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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

#41

Post by D9u »

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…

Installing LibreOffice on Lubuntu is so easy that even a caveman (me) can do it.

    1.) Open Synaptic Package Manager.
    2.) Enter Admin Password.
    3.) Type "LibreOffice" into the search field.
    4.) Follow the on screen prompts, clicking appropriately.
All of the various Lubuntu applications I've tried run quite well on my nearly 5 year old Atom N270(800MHz) 1GB RAM netbook.

Seriously, if a user has rudimentary experience with WinXP then Lubuntu will not be too much to assimilate, and the only caveats are proprietary applications, yet there exists workarounds for most, such as comphoilio's netflix-desktop - which uses a special version of wine to run Silverlight and its necessary components - to enable viewing of Netflix DRM content on Debian based systems.

http://www.compholio.com/netflix-desktop/

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

#43

Post by coldarchon »

skaevola wrote: post #22
muuh-gnu wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 n…

Most standards are not set by the government, they're set by professional organizations. See ANSI: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_National_Standards_Ins... Safety standards ARE often set by the government, but more general standards mostly are not. By the way, the position you're arguing for is literally the opposite of innovation. Imagine if, after Apple unveiled the iPhone, the government had discouraged its…

What kind of constant innovation does a city council need? Do their computers need to become faster or their business structure?

I think you really need to rethink your arguments because city councils need to make sure data is accessible for more time than the phase of a startup.

Ever tried to use a database of ACCESS 95? Ever had to convert it to '97, 2000, 2003 and then 2007 so you could finally convert it to your actual version and use it? Because that's how it works with innovative non-governmental standards by Microsoft and Apple ..

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

#45

Post by xradionut »

Spooky23 wrote: post #35
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

Windows 8 is cratering new PC adoption -- many people, especially folks who are not technically adept, hate it. So a German government decided to invest a small amount of money to help citizens utilize an alternative to insecure Windows XP.

Plenty of folks who are technically adept, dislike it as well.

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

#46

Post by tsahyt »

mtgx wrote: post #15
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 th…

What sorts of websites are we talking about here? I understand that some websites have to transfer a couple of megabytes to be displayed (though most of that is media content anyway) but how does that end up occupying 100MB of RAM? That's roughly an order of magnitude more than I'd like a website to take, except for when we're talking streaming media obviously.

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

#47

Post by tsahyt »

muuh-gnu wrote: post #18
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 offe…

> while not coparable to XP

Still, in the tech world, half a decade is pretty close to eternity anyway. XP sure had a long life.

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

#48

Post by skaevola »

keithpeter wrote: post #11
mathnode wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

But that would require the local government to allow forms to be submitted online. Which mine hasn't :(

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

#49

Post by quaint- »

NoodleIncident wrote: post #37
swah wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quite sincerely, I just tried switching to Ubuntu 13.04 (from Win7) on my gaming machine (4GB Ram, some Nvidia card that I can play BF3 very well), and it doesn't "Run" like Windows either. Chrome is slow to start, videos don't load properly, ejecting the pendrive fails...

Did you get the proprietary drivers for that Nvidia card? They can't legally be included in the distro itself, you have to go get them, which is a shame.

The situation described by GP is so ridiculous that it's unlikely to be true, which is why I wouldn't recommend anyone to waste their time trying to solve the mentioned "problems".

I mean, really, why would anyone switch from Windows to Ubuntu on a gaming machine? Just think about it for a sec.

(Videos not loading or USB not working are issues the OEM are supposed to handle. The fact that someone like GP can't tell even the series of their GPU hints strongly toward them using a prebuilt computer - yet expecting to be able to work as their own Linux OEM, which one could argue is more difficult than being a Windows OEM.)

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

#50

Post by peterjmag »

tsahyt wrote: post #46
mtgx wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 th…

What sorts of websites are we talking about here? I understand that some websites have to transfer a couple of megabytes to be displayed (though most of that is media content anyway) but how does that end up occupying 100MB of RAM? That's roughly an order of magnitude more than I'd like a website to take, except for when we're talking streaming media obviously.

Looking at Chrome's Task Manager: my Gmail tab weighs in at 255 MB. Facebook is #2, at 168 MB. All that client-side JS gets pretty heavy.

Interestingly, #3 is the home page of an old blogspot.com blog. It's mostly just text and a few inline images, and it still somehow manages to occupy 132 MB of RAM.

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