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German City Set To Make Linux A Norm For Citizens

efytimes.com

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Re: German City Set To Make Linux A Norm For Citizens

#11

Post by keithpeter »

mathnode wrote: post #8
keithpeter wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"But pushing citizens to use Linux is NOT government business" Not sure where you are from, but in Europe/UK local governments do get involved in promoting what might be described as lifestyle choices. E.g. smoking cessation, getting more exercise, healthy eating, making recycled furniture available cheap to poor people by establishing and promoting 'social enterprises' as we call them in the uk. I see the free CDs a…

Yes. Less waste, and in theory users will be given more secure and up to date software experience, which should provide safety and confidence for online shopping, for more tasty taxable purchases. +1 for environment +1 for Capitalism EDIT: last +1 for education, and employment. No need to get a new fancy computer to do your homework or write a CV.

Not to mention reduction in costs for local and national government if people can fill in forms online as opposed to paper or going to an office...

Re: German City Set To Make Linux A Norm For Citizens

#12

Post by keithpeter »

sageikosa wrote: post #10
keithpeter wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"But pushing citizens to use Linux is NOT government business" Not sure where you are from, but in Europe/UK local governments do get involved in promoting what might be described as lifestyle choices. E.g. smoking cessation, getting more exercise, healthy eating, making recycled furniture available cheap to poor people by establishing and promoting 'social enterprises' as we call them in the uk. I see the free CDs a…

The CDs may be free to the recipients, but they were not zero cost. The money to procure them came from somewhere.

Yes, of course. My local government spends quite a lot on marketing and publicising the social enterprises I mentioned in grandparent post.

A few thousand CDs won't cost that much. Canonical themselves supply Ubuntu CDs for £80 per 100. I'd imagine it gets a lot cheaper per 1000.

You can pay £900 to advertise a job in our local paper, and that is for a 10cm two column advert with two insertions. I had to pay £100 to move a piano not so long ago (specialist private mover).

Re: German City Set To Make Linux A Norm For Citizens

#13

Post by velodrome »

hiddenfeatures wrote: post #6

Wait... That's what I am paying my taxes for? That's where my money goes? I am NOT against Linux being more widely used. And I like the idea that the city uses Linux to save money & more efficient. But pushing citizens to use Linux is NOT government business

An indirect benefit is teaching the younger generation to be more proficient with linux.

Many of these old PCs can be used as hand-me-downs for young kids. Some of these kids will eventually work for the city and contribute to existing infrastructure. Also, let's not forget economies of scale (ie. labor, ecosystem, etc) to further reduce costs.

Makes sense to me. Think of this as dogfooding.

Re: German City Set To Make Linux A Norm For Citizens

#15

Post by mtgx »

keithpeter wrote: post #2

"Lubuntu can comfortably run on as little as 256MB of RAM." It can although I'd call it jogging rather than running. It can work on a P3 coppermine class laptop very nicely. However, a stock Lubuntu live CD does not come with LibreOffice. Gnumeric is a nice spreadsheet, but Abiword normally does not have built in facilities for mathematical formulas, or for making drawings. There appears [1] to be no presentation app…

I think at this point the apps themselves have a bigger impact than the OS. Websites can easily take 50-100 MB of RAM these days, each. Open a few of those, and you can already slow down your PC with low RAM.

All of these "low-end" operating systems should have at least 1 GB of RAM as the bare minimum, and something with a more modern OS like Ubuntu or Windows 7 should use at least 2 GB of RAM, otherwise you have the same problem.

Re: German City Set To Make Linux A Norm For Citizens

#16

Post by saturdaysaint »

There are some admirable intentions here, but most of the older people I know that this would theoretically serve best are infinitely better served by a light tablet. I want my grandma checking her e-mail and doing her reading in the most comfortable environment/seat in the house; I suspect this will lead to a lot greater usage/engagement. And portability means it's easier to ask for help.

Re: German City Set To Make Linux A Norm For Citizens

#17

Post by hnha »

stinos wrote: post #5

seems like a great idea, but knowing how older people can cope with change I don't see this going so easily and nicely for them as the article makes it sound? Anecdote: 2 of my family members over 50 years old had XP running with Office2003. I gave them Lubuntu and it took them literally months to adapt. For an IT guy it's off course all alike, but actually it isn't. Especially not if it already took you years to mas…

counter anecdotes: my 73 year old grandma switched to Linux mint 9 months ago and loves it. and my 21 year old cousin tried the same and ran back to Windows after days.

Re: German City Set To Make Linux A Norm For Citizens

#18

Post by muuh-gnu »

saturdaysaint wrote: post #16

There are some admirable intentions here, but most of the older people I know that this would theoretically serve best are infinitely better served by a light tablet. I want my grandma checking her e-mail and doing her reading in the most comfortable environment/seat in the house; I suspect this will lead to a lot greater usage/engagement. And portability means it's easier to ask for help.

Tablets, like mobiles generally sufferer from planned obsolescence. They are not meant to be used and receive updates for years and years, like people used XP.

I want my grandma to not have to relearn to yet another UI every two years. Canonical has commited to support the LTS releases for half a decade, which, while not coparable to XP, is for older folks still a better bet than anything the mobile world has to offer.

Re: German City Set To Make Linux A Norm For Citizens

#19

Post by jtome »

sanbor wrote: post #14

I would suggest the Trisquel distro, which is completely free software (it's officially sponsored by the FSF) and IMHO the desktop is more user friendly than Lubuntu. http://trisquel.info/

Some of the primary things people use computers for are watching flash videos and listening to mp3s and I would rather people use 99% Free software and 1% proprietary software than the other way around because someone zelously recommended to them a 100% Free Distro, which they found unusable and then switched back to windows. One of my worst experiences when starting out with Linux was installing Debian on a laptop, when I was without ethernet, because it didn't come with the proprietary wifi driver I needed, I don't wish to subject a non-technical person to that.

Re: German City Set To Make Linux A Norm For Citizens

#20

Post by muuh-gnu »

hiddenfeatures wrote: post #6

Wait... That's what I am paying my taxes for? That's where my money goes? I am NOT against Linux being more widely used. And I like the idea that the city uses Linux to save money & more efficient. But pushing citizens to use Linux is NOT government business

> But pushing citizens to use Linux is NOT government business

Why not? The goverment standardizes everything else, from screws to seat belts to yogurts, why not stop the crazy update-planned-obsolescence cycle pushed by commercial entities and agree on a "standard UI" for normal people?

The amount of unnecessary changes in UIs has become unbearably crazy. And since those changes are forced from all sides, there is no way to vote with your wallet.

Whoever wants to constantly relearn the same stuff over and over and over, and today relearn the Ribbon, tomorrow Metro, and so on, is free to do it. But normal, everyday folks should not have to deal with this shit. Computers are supposed to be boring, everyday tools to accomplish everyday tasks, not fashion statements.

If the commercial world is not willing or able to keep computers useful tools, the goverment has to step in and slow down the amount of changes and prevent the giant waste of tediously gathered know-how.

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