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Can Dutch universities do without Microsoft?

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Re: Can Dutch universities do without Microsoft?

#271

Post by Spunkie »

aquariusDue wrote: post #85
amoshebb wrote: post #71

I have found daily-driving Ubuntu at Delft shocking pleasant. Chrome, zotero, obsidian, zoom, and so on all work great. Outlook, teams, and the office suite, and signing pdfs are all the sharpest edges by far. I feel if the TUs were required to dogfood this, especially if generously funded such that startups could come along and provide the same service and support, that it could be a great positive externality

PDF signing is the bane of my existence, luckily I can get by with a cloud solution but it's nowhere near how easy I wish it would be. Sadly I'm still forced to use a Windows VM or dual-boot because the tax authority in my country requires a root/digital certificate for login to their web system, at least for incorporated entities.

I can find a dozen solutions to sign a PDF on linux without much trouble. Now redacting seems a whole nother story.

I've failed to find even a single option on linux that does real PDF redaction like adobe acrobat. Most don't do redaction at all or worse they say they redact but it's actually just black highlighter on black text or some other kind of overlay that leaves the underlying text data intact.

Re: Can Dutch universities do without Microsoft?

#272

Post by breve »

pjmlp wrote: post #258
fph wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why should they get rid of the Linux kernel?

Because Microsoft contributions, including being one of the Rust on the kernel sponsors.

How will Microsoft or the US government stop anyone from using those Linux contributions now that they've been contributed?

They're GPL licenced. They're open source. They're freely available.

They're sanction proof.

Re: Can Dutch universities do without Microsoft?

#273

Post by mbreese »

BenFranklin100 wrote: post #268
mbreese wrote: post #260

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Collaboration with Sharepoint is I think the biggest issue with M365. It’s impossible to figure out where a file is stored… on your hard drive? One drive? Teams? Sharepoint? And the biggest problem I have is managing revisions with multiple editors. If I were talking to Microsoft about strategy, this would be the thing I’d suggest. I know it’s common to use Sharepoint for collaboration, but it’s such a Frankenstein’d…

My 22 year old fresh out-of-school communications manager admin was able to figure all that out on her first day of work. Don’t know what to tell you.

Many of the 22-25 year old-ish people in a grad school class I was part of recently had no idea where a shared project document was or how to edit it outside of Office 365’s online editor. Many didn’t know that the “attachment” from email was actually a Sharepoint link and not a file. This becomes a problem when you need to use some features in the desktop Word program that aren’t in the online editor.

Honestly, I’m less interested in how things work on day one. When systems are fresh or new, it’s easier to keep working. The mess always ends up happening after things have had time to accumulate cruft. Working on a collaborative manuscript in the current Microsoft shared system is normally a nightmare.

Trying to manage/accept/reject edits and revisions between different people is still difficult. That is unless you can use a source code repository like GitHub. But good luck trying to convince people to do that. Sadly, this means that emailing files around is still the easiest way to keep things straight.

Re: Can Dutch universities do without Microsoft?

#274

Post by another_twist »

mcv wrote: post #183
seanieb wrote: post #21

I spent the past year working for a company that relies heavily on Microsoft for email, productivity tools, and identity management. After that experience, I can say with confidence: never again. The support is astonishingly poor, and user experience feels like an afterthought. More importantly, using Microsoft at scale can leave your organization fundamentally insecure. The obscure, insecure defaults are, at best, d…

I work for a company that now uses everything from Microsoft. They used to have Jira, AWS and tons of other different products, but now everything is Microsoft, and it's terrible. Azure DevOps is particularly horrific. It's like Jira+Jenkins except you can never find anything. Nothing about it makes sense to me. As far as I can tell, the databases on Azure are all either slow, expensive, or both. And of course it mea…

Dont know why employers do this. Why pay for shitty tools your employees hate ?

Re: Can Dutch universities do without Microsoft?

#275

Post by shakna »

mcv wrote: post #183
seanieb wrote: post #21

I spent the past year working for a company that relies heavily on Microsoft for email, productivity tools, and identity management. After that experience, I can say with confidence: never again. The support is astonishingly poor, and user experience feels like an afterthought. More importantly, using Microsoft at scale can leave your organization fundamentally insecure. The obscure, insecure defaults are, at best, d…

I work for a company that now uses everything from Microsoft. They used to have Jira, AWS and tons of other different products, but now everything is Microsoft, and it's terrible. Azure DevOps is particularly horrific. It's like Jira+Jenkins except you can never find anything. Nothing about it makes sense to me. As far as I can tell, the databases on Azure are all either slow, expensive, or both. And of course it mea…

Because I can't help it, and ADO is my pain:

Type the same id number into a bug related links twice. It'll have no match, and then a match.

Re: Can Dutch universities do without Microsoft?

#277

Post by pjmlp »

breve wrote: post #263
pjmlp wrote: post #259

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes it is, see my last sentence. Without Windows developers, game studios using Windows, Visual Studio and DirectX, SteamOS would have no games. Proton represents Valve's failure to make a business out of Steam OS native games. Funny will be when Microsoft decides Proton is a relevant target to aim for, and shot down by all means necessary.

> Proton represents Valve's failure No, it represents a market opportunity. WINE (a European led project) effectively makes Win32 and DirectX into Linux APIs. It works well for games. You can bring those games to Linux with less effort. And Valve can offer SteamOS (based on Arch Linux, also a European led project) for less cost. You don't need Visual Studio. JetBrains has nice, cross-platform IDEs and they're a Europ…

Now go see how many game studios use JetBrains.

As for Proton, don't build castles on foreign kingdoms => OS/2 "runs Windows better", Netbooks.

Lets see how long Valve manages to keep their castle up.

Re: Can Dutch universities do without Microsoft?

#278

Post by pjmlp »

breve wrote: post #272
pjmlp wrote: post #258

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because Microsoft contributions, including being one of the Rust on the kernel sponsors.

How will Microsoft or the US government stop anyone from using those Linux contributions now that they've been contributed? They're GPL licenced. They're open source. They're freely available. They're sanction proof.

The point is using Microsoft stuff, instead of alternatives, not what Microsoft can do.

Re: Can Dutch universities do without Microsoft?

#279

Post by rdm_blackhole »

lpcvoid wrote: post #174
anonzzzies wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is , there are very few Europeans or EUans. There are French and Germans and Spanish etc; they all want their country first and sure open markets but their country first. That is how they vote (certainly these days). Most people do not feel EU unfortunately. Language is one thing: it is getting better but having language not unified (English, Spanish, Mandarin; pick one) is a massive and real issue keepin…

Well written. I hope one day the united states of europe is a real political entity, burying the stupidity that is fragmented national interests.

> Well written. I hope one day the united states of Europe is a real political entity, burying the stupidity that is fragmented national interests.

And I personally hope it won't. Seeing how things are going, I have no interest for my country to become a small province of the EU to be managed by some bureaucrats in Brussels who have never set foot in it.

Sharing intel and and resources why not? Becoming a vassal state of an EU federation no thanks.

Re: Can Dutch universities do without Microsoft?

#280

Post by mips_avatar »

octaane wrote: post #253

So, I'm going to chip in with a different perspective from that of some other commentators on here. The overwhelming majority of computers in the entire world, used by our entire species, have windows as their OS. While I applaud the use of alternatives to windows and it's apps, universities teach it because it is what their graduates will use in the real world. Governments use it because while it has it's flaws, it…

Microsoft is not the Toyota of operating systems. That would imply some kind of culture of continuous improvement absent from Microsoft. It’s the General Motors of operating systems
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