at the help newsgroups or IRC channels sometimes.
I don't see why you want to bring OpenOffice on Windows into this. The original article is about replacing 14,000 Windows installations with Linux. The cost savings ain't gonna materialize, and trying to setup techsupport for 14k Linux boxes and associated problems isn't going to be easy.
Many large companies don't even upgrade from NT4 to 2000 to 2000 to XP, or even Service Packs, because it generates (invariably) a huge number of trouble tickets and causes more trouble than it is worth alot of times (modulo hotfixes) The belief that Linux will solve this issue is pure naivete'
The cost of Windows is an insignificant fraction of the support cost of a corporate user.
well instead of MSFT IBM and Novell will stand behind them, and Novell at least (probably IBM too I would imagine) stand behind their products with support.
If anything this is more like choosing between two coroprations to support you than between heaven and hell.
If anything this is more like choosing between two coroprations to support you than between heaven and hell.
DemoCoder said:
Typically actions like these are not undertaken, or even allowed to be undertaken, by the end-user in a business environment. Grandmothers aside, I think the only change here is that the IT support staff must learn this, not the end-user. For them it should be transparent.
Why not offer some evidence or examples of how it's so terrible? First of all, I am sure you know that there are several desktops available. I think we can safely assume that Munich will see the use of KDE, with a more remote possibility of Gnome. Neither of these two are terrible.
Maybe you could at least enlighten me (us) on what exactly qualifies OS X as not being terrible? Is it the fancy eye-candy or what? Though I think that stuff is great, especially for grandmothers, I am unusure how much benefit it brings to a corporate environment where the dekstop s likely to be a word processor, a spread sheet, or some database interface.
Although I have not been using Linux for anything approaching 15 years, I feel that Gnome and KDE are typically very good. Perhaps I am missing something obvious simply because I don't use my PC the same as you use yours so it would be nice if you pointed out what it was.
BTW, I am currently using Fedora Core 3 (x86_64) with Gnome (Bluecurve) and I think this is a really promising setup to compete with any commercial OS. On one hand I don't think the actual desktop has evolved a great deal over the past few years, but I find it solid and very easy to move around in. This made me think of another point and that point is that using the desktop (or GUI) to configure the computer is also dependent on the distrobution used, with each distribution creating and offering their own tools to streamline administrative functions.
DemoCoder said:
ALL I SAID IS THAT MY MOM, WHO IS 65, HAD NO PROBLEM WITH WORKING IN OPEN OFFICE, after working with M$ Ofiice for whole her life.
i NEVER mentioned linux.
and if people can boot their machines and use _SAME_ files and have no problem with using Office suite called little diffferent, then its NOT that big problem to move to Linux.
simple.
this isnt win<>lin topic, so i wont go further, all i said is that person that _NEVER_ used Open Office just set behind my comp and did what she had to do.....
so all those spooky stories about changing to anything but M$ are total BULLSHIT imo.