8 ms·

No more desktop Linux systems in the German Foreign Office

94 points by bjonathan 16y ago

stcredzero 16y ago
Word and Excel. For non technical users, you need at least these two. If Open Source is serious about the desktop, interoperability with these two applications is job one. EDIT: Some company should create a bounty for developing and implementing a process for achieving and maintaining 100% Microsoft Word compatibility for year. You'd have to put up a million dollars for something like that, but it would be worth it.
- stuaxo 16y ago
  100% ? There's a lot of weird stuff in those, I don't see it happening in a year - there could a lot of improvement probably. I guess some sort of automated testing that loads documents with tests in both and compares the rendering would a great step forward.
  - rbanffy 16y ago
    Interesting idea. It should be relatively easy to make various versions of Word and Open/LibreOffice load documents and print them and then compare the bitmaps for meaningful discrepancies.
- foljs 16y ago
  But they are not (serious about the Desktop). Or, to be more precise, it doesn't matter if they are or not, because OO don't have the resources needed to pull of such a thing. OpenOffice only exists ―and has semi-decent Office compatibility because it originated from thanks to corporate backing. KOffice never amounted to much, Gnumeric and Evolution withered, etc etc... The Open Source process as practiced by most projects gives very good server and programming tools, but at most nice desktop stuff.
- motters 16y ago
  Note that they're not complaining about Word and Excel. They're complaining about printer and scanner drivers.
  - goodside 16y ago
    "Users have, it claims, also complained of missing functionality, a lack of usability and poor interoperability." Not mentioned by name, but it's hard to imagine anything else being the number one complaint.
  - deleted 16y ago
    [deleted]
  - ekidd 16y ago
    Interesting. 10 years ago, printing and scanning from Linux was just agonizing. But today, I actually find Ubuntu 10.10 almost as easy as the MacOS: I ask it to look for new printers, it gives me list of printers on the network, and I choose the one I want. Everything just works. Similarly, the Gnome scanning application is a lovely way to make PDFs. This usually surprises the Windows users, who were telling me, "Oh, you're going to have figure out where the CD is, and install some software, and you may have problems with <X>..." Now, I'm sure that there are other printers and network configurations where Ubuntu will fail. But for the most part, they've done a great job. On the other hand, I do need to keep MS Office around for marking up contracts. Open Office doesn't support Microsoft's Track Changes feature, which is a dealbreaker.
    - ams6110 16y ago
      The Foreign Office started migrating its servers to Linux in 2001 and since 2005 has also used open source software such as Firefox, Thunderbird and OpenOffice on its desktop systems. Even in 2005, configuring printers in Linux was painful. And a big government bureaucracy cannot be deploying every distro-du-jour to keep up with improvements... most comparable Windows shops are still running XP. One thing that I think a lot of tech folks don't appreciate is how much business generally craves reports and printing. Its just reality, utopian dreams of a "paperless office" notwithstanding. I worked at a company that built a web-based system for a government agency. One thing we did, with EVERY release and EVERY new feature was include new or updated reporting (Crystal Reports) that paralleled the new features. Developers hated working with Crystal and hated doing report work in general. But the customer LOVED it.
- Vivtek 16y ago
  It'd be very difficult indeed to find and duplicate all the bugs.
- neutronicus 16y ago
  Don't forget Outlook/Exchange - the scheduling capabilities are awesome. I could figure out when the people I wanted to meet with were free, find out what rooms were free, invite the people I wanted to meet with (and then see whether they RSVP'd), and reserve the meeting room for a desired time slot, all through Outlook. I don't really know of an open source solution that does this quite so well.
  - slashdot 16y ago
    While not open source, there are free(mium) solutions like Tungle (or doodle, etc) do this quite well. Tungle even allows you to do this with people that aren't on the same exchange server Disclosure: I work at Tungle
  - rchowe 16y ago
    Open source no, but Google Apps does this very well, including sending email invitations to people not also using Google Calendar.
  - RockyMcNuts 16y ago
    And spend days trying to explain to people how to not screw invites up on their Blackberries and then have fits that their meeting vanished. People don't understand that they have to manage their calendars and that meeting requests are a convenience feature. They think there's a central calendar and everything gets updated automatically. Have fun when the CEO misses an important call or meeting from his calendar. This stuff is like crack, it makes people think it's easy and magical, but it's a support nightmare. http://blogs.technet.com/b/outlooking/archive/2010/03/29/some-best-practices-when-working-with-outlook-calendar.aspx http://blogs.technet.com/b/outlooking/archive/2010/03/29/som...
    - neutronicus 16y ago
      All I can say is that, where I worked, it was easy and magical and I never had a problem. Obviously your mileage varied.
  - Zak 16y ago
- davidw 16y ago
  You have to wonder, though, in a big bureaucracy, how much of the pain is due to "not 100%" compatibility, and how much is due to "this Linux thing is not what I'm used to".
  - SimonPStevens 16y ago
    Having worked with people trying to encourage adoption of open office I can say the main problem is compatibility. Pretty much everyone can adjust to the slightly different interface. The issue is that if you save a doc in open office and email to a customer who uses word if you've used anything beyond the basic text features there is a good chance when they open it there will be something wrong. The reverse applies too. Almost everyone I've tried open office with has eventually given up and migrated back to word primarily because they couldn't open files other people were sending them.
    - _delirium 16y ago
      We're on Word here and still have that problem. If you have a newer version of Word that does .docx files, you have to save as the older .doc files, because some recipients will complain that they can't open the newer ones. And if you're on the older one yourself, you have trouble opening stuff people send you. Whenever Word files go out to a distribution of more than two or so people including some external collaborators, I've always had problems. Afaict, Word on the Mac also behaves differently from Word on Windows, at least in terms of who reports back to me that they can't open a file I sent, and god help you if you try to embed media or use the reference manager. Honestly OpenOffice users give me the fewest problems, because they seem to be able to at least open anything I send them, even if the formatting is a bit mangled, while a significant percentage of Word users report back with "I couldn't open your file" or "your file seemed corrupt" or something.
      - stcredzero 16y ago
        We're on Word here and still have that problem. If you have a newer version of Word that does .docx files, you have to save as the older .doc files, because some recipients will complain that they can't open the newer ones. This tells me that Microsoft is actually in a vulnerable position here. If they start ramping up their rate of change to maintain lock-in they're going to inconvenience their customers even more. OpenOffice will start looking like the better alternative. Honestly OpenOffice users give me the fewest problems, because they seem to be able to at least open anything I send them, even if the formatting is a bit mangled, while a significant percentage of Word users report back with "I couldn't open your file" or "your file seemed corrupt" or something. It's not good to get egg on your face because the formatting is messed up. That looks like your fault. A corrupt file is seen as something like traffic. "Computers are tricky and stuff happens" is the usual reaction I see.
- benwerd 16y ago
  Part of the problem is the open source movement's increasing antipathy towards Microsoft. This is an understandable attitude to have, of course, but it doesn't win you fans when you try and acquire users outside the movement itself. For most people, computing isn't a political stance or a way of life; it's just another thing they need to use to do their job. Integrating with Active Directory to some extent, for example, shouldn't be incredibly difficult - and you would have thought that full integration with the new Office XML-based formats should be possible. But I suspect there isn't much appetite to actually do the work without substantial commercial incentive. I agree that a million dollar bounty would do the job, but then you'd have to do it again the next time a version of Office came out, and again and again. When it's so difficult to actually make money through an open source project (see LibreOffice's recent plea for 50,000 euros), that's difficult to justify. Despite what many people who run projects say, the open source business model problem is anything but solved. I know from experience that running an open source project as a business can occasionally be a soul-destroying experience (although, particularly if you're socially orientated, the good times far outweigh that). When there's a reliable way to make payroll and grow companies through producing open sourcing software, as opposed to packaging it or selling customization services, all of these problems will go away. Until then, we're - as ever - reliant on developers and teams within companies scratching an itch.
  - Starmonkey 16y ago
    "Integrating with Active Directory to some extent, for example, shouldn't be incredibly difficult " I get confused on this one. I am trying to implement some simple software at work, and the software (not Open Source) is supposed to be LDAP compliant. The Unix admin in charge of the LDAP Directory insists that Active Directory itself isn't LDAP compliant, and that when people gear their software towards Active Directory they "break LDAP." So far, his comment is correct. The product keeps trying to pull in windows AD objects just because the server is running Windows. Frustrating. Sorry, I guess my point is, that for some of us, it gets really difficult to figure out who is breaking what in terms of compatibility. "For most people, computing isn't a political stance or a way of life; it's just another thing they need to use to do their job." 100% agreed.
- drdaeman 16y ago
  Sorry, but even Microsoft software itself cannot provide 100% backwards-compatibility between versions. And forward-compatibility is almost non-existent.
mikerg87 16y ago
ouch. I almost bet we wont see this posted on slashdot....
- Hov 16y ago
  Yeah, I read this last week actually. It's not really slashdot material. I was somewhat surprised that they posted the story on the teething problems with the London Stock Exchange move to a Linux based trading system.
- angus77 16y ago
  It's there now.
buster 16y ago
I am wondering what hardware they use that they have do develop printer and scanner drivers..
- Roritharr 16y ago
  They have specialised scanners that allow them to scan passport booklets and other special formfactors without the need of manualy opening and lying them down on the scanner. The german Federal Commissioner for the Stasi Archives has special setups that allow them to enter bags of torn apart papers to scan... so i wouldn't wonder if they really need to write special drivers for their hardware.
- drtse4 16y ago
  I have a common canon multifunction laser printer (bought 4/5 years ago) and don't have any driver for it... I suppose they could have even older printers.
moeffju 16y ago
For those who can read German or use Google Translate, here's the original article: http://www.oliver-kaczmarek.de/2011/02/bundesregierung-zementiert-mit-software-umstellung-im-auswartigen-amt-monopolstellung-eines-anbieters/ http://www.oliver-kaczmarek.de/2011/02/bundesregierung-zemen...
pwelch 16y ago
I'm a huge fan of Linux and want to see it succeed but it still has a ways to go for the enterprise desktop market. The one biggest problem is Microsoft Office. I use OpenOffice on Linux and iWorks/NeoOffice on Mac often but I still find myself using Microsoft Office or Visio when I have a lot of work to do. There are just so many things that can be done quickly in Word or more advanced in Excel that I have yet to find in the other options despite all my googling. Regards of how you feel about Windows, IMHO Microsoft still has the edge when it comes to Office Suites.
- trezor 16y ago
  The one biggest problem is Microsoft Office. I'd say Microsoft Office, everything else Microsoft which integrates seamlessly and most of all Active Directory. Getting anything equivalent to Active Directory up on Linux is an absolute nightmare, or at least so it was last time I tried. Making something as basic as making a Linux machine join a domain and authenticate against the DC work cost me a full weekend, and yet in the end I just had to give up. That's really not a user- nor computer-management strategy that scales.
  - pwelch 16y ago
    I agree. I actually meant to say the biggest hang up for the enterprise to switch over to Linux is finding a good replacement for Office. However, you absolutely correct about how easy it is to get a Microsoft AD up and running. Though I am sure there is a way to do it in Linux if you have all the experience, sometimes when a System Admin has to get an environment up and running it is easy to get it done with Windows and AD.
  - drdaeman 16y ago
    Maybe that was because you were trying to apply AD ideology to GNU/Linux, i.e. do things in "Active Directory-way"? I don't know about AD, but implementing a single sign-on authentication on GNU/Linux is simple. Just configure PAM and roll the configuration to all machines (with rsync or whatever you prefer). I've never tried authenticating against a LDAP database, though. However, I believe if I'll see a Windows machine and be asked to set up a simple SSO configuration, it would take ages to understand (not just step-by-step copy some tutorial from the net).
bnastic 16y ago
Lesson on how not to perform due diligence?
rm-rf 16y ago
One factor likely at play here is the low cost of licensing MS products under the enterprise/volume licensing agreements. Where I'm at it's costing well under $100/person/year to license Windows, Office, Exchange, SharePoint and a few other odds & ends. IIRC, for just under $50/person/year, we get Windows & the basic Office suite, add another $10/person/year to get client access licenses for Exchange & SharePoint; add another $10 for Visio, Project... It's hard to carry the FOSS banner at that price.
- mkr-hn 16y ago
  I've never had a good sense of why people are so desperate for Linux to take Windows' desktop market share. Linux already clobbered Windows on the server, and probably will in perpetuity because of its momentum, price, and developer support. It's a good place for Linux. No one can legitimately call open source unviable at this point. I can understand it from an ideological perspective, but many of the people I see talking about it aren't ideologues.
  - kenjackson 16y ago
    I actually don't think Linux is clobbering Windows on the server. Here's a year old story, but I doubt things have changed much in a year: http://blogs.computerworld.com/15675/idc_windows_dominates_linux_in_servers_not_just_the_desktop http://blogs.computerworld.com/15675/idc_windows_dominates_l... With that said, I do think Linux is clobbering Windows on mobile devices.
    - mkr-hn 16y ago
      Taking a double digit percentage of a proprietary juggernaut's market with something free is what I'd count as clobbering. That report also seems to cover shipments, as in prefab servers with the OS already installed. Don't most larger operations use homemade distributions and configurations? That's on top of any number of spawned instances of Linux in a virtualized environment. I wonder how many Linux instances are running on EC2 at any given time. I don't see anything in the IDC report about overall OS share. Just shipments. A computerworld blog referencing a zdnet blog (which also cites the IDC report) for marketshare numbers seems fishy, as though they were fudging facts to support a headline.
berntb 16y ago
Why does an administrative office write device drivers instead of buying printers etc with Linux support? Is there a missing capability in the Linux supported hardware, somewhere?
- mkr-hn 16y ago
  Can't get a passport scanner at Office Depot.
nivertech 16y ago
1. I have a feeling, that even if MSFT will open-source all their SW products - people still will be complaining ;) 2. Office is de-facto industry standard. The only way to beat it is to innovate into new paradigms, i.e. something like Prezi vs. PowerPoint. Or if somebody will find new better way to do electronic tables - they will beat Excel, etc. 3. How can one expect to make open-source desktop better, when most open-source hackers using proprietary Macs with OSX?
beagle3 16y ago
"Savings were limited" but they decline to say how much. Also "Users complained of compatibility problems" -- all the more reason to switch; a proof of the MS lock in. I wonder if they write something like "We were only able to save $5K/year/person, but we didn't want to inconvenience our workers for such a paltry sum", what the response would have been. I can assure you it is very far from the $100/year licensing that people mentioned in other threads. If that were the case, no one would switch on one hand, and Microsoft wouldn't be the behemoth that it is today on the other. It's $100/year/person for their desktop software, + tens to hundreds of thousands for the server software that goes with it (to microsoft), plus a $2000/year/person for lost time due to viruses, spam, and being able to play WoW on their work computer, plus $2000/year/person when you look at the administration cost -- windows shops everywhere I've seen have a much lower admin/user ratio (e.g. 1 in 10 or 1 in 20) compared to unix/linux (1 in 50 or 1 in 100), and even more so when the end users are doing just word processing+spreadsheet work. Also, what the hell were they doing writing printer drivers? I've been using linux on the desktop since 2005, and didn't have to install a printer driver once.

94 points by bjonathan 16y ago

Word and Excel. For non technical users, you need at least these two. If Open Source is serious about the desktop, interoperability with these two applications is job one. EDIT: Some company should create a bounty for developing and implementing a process for achieving and maintaining 100% Microsoft Word compatibility for year. You'd have to put up a million dollars for something like that, but it would be worth it.

stuaxo 16y ago
100% ? There's a lot of weird stuff in those, I don't see it happening in a year - there could a lot of improvement probably. I guess some sort of automated testing that loads documents with tests in both and compares the rendering would a great step forward.
- rbanffy 16y ago
  Interesting idea. It should be relatively easy to make various versions of Word and Open/LibreOffice load documents and print them and then compare the bitmaps for meaningful discrepancies.
foljs 16y ago
But they are not (serious about the Desktop). Or, to be more precise, it doesn't matter if they are or not, because OO don't have the resources needed to pull of such a thing. OpenOffice only exists ―and has semi-decent Office compatibility because it originated from thanks to corporate backing. KOffice never amounted to much, Gnumeric and Evolution withered, etc etc... The Open Source process as practiced by most projects gives very good server and programming tools, but at most nice desktop stuff.
motters 16y ago
Note that they're not complaining about Word and Excel. They're complaining about printer and scanner drivers.
- goodside 16y ago
  "Users have, it claims, also complained of missing functionality, a lack of usability and poor interoperability." Not mentioned by name, but it's hard to imagine anything else being the number one complaint.
- deleted 16y ago
  [deleted]
- ekidd 16y ago
  Interesting. 10 years ago, printing and scanning from Linux was just agonizing. But today, I actually find Ubuntu 10.10 almost as easy as the MacOS: I ask it to look for new printers, it gives me list of printers on the network, and I choose the one I want. Everything just works. Similarly, the Gnome scanning application is a lovely way to make PDFs. This usually surprises the Windows users, who were telling me, "Oh, you're going to have figure out where the CD is, and install some software, and you may have problems with <X>..." Now, I'm sure that there are other printers and network configurations where Ubuntu will fail. But for the most part, they've done a great job. On the other hand, I do need to keep MS Office around for marking up contracts. Open Office doesn't support Microsoft's Track Changes feature, which is a dealbreaker.
  - ams6110 16y ago
    The Foreign Office started migrating its servers to Linux in 2001 and since 2005 has also used open source software such as Firefox, Thunderbird and OpenOffice on its desktop systems. Even in 2005, configuring printers in Linux was painful. And a big government bureaucracy cannot be deploying every distro-du-jour to keep up with improvements... most comparable Windows shops are still running XP. One thing that I think a lot of tech folks don't appreciate is how much business generally craves reports and printing. Its just reality, utopian dreams of a "paperless office" notwithstanding. I worked at a company that built a web-based system for a government agency. One thing we did, with EVERY release and EVERY new feature was include new or updated reporting (Crystal Reports) that paralleled the new features. Developers hated working with Crystal and hated doing report work in general. But the customer LOVED it.
Vivtek 16y ago
It'd be very difficult indeed to find and duplicate all the bugs.
neutronicus 16y ago
Don't forget Outlook/Exchange - the scheduling capabilities are awesome. I could figure out when the people I wanted to meet with were free, find out what rooms were free, invite the people I wanted to meet with (and then see whether they RSVP'd), and reserve the meeting room for a desired time slot, all through Outlook. I don't really know of an open source solution that does this quite so well.
- slashdot 16y ago
  While not open source, there are free(mium) solutions like Tungle (or doodle, etc) do this quite well. Tungle even allows you to do this with people that aren't on the same exchange server Disclosure: I work at Tungle
- rchowe 16y ago
  Open source no, but Google Apps does this very well, including sending email invitations to people not also using Google Calendar.
- RockyMcNuts 16y ago
  And spend days trying to explain to people how to not screw invites up on their Blackberries and then have fits that their meeting vanished. People don't understand that they have to manage their calendars and that meeting requests are a convenience feature. They think there's a central calendar and everything gets updated automatically. Have fun when the CEO misses an important call or meeting from his calendar. This stuff is like crack, it makes people think it's easy and magical, but it's a support nightmare. http://blogs.technet.com/b/outlooking/archive/2010/03/29/some-best-practices-when-working-with-outlook-calendar.aspx http://blogs.technet.com/b/outlooking/archive/2010/03/29/som...
  - neutronicus 16y ago
    All I can say is that, where I worked, it was easy and magical and I never had a problem. Obviously your mileage varied.
- Zak 16y ago
davidw 16y ago
You have to wonder, though, in a big bureaucracy, how much of the pain is due to "not 100%" compatibility, and how much is due to "this Linux thing is not what I'm used to".
- SimonPStevens 16y ago
  Having worked with people trying to encourage adoption of open office I can say the main problem is compatibility. Pretty much everyone can adjust to the slightly different interface. The issue is that if you save a doc in open office and email to a customer who uses word if you've used anything beyond the basic text features there is a good chance when they open it there will be something wrong. The reverse applies too. Almost everyone I've tried open office with has eventually given up and migrated back to word primarily because they couldn't open files other people were sending them.
  - _delirium 16y ago
    We're on Word here and still have that problem. If you have a newer version of Word that does .docx files, you have to save as the older .doc files, because some recipients will complain that they can't open the newer ones. And if you're on the older one yourself, you have trouble opening stuff people send you. Whenever Word files go out to a distribution of more than two or so people including some external collaborators, I've always had problems. Afaict, Word on the Mac also behaves differently from Word on Windows, at least in terms of who reports back to me that they can't open a file I sent, and god help you if you try to embed media or use the reference manager. Honestly OpenOffice users give me the fewest problems, because they seem to be able to at least open anything I send them, even if the formatting is a bit mangled, while a significant percentage of Word users report back with "I couldn't open your file" or "your file seemed corrupt" or something.
    - stcredzero 16y ago
      We're on Word here and still have that problem. If you have a newer version of Word that does .docx files, you have to save as the older .doc files, because some recipients will complain that they can't open the newer ones. This tells me that Microsoft is actually in a vulnerable position here. If they start ramping up their rate of change to maintain lock-in they're going to inconvenience their customers even more. OpenOffice will start looking like the better alternative. Honestly OpenOffice users give me the fewest problems, because they seem to be able to at least open anything I send them, even if the formatting is a bit mangled, while a significant percentage of Word users report back with "I couldn't open your file" or "your file seemed corrupt" or something. It's not good to get egg on your face because the formatting is messed up. That looks like your fault. A corrupt file is seen as something like traffic. "Computers are tricky and stuff happens" is the usual reaction I see.
benwerd 16y ago
Part of the problem is the open source movement's increasing antipathy towards Microsoft. This is an understandable attitude to have, of course, but it doesn't win you fans when you try and acquire users outside the movement itself. For most people, computing isn't a political stance or a way of life; it's just another thing they need to use to do their job. Integrating with Active Directory to some extent, for example, shouldn't be incredibly difficult - and you would have thought that full integration with the new Office XML-based formats should be possible. But I suspect there isn't much appetite to actually do the work without substantial commercial incentive. I agree that a million dollar bounty would do the job, but then you'd have to do it again the next time a version of Office came out, and again and again. When it's so difficult to actually make money through an open source project (see LibreOffice's recent plea for 50,000 euros), that's difficult to justify. Despite what many people who run projects say, the open source business model problem is anything but solved. I know from experience that running an open source project as a business can occasionally be a soul-destroying experience (although, particularly if you're socially orientated, the good times far outweigh that). When there's a reliable way to make payroll and grow companies through producing open sourcing software, as opposed to packaging it or selling customization services, all of these problems will go away. Until then, we're - as ever - reliant on developers and teams within companies scratching an itch.
- Starmonkey 16y ago
  "Integrating with Active Directory to some extent, for example, shouldn't be incredibly difficult " I get confused on this one. I am trying to implement some simple software at work, and the software (not Open Source) is supposed to be LDAP compliant. The Unix admin in charge of the LDAP Directory insists that Active Directory itself isn't LDAP compliant, and that when people gear their software towards Active Directory they "break LDAP." So far, his comment is correct. The product keeps trying to pull in windows AD objects just because the server is running Windows. Frustrating. Sorry, I guess my point is, that for some of us, it gets really difficult to figure out who is breaking what in terms of compatibility. "For most people, computing isn't a political stance or a way of life; it's just another thing they need to use to do their job." 100% agreed.
drdaeman 16y ago
Sorry, but even Microsoft software itself cannot provide 100% backwards-compatibility between versions. And forward-compatibility is almost non-existent.

mikerg87 16y ago

ouch. I almost bet we wont see this posted on slashdot....

Hov 16y ago
Yeah, I read this last week actually. It's not really slashdot material. I was somewhat surprised that they posted the story on the teething problems with the London Stock Exchange move to a Linux based trading system.
angus77 16y ago
It's there now.

buster 16y ago

I am wondering what hardware they use that they have do develop printer and scanner drivers..

Roritharr 16y ago
They have specialised scanners that allow them to scan passport booklets and other special formfactors without the need of manualy opening and lying them down on the scanner. The german Federal Commissioner for the Stasi Archives has special setups that allow them to enter bags of torn apart papers to scan... so i wouldn't wonder if they really need to write special drivers for their hardware.
drtse4 16y ago
I have a common canon multifunction laser printer (bought 4/5 years ago) and don't have any driver for it... I suppose they could have even older printers.

moeffju 16y ago

For those who can read German or use Google Translate, here's the original article: http://www.oliver-kaczmarek.de/2011/02/bundesregierung-zementiert-mit-software-umstellung-im-auswartigen-amt-monopolstellung-eines-anbieters/ http://www.oliver-kaczmarek.de/2011/02/bundesregierung-zemen...

pwelch 16y ago

I'm a huge fan of Linux and want to see it succeed but it still has a ways to go for the enterprise desktop market. The one biggest problem is Microsoft Office. I use OpenOffice on Linux and iWorks/NeoOffice on Mac often but I still find myself using Microsoft Office or Visio when I have a lot of work to do. There are just so many things that can be done quickly in Word or more advanced in Excel that I have yet to find in the other options despite all my googling. Regards of how you feel about Windows, IMHO Microsoft still has the edge when it comes to Office Suites.

trezor 16y ago
The one biggest problem is Microsoft Office. I'd say Microsoft Office, everything else Microsoft which integrates seamlessly and most of all Active Directory. Getting anything equivalent to Active Directory up on Linux is an absolute nightmare, or at least so it was last time I tried. Making something as basic as making a Linux machine join a domain and authenticate against the DC work cost me a full weekend, and yet in the end I just had to give up. That's really not a user- nor computer-management strategy that scales.
- pwelch 16y ago
  I agree. I actually meant to say the biggest hang up for the enterprise to switch over to Linux is finding a good replacement for Office. However, you absolutely correct about how easy it is to get a Microsoft AD up and running. Though I am sure there is a way to do it in Linux if you have all the experience, sometimes when a System Admin has to get an environment up and running it is easy to get it done with Windows and AD.
- drdaeman 16y ago
  Maybe that was because you were trying to apply AD ideology to GNU/Linux, i.e. do things in "Active Directory-way"? I don't know about AD, but implementing a single sign-on authentication on GNU/Linux is simple. Just configure PAM and roll the configuration to all machines (with rsync or whatever you prefer). I've never tried authenticating against a LDAP database, though. However, I believe if I'll see a Windows machine and be asked to set up a simple SSO configuration, it would take ages to understand (not just step-by-step copy some tutorial from the net).

bnastic 16y ago

Lesson on how not to perform due diligence?

rm-rf 16y ago

One factor likely at play here is the low cost of licensing MS products under the enterprise/volume licensing agreements. Where I'm at it's costing well under $100/person/year to license Windows, Office, Exchange, SharePoint and a few other odds & ends. IIRC, for just under $50/person/year, we get Windows & the basic Office suite, add another $10/person/year to get client access licenses for Exchange & SharePoint; add another $10 for Visio, Project... It's hard to carry the FOSS banner at that price.

mkr-hn 16y ago
I've never had a good sense of why people are so desperate for Linux to take Windows' desktop market share. Linux already clobbered Windows on the server, and probably will in perpetuity because of its momentum, price, and developer support. It's a good place for Linux. No one can legitimately call open source unviable at this point. I can understand it from an ideological perspective, but many of the people I see talking about it aren't ideologues.
- kenjackson 16y ago
  I actually don't think Linux is clobbering Windows on the server. Here's a year old story, but I doubt things have changed much in a year: http://blogs.computerworld.com/15675/idc_windows_dominates_linux_in_servers_not_just_the_desktop http://blogs.computerworld.com/15675/idc_windows_dominates_l... With that said, I do think Linux is clobbering Windows on mobile devices.
  - mkr-hn 16y ago
    Taking a double digit percentage of a proprietary juggernaut's market with something free is what I'd count as clobbering. That report also seems to cover shipments, as in prefab servers with the OS already installed. Don't most larger operations use homemade distributions and configurations? That's on top of any number of spawned instances of Linux in a virtualized environment. I wonder how many Linux instances are running on EC2 at any given time. I don't see anything in the IDC report about overall OS share. Just shipments. A computerworld blog referencing a zdnet blog (which also cites the IDC report) for marketshare numbers seems fishy, as though they were fudging facts to support a headline.

berntb 16y ago

Why does an administrative office write device drivers instead of buying printers etc with Linux support? Is there a missing capability in the Linux supported hardware, somewhere?

mkr-hn 16y ago
Can't get a passport scanner at Office Depot.

nivertech 16y ago

1. I have a feeling, that even if MSFT will open-source all their SW products - people still will be complaining ;) 2. Office is de-facto industry standard. The only way to beat it is to innovate into new paradigms, i.e. something like Prezi vs. PowerPoint. Or if somebody will find new better way to do electronic tables - they will beat Excel, etc. 3. How can one expect to make open-source desktop better, when most open-source hackers using proprietary Macs with OSX?

beagle3 16y ago

"Savings were limited" but they decline to say how much. Also "Users complained of compatibility problems" -- all the more reason to switch; a proof of the MS lock in. I wonder if they write something like "We were only able to save $5K/year/person, but we didn't want to inconvenience our workers for such a paltry sum", what the response would have been. I can assure you it is very far from the $100/year licensing that people mentioned in other threads. If that were the case, no one would switch on one hand, and Microsoft wouldn't be the behemoth that it is today on the other. It's $100/year/person for their desktop software, + tens to hundreds of thousands for the server software that goes with it (to microsoft), plus a $2000/year/person for lost time due to viruses, spam, and being able to play WoW on their work computer, plus $2000/year/person when you look at the administration cost -- windows shops everywhere I've seen have a much lower admin/user ratio (e.g. 1 in 10 or 1 in 20) compared to unix/linux (1 in 50 or 1 in 100), and even more so when the end users are doing just word processing+spreadsheet work. Also, what the hell were they doing writing printer drivers? I've been using linux on the desktop since 2005, and didn't have to install a printer driver once.