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Linux pioneer Munich poised to ditch open source and return to Windows

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Re: Linux pioneer Munich poised to ditch open source and return to Windows

#161

Post by yellowapple »

madez wrote: post #108
dukeluke wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly. An industry with a high barrier to entry is prone to becoming a monopoly.

This is why I think governments should fund libre alternative projects substantially and long-term. It is a matter of national interest. LibreOffice Calc is missing features that are required by many users? The government should pay for it to be developed. The ironic thing is that it is not even expensive to break this monopoly. So many countries share this interest in breaking the monopoly. Why the EU spends billion…

"Why the EU spends billions to protect farmers but is not willing to spend millions to finish and maintain a nearly workable independent software infrastructure is beyond me."

To be fair, food is a bit more important than software :)

Otherwise, I agree. This absolutely needs to be a public policy issue. Movements like the Pirate Party are a step in the right direction, and hopefully victories like in Iceland will prove to be more than just one-off occurrences.

Re: Linux pioneer Munich poised to ditch open source and return to Windows

#162

Post by yellowapple »

tracker1 wrote: post #143
ageofwant wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Redhat has a vast array of remote management tools: Asible, puppet, cobbler, ssh etc. Most all of them are superior to Microsoft's offerings. It would make perfect sense to have a Linux host on machines if most applications are web based.

But then you have to maintain ansible/puppet etc scripts to keep things in order... and when one machine doesn't work right, you have to figure it all out, often searching through stack exchange sites/answers... let alone getting answers for other distros, or even other versions of your distro than no longer apply. That doesn't even consider hardware variations and compatibility issues with drivers.

You'd have to maintain Active Directory / Group Policy /etc. settings under Windows anyway. It ain't like Windows automagically sets you up with a perfect management solution for your organization. When one Windows machine doesn't work right, you're still often the one searching through Stack Exchange, Microsoft's support forums, etc. If you're going with something popular in the enterprise like RHEL or SUSE, you're pretty much on equal footing when it comes to support availability and troubleshooting (if not in a much better situation due to the easier time - IMO - in actually creating/maintaining/deploying system configurations).

Driver issues are indeed significant, however. It's a lot better than it was when I first started using Linux, but printing and scanning is still a major pain point. Enterprise environments have a much easier time here than home users due to being able to constrain driver problems to a select few print/scan servers running CUPS/SANE instead of having to deal with this on a workstation-by-workstation basis, but it's still far from ideal, and very few businesses are truly "paperless".

Re: Linux pioneer Munich poised to ditch open source and return to Windows

#163

Post by luca_ing »

mschuster91 wrote: post #94
sveme wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Adding to that, a couple of months ago they had to close the KVR, the office where you have to register yourself, your car and basically have all your contacts with German bureaucracy down for a couple of days due to IT issues. As far as I know, your points 1) and 2) are the main issues. Having to work myself with software talking to Windows hardware drivers from MacOS via Parallels, I can understand the problems of…

It's not just IT issues (the IT crashes down not that often, don't let the media fool you!). It's massive staffing issues. There are way too few people employed at the public service desks, and it's easier to hide this by blaming IT. This was the case years ago, and it still is. The lack of staff is especially a problem as the employees have to be trained in a lot of different areas of law and procedures (because the…

> It's massive staffing issues. There are way too few people employed at the public service desks, and it's easier to hide this by blaming IT. This was the case years ago, and it still is.

Thank you for confirming my suspicions, fellow Munich-dweller.

While the mayor's office even publicly admit that the staffing situation is atrocious, they probably can't resist to pass at least some of the blame.

Re: Linux pioneer Munich poised to ditch open source and return to Windows

#164

Post by luca_ing »

jimnotgym wrote: post #2

I am deeply suspicious of the motives here... Yes I'm sure people moan about IT. They moan about Windows where I work. They probably moaned about the quality of the quills 100 years ago. Libre office is perfectly capable for most users, and is very compatible with MS Office. It is easy for users to transition too. I doubt any of this has anything to do with any of those points.

> I am deeply suspicious of the motives here...

Munich native here.

Not even the mayor's office denies that the entire public service organisation is woefully understaffed.

While I've heard disconcerting things about the quality of especially their bespoke applications, it feels like they are looking for scapegoats.

Re: Linux pioneer Munich poised to ditch open source and return to Windows

#165

Post by luca_ing »

tracker1 wrote: post #144
gigatexal wrote: post #6

Don't be surprised if Microsoft made the windows licenses free or nearly so so that they could sell them office 365 licenses.

I'm half surprised they didn't try switching to o365 for their users, while keeping the linux desktop distro, and allowing for exceptions for specific use cases.

They require lots of very specific applications. From what one hears (Munich native here), many of them are pretty bad.

Now, being bespoke apps, they'd probably just as horrible if they if they were Windows apps, but it just gets rolled into the Linux blame.

Re: Linux pioneer Munich poised to ditch open source and return to Windows

#166

Post by digi_owl »

tracker1 wrote: post #136
yuhong wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But I think they make relatively little in eg Windows revenue compared to corporate sales, which shows even today.

I think this is especially true today, given the reduced desktop/laptop sales in the home space, and MS's free upgrades from v7+ to win10. I think that offset was in favor of getting a smaller support base as well as the advertising channel for office365 (which annoys me, not the product, the win10 ads), same for edge browser.

What annoys me about office 365 is that yes your new Windows laptop ship with office, no you can't start using it unless you hand your personal data over to Microsoft. And apparently you have to do this within the first few months of using the laptop or else.

Re: Linux pioneer Munich poised to ditch open source and return to Windows

#167

Post by sveme »

luca_ing wrote: post #163
mschuster91 wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not just IT issues (the IT crashes down not that often, don't let the media fool you!). It's massive staffing issues. There are way too few people employed at the public service desks, and it's easier to hide this by blaming IT. This was the case years ago, and it still is. The lack of staff is especially a problem as the employees have to be trained in a lot of different areas of law and procedures (because the…

> It's massive staffing issues. There are way too few people employed at the public service desks, and it's easier to hide this by blaming IT. This was the case years ago, and it still is. Thank you for confirming my suspicions, fellow Munich-dweller. While the mayor's office even publicly admit that the staffing situation is atrocious, they probably can't resist to pass at least some of the blame.

There's the huge issue in Munich that the city cannot pay much more than has been agreed upon country-wide, it's all according to TVL. So in a city as expensive as Munich and with such a low unemployment rate, why would anyone start working for the city and not just choose a company? That's even more difficult for IT and other academic personnel.

Re: Linux pioneer Munich poised to ditch open source and return to Windows

#168

Post by kworker »

cwyers wrote: post #53
DrScump wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Support applies to both. Maintenance cost for these two alternatives is zero, since updates are free.

Office 365 comes with paid support. As far as maintenance being zero for OpenOffice... that's not how doing IT works at all. Things will break, or users won't be able to figure out how to do things, and they WILL ask for maintenance.

I don't believe in MS paid support since a glitch at servers made my uni and a hospital stop working properly for days after an update.

Re: Linux pioneer Munich poised to ditch open source and return to Windows

#169

Post by maus42 »

barrkel wrote: post #24
jernfrost wrote: post #16

Does anyone have some examples of the practical problems they experience using Linux, which can't easily be solved in any other way than going to Windows? It just seems odd to me given my good experience switching my fairly computer illiterate parents over to Linux previously. To be fair they presently use Mac, but I found the Linux switch a great advantage initially as I ended up with much less tech support dealing…

I have never had a good experience docking Linux laptops to a dock with multiple monitors attached. The behaviour changes from only lighting up one monitor to hard lockups on docking or suspending or something else, depending on kernel version and whim. Randomly the keyboard attached to the dock doesn't initialize and I need to unplug and replug. Unreliable docking is IMO an excellent reason not to use Linux on lapto…

I once worked at a largish corp with large *nix user contingent. We had Dell laptops and docks and I don't remember having problems you described.

However, the IT support had a list of 'recommended' distros (Ubuntu LTS if memory serves) and kernels and they preferred very much if you stuck to those.

Re: Linux pioneer Munich poised to ditch open source and return to Windows

#170

Post by mschuster91 »

sveme wrote: post #167
luca_ing wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's massive staffing issues. There are way too few people employed at the public service desks, and it's easier to hide this by blaming IT. This was the case years ago, and it still is. Thank you for confirming my suspicions, fellow Munich-dweller. While the mayor's office even publicly admit that the staffing situation is atrocious, they probably can't resist to pass at least some of the blame.

There's the huge issue in Munich that the city cannot pay much more than has been agreed upon country-wide, it's all according to TVL. So in a city as expensive as Munich and with such a low unemployment rate, why would anyone start working for the city and not just choose a company? That's even more difficult for IT and other academic personnel.

Back in the days there was the saying that if you had a training/education that is useful in the private sector you 'd be either a moron or an hopeless idealist if you worked for the public sector - no matter if for the city, the Stadtwerke (utility company), firefighters, cops... only the cops and teachers get a "Münchenzuschlag" to compensate for higher cost of living. Then again it isn't nearly enough to fill the difference.
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