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South Korean government to switch to Linux: ministry

koreaherald.com

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Re: South Korean government to switch to Linux: ministry

#171

Post by ethbro »

luckydata wrote: post #129
ethbro wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"... and hire people to build out the main infrastructure they need." There's a reason Microsoft was successful for years: they built turn-key solutions, and added new turn-key features their customers requested. Switching from that sort of IT to a linux-based, 'we need a system architect' model doesn't happen overnight. There's organization shift, cultural shift, firing unneeded people who won't retrain, retraining…

Not to mention it's a LOT of work that needs to be coordinated by someone with the vision and skill to make it happen. People like that are not exactly common in the public administration of any country.

Mostly because government and small-scale enterprise balk at the salaries they command.

Income inequality is a concern, and some people are certainly overpaid. But at the C* or technical architect level, the cost of pinching pennies is dominated by the cost of choosing a wrong direction (or not recognizing a changing situation and correcting quickly enough).

Re: South Korean government to switch to Linux: ministry

#172

Post by ethbro »

teh_klev wrote: post #131
ethbro wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

TOC seems to conveniently leave out risk as a factor too. At least at the sales level. And yet the amount of failed systems migrations I've seen... If I have a 50% chance to cut my IT budget by 15%, if I remake my org, is it worth it?

I've seen some spectacular cockups over the years and eye watering sums of money burned because no-one factored in risk properly. And they more often than not happen on government projects, and usually some big name consultancy is heavily involved - Capita, PwC et-al.

Having worked the consultant gig for a bit, we never talked about risk.

Honestly, because most customers sponsoring projects were morons. If you told them there was a 25% chance of failure, they'd go with someone else who claimed a 0% chance of failure.

I finally decided most of this was just sponsors covering their ass. If they initiated a project with risk and it failed, that reflected on them. If they initiated a project and the consultants claimed (winkwinknudgenudge) there's no risk, then if it failed those lying consultants were the only ones to blame.

Re: South Korean government to switch to Linux: ministry

#173

Post by maximus1983 »

gchamonlive wrote: post #108

What I really don't understand is why commercial stations (like burger king's, ice cream stands etc...) uses windows when all those computers do is show either videos or static images

It will be either one of these or a combination of these.

* Windows has been approved by management to be the only OS allowed on the computer network * The software for showing the static images / videos and whatever manages it will have been written on Windows or even DOS * The manufacturer of said machines whoever wrote their software was Windows Developer and it is cheaper just to ship a copy of Windows Embedded then to rewrite the software , QA and integrate it.

I have a piece of software that I get small support contracts for. I tell clients it is Windows only. There is nothing stopping me from deploying to Linux or even one of the BSDs (I think). I just can't be bothered to deal with differences in distros, going through a QA process etc when it won't really get me many more sales.

Re: South Korean government to switch to Linux: ministry

#174

Post by ethbro »

loup-vaillant wrote: post #162
DataWorker wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’ve switched to libreoffice from excel and find it totally viable as an excel replacement except for lack of vba support, but it has its own scripting language so even that isn’t a deal breaker. It’s just so much faster and less bloated than today’s excel.

For most users, "replacement" mean it can open and edit Microsoft's documents perfectly. For some users, it even means the GUI is just about the same so they don't feel lost. By that criteria (which are real criteria from real people), the only viable replacement for Microsoft Office, is the next version of Microsoft Office. The only way to break out of this, I think, is for governments to forbid themselves to use pr…

And for why that's important: business teams who generate business-critical Excel sheets never got the memo about good ideas from the software development lifecycle. And have been cobbling together undocumented tools to get work done for decades.

Dealing with this at work now.

And it's not like they're disinterested or incapable of learning, literally no one thought "Gee, what those folks are doing looks a lot like code."

The biggest boost to interop would be requiring software vendors to release spec sheets for necessary software components and file formats... if they want government work. No more "It's too hard" or "We can't." You want the job, those are the rules.

Re: South Korean government to switch to Linux: ministry

#175

Post by AsyncAwait »

loup-vaillant wrote: post #162
DataWorker wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’ve switched to libreoffice from excel and find it totally viable as an excel replacement except for lack of vba support, but it has its own scripting language so even that isn’t a deal breaker. It’s just so much faster and less bloated than today’s excel.

For most users, "replacement" mean it can open and edit Microsoft's documents perfectly. For some users, it even means the GUI is just about the same so they don't feel lost. By that criteria (which are real criteria from real people), the only viable replacement for Microsoft Office, is the next version of Microsoft Office. The only way to break out of this, I think, is for governments to forbid themselves to use pr…

> For most users, "replacement" mean it can open and edit Microsoft's documents perfectly.

For that use case, there's always SoftMaker Office[1].

1 - https://www.softmaker.com/en/softmaker-office

Re: South Korean government to switch to Linux: ministry

#177

Post by maximus1983 »

jacquesm wrote: post #100

Cue a concerted effort by MS salespeople to make them an offer they can't refuse. See also: Munich.

That is a flat out lie.

https://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/11/13/munich_committee_sa...

> Hübner said the city has struggled with LiMux adoption. "Users were unhappy and software essential for the public sector is mostly only available for Windows," she said. > She estimated about half of the 800 or so total programs needed don't run on Linux and "many others need a lot of effort and workarounds". > Hübner added, "in the past 15 years, much of our efforts were put into becoming independent from Microsoft," including spending "a lot of money looking for workarounds" but "those efforts eventually failed."

https://www.neowin.net/news/munich-germany-realizes-that-dep...

> https://www.neowin.net/news/munich-germany-realizes-that-dep...

Looks like the open source equivalents for the software didn't deal well enough with different file formats.

Re: South Korean government to switch to Linux: ministry

#178

Post by loup-vaillant »

AsyncAwait wrote: post #175
loup-vaillant wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For most users, "replacement" mean it can open and edit Microsoft's documents perfectly. For some users, it even means the GUI is just about the same so they don't feel lost. By that criteria (which are real criteria from real people), the only viable replacement for Microsoft Office, is the next version of Microsoft Office. The only way to break out of this, I think, is for governments to forbid themselves to use pr…

> For most users, "replacement" mean it can open and edit Microsoft's documents perfectly. For that use case, there's always SoftMaker Office[1]. 1 - https://www.softmaker.com/en/softmaker-office

Sorry, I was implying free software only. The "free trial" I see on the front page looks proprietary.

Re: South Korean government to switch to Linux: ministry

#179

Post by AsyncAwait »

loup-vaillant wrote: post #178
AsyncAwait wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> For most users, "replacement" mean it can open and edit Microsoft's documents perfectly. For that use case, there's always SoftMaker Office[1]. 1 - https://www.softmaker.com/en/softmaker-office

Sorry, I was implying free software only. The "free trial" I see on the front page looks proprietary.

Yeah, it is, unfortunately. But the question then becomes, is it better for them to use GNU software and Linux, with maybe one or two closed-source apps, which they could migrate from over time, or use Windows and everything proprietary, even if the only use case LO doesn't cover is opening MS Office files 'perfectly' (yet)?

Re: South Korean government to switch to Linux: ministry

#180

Post by kazinator »

0xb100db1ade wrote: post #165
kazinator wrote: post #163

"Let's switch to something developed under the free world's values that we violently repress here, and whose originators we would likely have jailed had they started their projects here."

Did you mean to say that about North Korea, not South Korea?

Sorry, yes. There is a parallel story about that, actually.
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