12 ms·

Former Mayor of Munich Explains How Microsoft Undermined Linux

118 points by virtualritz 7y ago

mikece 7y ago
“We assume our readers are wise enough to understand that Microsoft is the same old corrupt company, with new lies and PR.” I assume Microsoft still wants to make as much money from Windows and Office as they can but the trend has been to get users onto Azure and that’s not incompatible with Linux desktops and LibreOffice. That said, it’s possible that Microsoft Germany is doing things of which Redmond wouldn’t approve if it were fully know back at HQ. This isn’t Ballmer’s MSFT anymore.
- simion314 7y ago
  I am sure that all the bribes Microsoft gave in Europe were not known in US /s
- DayDollar 7y ago
  Wenn das der Führer wüsste
- lstroud 7y ago
  I’m not sure it’s changed much on the Windows / Office side. There’s definitely a different attitude with Azure. However, it’s hard to tell if that’s a culture change or if it’s just because they are the little guy in the cloud space.
- fartcannon 7y ago
  It's not the same, no. Now they're significantly better at getting people to parrot their PR for them.
- freehunter 7y ago
  I thought the same thing on azure but I recently stood up an environment there and found there are a lot of cool tools available that are greyed out with a message saying “not available on Linux hosts”. Maybe it’s just temporary until they add those features and Linux stuff deploys just fine, but I did feel like Linux was a second class citizen. It doesn’t help that most of the selection boxes I ran into had Windows as the default option.
  - topkai22 7y ago
    It depends on the service, and a lot is the legacy of Azure actually being windows first or only for the first 5 or 6 years. I'm betting the area you were playing around in was web apps or VMs. If you look at the various container based offerings or the newer dev tools they are clearly Linux first. I'm pretty sure the new Visual Studio online offering doesn't even have a windows configuration.
    - freehunter 7y ago
      You’re right, it was with App Services.
mschuster91 7y ago
> “The decision to convert (14.000 PC clients) back to Microsoft from Limux [some time] until 2020 was a purely political one. Christian Ude: “There wasn’t a single unsolvable technical problem.” I have worked on the Limux team during university. There were a couple of problems that led to resentments: - fossilized, underpowered computers (1G RAM!) combined with fossilized software versions (Firefox/Thunderbird/Openoffice) thanks to testing/conformity requirements. This was what drove the majority of customer complaints. - underpowered Internet uplinks of the dozens of government offices - you would think each had a gigabit fiber uplink, which is far from reality - lack of manpower in the dev department, mostly caused by abysmal pay compared to the free market - special IT software was mostly Windows-only or, if it was available for Linux, compiled for rpm-based distros while Limux was Ubuntu-based leading to all sorts of issues - city staff being used to MS and not to Linux, requiring extensive training - infighting among departments of the city, not everyone was a friend of centralization in IT Technically all of this would be solvable but the budget was too low. People, especially key deciders, blamed it on "Linux" instead on their failure to provide adequate resources. The colleagues were the best people I have had the pleasure to learn from and work with, even to this day, but the best work is moot against idiots or bought-off morons in politics
- MaupitiBlue 7y ago
  “failure to provide adequate resources” So you’re confirming Microsoft’s point that Linux on the desktop provides no cost advantage? Combine that with OpenOffice’s Word 6 level UI, and it’s understandable why they went back.
  - tinus_hn 7y ago
    He’s confirming using free software is not free. People trained to use Microsoft’s ribbon can’t use OpenOffice, just like many people trained to use older Office versions can’t use the ribbon.
    - alexis_fr 7y ago
      I’m always surprised by the need for training to click on the “bold” or “save” button. Yet Facebook has 2.41 billion monthly users. One cause would be that people are afraid of the career implication of clicking « save » on a document that shouldn’t be saved (the « mismanagement trauma » is how I would call that). I know Atlassian changed it colors[1] for “cringy blue” because it made people less afraid of clicking than “serious blue”. But generally the same persons who succeed to become fashionistas on Instagram and plug it with their Google Analytics somehow and make hundreds with it, are sometimes the same who would need a training to use the Microsoft ribbon, come Monday morning. [1] Heavy use of B400 for flat elements like the bar, to sashimi salmon for lozenges: https://atlassian.design/server/foundations/colors/ https://atlassian.design/server/foundations/colors/
rapsey 7y ago
I would prefer a translation instead of this editorializing.
- ce4 7y ago
  Here's the original 4-page interview of former mayor Christian Ude, it's very readable and should translate well with Google Translate: https://www.linux-magazin.de/ausgaben/2019/10/interview-2/ https://www.linux-magazin.de/ausgaben/2019/10/interview-2/
  - justinclift 7y ago
    Hmmm, it's not a very good translation: Page 1: https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.linux-magazin.de%2Fausgaben%2F2019%2F10%2Finterview-2%2F https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&u=https... Page 2: https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.linux-magazin.de%2Fausgaben%2F2019%2F10%2Finterview-2%2F2%2F https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&u=https... Page 3: https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.linux-magazin.de%2Fausgaben%2F2019%2F10%2Finterview-2%2F3%2F https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&u=https... Page 4: https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.linux-magazin.de%2Fausgaben%2F2019%2F10%2Finterview-2%2F4%2F https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&u=https...
    - ce4 7y ago
      Thanks for linking. Agreed, eg.the idiom should have read "sink or swim" (not eat or die), but is the rest really that bad? Also the source article isn't too informative to begin with.
    - ndzig 7y ago
      Try DeepL https://www.deepl.com/en/translator https://www.deepl.com/en/translator — unfortunately it can't translate webpages, so you would have to copypaste the contents
    - deleted 7y ago
      [deleted]
BuckRogers 7y ago
You either pay with licensing or hire a team to support. There’s no free as in beer, anywhere. At least once you get beyond some guy’s single Linux Mint install on his personal laptop, but not at any complex scale. Active Directory, development support, these things are needed. Hiring and maintaining a competent team is most often more expensive and importantly, far more difficult to competently do than licensing. Microsoft has a complete, vertically aligned stack that they’ve spent decades building and refining, there’s a lot of value there. Ubuntu is setup to compete here, and they’re a fine choice, but you do lose some things over going with Microsoft. The wish upon a star for free beer is strong.
- imglorp 7y ago
  Desktop much? In this century, cloud apps as a managed service are sufficient for some 90 pct of office workers. Chromebook/thin clients can be wiped on the hour or chucked in the trash if they break. So, 365, which is killing it. Not an MS cheerleader but this is the right play for them. Developers are obviously different and need a curated desktop experience.
  - BuckRogers 7y ago
    Thin-clients are very much last century, mid-last century at that. They were called terminals. That's just a new buzzword because technology became fashionable for the non-technical, like calling server farms, "the cloud". A thin-client is just a desktop that can't do much of anything under its own power. There's good reason Apple keeps advancing their A-series chips, why not stop at "thin client" (running a browser), like a Chromebook? Instead, they're near desktop Intel speeds. To answer that, it's because they want their platform to actually be able to do something on its own. AR, VR, image processing, video editing, you name it. No developer is required to own it, unlike this idea that "curated desktops", which can be around the power of an Apple A13, as somehow just aimed at developers. Agreed on O365. Microsoft can do thin clients, and has a complete stack that integrates easily to resolve more complex demands out of the box. Just because it's the 21st century doesn't mean any of these concepts listed are new, nor is what Microsoft built in the 80's, 90's and 00's valueless. Depending on requirements it's very strongly to the contrary.

118 points by virtualritz 7y ago

“We assume our readers are wise enough to understand that Microsoft is the same old corrupt company, with new lies and PR.” I assume Microsoft still wants to make as much money from Windows and Office as they can but the trend has been to get users onto Azure and that’s not incompatible with Linux desktops and LibreOffice. That said, it’s possible that Microsoft Germany is doing things of which Redmond wouldn’t approve if it were fully know back at HQ. This isn’t Ballmer’s MSFT anymore.

simion314 7y ago
I am sure that all the bribes Microsoft gave in Europe were not known in US /s
DayDollar 7y ago
Wenn das der Führer wüsste
lstroud 7y ago
I’m not sure it’s changed much on the Windows / Office side. There’s definitely a different attitude with Azure. However, it’s hard to tell if that’s a culture change or if it’s just because they are the little guy in the cloud space.
fartcannon 7y ago
It's not the same, no. Now they're significantly better at getting people to parrot their PR for them.
freehunter 7y ago
I thought the same thing on azure but I recently stood up an environment there and found there are a lot of cool tools available that are greyed out with a message saying “not available on Linux hosts”. Maybe it’s just temporary until they add those features and Linux stuff deploys just fine, but I did feel like Linux was a second class citizen. It doesn’t help that most of the selection boxes I ran into had Windows as the default option.
- topkai22 7y ago
  It depends on the service, and a lot is the legacy of Azure actually being windows first or only for the first 5 or 6 years. I'm betting the area you were playing around in was web apps or VMs. If you look at the various container based offerings or the newer dev tools they are clearly Linux first. I'm pretty sure the new Visual Studio online offering doesn't even have a windows configuration.
  - freehunter 7y ago
    You’re right, it was with App Services.

mschuster91 7y ago

> “The decision to convert (14.000 PC clients) back to Microsoft from Limux [some time] until 2020 was a purely political one. Christian Ude: “There wasn’t a single unsolvable technical problem.” I have worked on the Limux team during university. There were a couple of problems that led to resentments: - fossilized, underpowered computers (1G RAM!) combined with fossilized software versions (Firefox/Thunderbird/Openoffice) thanks to testing/conformity requirements. This was what drove the majority of customer complaints. - underpowered Internet uplinks of the dozens of government offices - you would think each had a gigabit fiber uplink, which is far from reality - lack of manpower in the dev department, mostly caused by abysmal pay compared to the free market - special IT software was mostly Windows-only or, if it was available for Linux, compiled for rpm-based distros while Limux was Ubuntu-based leading to all sorts of issues - city staff being used to MS and not to Linux, requiring extensive training - infighting among departments of the city, not everyone was a friend of centralization in IT Technically all of this would be solvable but the budget was too low. People, especially key deciders, blamed it on "Linux" instead on their failure to provide adequate resources. The colleagues were the best people I have had the pleasure to learn from and work with, even to this day, but the best work is moot against idiots or bought-off morons in politics

MaupitiBlue 7y ago
“failure to provide adequate resources” So you’re confirming Microsoft’s point that Linux on the desktop provides no cost advantage? Combine that with OpenOffice’s Word 6 level UI, and it’s understandable why they went back.
- tinus_hn 7y ago
  He’s confirming using free software is not free. People trained to use Microsoft’s ribbon can’t use OpenOffice, just like many people trained to use older Office versions can’t use the ribbon.
  - alexis_fr 7y ago
    I’m always surprised by the need for training to click on the “bold” or “save” button. Yet Facebook has 2.41 billion monthly users. One cause would be that people are afraid of the career implication of clicking « save » on a document that shouldn’t be saved (the « mismanagement trauma » is how I would call that). I know Atlassian changed it colors[1] for “cringy blue” because it made people less afraid of clicking than “serious blue”. But generally the same persons who succeed to become fashionistas on Instagram and plug it with their Google Analytics somehow and make hundreds with it, are sometimes the same who would need a training to use the Microsoft ribbon, come Monday morning. [1] Heavy use of B400 for flat elements like the bar, to sashimi salmon for lozenges: https://atlassian.design/server/foundations/colors/ https://atlassian.design/server/foundations/colors/

rapsey 7y ago

I would prefer a translation instead of this editorializing.

ce4 7y ago
Here's the original 4-page interview of former mayor Christian Ude, it's very readable and should translate well with Google Translate: https://www.linux-magazin.de/ausgaben/2019/10/interview-2/ https://www.linux-magazin.de/ausgaben/2019/10/interview-2/
- justinclift 7y ago
  Hmmm, it's not a very good translation: Page 1: https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.linux-magazin.de%2Fausgaben%2F2019%2F10%2Finterview-2%2F https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&u=https... Page 2: https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.linux-magazin.de%2Fausgaben%2F2019%2F10%2Finterview-2%2F2%2F https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&u=https... Page 3: https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.linux-magazin.de%2Fausgaben%2F2019%2F10%2Finterview-2%2F3%2F https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&u=https... Page 4: https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.linux-magazin.de%2Fausgaben%2F2019%2F10%2Finterview-2%2F4%2F https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&u=https...
  - ce4 7y ago
    Thanks for linking. Agreed, eg.the idiom should have read "sink or swim" (not eat or die), but is the rest really that bad? Also the source article isn't too informative to begin with.
  - ndzig 7y ago
    Try DeepL https://www.deepl.com/en/translator https://www.deepl.com/en/translator — unfortunately it can't translate webpages, so you would have to copypaste the contents
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]

BuckRogers 7y ago

You either pay with licensing or hire a team to support. There’s no free as in beer, anywhere. At least once you get beyond some guy’s single Linux Mint install on his personal laptop, but not at any complex scale. Active Directory, development support, these things are needed. Hiring and maintaining a competent team is most often more expensive and importantly, far more difficult to competently do than licensing. Microsoft has a complete, vertically aligned stack that they’ve spent decades building and refining, there’s a lot of value there. Ubuntu is setup to compete here, and they’re a fine choice, but you do lose some things over going with Microsoft. The wish upon a star for free beer is strong.

imglorp 7y ago
Desktop much? In this century, cloud apps as a managed service are sufficient for some 90 pct of office workers. Chromebook/thin clients can be wiped on the hour or chucked in the trash if they break. So, 365, which is killing it. Not an MS cheerleader but this is the right play for them. Developers are obviously different and need a curated desktop experience.
- BuckRogers 7y ago
  Thin-clients are very much last century, mid-last century at that. They were called terminals. That's just a new buzzword because technology became fashionable for the non-technical, like calling server farms, "the cloud". A thin-client is just a desktop that can't do much of anything under its own power. There's good reason Apple keeps advancing their A-series chips, why not stop at "thin client" (running a browser), like a Chromebook? Instead, they're near desktop Intel speeds. To answer that, it's because they want their platform to actually be able to do something on its own. AR, VR, image processing, video editing, you name it. No developer is required to own it, unlike this idea that "curated desktops", which can be around the power of an Apple A13, as somehow just aimed at developers. Agreed on O365. Microsoft can do thin clients, and has a complete stack that integrates easily to resolve more complex demands out of the box. Just because it's the 21st century doesn't mean any of these concepts listed are new, nor is what Microsoft built in the 80's, 90's and 00's valueless. Depending on requirements it's very strongly to the contrary.