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The bigger question is Should the State be making an Operating System? Choosing Linux is entirely different question and can be made successful with abundance o

by sremani 11y ago

The bigger question is Should the State be making an Operating System? Choosing Linux is entirely different question and can be made successful with abundance of spending on retraining.

swayvil 11y ago
What retraining? I have several clients, computer illiterate old ladies, who use Ubuntu and Debian just fine. No retraining required. They just jump on that desktop and go.
- sremani 11y ago
  We are talking about Government Offices here. The UX difference between Word and LibreOffice is noticeable. People need retraining, no matter how facsimile both are. Its matter of productivity.
  - sandworm101 11y ago
    >We are talking about Government Offices here. [...] People need retraining. Why do government workers always need formal retraining? Every job i've ever worked involved constant intake of new skills without dropping tools and attending a class. For a new OS in an office environ that generally boils down to "Here is your new OS. Play around with the colours if you want, but that memo is still due Thursday."
    - m0v_eax 11y ago
      Your anecdotal evidence is hardly the norm.
  - bad_user 11y ago
    Microsoft Office switched to the Ribbon, being a huge UI overhaul, yet people, companies and institutions still switched. Yes, the UI is different, but the concepts you're dealing with are still the same and if you know the concepts then a new UI is just a small and temporary inconvenience, rather then a barrier. The biggest problem will actually be incompatibilities, which happen for example with advanced usage of Excel documents, but you know, in such cases it's better to switch to portable formats that work across multiple products (i.e. ODF) and it's better to do it sooner rather than later, because as a freaking government you should keep your documents accessible for everybody. And if you switch to portable formats and a set of features supported in both Microsoft Office and LibreOffice, you don't even have to move everybody to LibreOffice at once. So on the whole I feel that this is a red herring.
- dangerlibrary 11y ago
  Until something goes wrong. Like if they can't read the tiny font in the file menu. Then they google it, and discover they need to "sudo apt-get install unity-tweak-tool." Then they manage to actually find a terminal window and run the command, and install the tool, and turn up every available font rendering option, and it still doesn't solve their problem. That is just one real world example. Linux is an operating system used and built primarily by people who are willing to put up with a little bit of crap to get 99% of what they want, and live with the rest. Imagine if Windows or OSX required you to open a terminal and install a third party lib to increase your font size. People would call them insane. Just to be clear: I use a linux desktop every day. I love it and it would require a substantial increase in compensation for me to switch back to a Windows machine. But saying that computer illiterate/naive workforce can switch operating systems with no retraining costs is demonstrably false.
  - infinity0 11y ago
    How's that different from Windows? Instead of opening a terminal, I double click?
    - mikeryan 11y ago
      My neighbor, son, daughter, friend, mailman all probably can provide an answer?
      - infinity0 11y ago
        Please, do provide an answer. And I mean a real answer of real things they actually did, that is comparable on Windows and Linux, as opposed to marketing crap someone else told them about that they then mis-stored in their own heads as false memories. My experience is that there is no substantial difference in the amount of "fucking around" you have to do with Windows or Linux. I had to install custom graphics drivers from third party sites, install custom keyboards, mess around with random settings, especially after upgrades between different OS versions. Please show me an actual study instead of talking about personal anecdotes.

by sremani 11y ago

The bigger question is Should the State be making an Operating System? Choosing Linux is entirely different question and can be made successful with abundance of spending on retraining.

swayvil 11y ago

What retraining? I have several clients, computer illiterate old ladies, who use Ubuntu and Debian just fine. No retraining required. They just jump on that desktop and go.

sremani 11y ago
We are talking about Government Offices here. The UX difference between Word and LibreOffice is noticeable. People need retraining, no matter how facsimile both are. Its matter of productivity.
- sandworm101 11y ago
  >We are talking about Government Offices here. [...] People need retraining. Why do government workers always need formal retraining? Every job i've ever worked involved constant intake of new skills without dropping tools and attending a class. For a new OS in an office environ that generally boils down to "Here is your new OS. Play around with the colours if you want, but that memo is still due Thursday."
  - m0v_eax 11y ago
    Your anecdotal evidence is hardly the norm.
- bad_user 11y ago
  Microsoft Office switched to the Ribbon, being a huge UI overhaul, yet people, companies and institutions still switched. Yes, the UI is different, but the concepts you're dealing with are still the same and if you know the concepts then a new UI is just a small and temporary inconvenience, rather then a barrier. The biggest problem will actually be incompatibilities, which happen for example with advanced usage of Excel documents, but you know, in such cases it's better to switch to portable formats that work across multiple products (i.e. ODF) and it's better to do it sooner rather than later, because as a freaking government you should keep your documents accessible for everybody. And if you switch to portable formats and a set of features supported in both Microsoft Office and LibreOffice, you don't even have to move everybody to LibreOffice at once. So on the whole I feel that this is a red herring.
dangerlibrary 11y ago
Until something goes wrong. Like if they can't read the tiny font in the file menu. Then they google it, and discover they need to "sudo apt-get install unity-tweak-tool." Then they manage to actually find a terminal window and run the command, and install the tool, and turn up every available font rendering option, and it still doesn't solve their problem. That is just one real world example. Linux is an operating system used and built primarily by people who are willing to put up with a little bit of crap to get 99% of what they want, and live with the rest. Imagine if Windows or OSX required you to open a terminal and install a third party lib to increase your font size. People would call them insane. Just to be clear: I use a linux desktop every day. I love it and it would require a substantial increase in compensation for me to switch back to a Windows machine. But saying that computer illiterate/naive workforce can switch operating systems with no retraining costs is demonstrably false.
- infinity0 11y ago
  How's that different from Windows? Instead of opening a terminal, I double click?
  - mikeryan 11y ago
    My neighbor, son, daughter, friend, mailman all probably can provide an answer?
    - infinity0 11y ago
      Please, do provide an answer. And I mean a real answer of real things they actually did, that is comparable on Windows and Linux, as opposed to marketing crap someone else told them about that they then mis-stored in their own heads as false memories. My experience is that there is no substantial difference in the amount of "fucking around" you have to do with Windows or Linux. I had to install custom graphics drivers from third party sites, install custom keyboards, mess around with random settings, especially after upgrades between different OS versions. Please show me an actual study instead of talking about personal anecdotes.