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South Korean government to switch to Linux: ministry

koreaherald.com

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Re: South Korean government to switch to Linux: ministry

#141

Post by mycall »

microtonal wrote: post #133
teh_klev wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Basically Total Cost of Ownership (TCO). This is something people forget about. OS and app licenses are likely a drop in the ocean compared to the operating costs of supporting your infrastructure (regardless of whether it runs on Windows or Linux). [edit: TOC -> TCO]

TCO was also a big part of the marketing campaign of Microsoft against Linux in the late 90ies, early 00s. A big difference compared to one or two decades ago is that a lot of domain-specific services have moved to web applications. So, there are probably a lot of machines out there that are just glorified web browsing machines. Also, the popularity of iOS and Android have made more applications cross-platform. Of co…

Linux workstations, Office 365 -- skip LibreOffice.

Re: South Korean government to switch to Linux: ministry

#142

Post by codedokode »

toyg wrote: post #97
rakoo wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same for me, although it might be because I also switched to Linux in parallel. XP was just perfect and there was no reason to change, yet 7 came along and if you want the best protection you need to be up to date. While 7 didn't bring anything for me beyond different skins, it did its job. Windows 10? Man I feel like I'm on an ad-infested website and I need to be careful of where I click. But I'm definitely not obje…

> XP was just perfect and there was no reason to change Lolz, I heard that already... with Windows 2000. So many (me included) spent serious time trying to strip XP of all the crap, because "Win2000 was just perfect". In reality, XP (like 2000) was just another pile of shit. They patched the hell out of it with SP2, and still it would get owned and owned. Vista and Windows 7 have made using Windows much safer, and Wi…

Windows 7 also had lot of exploits. It runs many services like network file systems (NetBIOS) in kernel which makes it easier to gain access to it.

Re: South Korean government to switch to Linux: ministry

#143

Post by Mikeb85 »

jeroenhd wrote: post #72
1f60c wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The French police uses a custom distro based on Ubuntu 16.04: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GendBuntu

Why are they using a custom distro? Is it just different graphics or do they have changes significant enough that a customised Ubuntu installer wouldn't suffice?

Likely it's simply Ubuntu + some custom repos + different graphics (because why not).

Re: South Korean government to switch to Linux: ministry

#144

Post by jaabe »

AsyncAwait wrote: post #47
NortySpock wrote: post #13

As I recall, this sort of public statement is used as a lever to squeeze some discounts out of Microsoft's Enterprise Sales team before the government "decides" to stay with Windows.

As a Linux aficionado, I have to agree with you, unfortunately. I've seen this too many times over the years not to be cynical about it.

As someone who likes Linux and genuinely believe that software that was paid for by the public should be open source, I just have to ask you why that is.

I work in a Danish municipality with 100.000 citizens. We operate more than 300 IT systems, some of these are one of a kind systems that have no alternatives and some of those only run on Windows.

We also have 8000 employees, a lot of them couldn’t tell you if the smartphone they use each day is an android or an iPhone. They know windows and they know office, switching them to pages and macOS would be almost impossible, Linux and libre office is out of the question.

We have an IT staff of skilled people who were willing to skip pay for ideology they are all certified Microsoft and have little other education. They could all easily leave for other positions in the Microsoft infrastructure. It would cost around a million to replace just one of them.

We could easily switch our tech to Linux, we would need to build a lot of replacement software but that could be done in a reasonably manner, but moving the business side to Linux would be the most expensive thing we ever did.

Which is why I’m a skeptic of something I believe should happen. We pay a tech tax to Microsoft, by we can’t stop. It’s just not doable.

Re: South Korean government to switch to Linux: ministry

#145

Post by Mikeb85 »

choeger wrote: post #81
Buetol wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a french, I have to say the french local police (gendarmerie) has been using Ubuntu in all their stations for years and they are very happy with that !

Wait until chrome is not fully working anymore and all their shiny webapps require it.

Considering Google uses Linux extensively, I doubt that'll happen any time soon.

Re: South Korean government to switch to Linux: ministry

#146

Post by mycall »

Yeri wrote: post #8

I used to support our office in S. Korea. It's true they depend super heavily on ActiveX and other weird applets/software that runs only on Windows and/or IE. A lot of the communication with the government (yearly tax submission) as well as banking software would not run on our Linux or OSX devices, and so we had these 'loaner' windows 'tax machines' that got reimaged every few days that people could use to do their…

Did they try WINE or ReactOS?

Re: South Korean government to switch to Linux: ministry

#147

Post by DataWorker »

microtonal wrote: post #133
teh_klev wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Basically Total Cost of Ownership (TCO). This is something people forget about. OS and app licenses are likely a drop in the ocean compared to the operating costs of supporting your infrastructure (regardless of whether it runs on Windows or Linux). [edit: TOC -> TCO]

TCO was also a big part of the marketing campaign of Microsoft against Linux in the late 90ies, early 00s. A big difference compared to one or two decades ago is that a lot of domain-specific services have moved to web applications. So, there are probably a lot of machines out there that are just glorified web browsing machines. Also, the popularity of iOS and Android have made more applications cross-platform. Of co…

I’ve switched to libreoffice from excel and find it totally viable as an excel replacement except for lack of vba support, but it has its own scripting language so even that isn’t a deal breaker. It’s just so much faster and less bloated than today’s excel.

Re: South Korean government to switch to Linux: ministry

#148

Post by detaro »

jaabe wrote: post #144
AsyncAwait wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a Linux aficionado, I have to agree with you, unfortunately. I've seen this too many times over the years not to be cynical about it.

As someone who likes Linux and genuinely believe that software that was paid for by the public should be open source, I just have to ask you why that is. I work in a Danish municipality with 100.000 citizens. We operate more than 300 IT systems, some of these are one of a kind systems that have no alternatives and some of those only run on Windows. We also have 8000 employees, a lot of them couldn’t tell you if the s…

partial counter-point: many large companies, universities, schools etc have switched to things like Google Docs. Most use of office software is simple enough that people can transfer (afaik a big part in the Munich migration was making sure all the templates used for common documents where ported properly and people could easily access to).

Specialist software is a big problem of course, likely leading to a parallel Windows infrastructure of some kind, either dedicated Windows workstations for the workers that need it or a terminal-server setup of some kind - I know companies that used the latter to keep Windows XP applications available in an isolated environment too. But it's all a bespoke process.

Re: South Korean government to switch to Linux: ministry

#149

Post by duxup »

ethbro wrote: post #121
giancarlostoro wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Whats worse is they could all pull it off if they invest in existing Distros and hire people to build out the main infrastructure they need. If they rely on legacy Windowd OS' the licenses for new OS' wont matter. They need secure systems to avoid being hacked by external malicious state actors. I would love to see some countries adopting Linux for government systems and funding research and development e.g. maybe fu…

"... and hire people to build out the main infrastructure they need." There's a reason Microsoft was successful for years: they built turn-key solutions, and added new turn-key features their customers requested. Switching from that sort of IT to a linux-based, 'we need a system architect' model doesn't happen overnight. There's organization shift, cultural shift, firing unneeded people who won't retrain, retraining…

Yeah finding talent and making good choices way outside what your traditional IT competency is pretty risky.

Re: South Korean government to switch to Linux: ministry

#150

Post by la_barba »

kikoreis wrote: post #46
robertAngst wrote: post #14

What does 'Linux OS' mean? Various Linux desktop distros? If so, have mercy on anyone who will be using Ubuntu Desktop for the first time. I hope they aren't afraid of using Terminal, because the internet will shout them down for wanting a GUI solution. Love Ubuntu server, but could never get into linux desktop.

Come on, this is not accurate. My wife, a journalist employed in the local university and my mother, a shop owner, use Ubuntu every day and have never used the terminal. The demographic that has needs more advanced than the basic desktop functionality will indeed use AskUbuntu and the terminal, but we have to recognize ourselves as niche. Most office workers will use a browser and very little else.

Well.. everyone thinks "basic desktop user" to mean different things. The problem is I don't think there is such thing as an average user.

Every workplace is domain-specific, and domain specific software is simply a tool to get the job done. Windows/Linux is completely irrelevant and of absolutely zero consequence IMHO. You pick a tool that you know will get the job done, and simply use whatever OS it works on. We use a lot of scientific software at work and a 100% of it requires Windows. Yes, it could easily be re-written to work on Linux or OSX but that is not the case at this moment. If we were an accounting firm, we'd just pick Quicken or Quickbooks or whatever tool people were familiar with and use it. Or if we were an magazine or an architecture firm, or an electrical company, we'd again use whatever tools we need to get the job done. As far as the OS goes, the only thing people care about is whether their tools still work on version N+1.

For various reasons, Linux and OSX require much more involvement from the vendor to keep the software running. OSX is very user-friendly, but very hostile to developers who just want to push code out, and not be shackled with supporting the new flavor of the month API that Apple comes out with.

Windows requires very little time investment from the vendor to make it work on newer versions. Heck we're using Windows XP software (like.. binaries compiled decades ago) on Windows 10 without issue. Yes, obviously, giant caveat here - I'm not saying windows never has API breaking changes .. I'm only saying the probability is much much lower on Windows than any other platform. (discounting esoteric options that nobody is using)

People who are cheer-leading Linux or Windows or w/e, never seem to "get" this. Nobody really cares about the OS.

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