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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

#171
post #167

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.

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

#172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

These desktops are completely virtual; printing is through the virtual desktop to a network printer. They don't even let us hook USB flash drives to the client. So driver issues would be minimized here, which seemed to me to be all the more reason to go with Linux here.

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

#173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apparently, this message board gives commenters a couple of minutes to correct their comment. That’s why the “Reply” link only appears after some time. About your administrator tool, yeah, that sucks. I once worked in a company where the managers were paranoid about us leaking the source code of the game we developed. We all had 2 PCs, one for development, another one for the Internet, two physically-separate local n…

> I once worked in a company where the managers were paranoid about us leaking the source code of the game we developed. Not necessarily unwarranted; I still remember the leak of the source code for Half-Life 2 making headlines back in 2003. https://games.slashdot.org/story/03/10/02/1547218/half-life-... (Good grief, has it really been that long since Half-Life 2? I feel old.)

Well, I’m old as well. I was working at that company in 2004-2005. Very likely, that Valve leak was the very reason for their paranoia.

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

#174
post #167

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.

You're right.

But they also deliberately shrunk the staff levels a few years ago to save money.

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

#175
post #128
post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While someone being "geschmiert" does mean they were bribed, "läuft wie geschmiert" translates to things running smoothly (like a well-oiled machine).

If you know German, it's the double meaning of the word, it's sarcasm. If you just look at the Duden dictionary, your findings are technically true.

I'm German (born, raised and lived in Munich) and I do not associate "Läuft wie geschmiert" with bribe. To me it has only one meaning, which is "running smoothly". In this context I'd guess the person said that Linux runs smoothly and from a technical point of view there is no reason to switch to Windows.

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

#176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Better at what? Most users just write simple letters in Word and make simple lists in Excel. I am known as an Excel power user, and Excel is better at some things than calc, but not very much. Calc is better at exporting unicode CSV, which is big news for a developer. 365 starts at $99 a year, per user. That is quite a lot in my book when you have thousands of users

> 365 starts at $99 a year, per user. That is quite a lot in my book when you have thousands of users It's really not. Office is the single MS product that is actually better than the competition (Libre, Apple, etc) and it's also THE core business software. Most businesses might have huge ERP systems, but the war is won in the Excel trenches. If you're an organization of 1,000+ users, $100kpa is nothing.

No one pays $99/user/year anyways.

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

#177
post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

To be fare it's pretty rubbish on Windows as well, in particular if you have different resolutions on each screen. I have to reboot at least twice to get everything working.

Also have issues booting up my mbp with multiple displays attached. Usually have to unplug or replug them about 1 in 3 bootups because it's decided to use the wrong resolution or not use one of the monitors.

Also whoever's decision it was that if you drop the right 10px at the left edge of the screen, it should only show those 10px and not overlap onto the neighbouring screen by default obviously does not use double monitors.

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