German City Set To Make Linux A Norm For Citizens • Hacker News Board

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

#61

Post by com2kid » Tue, Jun 25, 2013, 2:34 AM UTC

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.

I use a web IM client, it can easily consume hundreds upon hundreds of megabytes if left open for a few days, and that is just to send small snippets of text back and forth!

About:Memory in Firefox right now, with nothing other than this reply box open, shows JS using 67.29MB and well over 100MB of memory used for other purposes.

(Likely this is left over from tabs I have closed)

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

#62

Post by girvo » Tue, Jun 25, 2013, 2:37 AM UTC

vanderZwan wrote: post #56

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…

"Abiword normally does not have built in facilities for mathematical formulas" The Xerox Alto had this in 1982[1]. NINETEEN FREAKING EIGHTY TWO. How is it possible that any WYSIWYG word processor is allowed to ship without this? [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ODZBL80JPqw

Because AbiWords codebase is so painful, adding it is more trouble than it's worth.

I tried to port it to elementary with a new UI. Dear god.

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

#63

Post by PavlovsCat » Tue, Jun 25, 2013, 3:07 AM UTC

swah wrote: post #34

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…

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...

Everybody has different hardware etc., but for what it's worth, OpenSUSE never let me down. So if you feel like you have another go in you before you completely give up on Linux, try that maybe.

As for the videos, if you aren't already, use VLC, it seems to have a trillion obscure codecs baked into it.. I would go so far to say if it doesn't play in VLC, there is either a problem elsewhere, or it's not a video file.

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

#64

Post by sageikosa » Tue, Jun 25, 2013, 3:46 AM UTC

v0lta wrote: post #52

sageikosa wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Of course not, but CDs are incredibly cheap if produced in great numbers. And as a German I can only agree with keithpeter. It's perfectly normal for local government to spend tax-money outside of "classic" duties to promote a public issue. Especially something with an environmental background. Something else you should keep in mind is, that Munich is pushing towards electronic bureaucracy, which would require access…

Perfectly normal is an observation of frequency of occurrence, and one I won't dispute. "hiddenfeatures" was complaining that this was (to paraphrase with words from your observation) "perfectly normal", which he found odd in that his tax money was promoting this, when he didn't see this as a government function.

"keithpeter" referenced that in Europe/UK (and I will confirm that various jurisdictions in the US of A do so as well) local governments promote all sorts of pet social projects. At this point "keithpeter" referenced free CDs.

That's when I pointed out the CDs were not free to produce which was "hiddenfeatures" point about tax money going to promote a product.

Now, I'm not sure where "hiddenfeatures" is from, but I am from the US of A, and things like this do happen here as well, and some people don't like it for a variety of reasons. Constitutionalists, for instance can't find Linux promotion in any of the original Articles, nor in any Amendments.

For me anytime I see even small amounts of money spent I compare it to what I've been taxed for the year and calculate how much of my money went to support the program. If its less than I have been taxed, I can claim to have completely funded the program, if it's more, then I can calculate how many years I had to work to completely fund this a program. If it's far more than I can be taxed in a lifetime, I try to calculate how many people like me will have all of their lifetime tax money poured into said program.

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

#65

Post by venomsnake » Tue, Jun 25, 2013, 4:32 AM UTC

quaint- wrote: post #49

NoodleIncident wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Well I did. So far I have close to 100 native games and I have been able to play a lot of recent games with playonlinux. So not bad at all. One of the few things missing is decent Everything clone for linux - something that reads directly from the journal and is able to find files instantly by names without useless indexing of the contents.

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

#66

Post by venomsnake » Tue, Jun 25, 2013, 4:40 AM UTC

xradionut wrote: post #45

Spooky23 wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It is terrible. Yesterday I had to go long ways to help a friend install skype on w8. The thing pushed her towards the metro version and microsoft account.

So i had to find a direct link to desktop installer. Every non IT user I have seen hates 8. Most of the ITs too.

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

#67

Post by keithpeter » Tue, Jun 25, 2013, 5:15 AM UTC

skaevola wrote: post #48

keithpeter wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 :(

UK: big push to get 'open government' going and my local council has a big advertising campaign getting people to use their web pages. Not always online, some services mainly call centre based.

I imagine this will vary widely by country

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

#68

Post by keithpeter » Tue, Jun 25, 2013, 5:23 AM UTC

D9u wrote: post #41

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 w…

Absolutely! But many of the target audience may have very little experience of installing software and may need a screen cam / leaflet along the lines of your instructions. Last time I tried Lubuntu, I had to manually install the appropriate spell checker for my language (en-gb). Many will want ms core fonts as well. I agree the whole thing is one side of A4 with a few scren shots.

PS: Atom based netbooks with 1Gb are much more capable than P3/256Mb, people with such netbooks will have no issues at all with Lubuntu.

I'm running ubuntustudio fine on this Samsung NC10.

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

#69

Post by keithpeter » Tue, Jun 25, 2013, 5:34 AM UTC

sageikosa wrote: post #64

v0lta wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of course not, but CDs are incredibly cheap if produced in great numbers. And as a German I can only agree with keithpeter. It's perfectly normal for local government to spend tax-money outside of "classic" duties to promote a public issue. Especially something with an environmental background. Something else you should keep in mind is, that Munich is pushing towards electronic bureaucracy, which would require access…

Perfectly normal is an observation of frequency of occurrence, and one I won't dispute. "hiddenfeatures" was complaining that this was (to paraphrase with words from your observation) "perfectly normal", which he found odd in that his tax money was promoting this, when he didn't see this as a government function. "keithpeter" referenced that in Europe/UK (and I will confirm that various jurisdictions in the US of A d…

> "For me anytime I see even small amounts of money spent I compare it to what I've been taxed for the year and calculate how much of my money went to support the program."

Does your analysis include any estimate of corresponding benefits, specifically reduction in costs down the line?

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

#70

Post by keithpeter » Tue, Jun 25, 2013, 5:41 AM UTC

velodrome wrote: post #13

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.

As I was reminded in another comment many Atom based 1Gb netbooks were sold with XP and a 160Gb hard drive. Such a machine can run ubuntustudio well, and allow a young person to do quite a lot with audio, images and some low-fi video.