4 ms·

The alternative, in my experience, is that our government spends millions in creating a fork of Ubuntu, which is just regular Ubuntu with a different default se

• coldtea 9y ago
  >Obviously, after a few years, they get tired of that rubbish distro, and go back to Microsoft. Funny you should say that, because it has happened exactly that way in the past (e.g. in Germany): http://www.zdnet.com/article/after-a-10-year-linux-migration-munich-considers-switching-back-to-windows-and-office/ http://www.zdnet.com/article/after-a-10-year-linux-migration...
  • mrkrab 9y ago
    Nothing in my post was a joke, because I've seen it happen here in person. And what's sad, is that anybody with half a brain could've expected the outcome. But of course, there are far too many people in the government who want a slice of cake.
  • scriptproof 9y ago
    You know that Munich is currently expecting Microsoft to create a big center in their city and the major (a pro-Microsoft guy) try to court them. That has nothing to do with the quality of Linux.
    • coldtea 9y ago
      I don't think that's all of it (simple payola). While that might have been involved, as it says: The Second (deputy) Mayor of Munich, Josef Schmid, said the re-examination is necessary because of complaints from employees, who Schmid said are “suffering” in the transition. (...) Sabine Nallinger, who ran for mayor for the Greens, noted that data exchange was especially problematic and didn’t work properly. Schmid agreed, telling Munich’s largest newspaper, Süddeutsche Zeitung, that “Linux is very expensive” because of the need for custom programming. And getting rid of all proprietary software isn’t realistically an option. That 2008 EC report noted that Munich uses 300 “specialised administrative software packages” to perform its official duties. Although the goal was to replace those proprietary applications with platform-independent alternatives, the reality is that most would probably end up running in Windows inside a virtual machine, which of course requires paying Microsoft a license fee.
      • Shorel 9y ago
        "would probably" are in the top ten of weasel words.
  • Shorel 9y ago
    Didn't that involve a constant lobbing pressure from MS? It is a marketing victory instead of a technological one.
• pyroinferno 9y ago
  I thought most government institutions are using Red Hat?
  • SEJeff 9y ago
    The overwhelming majority are (at least in the US), primarily because Redhat will actually work with upstream projects and fix bugs. Canonical will say, "Lets see if Debian will fix it for us". One of my employers spent a multi-year effort to replace Ubuntu entirely (with RHEL) after Jane Silber came onsite and agreed that their support organization could not work on the things we'd wanted them to, because Redhat was already the upstream working on those things or the preferred partner of said hardware vendors. This isn't heresay, I heard it from her myself (maybe 4 years ago?).
• martijn_himself 9y ago
  The only viable (and vastly superior) alternative I think is running macOS, which would be prohibitively expensive for most organisations, especially schools. Schools and government use GUI's for everything and Ubuntu's is just not good enough.
  • Shorel 9y ago
    Ubuntu itself is good enough. If you mean GUI software providers different to the OS provider, then I agree. But not for the base OS. Do you have any particular example explaining your opinion?
• nippples 9y ago
  > spends millions in creating a fork of Ubuntu Just install plain Ubuntu ffs