South Korean government to switch to Linux: ministry • Hacker News Board

Re: South Korean government to switch to Linux: ministry

#201

Post by sascha_sl » Sat, May 18, 2019, 10:00 PM UTC

maximus1983 wrote: post #177

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…

This is not flat out wrong, it's just the officially given reason. Not the entire story. The source is in German, but EN Wikipedia sums it up nicely:

"In 2018, journalistic group Investigate Europe released a video documentary via German public television network ARD, wherein it is claimed that the majority of city workers were satisfied with the operating system, with council members insinuating that the reversal was a personally motivated decision by lord mayor Dieter Reiter. Reiter denied that he had initiated the reversal in gratitude for Microsoft moving its German headquarters from Unterschleißheim back to Munich."

This is also worth a read:

https://blog.documentfoundation.org/blog/2017/02/14/statemen...

In short, it _was_ MSFT lobby grease.

Re: South Korean government to switch to Linux: ministry

#202

Post by jacquesm » Sat, May 18, 2019, 10:02 PM UTC

maximus1983 wrote: post #177

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 hell it is. Really, if you want to argue this please at least do your homework and have a read on the effort MS put in to get into the good graces of the Munich authorities.

I don't doubt that there were issues with 'different file formats', .docx and .xslx right up front (open standards that they are one wonders how there could have been an issue).

https://mspoweruser.com/microsoft-germany-moves-into-a-new-h...

Probably has a lot more to do with it than file formats ever did.

Re: South Korean government to switch to Linux: ministry

#203

Post by skc » Sat, May 18, 2019, 10:23 PM UTC

I really don't get all the conspiracy theories being thrown around about Microsoft now having to send over some suits to rescue the situation.

Doesn't really jibe with the moves they have been making lately that seem to show that if anything, Microsoft is de-prioritising the Windows business.

They are happy for you to move off Windows provided you still use some of their cloud offerings. There's a reason Office 365 is doing as well as it is.

Re: South Korean government to switch to Linux: ministry

#204

Post by Hydraulix989 » Sat, May 18, 2019, 10:49 PM UTC

freeflight wrote: post #128

rileyphone wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Funnily enough North Korea runs their own Linux distro, Red Star OS

For anybody interested in a more detailed look on Red Star OS, check out this CCC talk [0] [0] https://youtu.be/8LGDM9exlZw

My fiancee who is from South Korea thinks very highly of the North Korean engineers' skills. Even under hunger and adverse conditions, they can produce their own Linux distribution and nuclear weapons program.

Re: South Korean government to switch to Linux: ministry

#205

Post by pferde » Sat, May 18, 2019, 10:50 PM UTC

markvdb wrote: post #194

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…

> By that criteria (which are real criteria from real people), the only viable replacement for Microsoft Office, is the next version of Microsoft Office. By that criteria, the only viable replacement for Microsoft Office is the _same_ version of Microsoft Office. The delta between two Microsoft Office versions has often been larger than between a Microsoft Office version and a LibreOffice version...

But the two MS Office versions both have a Microsoft logo on them. People will grumble, but get used to the new version, whereas if you give them something with a different logo, they will scream bloody murder and demand that you get rid of that weird program and give them back their Office programs.

Re: South Korean government to switch to Linux: ministry

#206

Post by jothezero » Sat, May 18, 2019, 11:10 PM UTC

Most of governments are locked-in windows and will for a while.

Re: South Korean government to switch to Linux: ministry

#207

Post by stockkid » Sat, May 18, 2019, 11:23 PM UTC

I'm surprised to see such a move from the South Korean government. The reason is that, back when I lived there a while ago, most of the government resources required Windows machines to access. Specifically, we needed ActiveX and Internet Explorer for many stuff.

Such dependence on Microsoft technology is not only found in government but also in corporations. Recently I needed to access my bank account there and the bank required me to install some anti-virus software that only runs on Windows.

I don't know how things are now in general, but I welcome this change.

Re: South Korean government to switch to Linux: ministry

#208

Post by gkanai » Sun, May 19, 2019, 12:03 AM UTC

I was the blogger who first wrote (in English) about South Korea's reliance on Active X controls and Internet Explorer. That was more than a decade ago.

Re: South Korean government to switch to Linux: ministry

#209

Post by macspoofing » Sun, May 19, 2019, 12:04 AM UTC

commoner wrote: post #161

macspoofing wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is the conspiracy theory that some are telling themselves: that this is THE reason why Munich moved away. AS IF! Here's something more likely: Munich was ready to move back because the project was expensive to maintain, cumbersome in practice, killed productivity and was generally unpopular with the end-users, and Microsoft's new branch was just a cherry on top.

Microsoft made major political moves after LiMux adoption began. They relocated their German headquarters to Munich, and a new mayor (Dieter Reiter) was elected after the Microsoft employees moved to Munich. Reiter initiated the reversal from LiMux to Windows, while the previous mayor (Christian Ude) refused to do so despite in-person appeals from Steve Ballmer. You might not like this line of argument, but it's not…

>You might not like this line of argument, but it's not a "conspiracy theory" since it's well-supported.

But it isn't. You just asserted it. I don't dispute the facts at hand, but you can't just link those together and assert causality when there is no evidence for it .

>It's disingenuous to completely dismiss the role of political influence on a government decision.

I don't know what to do with that. There is no evidence and everyone disputes the corrupt link you assert. Not only that, there is an alternative explanation: the Linux deployment wasn't popular, killed productivity, and wasn't cheap to maintain. What you're doing is the definition of FUD.

Re: South Korean government to switch to Linux: ministry

#210

Post by jaabe » Sun, May 19, 2019, 12:10 AM UTC

detaro wrote: post #148

jaabe wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As someone who likes Linux and genuinely believe that software that was paid for by the public should be open source, I just have to ask you why that is. I work in a Danish municipality with 100.000 citizens. We operate more than 300 IT systems, some of these are one of a kind systems that have no alternatives and some of those only run on Windows. We also have 8000 employees, a lot of them couldn’t tell you if the s…

partial counter-point: many large companies, universities, schools etc have switched to things like Google Docs. Most use of office software is simple enough that people can transfer (afaik a big part in the Munich migration was making sure all the templates used for common documents where ported properly and people could easily access to). Specialist software is a big problem of course, likely leading to a parallel…

That is not really a counter point though. I mean, education is part of a municipality, it makes up around 15% of our work force, and you’re right, they could probably be switched to Linux.

That doesn’t really make sense though, because our IT staff can’t support it, so we would need 1-2 guys extra which is more expensive than the windows licenses for 1200 employees.