The City Of Munich Now Wants To Abandon Linux And Switch Back to Windows (techrepublic.com) 557
"The prestigious FOSS project replacing the entire city's administration IT with FOSS based systems, is about to be cancelled and decommissioned," writes long-time Slashdot reader Qbertino. TechRepublic reports:
Politicians at open-source champion Munich will next week vote on whether to abandon Linux and return to Windows by 2021. The city authority, which made headlines for ditching Windows, will discuss proposals to replace the Linux-based OS used across the council with a Windows 10-based client. If the city leaders back the proposition it would be a notable U-turn by the council, which spent years migrating about 15,000 staff from Windows to LiMux, a custom version of the Ubuntu desktop OS, and only completed the move in 2013...
The use of the open-source Thunderbird email client and LibreOffice suite across the council would also be phased out, in favor of using "market standard products" that offer the "highest possible compatibility" with external and internal software... The full council will vote on whether to back the plan next Wednesday. If all SPD and CSU councillors back the proposal put forward by their party officials, then this new proposal will pass, because the two parties hold the majority.
The leader of the Munich Green Party says the city will lose "many millions of euros" if the change is implemented. The article also reports that Microsoft moved its German headquarters to Munich last year.
The use of the open-source Thunderbird email client and LibreOffice suite across the council would also be phased out, in favor of using "market standard products" that offer the "highest possible compatibility" with external and internal software... The full council will vote on whether to back the plan next Wednesday. If all SPD and CSU councillors back the proposal put forward by their party officials, then this new proposal will pass, because the two parties hold the majority.
The leader of the Munich Green Party says the city will lose "many millions of euros" if the change is implemented. The article also reports that Microsoft moved its German headquarters to Munich last year.
but but but (Score:4, Funny)
libreoffice is just as good!!!*
*as MS Office 2000
Re:but but but (Score:4, Insightful)
Could you name the features the contemporary (or any) MS-Office has that are important to the average secretary and that are missing in LibreOffice?
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"The Average Secretary" is not your issue here. Using it as the standard is low, in more ways than one.
I agree the average secretary would make do with anything. Her contacts, boss, clients and colleagues would most likely not agree.
Re: but but but (Score:2)
Re:mail merge (Score:3)
Many prefer to email within word and not open a million compose new message in Outlook. Also the ribbon UI. The file menus are quite dated and mellinials do not know how to use menus outside hamburger ones from their phones
Re: but but but (Score:4, Informative)
Yup, and this essentially amounts to doing things the way that MS Office does them. The way you've already learnt to do things is the easy way, because doing things any other way first requires unlearning the way you've already learnt.
Yup, and it's exceedingly difficult to get 100% compatibility with MS Office without being MS Office. (Whereas MS Office gets it for free, by definition.)
Yup, and there'd need to be a large user base to change this
Nope, that about covers it.
About a decade away from compatibility with today's MS products. In another decade, they'll still be about a decade away. It's a moving target.
Re: but but but (Score:4, Insightful)
That sounds obvious but it doesn't apply as much as you would think.
A few years ago I was running practical class sessions for first year engineering students that included a segment on graphing a stress-strain curve of a specimen that the students had tested, and doing a few very simple calculations based on the data. At a staff meeting we decided to change to MS Excel to do the graphing because "they have already learned how to use Excel". It turned out that they hadn't. The prac class turned into a nightmare that always ran over time that ended up being a class on how to do line graphs in MS Excel.
So I and everyone in that meeting had the same preconception you do and we were wrong. Just because a lot of people have used MS Office to do things does not mean the fastest way to get them up to speed on a task you want them to do is to use MS Office to do it. That especially applies now with the ribbon making it much harder for people unfamiliar with a task to find the way to get MS Office to let them do it.
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Help and assistance on the Web when you need to figure something out. Easy with MS products just Google what you are trying to do and get 100s to 1000s of sites showing examples. With the FOSS options. That only works about 10% of the time.
I beg to differ. Whenever I've had LibreOffice questions or issues I've found what I needed on the Web close to 100% of the time (I can't offhand think of an exception), and generally in just a few minutes; and this runs the gamut from how-tos to workarounds and much more.
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I was being a wiseass
Re:but but but (Score:5, Interesting)
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Presentations are worthless bureaucratic boilerplate anyway. We should do away with them.
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Yeah, Scott McNealy did this when he ran Sun - wrote on mylar sheets w/ markers
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Animation is useful when it leads from one slide to the next. It's only pointless when people pick random transitions without meaning.
It's bullet points that are always a disaster.
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Seriously, anyone using animation in a presentation is a disaster himself.
Found the Slashdotter who lacks imagination. Yes, the formula in the boardroom is basically that quantity of animations are inversely proportional to useful information. However, Powerpoint is used beyond the boardroom. My mother is a children's librarian. She does all kinds of things with animations and layers and her monthly story times are amongst the most well attended in the district. On the other hand, Steve Jobs used the "slam in and make dust/smoke" effect on a number of his annual product release p
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PowerPoint, Impress, etc., are not bad tools but much of the time there is negative value added with fancy dissolves and all the things that catch your eye and detract your attention from the actual message.
Impress won't do all of those fancy tricks that PowerPoint will do but generally that might be viewed as a plus, unless you're doing a TV show or the aforementioned children's shows. For most business presentations, you want focus on the main points, not the tricks.
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Seriously, anyone using animation in a presentation is a disaster himself.
I demand animated diagrams in video presentations. If someone wants to stand up there with transparencies like the olden days, I'll get over it. But use the medium!
Re: but but but (Score:4, Insightful)
Not for the people being subjected to it.
Also since the final resting place of a good presentation is on an intranet to be viewed by a web browser it's a pretty stupid idea unless a web browser can also render it.
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In my workplace a capture tool that produces AVI files is the software of choice instead of attempting to feed a lot of screenshots into MS Powerpoint.
As for your sig - wow, I never noticed that since the King James Bible really downplays it. In other versions it stands out like donkeys balls.
And no, I don't care if you can animate that in MS Powerpoint
Re:but but but (Score:5, Insightful)
Kindof unpleasant experiencing a total system lockup when you are presenting to 200 scientists. People in the audience actually said: "I can't believe you attempted this using Libre!", "Why are you using Linux for this?"
But the funny thing is I've also seen, MANY TIMES, someone try to present only to pull up their laptop...
"Windows is updating. 3 of 97. Please do not turn off your computer." ...
I've seen presentations rescheduled, the order juggled, or a presentation even outright cancelled because there was no other time, and there was nothing the presenter could do ... his 45 minute allotement was the only spot, and there was NOTHING he could do now but wait until Windows decided he could use his laptop again.
And the audience? They don't generally berate you for using Windows... they just groan in sympathetic empathy; because that's interrupted nearly all of our workflows at some point... although perhaps not so catastrophically.
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"there will be no "Linux singularity", just a slow Microsoft slide to irrelevance"
Right but wrong, simply because it has already begun.
Someone has been visited by an MS rep (Score:5, Informative)
I've seen this: some high-powered MS rep chats up a boss, and *presto*:
MS is great
We've got to migrate
Put that to whatever jingle you want. Also: inspect bank accounts and campaign funds.
Note also that the study supporting the move back to WIndows was carried out by Accenture [wikipedia.org] (some of us know them better by their old name, Andersen Consulting). Accenture was Microsoft's Alliance Partner of the Year in 2016 [zdnet.com], so I'm sure that they have a neutral, objective reason for recommending Microsoft software.
Re:Someone has been visited by an MS rep (Score:5, Insightful)
I've seen this: some high-powered MS rep chats up a boss, and *presto*:
Believe it or not there are other issues beyond "Libre/Open/WhateverOffice is just as good", because you see, big organizations such as municipalities use more software than just office, and many of them simply don't run or run well on Wine or such. And the alternatives to Excel for very complex spreadsheets leave a lot to be desired.
It's easy to think that money changed hands, but there may just be more to it than that.
Re:Someone has been visited by an MS rep (Score:5, Insightful)
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And the alternatives to Excel for very complex spreadsheets leave a lot to be desired.
I won't argue that point except to say that very complex spreadsheets themselves leave a lot to be desired. They are error prone and difficult to audit by their very nature. Generally when computational needs get so involved, a spreadsheet is a bad idea. But spreadsheet abuse and overuse is rampant. Excel encourages this in a big way. LibreOffice Calc, in trying to follow suit, does the same, but being less capable at the high end, doesn't allow you to go quite so far.
There were a few spreadsheet-like progr
Re:Someone has been visited by an MS rep (Score:5, Insightful)
You can also continue using LibreOffice and Thunderbird on... Windows! By saying they want to dump those applications, which have the highest compatibility, they're essentially saying that they want to buy in into the classic corporate culture (spend, spend, spend) with no true reason for it except marketing. Meanwhile the classic corporate culture is moving away from a Microsoft monoculture.
Re:Someone has been visited by an MS rep (Score:5, Insightful)
Quote: The article also reports that Microsoft moved its German headquarters to Munich last year.
There you go - take our software and we'll move to Munich, that way you gain the income taxes of our workers regardless of how shitty our software is.
The issue here is that these decisions are made for political reasons, not technical ones.
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Re: Someone has been visited by an MS rep (Score:2)
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I've seen this: some high-powered MS rep chats up a boss, and *presto*:
MS is great
We've got to migrate
Put that to whatever jingle you want. Also: inspect bank accounts and campaign funds.
Note also that the study supporting the move back to WIndows was carried out by Accenture [wikipedia.org] (some of us know them better by their old name, Andersen Consulting). Accenture was Microsoft's Alliance Partner of the Year in 2016 [zdnet.com], so I'm sure that they have a neutral, objective reason for recommending Microsoft software.
Maybe. My company (fortune 500) treats MS as a hostile business partner. We deal with them only because we have legacy systems that we must deal with and because no one really offers a solution as robust as active directory for the enterprise.
I've made the argument a number of times with the higher ups that by eliminating the Microsoft licensing tax we could higher more people with expertise in Mac/Linux and eliminate MS entirely. They don't listen because "change" is a bad word in the enterprise. My entire
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Hire.
If this is how you spell when making proposals to the higher-ups, it's no wonder they ignore your suggestions.
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If this is how you spell when making proposals to the higher-ups, it's no wonder they ignore your suggestions.
Hire.
No wait.
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I would say that it is just as likely that they are going back to windows because of the incompatibility issues and the amount of retraining necessary. This sort of change is so expensive and such a big hassle, I really doubt that any single person could push it through if the average user was fine with how the computers were working.
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I've seen this: some high-powered MS rep chats up a boss, and *presto*:
MS is great We've got to migrate
Put that to whatever jingle you want. Also: inspect bank accounts and campaign funds.
Note also that the study supporting the move back to WIndows was carried out by Accenture [wikipedia.org] (some of us know them better by their old name, Andersen Consulting). Accenture was Microsoft's Alliance Partner of the Year in 2016 [zdnet.com], so I'm sure that they have a neutral, objective reason for recommending Microsoft software.
Second point first: Accenture spun of a separate company 'Avanade', which partners w/ Microsoft and works w/ clients that are heavily into Microsoft solutions, as opposed to Oracle or SAP or anything else.
But I agree w/ your first point. Many years ago, had someone suggested migrating back from an FOSS solution to a Windows 7 based solution, it would have made sense, since the legacy support was still there. But that's no longer true about Windows 10. The only reason Windows 10 would make sense is if
It's not office. (Score:2)
Everyone is going to point at MS Office, but that's no the problem. There are man many "proprietary" applications that have become standards across certain industries and organizations such as municipalities where Wine simply isn't an option.
But speaking of Office, and I'm sure the subject will start great arguments, but there are some who like Outlook, and many that rely on some of its features that, sorry, Thunderbird et al just don't replicate well or at all.
Re:It's not office. (Score:5, Interesting)
I am starting my phd soon and when I do will have access to a discount office. There is no way in sweet hell I would use libre to write my thesis!
Well, a cheap office is nice for writing a thesis in. But writing a thesis in any technical field with MS Office (or Libre Office, or Apple Pages) is just masochism. That's what LaTeX is is made for.
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Agreed. Word is a horrible product to use for a thesis. Use the right tool for the job, and MS Office is almost never that tool. Instead it is the "barely good enough" choice that people stick with because they don't know of anything else. On the office people use it because they're addicted to Exchange Server, which means you get Word and Excel as a mere byproduct. Office does not meet good user design guidelines, it's somewhat hostile to the entire notion. Office doesn't even bother with compatibilit
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That's a fact. Word shits itself with large documents. I've seen it too many times. Be prepared for your computer to freeze while scrolling, tables to break, and formatting to spontaneously mess itself up. Worst of all, keep multiple running backups so you have a recent usable document to revert to when Word saves random garbage to your thesis. People have asked me if I can recover their fucked-up Word thesis. They had to revert to an old copy they emailed or put on a USB dongle two weeks before. If you are
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An AMA (Score:5, Interesting)
Re: An AMA (Score:2)
Follow the money (Score:5, Insightful)
--I bet somebody's getting "compensated" in some way to bring this forward. Not only would they be giving up flexibility for a corporation-centric solution, but they would be giving up privacy as well. This site alone is full of Win10 articles detailing what a POS bit of spyware it is, masquerading as an OS. Not to mention random reboots due to upgrades.
--I can only hope this doesn't get approved, but in this world currently nothing is apparently safe or predictable.
Invest those millions to improve the FOSS in use (Score:5, Insightful)
If the leader of the Munich Green Party is right and the city will lose "many millions of euros" if the change is implemented, it's too bad they don't use all that money for hiring an army of programmers. They could implement the changes they want in the FOSS themselves, and give something back to the community for the billions they will save over the next 100 years.
Monopoly Abuse (Score:5, Informative)
The desire to switch to an office suite with the "highest possible compatibility" clearly indicates they've had trouble opening MS Office documents, and that people with MS Office have had trouble opening ODF documents.
To maintain their position in the market Microsoft make a deliberate attempt to make other software incompatible with their formats, and make their software incompatible with other formats. For example, they claim 100% technical comparability with the ODF formats, but if you open an ODS spreadsheet in Excel it strips out all the formulas, thus rendering the spreadsheet worthless.
This seems like intentional abuse of their market position to me.
They were mostly alone, continue to be alone (Score:5, Informative)
I'm sure the founders of the LiMux project thought that by 2017 the YotLD had long since come and gone, that mainstream drivers and software would be there almost by default at near zero cost. The latest stats from StatCounter says that worldwide Linux has 1.55% desktop OS market share. Even if I pick Germany which is a very pro-Linux market it's 3.46%. From a local politician's view I can understand that it looks like an endless uphill battle, regardless of the actual merits of the OS there will be far more solutions for Windows. It's just a fact of running an obscure solution.
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I'm sure the founders of the LiMux project thought that by 2017 the YotLD had long since come and gone, that mainstream drivers and software would be there almost by default at near zero cost.
Who cares if it's the year of the blah blah blah or not? Or if the mainstream software is available? For those few times it matters, you sneak in a Wintendo or a Mac. Mostly it doesn't, especially when you're governmental entity and in a position to set standards. If people want to communicate with you, they can damned well speak your language — especially if it's ODF, if the alternative is DOC.
From a local politician's view I can understand that it looks like an endless uphill battle, regardless of the actual merits of the OS there will be far more solutions for Windows.
But do you want them?
Is it possible... (Score:3)
Obviously, the go-to assumption is that there was a deal made on a golf course somewhere. It's entirely possible - probable, even...but let's take a moment to suspend the "crucify Microsoft" direction and consider a possible alternative...
Libreoffice is a solid product. I do not mind it one bit; in some cases I even prefer it to MS Office. Munich probably did save a bundle in licensing costs for Office. However, that's not the whole story. Integration with Office can frequently be a mission-critical requirement. There's a whole lot of reporting software, calculation software, CRM software, and document management software that integrates with Office. These vendors do not typically include integrations for LibreOffice, which means there are two options:
1. use products that work with LibreOffice.
2. roll your own.
Option 1 is a bit of a quagmire because it's not like they were moving to a computerized system from filing cabinets and typewriters, so it's not like they could just start with "linux/LO compatibility required" as a bidding condition. If they did, it probably would have been better for OSS as a whole, but alas, there is data residing in incumbent systems which need to be considered. Thus, we land at option #2.
How many programmers would be required to make a LibreOffice/LogicalDoc rollout roughly comparable to MSO/Sharepoint, move all the data over, access the same set of databases and workflows, etc., and do it in a timeframe that doesn't bring the city to a halt? Well, that needs to be compared to the cost of just using MSO, and do so favorably...but let's say that it did, and we ignore the user training side of things. What about the server side of things? Were they still using Windows Server and Active Directory, or migrate all that over to LDAP? Same with Exchange and Dovecot? MS SQL and Postgres? It's a bundle of money, but moving everything over, everywhere, ever, is almost as challenging as getting Linux desktops to work flawlessly with a Microsoft backend.
Now, let's head back to the golf course. Who called the meeting? If it was Microsoft, that's a good thing. Do you really think that Microsoft will be able to convince the city to migrate back without giving them one hell of a good price on it? If MS wants the contract back, you know they're taking pennies on the dollar for it.
If the takeaway of this exercise is that Microsoft is giving the city of Munich a software contract at 70% off for the next decade and that the OSS community ends up with a to-do list of functions that were considered shortcomings, then it sounds like some good ultimately came out of it. If it really was an offer they couldn't refuse, then by all means, crucify them.
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It's the City of Munich. They don't have a CRM. They don't have customers, they have subjects ;-)
And Exchange - how many of these people have a packed agenda that they need something like Outlook to shuffle around appointments?
GIS-software and other specialized software for all kinds of things (large and small) the city manages and runs is probably a bigger problem. IIRC, they run thousands of pieces of software altogether. Most of that only available on Windows. They could have (and did so, to some degree
Windows Services for Linux (Score:2)
Same old Microsoft (Score:2)
Just as evil as ever. To this day, the pustulent ghost of Grand Architect Gates still restlessly wanders the halls of Redmond, shedding clouds of toxic dandruff that instantly purges whoever it contacts of all morality.
Wait until they need to move to a new Windows box (Score:2)
I just did a migration for a Windows 7 customer to a new Windows 10 machine. Manually get all of the accounts and settings on the new system set up like the ones on the old system. Copy over all the data folders. Change over from the old Windows Live email setup to the new Windows 10 Outlook that won't import Windows 7 mail archives and with the People contacts application that doesn't work. Then for the hard part: wait while user thrashes through every file cabinet and closet box looking for his software i
Thunderbird (Score:2)
My business went Linux, then back to Windows (Score:5, Interesting)
I own a private museum with about 100 computer-driven displays and half a dozen admin/office PCs. Originally I used Linux for 95% of it. Ten years later I have 2 Linux boxes left and the rest are Windows 10. I used to believe all the pro-Linux arguments I'm reading again here, but in the real world there are just too many problems with Linux. It's not any one problem - it's the plethora of annoying niggles that eventually wear you down. For example:
- Unavoidable but incompatible 3rd party hardware and software.
- "Linux-compatible" versions of software that are just crap.
- Driver issues.
- Minor but frequent differences in the way MS Office docs are rendered.
- Browser rendering differences and problems with 3rd party websites (shouldn't happen but does - nothing I can do about that).
+ many, many more little things.
If I was a better sysadmin/programmer and enjoyed spending time addressing these issues then maybe I could make Linux work better. But I'm not and I don't, so Windows it is.
Re:My business went Linux, then back to Windows (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:My business went Linux, then back to Windows (Score:5, Informative)
Here's the thing. An enterprise has to be able to work with old documents (from well before you were born) and documents created in other enterprises and elsewhere. If OpenOffice or LibreOffice can not do this, then OO and LO are 100% useless. Period. Enterprises are not playing, they are trying to make money and not being able to properly use and exchange documents is vital.
This is only one problem here, and it's not really the fault of OO, LO or Linux. If Linux had ever made a dent in the desktop market place then the other players would have taken Linux into consideration. It never did. Never will.
Microsoft connected study says move back to Windo (Score:3)
Re: I predict (Score:2, Insightful)
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Linux is mainly for servers and embedded systems. On the desktop it's for people that enjoy tinkering with computers rather than getting work done.
Re: I predict (Score:4, Insightful)
I mean, that's just an assumption about what Linux users do with their systems. Microsoft has great data on what their users use their systems for- timestamps of executable programs, all data typed by keyboard, which ads are most likely to lead to sales, etc. Until someone starts tracking everything done by Linux users in the same manner Microsoft tracks all Windows users, I'm afraid your assertion is likely to remain unproven...
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"but windows and mac can work for everybody very easily"
Until they don't. And then Linux saved my sanity.
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As someone who has used Linux as their main operating system for many, many years and who has built Linux systems for many others (non-Linux users) I can only say that you're wrong. Accept that in many if not most cases proprietary software like Microsoft Office is simply better than free alternatives because the company has vastly more resources to dedicate towards its development and also more resources to ensure that it is stable. The idea of the free software model is some magical formula that is auto
Re: I predict (Score:3, Informative)
Re: I predict (Score:5, Insightful)
Anal ventriloquism; impressive. I've switched over hundreds of my clients [who are casual users] from Winblows to Mint over the past six years or so and the less technically adept they are, the more likely they are to benefit.
How, by being tied to you for paid support?
I've run Linux farms, and won't go anywhere else for most application servers, because they can configured perfectly for the task at hand. But user machines need to be prioritised to UI, device compatibility, and familiarity and Linux is horrible by comparison.
I don't expect much agreement in here, but I've worked in several places that allow techy staff (non-MS techies) their own machines (laptop/desktop), and most of them choose Mac or Windows. I know of precisely zero non-techy staff that have even heard of Linux.
There is a reason that the Linux desktop has failed outside a few fringe experiments (like Munich) because it simply doesn't stack up.
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I'm not sure how to tell you this, but quite a few casual users I've dealt with have walked off with Linux live disks taken from my emergency stack because of Microsoft's UI decisions from Win8 on--and most seem to be pretty happy with the move.
Admittedly, the flavors in my stack of Linux live disks are deliberately picked to be luser-friendly--it exists so I don't have to be bothered by others' needing data off a hosed OS, or who can't even tell if it's a software or hardware problem.
Microsoft shills have become the next generation of denialists. They experience cognitive dissonance when faced with the truth. My wife has less problems with her Minty laptop than I do with my brand New W10 Envy. I run my database and spreadsheet on my iMac on AO that I take from the Mac to AO on Linux, and AO on My new machine. 100 percent compatible. On Windows Office, it isn't even compatible from Windows to MacOS, and nothing on Linux. Well, except that I can open Microsoft Office files.
My guess, out
Re: I predict (Score:4, Interesting)
Re: I predict (Score:5, Interesting)
If web based services are what most office staff and bureaucrats use all day long, then you only need a browser. And Linux runs a browser just as well as Windows. And ChromeOS, if you can call it Linux, runs a browser way better than a desktop. (but that's about all it does)
Office software on a desktop is still a little better than the web based options. There isn't a huge difference in terms of capabilities and usability between Office 16 and LibreOffice, but the compatibility between the two is quite poor so it's best to pick just one. Throwing data into a spreadsheet, making some graphs, and slides is pretty much a solved problem on Windows and Linux. Web based stuff is a few steps behind, I anticipate in 3-4 years that it will be to a point that my company can switch (10000+ employees)
When you get into content creation that you have to think carefully about what OS to us. Desktop publishing, graphic design, etc.
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If you are working for the Government, then you probably want to choose LibreOffice, because it complies with standards and is not controlled by an overseas commercial interest which you cannot influence.
Or, you might be American.
Re: I predict (Score:2, Insightful)
If you're in IT, linux is whatever you make it. If you have end-user desktop needs, you manipulate it in a way that's friendly to the end-user on the surface.
If you can't do that, then you have no business in IT in that particular organization.
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"On the desktop it's for people that enjoy tinkering with computers rather than getting work done."
Not my experience. I'm a plain vanilla Linux user who wants nothing to do with tinkering. I just want the computer to work. Windows kept making problems and Linux fixed them.
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I remember, oh, around 1995, when people were proclaiming "Linux is ready for the desktop" ! I was a full-time user myself and was in full disagreement with that idea too. Yes, some users can adapt and would do okay, but not the business world, average office workers, and so on.
Comment removed (Score:4, Interesting)
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I remember, oh, around 1995, when people were proclaiming "Linux is ready for the desktop" ! I was a full-time user myself and was in full disagreement with that idea too. Yes, some users can adapt and would do okay, but not the business world, average office workers, and so on.
All Microsoft has to do is start enforcing licenses and businesses will migrate. I had a client that I dropped about 8 months ago. Over the course of 10 years they continually refused to upgrade their Exchange mail server, and even bastardized their mail infrastructure by setting up a Linux mail server for 'normal' users while keeping their 'advanced' users in Exchange using Outlook. They purchased 20 licenses for Exchange and then proceeded to load 120 users on the system. Exchange 2007 is EoL and the
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Seems pretty obvious that either the right people were bought off, pressure applied in the right places, or both. How many Microsoft suits visited with Munich suits, and what went on?
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This is why the millions of people using Raspberry Pis cannot possibly use it, it's too difficult for them, when we see them using it, we are dreaming or deceived by Descarte's evil demon.
Sarcasm apart, I've used it as a desktop for about 10 years, it's become steadily easier over that period. We started a project for a housing estate (that's a 'project' for Americans, but it may be nicer) with about 20 older machines that we repurpos
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I write this on Android, which is Linux.
Bleh.
IOS [] is FreeBSD.
I wish people would stop spreading this nonsense.
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I wish people would stop spreading this nonsense.
NeXT? What's that? scroll scroll scroll FreeBSD! I've heard of that! And so it goes.
Re: I predict (Score:5, Funny)
Let's all take a moment to remember (and laugh at) Microsoft's attempts to foist upon the world a smartphone that ran Windows.
To Microsoft's credit, it did usually start on the third pull.
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That this discusssion will get Godwin'd very quickly
I guess if Microsoft started agitating for Windows in beer halls.
Re:Linux is only free if your time is worth nothin (Score:4, Interesting)
A lot of "enterprises" including my employer went to office365 and it doesn't matter what the client OS is. I use Linux at home and Mac at work to do employer's things, it just doesn't matter
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Never heard of a place that standardized on Vista of all things, that's kind of weird. Your employer better get themselves some 7 or 10
Re:Linux is only free if your time is worth nothin (Score:4, Funny)
I'd guess that might be problematic on account of the apps they use that won't run on those versions of MS Windows? Good suggestion though. Are you an MCSA?
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It's Windows that wastes time with upgrades and balloons that get in the way when someone is trying to get work done, not to mention forced unwanted reboots that lose work and the "installing updates" during shutdown or powerup that can go on for over an hour when user is in a hurry to get stuff done. And installing something might require reboots and reconfig and registry editing, what a colossal time waster windows is. It is very badly engineered bloated garbage. We won't even talk about powershell, I p
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Big reason is that when an organization goes w/ an FOSS approach, the schedule of whether and when to upgrade is in their hands. With Microsoft, they were first forced out from XP to 7, and now from 7 to 10. A lot of organizations don't have the inclination to upgrade every other year just b'cos...
Besides, in this case, Munich had gone to Linux some years ago doing a complete exercise, from rolling out their own distro - Munix - to getting all their document systems to this. So their entire software i
Re: Good lick to them! (Score:2)
It's 2017. Things have changed a bit in the last 19 years
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Sometimes it is the little things, like really little things. I remember when an employee for the university I was working for turned down a new computer because it was not Mac, and only Macs had the proprietary font that she liked to use.
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Microsoft spends lots of money to make all sorts of peripherals ... work.
No Microsoft don't. It is the peripheral makers who spend the money and effort to make their stuff work in Windows; they do not always bother to do that for Linux. All Microsoft need to do is sit on their arse and let it happen.
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they most certainly do, they have an entire group dedicated to testing peripherals.
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until the various Linux communities figure out how to make their software work as easily as either of the big boys, which means running real programs such as Photoshop ....
Unless, highly unlikely, Adobe were to release the source code for Photoshop, that is not possible for the Linux community to "figure out". Only Adobe could do that.
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Making software easy to use is all about having a good intuitive ui, nothing to do with source code.
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The GP wants Photoshop itself for Linux, not a clone with a good UI.
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Wow, straight out of the marketing literature! Seriously, who other than microsoft would mumble something like "served up securely" when talking about the "cloud"? Only someone from the market department would ever say "knocked it out of the park".