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Ubuntu and open source help the City of Munich save millions

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Re: Ubuntu and open source help the City of Munich save millions

#31

Post by nmrm »

brudgers wrote: post #15
zanny wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except it isn't - you need to consider the costs of not just Windows, but all the software surrounding it. Photoshop licenses, Visual Studio licenses, Office licenses, etc. Even at business rates. Per workstation, $3000 can be an underestimate. Meanwhile, using Gimp / Krita / LibreOffice / kdev etc and, at the scale of a city like Munich, just having a dev team to fix the localized problems the city has in the softwa…

As I mentioned common open source productivity software runs on Windows. That includes Gimp, Emacs etc. - not that I believe that Munich is rolling out 14000 development/graphics boxes. The comparison does not appear to be between equivalent specifications. It's assuming that Windows requires Office. That's simply false.

For most people/IT departments, dependence on Office is the only reason they hand Microsoft a dime for Windows.

If you're not using Office or other Windows-only productivity software, why pay the Windows licensing fee?

Re: Ubuntu and open source help the City of Munich save millions

#33

Post by velodrome »

eru wrote: post #26
velodrome wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Honestly, it is going to take a while. The display drivers needs a lot of work (intel seems solid). Also, desktop itself needs to be super stable. Also, the software (from companies) is treated like a second-class citizen. Chrome is horrible on linux, --disable-gpu --audio-buffer-size what user is going to bother with that? I have to do all these tweaks and workarounds to get things to work. Regular users will not ha…

> Chrome is horrible on linux, --disable-gpu --audio-buffer-size what user is going to bother with that? Really? Chrome is a first class citizen on ChromeOS, so I'd expected other linuxes to be well served, too.

Yep. I think it has to do with AMD drivers but I am not sure (I have seen some Nvidia users complain too). It started around Chrome 33.

By the way, I don't think ChromeOS is a good example. Can you use Firefox on ChromeOS? I consider ChromeOS like purpose-specific, dedicated hardware (like a router). It is a start though. By the way, Chromebooks use intel gpus - they are pretty solid.

LOD has to be better than alternatives by a significant margin in order to attract users.

Re: Ubuntu and open source help the City of Munich save millions

#34

Post by waps »

brusch64 wrote: post #19
CSDude wrote: post #4

It reminds me http://xkcd.com/934/ for most simple users. What a government officer do at his/her workstation? They probably have every service through web pages, almost nobody builds native programs anymore. And for the most cases LibreOffice is not perfect, but adequate to do simple jobs. So it is very logical to use something free for these tasks, to replace Windows+Office and save money.

I really wonder if LibreOffice is not totally adequate for the users in the city of Munich. I know that it has its problems if you want to use it with Word generated documents, and it obviously has problems with add-ons developed for Word. But I could really think that it works quite nice, if all your documents are generated for LibreOffice. I am using Open / LibreOffice since nearly 10 years exclusively at home and…

I think this is really sad. As someone who went through university when the last wave of centralized unix died off, then the move to decentralized windows, and to decentralized linux (because they couldn't really figure it out mostly).

I found that move to decentralization and the availability of compilers and tools and dev. environments and easy ways to get admin privileges, well I credit that with my learning how to code/admin/... and to my succes later in life. These computers, I've heard from a friend, are LOCKED down. As in, try to compile anything against a GUI library is a complete non-starter. Compiling anything under linux without root is almost impossible.

Add to that that even the development environments that do exist on linux are ... well sorry to say but let's be honest here ... far inferior for learning to code and to writing simple games than the ones available on windows.

Nobody's going to learn how to use computers, how to program and how to improve their situation on these linux machines. And that sucks.

But hey, easier on the admins !

(not that it's anywhere near as bad as SAAS though)

Re: Ubuntu and open source help the City of Munich save millions

#35

Post by indlebe »

stefanve wrote: post #24
velodrome wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is there an opensource alternative for Sharepoint?

SharePoint is a Jack of all trades, master of none so based on you requirements you have to choose the right tool most of which are OSS or at the very least non depended on Windows

Definitely true. A wiki provides a good chunk of what I've seen folks in academia use SP for but I've seen other companies use primarily the office-type features (calendar, contacts, etc). But if you setup a wiki along with something like Zimbra and that could provide most of what SP offers and some extras.

Re: Ubuntu and open source help the City of Munich save millions

#36

Post by achiang »

velodrome wrote: post #20
yoran wrote: post #3

Is 2014 the year of Linux on desktop? Joke aside, it makes me happy to see the transition from Microsoft to Linux has been a success. I remember reading the news headline when they first announced it. I wonder how many of the 22,000 government officers that use Ubuntu at work are now also using Ubuntu at home?

Honestly, it is going to take a while. The display drivers needs a lot of work (intel seems solid). Also, desktop itself needs to be super stable. Also, the software (from companies) is treated like a second-class citizen. Chrome is horrible on linux, --disable-gpu --audio-buffer-size what user is going to bother with that? I have to do all these tweaks and workarounds to get things to work. Regular users will not ha…

YMMV, of course.

I have found the exact opposite experience.

https://plus.google.com/u/0/+AlexChiang/posts/JKdr1LTLQD2

Re: Ubuntu and open source help the City of Munich save millions

#37

Post by tdicola »

eru wrote: post #26
velodrome wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Honestly, it is going to take a while. The display drivers needs a lot of work (intel seems solid). Also, desktop itself needs to be super stable. Also, the software (from companies) is treated like a second-class citizen. Chrome is horrible on linux, --disable-gpu --audio-buffer-size what user is going to bother with that? I have to do all these tweaks and workarounds to get things to work. Regular users will not ha…

> Chrome is horrible on linux, --disable-gpu --audio-buffer-size what user is going to bother with that? Really? Chrome is a first class citizen on ChromeOS, so I'd expected other linuxes to be well served, too.

No WebGL enabled on Linux Chrome in my experience. Kind of annoying when cool visualizations get passed around and you can't see them.

Re: Ubuntu and open source help the City of Munich save millions

#38

Post by datashaman »

waps wrote: post #34
brusch64 wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I really wonder if LibreOffice is not totally adequate for the users in the city of Munich. I know that it has its problems if you want to use it with Word generated documents, and it obviously has problems with add-ons developed for Word. But I could really think that it works quite nice, if all your documents are generated for LibreOffice. I am using Open / LibreOffice since nearly 10 years exclusively at home and…

I think this is really sad. As someone who went through university when the last wave of centralized unix died off, then the move to decentralized windows, and to decentralized linux (because they couldn't really figure it out mostly). I found that move to decentralization and the availability of compilers and tools and dev. environments and easy ways to get admin privileges, well I credit that with my learning how t…

FUD. Try to get anything done in a Windows group policy environment. Same problem, different OS. The serious IDEs are (mostly) available on all platforms, except for Visual Studio (naturally). The machine is installed to be used by a regular user, why would you want it to be developer-friendly? Regular civil servants need to compile applications?

Re: Ubuntu and open source help the City of Munich save millions

#39

Post by stefanve »

velodrome wrote: post #28
stefanve wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

SharePoint is a Jack of all trades, master of none so based on you requirements you have to choose the right tool most of which are OSS or at the very least non depended on Windows

Could you name few? Anything would be helpful.

It really depends on your requirements. What is it that you need? Like any software SP is a tool, just like home improvement you don't go out buy a tool and than try to use it for what ever task is in front of you (you might end up with a screw driver while you really needed a hammer). So I could make a list of Document Management, Content Management, Intranet, etc software but the correct answer depends on your needs since there are lots of choose and all (some) have there own strong and weak points.

SP is a mesh up of several software suits slowly coming to getter, it is getting better every release. SP could also be the right choice depending in your needs. Mainly work group portals but those tend to fail (as in not being used) since most of the time there is no proper business case nor business processes in place to support the grand idea

Re: Ubuntu and open source help the City of Munich save millions

#40

Post by perlgeek »

CSDude wrote: post #4

It reminds me http://xkcd.com/934/ for most simple users. What a government officer do at his/her workstation? They probably have every service through web pages, almost nobody builds native programs anymore. And for the most cases LibreOffice is not perfect, but adequate to do simple jobs. So it is very logical to use something free for these tasks, to replace Windows+Office and save money.

The problem is usually interacting with other agencies; those don't have well-defined data formats for data interchange, instead they often work with forms in Word documents, and require the document to be edited with a very specific version of MS Word. Of course that makes interaction harder.

The technical lead of the LiMux project told a story once about a German federal agency that required documents to be submitted in a very specific, unusual font that basically everybody had to buy first.

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