Open Source Pioneer Munich Debates Report That Suggests Abandoning Linux for Windows 10 (techrepublic.com) 176
As an open-source software pioneer, Munich spent years moving away from Windows, but now politicians are debating a report that suggests the city could eventually abandon Linux. A report on TechRepublic adds: If the authority ruling Germany's third largest city backs proposals to make Windows 10 and Microsoft Office available across the council, it would be a significant step away from open-source software for an organization once seen as its champion. Over a nine-year period starting in 2004, the council moved about 15,000 staff from using Windows and Office to LiMux -- a custom version of the Ubuntu desktop OS -- and other open source software. At the time, Munich was one of the largest organizations to reject Windows, and Microsoft took the city's leaving so seriously that then CEO Steve Ballmer flew to Munich to meet the mayor. Now a report commissioned by current mayor Dieter Reiter to help determine the future of IT at the council has outlined a project to make Windows 10 and Microsoft Office available to all departments, and give staff the choice about whether to use Windows or LiMux.
It's not surprising... (Score:5, Interesting)
In an enterprise there are two big costs... licensing, and support.
Linux the cost of support is pretty high -- for models like Red Hat the cost often is higher than Windows because you don't get as high a per-seat discount. Then there are the other ancillary costs like productivity, accessibility, data governance, etc... which are harder to materialize but also make an impact.
Ultimately most organizations use Windows because it meets the needs for those things that are ancillary while also staying competitive with the two larger costs of support and licensing.
This isn't a religious conversation much as Slashdot would like it to be; I am a big fan of the best tool for the job and on the desktop sad to say, Linux still doesn't do the job. Server side the uptick is huge, which is also why Microsoft products like SQL Server or .NET Core can literally run on Linux, and are supported in Docker. Microsoft saw the light because being agnostic is financially rewarding, and lock-in doesn't work. But the desktop? Still the realm of Windows.
Re:It's not surprising... (Score:5, Insightful)
> Linux the cost of support is pretty high [...]
I think there are other forces at work. From TFA
"Accenture was chosen to co-author a report assessing the use of Microsoft software, [when] the consultancy runs a joint venture with Microsoft called Avanade, which helps businesses implement Microsoft technologies"
Hmmm. If I ask my butcher, he'll say: "Meat is good for you, oh yeah. Eat more meat!"
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""Accenture was chosen to co-author a report assessing the use of Microsoft software..."
Accenture worked with Microsoft to create the .NET "solution" to the London Stock Exchange attempt to get to 2 ms transaction times. They failed miserably and the second crash of the system kept the LSE off line for an entire day, costing them over $1 BILLION dollars in lost business.
Before the crash Microsoft had an ad featuring the "Highly Reliable TImes", a make-believe news paper which headlined a make-believe "fac
Re: It's not surprising... (Score:2, Insightful)
Because no one ever has to setup and maintain domain servers, group policy, exchange servers, file and print servers, antivirus licenses, etc, you fucking moron.
Re:It's not surprising... (Score:5, Interesting)
How is the desktop support much of an issue? Enterprise support for databases and other server services can get very complex and I can acknowledge that a real TCO case could be made. But desktop? To me that's a simple, you have a problem, let's wipe you and reimage. I can't imagine a case where the costs difference exceed the license expenses.
Now if every crybaby in management can't handle learning LibreOffice over Word/Excel, thats another problem..... Maybe get smarter people? It's Germany, they have plenty.
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I can assure you that in my tiny bit of the world, Windows OS is running on less than half the computers we manage. We could probably get rid of close to 90% of the windows machines if it wan't for the people who use them who would complain they couldn't do that one thing they just can't live without.
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At my last job we had a farm of ~3 terminal servers whose purpose was to run those "can't live without it" apps. If you needed to use one of your snowflake apps, you would RDP in to "the farm" and use your app there. RDP works on pretty much anything including Android. We'd also RDP in to the servers as needed (one of our vendors distributed their product updates only through MSIs)
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Your IT staff has things firmly under control. Bravo for them! It's almost like the good old days, when you got to wear white coats, and the other people in your company had to pass job requests in to you through the half-door to the Machine Room.
It's almost like the PC revolution never happened!
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In my previous job, IT Management decided that everything we did could be done just-as-well with another brand of software, with cheaper or no licensing costs - the software they brought in was not able to perform tasks for our customer, that we were contractually obligated to do.
IT Management could not wrap their heads around that MS Office* was actually, quite literally, the only option, at all, for doing those tasks, and I'd caution others who think that their colleagues are just being stubborn/stupid wh
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However, Munich has been using their Linux setup for some time now. Apparently, Microsoft Office turned out to be something they could replace. Replacing Windows with Linux won't work for all enterprises, but if it does work it has significant advantages
Re:It's not surprising... (Score:4, Insightful)
From reading about this case, what Microsoft has, is a tight leash on Accenture, who made the report....
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How is the desktop support much of an issue? Enterprise support for databases and other server services can get very complex and I can acknowledge that a real TCO case could be made. But desktop? To me that's a simple, you have a problem, let's wipe you and reimage. I can't imagine a case where the costs difference exceed the license expenses.
Wipe and reimage... please tell me why I shouldn't outsource your job to the cheapest monkey in India. To "support" in this context means "create and maintain the environment that enables our workers to be productive, including but not limited to finding solutions to missing, poor or defective functionality", you know everything but the sticker price. The help desk, the training, the patching and upgrades, enforcing policies, dealing with vendors and bug reports, finding supported hardware and functional dr
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People seem to be glancing over this from the article:
"Aspects of these proprietary systems are incompatible with LiMux, according to POR, citing the council's SAP security system, and errors in how PDFs are displayed by the open-source viewing software."
Having worked in plenty of state/local government offices, I can tell you that most of their work is done in proprietary software systems tailored to their specific job function (processing taxes, business registration, managing licenses, etc). There simpl
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"Having worked in plenty of state/local government offices ... most of their work is done in proprietary software systems tailored to their specific job function (processing taxes, business registration, managing licenses, etc). There simply isn't enough of this software written for other platforms besides Windows."
I spent the last 11 years of my programming career (I retired in 2008) writing in-house solutions for a state dept of Revenue. The last eight was spent writing those applications using the Qt AP
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How is the desktop support much of an issue? Enterprise support for databases and other server services can get very complex and I can acknowledge that a real TCO case could be made. But desktop? To me that's a simple, you have a problem, let's wipe you and reimage. I can't imagine a case where the costs difference exceed the license expenses.
Now if every crybaby in management can't handle learning LibreOffice over Word/Excel, thats another problem..... Maybe get smarter people? It's Germany, they have plenty.
A wonderful MS Office product for Linux is not LibreOffice, but wps.com
Re:It's not surprising... (Score:5, Informative)
RTFA! They had used a custom version of Ubuntu so they were likely doing the support themselves with a custom setup tuned to their environment and on that level (15 000 desktops) it was likely cheaper. The larger problem is: What happens when someone sends you a document that your version of OpenOffice doesn't like or you need software that doesn't run on Linux? Libre Office file compatibility still isn't 100% (mostly there compared to word, chokes on PowerPoint sides and doesn't do VBA ever)
And that is where it comes down to use cases. Linux has a lower total cost on the desktop when it does everything you need it to. But if you need something that Linux doesn't have software for, the lower cost just doesn't matter.
Re:It's not surprising... (Score:5, Insightful)
What you do when people pester you with unreadable proprietary documents? You tell them to fuck off, until they have learned to install another program which is free, and produce a readable document with it.
This is not some two bit company struggling to make ends meet, if you want to tell them something in a document, you make sure they can read it. You do NOT get to dictate what software they should or shouldn't use.
Re:It's not surprising... (Score:5, Insightful)
What you do when people pester you with unreadable proprietary documents? You tell them to fuck off, until they have learned to install another program which is free, and produce a readable document with it.
And this attitude is exactly why Desktop Linux hovers at around 2% or wherever it is today.
Being smarter than your customer is one thing, shoving that in their face with a smug, asshole attitude is a totally different thing.
Forcing everyone else to adapt to your tiny little world will end up with you being alone and ignored in your tiny little world.
Re:It's not surprising... (Score:4, Insightful)
>Forcing everyone else to adapt to your tiny little world will end up with you being alone and ignored in your tiny little world.
Tiny little world? Many *many* businesses have "standardized" on Office 97 as the document format. Why? Because it's "well known" and other office suites have little trouble with it (like WordPerfect and Libre).
It's not an ISO standard, but it's "standard enough."
Speaking of ISO standards, Microsoft still doesn't support their own standard. Especially in light of the fact that ODF is even in MS Office.
--
BMO
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In this day, lots of business will ask that documents be sent in PDF. And certainly, governments can get away with this.
Sure, there are plenty of businesses that have gone all in with MSOffice - or some other proprietary Windows-only app. But that stuff is legacy. That's not to say they can all switch desktop OS's any time soon, but that time is coming. And by that time the new OS may as often as not be Chrome - or Android. Or some other thin client system following a similar model. Even Microsoft kno
Planned Obsolescence (Score:3, Insightful)
The issue is not Linux or LibreOffice compatibility. It is that Microsoft intentionally keeps moving the goal. Microsoft's strategy is planned obsolescence to get you to buy the same product over and over again.
User #1: Sorry, I can't read this document. What is a .docx (.xml, .doc, .rtf, .wps) anyway?
User #2: Maybe it is because you are using an older version. Have you tried upgrading to Office 2016 (2012,2010,2007,2003,2000)?
User #1: Hey, thanks! I will plunk down another $395 for the new version of O
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So you're basically saying "thou shalt not add features to your product".
Yes, newer documents can't be opened (or at least not opened properly) by older versions of the suite. I see nothing weird here. It happens everywhere. As software improves and adds functionality to its product, it's only normal that older versions of the same product will not be able to open files created by newer versions of the same product. Happens everywhere, all software does it.
Microsoft does offer free software which you can us
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Readers are available for free and expecting old software to read data files for new software is more than a bit strange...
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And this attitude is exactly why Desktop Linux hovers at around 2% or wherever it is today.
Ah, I can see from your comment that you've been in a coma for the last ten years. You're probably parroting the Windows centric site, NetApplications, that remarkets EXE's under new names and it tracked the OS of people looking for Windows software. No surprise that only 1 or 2% were running Linux.
Here is the detail of another site that tracks the OS of its visitors:
http://distrowatch.com/awstats... [distrowatch.com]
You can see that 41% of the visitors were using Windows and 47.3% were using Linux. Now, shall I claim
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You're delusional.
https://www.netmarketshare.com... [netmarketshare.com]
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Yes, but that same site claims that the XBox does not exist.
Seriously, choose Console as the device type, look at the results, then have a think about how they gather their data.
Re: It's not surprising... (Score:5, Informative)
I politely emailed him back saying that I had a problem with it, because it was in a non-standard, MS proprietary, format and please could he send it in the ISO standard ODF format instead. He did. It worked.
MS formats don't even transfer from one computer to another if you have different printers. Windows is NOT fit for prime time. Its just that some people don't know, and a whole lot of the others were bribed.
Re: It's not surprising... (Score:4, Insightful)
Key word being "politely".
A rare thing in the Linux world.
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I wasn't talking about companies.
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Actually I would be able to install Open Office and open it that way :)
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Who wants a poor customer? :)
Joke aside, export to PDF. Problem solved.
Anyway, I was not discussing the issue of documents compatibility, but rather attitude.
Collectively drop the smugness and Linux will rise.
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As a matter of fact, I am not an American. I live in Europe, have ties with German people and they're less assholes than how you are (deduced from your post above). Why do you think they consider switching?
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Re:It's not surprising... (Score:4, Insightful)
Anyway, if you are submitting forms, should they not be pdf to avoid tampering after submission?
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Pdf doesn't avoid tampering after submission. Haven't you heard of pdf editors? Adobe certainly would be glad to sell you theirs.
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Heck, if you want to change text in most PDF files, you can do it with a text editor. Technically, the text is encoded in an intermediate form, but in most files I've looked at ASCII text is itself the intermediate form.
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Have you ever submitted a document to the government? If it doesn't fit their spec, they just reject it. Costs them no time, less work for them.
What is the alternative anyway? Accept every document from any source and spend hours trying to decode it?
I actually do shit like that because I'm dealing with files sent to me by clients, because they pay me.
Funnily enough I use WordPerfect 5 as my usual intermediate format to go from whatever the client uses to what my old DTP apps need.
Wordprocessors reached a st
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"1-off communications with vendors, institutions, legal documents."
Such are hardly ever "one- off", but part of a long relationship.
They would have worked out a common format long ago.
Anyway, don't see why it should be the recipients' responsibility to work out whatever crap some random person wanted to send.
PDF is pretty universal.
Hell, plain text would do for 99% of documents.
Anyway, the side with the power is who determines the format.
If I submit a file to a publisher, they have a page of specs I have
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What you do when people pester you with unreadable proprietary documents? You tell them to fuck off, until they have learned to install another program which is free, and produce a readable document with it...
Well, that usually doesn't work too well as you know. But asking for a pdf instead pretty much always works just fine.
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What you do when people pester you with unreadable proprietary documents? You tell them to fuck off, until they have learned to install another program which is free, and produce a readable document with it...
Well, that usually doesn't work too well as you know. But asking for a pdf instead pretty much always works just fine.
And then the boss wants a .doc file, or the info brought into a spreadsheet.... in five minutes.
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And then the boss wants a .doc file, or the info brought into a spreadsheet.... in five minutes.
Libreoffice does that perfectly well.
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And then the boss wants a .doc file, or the info brought into a spreadsheet.... in five minutes.
Libreoffice does that perfectly well.
Yes it does - which is why I use it on all my different computers, and any I am involved with, and only put MS office on computers where they demand the non-standard application.
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What happens when someone sends you a document that your version of OpenOffice doesn't like...
You have the same problem when somebody sends you a document that your version of MS Office doesn't like. Which happens. A lot. In fact, OpenOffice (Update: LibreOffice) has a reputation for being able to handle documents from various older MS Office versions better than Microsoft does.
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RTFA! They had used a custom version of Ubuntu so they were likely doing the support themselves with a custom setup tuned to their environment and on that level (15 000 desktops) it was likely cheaper.
Does that really follow? A custom OS that you support yourself is cheaper for users?
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Re:It's not surprising... (Score:4, Insightful)
RTFA! They had used a custom version of Ubuntu so they were likely doing the support themselves with a custom setup tuned to their environment and on that level (15 000 desktops) it was likely cheaper. The larger problem is: What happens when someone sends you a document that your version of OpenOffice doesn't like or you need software that doesn't run on Linux? Libre Office file compatibility still isn't 100% (mostly there compared to word, chokes on PowerPoint sides and doesn't do VBA ever)
And that is where it comes down to use cases. Linux has a lower total cost on the desktop when it does everything you need it to. But if you need something that Linux doesn't have software for, the lower cost just doesn't matter.
I've had many more incompatibility problems with Windows than ever with Linux. NOthing like opening an old Office file that someone needs some historical data from.
Your monoculture Windows only outlook is obsolete, and If I cannot take a file from the latest version of Office, and open it up with no changes needed in OS X, then your argument is defeated.
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Um, Office is available on OS X too...
Problem is, MS Office isn't all that compatible between the two.
If you read my post, you'd see that you don't just transfer MS Office from Windows to OSX without making changes. Often a lot of changes. We've spent thousands of hours with that problem. With AO, my documents can be done on a Windows, Linux or OSX machine and look the same on each.
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Hmm, Anti-Microsoft zealots have many more incompatibility problems with Windows.... or so they claim.
Hmm, making a lot of assumptions.
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Of course what we're discussing here is really a report. A report written by Accenture, a known Micosoft toady.
Windows 10 is expensive but not because why you th (Score:2, Insightful)
cost of enterprise Windows 10 is pretty high as well.
cost of SUPPORT of enterprise windows 10 is either ZERO or A FUCKING LOT. if you give no support then it's pretty low, if you intend to do any kind of "enterprisey" kind support then it's _MASSIVE_.
why it's so massive? they fucked up group policy. they fucked up network policies. they fucked up all configurations - and they fuck them up even more monthly with patches! they don't even give patch notes! if a cumulated update is going to fuck your network c
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The direct opposite appears to be true.
Since you wish us to believe the unlikely on the basis of faith it strongly resembles one.
With almost every kind of *nix backup and recovery is trivial and you can also usually just shove the users drive out of a dead machine into a new one to get them going again. With MS there is a lot of messing about - even software installations are mind bogglingly sloooooowwwwwwwwwwwww.
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In an enterprise there are two big costs... licensing, and support.
I agree but I do have to wonder if they've factored in the cost porting all of their legacy systems from Linux to Windows 10
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In an enterprise there are two big costs... licensing, and support.
Linux the cost of support is pretty high -- for models like Red Hat the cost often is higher than Windows because you don't get as high a per-seat discount. Then there are the other ancillary costs like productivity, accessibility, data governance, etc... which are harder to materialize but also make an impact.
So here's the thing:
With Linux - you *might* have a support cost (e.g RHEL/SuSE/Canonical Enterprise support agreements), infrastructure to run, a few engineers to maintain your specific packages, and your normal support staff.
With Windows, you still actually have all of that, plus you have to the licensing for Windows itself, the servers, etc. Windows Server requires licenses for clients to access it - so you pay twice for each user (WIndows Desktop License + CAL on the server).
The enterprise supp
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Anybody who tries to assert that doing this would be "free" is a fool, or a liar. They may not be paying licenses to RedHat, but there is most certainly a cost of ownership associated with "building and customizing" their own Linux distribution.
The cost of hiring sufficient engineering and support personnel to manage this certainly drives up the cost of ownership for the "free" linux solution.
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Customizing a Linux distribution that you deploy to employees is no different than customizing Windows install image that you deploy on employee's computers.
Re:It's not surprising... (Score:4, Insightful)
Customizing a Linux distribution that you deploy to employees is no different than customizing Windows install image that you deploy on employee's computers.
Seriously. GP acts as though this requires some sort of great engineering feat. Sure you'll need experts that you'll have to pay...as in ANY Enterprise.
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You're not arguing the costs are comparable to owning and maintaining a comparable Windows environment, are you? Of course you'll need to pay experts to engineer, operate and maintain the environmemnt -- as with any Enterprise environment.
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Anybody who tries to assert that doing this would be "free" is a fool, or a liar. They may not be paying licenses to RedHat, but there is most certainly a cost of ownership associated with "building and customizing" their own Linux distribution.
The cost of hiring sufficient engineering and support personnel to manage this certainly drives up the cost of ownership for the "free" linux solution.
Because even I can roll my own Linux distro http://linuxfromscratch.org/ [linuxfromscratch.org] Step by freaking step. What manner of army of engineers do you need for that?
So which am I the fool or the liar, or both? You know much, so you can let us know. But otherwise, give us the details of why it takes that army.
Re:It's not surprising... (Score:4, Informative)
Yes, I know how Ubuntu and Debian work, as someone who does debian packaging as part of his job. And I also know that "patches to a few dozen packages," as well as managing changes coming in from an upstream distribution, could easily be a full time job for me. So again - you're still looking at requiring hiring engineering talent & running internal infrastructure and resources, for your "free" operating system. That makes it "not free."
Again: headcount = not free. Administering Windows for 120 users probably wouldn't require more than 1 or 2 people, too, and probably you could hire IT staff a lot cheaper than you could handle a couple developers capable of customizing an entire repo. You can debate relative costs, but you cannot get away with claiming that "Linux = $0" and "Windows = $INFINITY" when you're comparing costs. There are specific costs associated with both. You can pay less on Linux licensing, but you're probably going to pay more in the headcount needed to support it, because you need people with deeper technical skills. You can pay more on Windows licensing, and get your headcount a lot cheaper for support, because your Windows desktop support can fall back on Microsoft support when they hit something beyond their skill level.
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It's not free, as you say. I don't know how the support costs would prepare, since running an enterprise Windows setup requires support also, and I don't know who'd they need to run Linux support. It's a large enterprise, so the cost of having a few developers is amortized over a large number of machines.
What Munich gets out of it is the ability to use lower-end hardware (not a consideration with new computers, but Linux is typically less demanding on older hardware than Windows), a lack of licensing f
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How much do those 120 licenses for windows 10, outlook, and ms office cost?
And what's more, Microsoft will change the rules on ya for no damn reason. Where I worked, you could run a copy of MS Office on your personal computer if you had one at work. They changed their mind after a few years, and demanded that we delete all of the personal copies. many thousands of computers.
And the worst thing of all is that Microsoft Office is not cross platform compatible. Of course they don't make one for Linux, but they can't be bothered to make it compatible between OSX and Windows.
Mean
Linux is a Server OS (Score:4, Insightful)
Linux in its heart is a Server OS. Its desktop/workstation features are almost a hack onto the systems to make useful.
Now I have the same feelings about Windows Server. Windows is a Desktop OS, and Windows Server is a hack to make it more server feature friendly.
Now for folks like me Linux for the Desktop is great, which is why I use it at home over Windows... But for the general public. Trying to get beyond normal features you come across these minor differences and compatibility issues which for us is an easy workaround. But for someone who isn't so savvy it is a big deal. And a lot of effort goes into training, and fixing the issue.
I tried a while back to give my Parents Linux as their default laptop. All fine and good until I get a call saying why I can I run this game, or I am getting this error...
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So you didn't tell your parents that a big chunk of games are not designed to run on Linux? Your parents are versed enough to fix windows errors I'm guessing with out calling you?
What if you gave your parents a Mac and they tried to play a windows game on OSX and got error? I guess it not a desktop OS either?
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... until I get a call saying why I can I run this game
This is the reason why I install it. They'll use to browse web and Facebook. They're not allowed to install stuff. This give me peace, as there is no Windows formatter guy able to bloat the machine with crapware.
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Linux is currently the most successful end-user OS. Android is based on the Linux kernel, and currently has over 1.8 billion users [wikipedia.org], vs 1.4 billion for Windows. Pretty good for a server OS which had to have featurees "hacked" onto it to make it useful to end users.
IMHO Linux on the desktop is a dead end because too many of the developers working on it are focusing on what they want, rat
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IMHO Linux on the desktop is a dead end because too many of the developers working on it are focusing on what they want, rather than what the users want. Ubuntu had a chance, but then went off track forcing features users didn't necessarily want down their throats because the people in charge of it wanted to.
Not sure what you're going on about here. Canonical set out to own the Linux desktop space and succeeded at that. Now busy leveraging that as an entry into the far more lucrative server space. Hard to see what's wrong with that strategy. And Linux has somewhere between 40 and 80 million desktop users now, based on 2% share of the market. Those are serious numbers by any standard.
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I believe that at its heart Linux is a kernel upon which one can build whatever kind of OS they wish, including for desktops, servers, and tablets. The "hack" you refer to has, IMHO, more to do with X11 than anything else. The rest of what people think of as a "Linux operating system" is a collection of GPL and BSD services, utilities, and so forth that are usually equally suited to a server or desktop. With the widespread use of GPL and BSD software across Linux based, Apple, and Microsoft operating sys
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The iMac I refer to was purchased in 1999, it was a "blueberry" model to give an idea of its age. The printer was bought shortly after, also blue colored. When the computer died years later the printer was no longer supported and no updated drivers existed. It was a cheap USB inkjet printer, not something you'd see supporting PostScript or PCL.
The computer that replaced the iMac had Windows on it. So we were trying to print on a cheap five year old printer, designed for a Mac, from Windows. We found dr
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Linux in its heart is a Server OS
Linux at it's heart is a kernel. Windows at it's heart is a kernel. There's nothing that makes it more or less server or desktop than a few prioritised schedulers.
Everything else is just software built on top of this.
Linux at it's heart is the most popular mobile platform in the world.
The Linux kernel runs more lower power and highly efficient applications in the world than any other. Not much of a Server OS at heart when it has that claim to fame is it?
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You can't really reduce Windows to 'a kernel.'
You can't really reduce Linux to 'a kernel' either (one word: libc) so what's the difference?
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The kernel is a kernel. The linux kernel doesn't contain the subsystem either.
Point is that the OP was comparing a Linux kernel to a full system by saying apps on top of the kernel are just a desktop patch for a server OS. Be consistent is all I'm asking. At the lowest level both kernels are optimised for their target use. Both kernels have systems built on them for the target user group. Neither is more server or desktop than the other, other than "I can boot it into a command mode therefore server", which
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Linux in its heart is a Server OS. Its desktop/workstation features are almost a hack onto the systems to make useful.
Oh wow, insightful! And how is that different from MacOS, based on FreeBSD, a server OS? Or Windows 10, based on Windows NT, a server OS? And gosh, isn't it just amazing that Google was able to take over the mobile handset market with a Java API bolted onto a server OS. Insightful indeed.
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Is that phone in your pocket a server?
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What kind of supergenius are you that compatibility issues with linux are "an easy workaround"?
I have plenty of hardware and software that I'd be willing to bet quite a lot you will not get working in linux easily.
Once you create an account, much of the issues that seem to really baffle AC's become crystal clear.
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Used to be, I figured that anybody who used a computer for light word processing, email, and web surfing could get along nicely with a Linux distro. I'm not sure that role is the right one any more, since an iPad or Android tablet will usually work, and has better casual games.
Let me guess... (Score:5, Funny)
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Close, from a comment above: "Accenture was chosen to co-author a report assessing the use of Microsoft software, [when] the consultancy runs a joint venture with Microsoft called Avanade, which helps businesses implement Microsoft technologies"
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TRANSLATION.... (Score:5, Interesting)
Microsoft made them a deal they could not pass up. Betting it was gobs of free licenses for all microsoft products and possibly even hardware.
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Microsoft made them a deal they could not pass up. Betting it was gobs of free licenses for all microsoft products and possibly even hardware.
. . . more like free suitcases of cash on the Cayman Islands . . .
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Re:TRANSLATION.... (Score:4, Insightful)
I still haven't got any training for using the ribbon. I still quite often hear people swear with passion when using MS Office. I'm not saying that LibreOffice is better, but somehow training is not needed when MS changes an interface but it becomes an issue if the software is not made by MS. Why is that?
Because windows is so... (Score:2, Insightful)
Fracking fantastic right.... Thousands of people at my wife's university with frozen computers bothering the IT guys, yeah a great product, and me a network guy, my judgement, noisy freaking operation system windows has become network wise one thinks of the appletalk era, oh and an OS that is freezing the network connection when updates are being prepared for installation and not asking the user if that is inconvenient before doing so and emet... Puke puke puke, it is clear that the politicians and people e
The grass is always greener (Score:5, Insightful)
Listen up people. No matter what platform or OS you use, there is going to be someone who tells you you were making a mistake. That's just life. And if these folks in Germany think Linux is bad, they should just switch over to W10.
What errors? (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Some PDF files are weird. That's how it goes. PDF is not so much a document format as a program to produce a certain document.
I know of no F/OS PDF reader that handles the entire spec, although it's been a few years since I looked, such as providing a 3D image that can be manipulated by the user.
Microsoft Germany Headquarters (Score:5, Insightful)
Even Nazis (Score:2)
Even Nazis don't like Sheisstopfd.
Office 365? (Score:2)
If they need Office but don't want Windows, what is wrong with an Office 365 subscription? Works in a browser and if it is wonky then you just need to tell MS to fix their shit. MS is all about the cloud now so they sell a browser based Office solution. Sure, it comes with the desktop version too and I have Office 2016 on my Mac but in the absence of the desktop version, I can use the browser. Desktop OS support is expensive and horrible and Windows is about the worst to support so stick with Linux and if t
Munich's mayor is closely related to MS (Score:5, Interesting)
There's a 600 pound gorilla in the room. (Score:2, Interesting)
The report (Accidenture?) missed the 600 pound gorilla in the room, i.e. two German laws. The data collection features of Win10 violate two laws and this issue is currently under investigation. So no sane person could recommend to use Win10 in a corporate or municipal environment in Germany at the moment. We have to wait until the legal situation is clear. Possibly MS would have to create a Win10DE and early adopters might face a lot of trouble.
Re: (Score:2)
I've read that you can turn off the telemetry in the Enterprise edition. However, I don't have one, and would want to spend a long time with Wireshark to convince myself if I did.
Re: (Score:2)
Some of those supposed reasons for Microsoft documents might evaporate under close examination. For example, many vendors don't want to give customer quote in format they could (easily) alter. Work that is only referenced within a company might not need it
Re: (Score:3)
It's actually been years since anybody, even an MS Office user, sent me a .doc(x) file. Always PDF these days. The only reason people send .doc(x) files now is for editing, and Googledocs is way more effective for that.
Re:I can see why (Score:5, Insightful)
I haven't touched MS Office in many years. I rely on LibreOffice (formerly OpenOffice) for my office-type needs. It does all the spreadsheeting and document preparation I need, way more than I need, actually. I get free lifetime updates. When I need to communicate with inmates on the Microsoft prison island, PDF works fine. When I need to collaborate on documents, Googledocs. Whatever. Microsoft is just irrelevant these days, some folks haven't gotten the memo yet.