Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Indian Government adopts an open source policy

opensource.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

31–40 of 58 posts

Re: Indian Government adopts an open source policy

#31

Post by infinity0 »

dangerlibrary wrote: post #28
infinity0 wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please, do provide an answer. And I mean a real answer of real things they actually did, that is comparable on Windows and Linux, as opposed to marketing crap someone else told them about that they then mis-stored in their own heads as false memories. My experience is that there is no substantial difference in the amount of "fucking around" you have to do with Windows or Linux. I had to install custom graphics driver…

You have provided personal anecdotes to support your position and demanded "actual studies" to refute your position. I do not think you are truly interested in changing your mind.

I provided personal anecdotes in response to other personal anecdotes. The point is to show that these types of arguments are flawed - of course I won't change my mind in response to others' anecdotes, when my own are different - will you?

Re: Indian Government adopts an open source policy

#33

Post by m0v_eax »

sandworm101 wrote: post #22
sremani wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We are talking about Government Offices here. The UX difference between Word and LibreOffice is noticeable. People need retraining, no matter how facsimile both are. Its matter of productivity.

>We are talking about Government Offices here. [...] People need retraining. Why do government workers always need formal retraining? Every job i've ever worked involved constant intake of new skills without dropping tools and attending a class. For a new OS in an office environ that generally boils down to "Here is your new OS. Play around with the colours if you want, but that memo is still due Thursday."

Your anecdotal evidence is hardly the norm.

Re: Indian Government adopts an open source policy

#34

Post by JupiterMoon »

dangerlibrary wrote: post #26
infinity0 wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How's that different from Windows? Instead of opening a terminal, I double click?

I believe you can simply zoom, using ctrl-+ or ctrl-scroll wheel. It's a common pattern that works across applications in windows and OSX, but for whatever reason isn't implemented in the file menu of Ubuntu systems. Maybe for open-source-y political reasons or maybe because component X of Y system included in the file menu already uses that shortcut. It doesn't matter - the existing knowledge of how to zoom in is us…

OK I'm going to give you the benefit of the doubt an assume you don't use Linux much... But both of your examples are not accurate.

For your first example ctrl double swipe on my trackpad works pretty much everywhere and ctrl +/- works everywhere except my terminal where ctrl-shift +/- does the job.

As for your second. This is not a common use case that any non-technical person would even think of trying. If you needed to I would suggest ignoring jackd (whatever that is) and using the gui for pulse audio control.

Re: Indian Government adopts an open source policy

#35

Post by forinti »

superskierpat wrote: post #29
dangerlibrary wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Until something goes wrong. Like if they can't read the tiny font in the file menu. Then they google it, and discover they need to "sudo apt-get install unity-tweak-tool." Then they manage to actually find a terminal window and run the command, and install the tool, and turn up every available font rendering option, and it still doesn't solve their problem. That is just one real world example. Linux is an operating s…

Honestly, how many of them do you actually expect to be able to fix the problem on windows? They just call the it guy.

Exactly! A friend of mine was afraid he wouldn't know how to configure wifi on Linux. I pointed out that he couldn't configure it on Windows either.

Re: Indian Government adopts an open source policy

#36

Post by dangerlibrary »

JupiterMoon wrote: post #34
dangerlibrary wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I believe you can simply zoom, using ctrl-+ or ctrl-scroll wheel. It's a common pattern that works across applications in windows and OSX, but for whatever reason isn't implemented in the file menu of Ubuntu systems. Maybe for open-source-y political reasons or maybe because component X of Y system included in the file menu already uses that shortcut. It doesn't matter - the existing knowledge of how to zoom in is us…

OK I'm going to give you the benefit of the doubt an assume you don't use Linux much... But both of your examples are not accurate. For your first example ctrl double swipe on my trackpad works pretty much everywhere and ctrl +/- works everywhere except my terminal where ctrl-shift +/- does the job. As for your second. This is not a common use case that any non-technical person would even think of trying. If you need…

ctrl-+ does not increase font size in the file menu. Try it. Icons get bigger, font size remains the same. If you can find a way to increase the font size, even with unity-tweak-tool, I'll eat my hat.

The second example is used by people who play video games all the time. People do it for skype/ventrilo calls during gaming sessions constantly. It may not be a common use for _for you_ but it is not as rare as you appear to think.

Re: Indian Government adopts an open source policy

#37

Post by zxcvcxz »

dangerlibrary wrote: post #18
swayvil wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What retraining? I have several clients, computer illiterate old ladies, who use Ubuntu and Debian just fine. No retraining required. They just jump on that desktop and go.

Until something goes wrong. Like if they can't read the tiny font in the file menu. Then they google it, and discover they need to "sudo apt-get install unity-tweak-tool." Then they manage to actually find a terminal window and run the command, and install the tool, and turn up every available font rendering option, and it still doesn't solve their problem. That is just one real world example. Linux is an operating s…

What I find strange is that no one ever has to be trained to use a smartphone.

>discover they need to "sudo apt-get install unity-tweak-tool."

This is disingenuous, they would just install it through the app store like on a phone.

Re: Indian Government adopts an open source policy

#38

Post by bad_user »

sremani wrote: post #16
swayvil wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What retraining? I have several clients, computer illiterate old ladies, who use Ubuntu and Debian just fine. No retraining required. They just jump on that desktop and go.

We are talking about Government Offices here. The UX difference between Word and LibreOffice is noticeable. People need retraining, no matter how facsimile both are. Its matter of productivity.

Microsoft Office switched to the Ribbon, being a huge UI overhaul, yet people, companies and institutions still switched.

Yes, the UI is different, but the concepts you're dealing with are still the same and if you know the concepts then a new UI is just a small and temporary inconvenience, rather then a barrier.

The biggest problem will actually be incompatibilities, which happen for example with advanced usage of Excel documents, but you know, in such cases it's better to switch to portable formats that work across multiple products (i.e. ODF) and it's better to do it sooner rather than later, because as a freaking government you should keep your documents accessible for everybody. And if you switch to portable formats and a set of features supported in both Microsoft Office and LibreOffice, you don't even have to move everybody to LibreOffice at once. So on the whole I feel that this is a red herring.

Re: Indian Government adopts an open source policy

#39

Post by zanny »

rushabh wrote: post #24

This is based on a policy document released a couple months back. Here is a better article http://opensource.com/government/15/8/india-adopts-open-sour... In general, this is just intent. I am not sure how the government plans to implement this. Government in India is huge and complex and most of the arms run independently, which is great for IT services vendors like IBM, TCS and others since they make money by selli…

Most old guard politicians are not prepared to say "there is already a great community project out there - be it Debian / Ubuntu / Fedora / etc - we should probe which ones are interested in working with us rather than just taking their code and trying to go it solo.

Their answer is always take the product in the market and throw a few million dollars at it to make it do what we want. And then ignore the fact its software, and needs constant maintenance and vigilance and they could get that all for free if they were participatory rather than off on their own.

Re: Indian Government adopts an open source policy

#40

Post by zanny »

mikeryan wrote: post #23
infinity0 wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How's that different from Windows? Instead of opening a terminal, I double click?

My neighbor, son, daughter, friend, mailman all probably can provide an answer?

I do IT support in the small town I live in. I always advocate Kubuntu / Ubuntu / Gnome (I just throw them at it for 10 mins each and whichever one they like most they get) and they are no more capable of fixing something wrong with their computer on those distros than on Windows.

But at least I can ssh into their rigs after the fact and fix them remotely. Trying to get them running teamviewer every time there is a problem on Windows is a nightmare.

Also consider the #1 reason I get called is because people install some virus or spyware or clickjacker by clicking and running random stuff off the Internet. On any Linux based distro none of that stuff works so what ends up happening is my repeat customers every 2-4 months are Windows users and the dozen or so clients I have using some flavor of Ubuntu might email me once a year like "can I run X?" and I just go look on playonlinux if its supported or not. Libreoffice opens all the old Doc and XLS files fine, their printers work, their wifi works, they can use their crappy 1995 webmail client from their ISP no problem, and they even get neat perks like having their phone rings show up in their desktop notifications if they use KDEConnect.

Post reply on HN