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

"Linux switch saved city millions and reduced user complaints"

computerworlduk.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

61–70 of 141 posts

Re: "Linux switch saved city millions and reduced user complaints"

#61

Post by desireco42 »

Replacing MS Office with Libre Office, especially based on comments so far seem to be not that great choice. People not calling support, it might be tu number of reasons. I bet if they did survey on what people think about impact on their work, they would get different results. I was thinking and Google Docs would probably be better choice as alternative to MS, however, this is just another provider ie. you don't get open source.

I am all for open source, and cities like Munich getting into it is welcome news, and will influence improvement in apps, however I suspect there is a lot of negativity pushed under the rug here.

Re: "Linux switch saved city millions and reduced user complaints"

#62

Post by edwinnathaniel »

viandante wrote: post #36
doktrin wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree. The FOSS office tools are simply not in the same class as Microsoft Office. Anyone who has worked extensively with Excel will acknowledge there really is no true competitor out there. Frankly, I would go so far as to say that a Linux desktop OS is really only appropriate for enthusiasts or those with minimal needs (e.g. email). For just about anyone else, there is simply too much potential hassle involved in…

Frankly, I would say just the opposite. If your needs are minimal, go with windows. If you need more, linux is a good choice. You will never get a decent terminal in windows or good support for some programming languages (such as python). You are right with Excel although. However, much of the "power" of Excel is really just needed because people are overusing it. Stop making "databases" out of Excel sheets and imple…

Are you completely ignoring SharePoint integration with Office?

Re: "Linux switch saved city millions and reduced user complaints"

#63

Post by excerionsforte »

rbanffy wrote: post #43
skrebbel wrote: post #23

With these kinds of `hooray linux´ articles, I always wonder whether they included the cost of reduced productivity they included when moving everybody from MS Office to LibreOffice and stuff like that. The difference in quality, stability and features is pretty big. I've worked with LibreOffice only for about 8 months, and I can tell you, it's not just a matter of "getting used to". There's simply a whole bunch of b…

You seem to neglect the fact Office users routinely experience problems with their own documents and programs. Who never had a Word document that, after some heavy editing, refused to load? I have, many times, since the first version of Word for Windows. I've abandoned Office between 2002 and 2008 and, to my surprise, I still had those problems with Word, Project and Outlook (when I had to clean PST files more than o…

When speaking from your experience its easy to say 'many' users have had problems, just like how I can say I've never had a problem with a word document therefore 'many' users have never had a problem with a word document. :) Not sure what kind of editing you do. haha

Re: "Linux switch saved city millions and reduced user complaints"

#64

Post by edwinnathaniel »

cs702 wrote: post #54

Doubtlessly, this successful migration to desktop Linux must have been very difficult, costly, and disruptive. The upfront costs of migration surely exceed what it would have cost the city to stay on Windows for one or two more waves of upgrades. The important question is: were these upfront costs & multi-year effort worth it? The data presented in the article provides compelling evidence that the answer is yes -- i.…

It's good for them that they haven't caught the "SharePoint" (and soon, InfoPath) wave yet cause if they do, the migration cost will rise quite significantly.

Most offices these days do use SharePoint heavily and some of the BAs started their hands on InfoPath to make forms for data entry to SharePoint.

To make matter worse (or sweeter, depending your POV), these whole thing can be acquired cheaper by using Office 365 (their cloud version of Office) plus certain Office 365 offerings automatically gives you Office 2010 Professional Plus for free. Sweet deal if you ask me.

Some of us would like to see Linux to win the battle especially when it comes to cost perspective. Unfortunately, Microsoft took notes and they had adjusted their licensing cost as well.

For example: in the K-12 sector, I heard schools are getting 90% discounts. Ninety percent discounts.....

Re: "Linux switch saved city millions and reduced user complaints"

#65

Post by drucken »

cs702 wrote: post #54

Doubtlessly, this successful migration to desktop Linux must have been very difficult, costly, and disruptive. The upfront costs of migration surely exceed what it would have cost the city to stay on Windows for one or two more waves of upgrades. The important question is: were these upfront costs & multi-year effort worth it? The data presented in the article provides compelling evidence that the answer is yes -- i.…

"Most surprisingly, the city claims its IT department is fielding HALF as many (!) user complaints with Linux than with Windows, reducing another major cost forever."

Uh, what? Complaints can change at any time and due even to "small" changes. Also, there could be changes in the opportunity cost of running Linux vs other operating systems in the future which could be realised/visible to ordinary users and thus cause a rise in complaints. But yes, for now, if the facts are right, they have saved themselves significant support cost.

Rest of your summary deductions are sound.

Re: "Linux switch saved city millions and reduced user complaints"

#67

Post by luser001 »

cs702 wrote: post #54

Doubtlessly, this successful migration to desktop Linux must have been very difficult, costly, and disruptive. The upfront costs of migration surely exceed what it would have cost the city to stay on Windows for one or two more waves of upgrades. The important question is: were these upfront costs & multi-year effort worth it? The data presented in the article provides compelling evidence that the answer is yes -- i.…

Maybe I read the article wrong, but my spidey sense went off when reading the article. They're comparing the maximum_complaints_per_month quantity before and after switch. i.e., the peak value of complaints_per_month. Not average or annual.

I agree with your other points.

FTA:

    The maximum number of complaints was 70 per month
    before the beginning of the switch to LiMux. After the
    number of LiMux workplaces increased from 1,500 to
    9,500, the maximum number of complaints per month
    dropped to 46.

Re: "Linux switch saved city millions and reduced user complaints"

#68

Post by ams6110 »

skrebbel wrote: post #23

With these kinds of `hooray linux´ articles, I always wonder whether they included the cost of reduced productivity they included when moving everybody from MS Office to LibreOffice and stuff like that. The difference in quality, stability and features is pretty big. I've worked with LibreOffice only for about 8 months, and I can tell you, it's not just a matter of "getting used to". There's simply a whole bunch of b…

I agree that LibreOffice is not an equal to MS Office, but I wonder how many civil servants are doing a lot of original work in an office suite. Seems to me that most of what they would be doing is filling out forms and using other standard templates. Given a suite of working, debugged templates (which seems to be what the "WollMux" extension supplies) I'd be surprised if there'd be a lot of need to go outside that.

Re: "Linux switch saved city millions and reduced user complaints"

#69

Post by Xylakant »

cs702 wrote: post #54

Doubtlessly, this successful migration to desktop Linux must have been very difficult, costly, and disruptive. The upfront costs of migration surely exceed what it would have cost the city to stay on Windows for one or two more waves of upgrades. The important question is: were these upfront costs & multi-year effort worth it? The data presented in the article provides compelling evidence that the answer is yes -- i.…

While I support the general notion of your statement, I have to correct some facts:

- The recurring costs for licence upgrades are said to be 2.8 Mio Euros every 3 - 4 years. However, there are other cost factors that need to be taken into account: migration and training costs for the new windows and office versions and cost that are now saved since they took the opportunity to unify some of their document management. That's not 10 mio pounds per year, but still a sizable amount.

- In the original document, no amount is given for the cost savings for the hardware that's not replaced.

- There are no statistics given for the number of support queries in terms of linux vs. windows. There is anecdotical evidence but they response explicitly states that full and valid statistics will only be available in two years. The number cited is the total number of support queries for the linux workstations over time. It is cited as proof that the pain points from the beginning of the migrations have been resolved and that the number of support queries is dropping sharply even though the number of linux workstations is rising. The number is also said to include all kinds of errors, including network, server and database errors.

Still, the cost savings are totalled at somewhere around 3.8 Mio Euro for the whole period and since most of the up-front investments have been done now the number can be expected to rise. It's not as huge as you make it sound, but it's still big. And most importantly its a proof that this can be done without disrupting everything.

(most numbers taken from the original statement at http://www.muenchen.de/rathaus/dms/Home/Stadtinfos/Presse-Se...)

Re: "Linux switch saved city millions and reduced user complaints"

#70

Post by drucken »

duncans wrote: post #5

For counter arguments there's some fascinating stuff at http://limuxwatch.blogspot.co.uk/ although it hasn't been updated for a while, so maybe they've finally succeeded?

Hardly the most reliable or even useful of sites.

1. Completely anonymous - who is this person who has dedicated a site just to this topic?

2. Clearly neither German or even speaks German (using Google translation!) - so, we can rule out an insider or even a user.

3. Railing on all topics relating to Linux for government use anywhere on the globe without giving reasons other than quoting other sources.

As I said, not reliable and someone clearly disgruntled with no independent information or expertise (technical or managerial).

Post reply on HN