Another German regional government is switching from Linux to Windows

https://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/3036673/another-german-regional-government-is-switching-from-linux-to-microsoft-windows

by XzetaU8 • 8 years ago

48 59 8 years ago

theinquirer.net

yoz-y2• 8 years ago

I was under the impression that most of the administrative work was now done in a browser anyways. I wonder what exactly they get by switching to windows, better fleet management tools maybe?

mikejb2• 8 years ago

I think the assumption is incorrect. The Microsoft Office suite is used a lot, IIUC

glitchc2• 8 years ago

Concur. The office suite and surrounding ecosystem (Exchange, Sharepoint) are king in enterprise environments. The latest versions run poorly or not at all on anything other than Windows.

yoz-y2• 8 years ago

Even that moves to the cloud though. I have not used the office 365 tools at all but from my understanding they should have feature parity at some point.

But then I suppose that editing a hundred page call to bids document in a browser tab does not really work well.

eitally• 8 years ago

MS is extremely flexible with pricing in their EAs. They can make any arbitrary product pretty much free by gladly readjusting prices, discounts and benefits in other parts of the agreement.

It wouldn't surprise me if they made the switch appealing by this sort of shenanigan, but client CALs are pretty much free already at volume. It's the server licenses where they kill you ... but with Azure flexibility as an option, not to mention O365, it's super-easy to see how MS makes lock-in look very, very appealing.

source: use to own the MS EA at an F200 company that tried to extract Office in favor of Google Drive + LibreOffice, and Windows Server + SQL Server for CentOS + PostgreSQL.

0x4f3759df• 8 years ago

I'm under the impression that its more to do with external hardware compatibility like printer drivers (do industrial printers have linux drivers?), license plate scanners, etc.

peatmoss3• 8 years ago

I don’t know about license plate scanners, but usually the more industrial the printer, the higher likelihood that Linux will do just fine.

I think the main reasons are that big industrial printers are likely to support standards like IPP and Postscript. Also, Apple uses CUPS just the same as Linux. Some cheap home printers require proprietary binary drivers, but many printers are supported by CUPS with some minimal config definitions.

peatmoss3• 8 years ago

I feel like there are two models for desktop computing—one that is very hard to accommodate for a traditional enterprise, and another where Linux is very well suited.

If one is looking for a managed solution with heavyweight apps including an office suite, email / calendar, etc., then anything other than Windows is going to be unsatisfactory to people who expect Windows. I even include macOS with Linux in that assessment. Let's call this model of centralized control of fat clients the culmination of the 1990s enterprise desktop.

On the other hand, if a company has gone down the road of Google / web apps for everything, then Linux starts to be a very effective bootloader for a web browser.

Personally, I like the fat-client model of the 1990s, and feel that Linux best satisfies my desires. But it's hard to deny the comprehensiveness of Windows & Active Directory for those enterprises that also want to stick to this model.

The web-only model feels a little too lean to me. In any enterprise, there are bound to be instances where web apps aren't going to cut it.

This is where I have hopes for Chrome OS once it begins to support native Linux apps. At that point, it's not a thin client, and it's not a fat client. I wonder then if we may see some of these enterprises walk back from Windows.

frockington• 8 years ago

I think we are a long way from anyone walking back from Windows. It will be an uphill battle for Google due to the lack of privacy awareness (I'm not saying Microsoft is better or worse, just that Google is not looked upon kindly in the privacy regard)

peatmoss3• 8 years ago

Perhaps. But I also think that, of the people who are sticking to the heavyweight fat-client model of computing, some are doing so for technical reasons and others are doing so for principled reasons. If Google's softening on the "everything must be a web app" removes the technical barriers, I could imagine an expansion of Chrome OS.

As a paying FastMail customer, I'm right there with you on Google's privacy posture. But given the number of corporate G-Suite customers, I don't think principled rejection of Google over privacy concerns is the major impediment to Chrome OS adoption.

AdmiralAsshat• 8 years ago

This time it's all about the roving staff, who aren't using OpenSUSE and didn't use Solaris before it. They've always been Windows users and it seems that officials feel it might be time for a bit of consistency.

So my takeaway is that someone at the top was pissed off that he had to use an e-mail client other than Outlook and made a multi-million dollar infrastructure decision based on that.

vetinari4• 8 years ago

So my takeaway is that someone at the top was pissed off that he had to use an e-mail client other than Outlook and made a multi-million dollar infrastructure decision based on that.

Nah, decisions like this are usually greased much better than just by the good feeling of using Outlook again.

swarnie_• 8 years ago

I've worked on a number of large rollout projects where multiple vendors have been considered.

When you tell a CEO/CFO/CIO that you can bundle OS, updates, productivity tools, communication/colab tools all in to one monthly bill they almost always take the MS route. The predictability of the financing is the key thing helping MS kill it in enterprise.

It also helps that 90% of their staff have never known anything else and will need very little training.

raverbashing• 8 years ago

And to be honest they're not wrong (in those aspects)

moviuro• 8 years ago

very little training

That's the worst assuption ever. Not because everyone uses tool X, everyone understands how to make it work properly. Did you ever try to move a picture from a document you got from M. Johnson? You'll get a headache because moving that one picture will fuck up your title formatting in page 13 and the table in page 2.

Everyone using MS Office I met could use a good week-long training session about do's and don't's, how to write proper documents, presentations that don't suck, etc.

reacharavindh3• 8 years ago

It always hits the nerve to hear that a public organization is moving back to MS from FOSS, but I wish this kind of demand(from governments) would lead to a open company that is strictly focused on developing an alternative to Windows desktop. Linux is heavily pulled in the server direction, and we need a company other than RedHAt who can pull Linux ecosystem a bit together to build an opinionated but coherent desktop.

Trying to support all of the email clients, calendar tools and obscure media decoders will never lead us to an usable Linux based Desktop.

ams6110• 8 years ago

an opinionated but coherent desktop

Isn't this Ubuntu?

reacharavindh3• 8 years ago

I experimented with Ubuntu by giving a laptop running plain Ubuntu to my retired parents. They are new to computers and their needs are simple. * Video calls - Skype or FaceTime * watch youtube. * Transfer pictures from digital camera to laptop and view them (many times ;-) ) * local newspaper's website * play their local music library * Not confuse them.

But, Ubuntu failed them miserably. They had a hard time using because, their words - "what works one time, doesn't the next time."

When my dad closes the lid, he expects the laptop to go to sleep mode, and again open the lid to wake it, just doesn't work all time, give some kind of messages only a tech person would understand.

Their observation - "text is not sharp". I checked it on their laptop display, Windows is rather sharp and usable while Ubuntu's default font rendering is too soft and they need to squint a bit to read.

internet connectivity - There are so many issues with the default wifi setup on their laptop. Dad gets frustrated if it shows him a dialog box with information he does not understand. So, often times the laptop lies there gathering dust until I or a friend goes to their house to "fix it" - often times just reboot the damn thing.

After this struggle, they bought a Windows laptop.

nine_k• 8 years ago

I don't see how coherence is a problem. Windows the platform is pretty incoherent.

The article is light on details, but I think the issue is really in interoperability. When everyone around you runs Windows, you either have to be very good at interoperating with key Windows apps (all parts of Outlook, Word, Excel, Visio, MS Project, etc), or to run Windows, too.

Part of the problem is that many of these things operate on closed data formats, and MS has little incentive to help with interoperbilty. Conversion tools can exist but they are often cumbersome, imperfect, and thus painful for regular use.

This is how an ecosystem lock-in works. BTW it's not specific to Windows; every platform makes it simpler to use this platform's tools, and, because of that, any out-of-platform tools become harder to use in comparison.

reacharavindh3• 8 years ago

True. It's something I didn't write in the original comment, but Office suite is another big reason for Windows being this prevalent. For most non-technical users, MS Office is the only program they know. for such non-tech users, Google docs is the lightweight office you get if you don't have the privilege of running fat Office on your desktop..

Well, technically Linux ecosystem has Open&Libre office. Many times when they show up in news feed, I download and try to use it. But, one thing thing I can always feel - awfully slow/laggy and looks like they are stuck in a decade ago and refuse to change. This makes it uncool for anybody to switch to it from MS office. Perhaps it is great for those obsessive tech users who tinker the heck out of it, but out of the box, it IS inferior in most ways. If anything incentives like these huge government implementations have the potential to start and fund a project that will develop an open & usable alternative to MS Office. One can dream.

nisa2• 8 years ago

If you consider that every municipality in EU (or world) has similiar problems and the costs for running Microsoft and other commercial software is quite high everywhere I really don't know why the EU doesn't start some public company or organisation and polish the existing open-source tools.

It's probably considered anti-competitive but let's image they scrap 1 billion of their budgets and invest in opensource:

- polish Samba to be a viable Windows Server replacement. Replication, missing Kerberos functionality, Implement ADWS, ADFS - maybe Exchange APIs. Save millions on server costs.

- unfuck LibreOffice, develop a strong foundation to implement typical processes

- polish KDE / Plasma to macOS/Windows usability/stability - rewrite kmail/korganizer with modern usability/ui

Not sure if that's possible but it feels like a lot of things are 60-80% done - maybe taking a leap and fixing the other 60-80% might make a difference.

- have an EU wide service agency that supports municipalities in implementing OSS

- demand opensource software for public money.

- create strong open standards and enforce them by law for public institutions.

maybe it will take 5 to 10 years but everyone should profit.

nextos• 8 years ago

I agree Linux requires some polish, but have you tried e.g. LibreOffice lately? It's very good.

I have a small deployment of Linux machines running GNOME and the typical office suite applications, including LibreOffice. I'm using NixOS to ensure everything runs extremely controlled versions of software. It's rock solid.

Furthermore, the users are really technologically illiterate. And they like the UI. They have no issues.

I think the big problem is usually that people expect a perfect replacement for MS Office. They try to open DOC (not DOCX files) in LibreOffice. And it's not perfect. It can't be perfect, as it's playing a very hard catch up game on ill-defined file formats.

MichaelMoser123• 8 years ago

The last 10 percent are a very hard thing to do - a lot of effort goes into these frigging details (one of them is internationalization, like a proper spell checker for libre office that works for many languages and not just English)

zimbatm• 8 years ago

It's an unsubstantiated claim but my impression is that governments are not good at managing companies.

Who gets to decide if it's better to use LibreOffice or OpenOffice? What are the features that are the most important for the office replacement? How is it going to be supported? Is there a line where people can call to complain about the product? Taking all that OSS and packaging it sounds a lot like running a company, especially when multiple "consumers" are involved.

Asooka• 8 years ago

Why would you want to recreate Windows UI? It's an evolutionary dead-end and everybody is moving off of it. KDE is a dead technology as well, they're still stuck in the WIMP metaphor, whereas Gnome are pushing the envelope with innovative tablet-friendly user-centric story-based UIs that are miles ahead of anything Apple can dream to achieve. We can't move forward by being stuck in the past and an effort to hobble the F/OSS desktop by EU governments should be resisted at all costs.

jolmg2• 8 years ago

we need a company other than RedHAt

Why not government? FOSS is for free public use like any other public infrastructure. It benefits all so it seems proper for government to fund it.

EDIT: If anyone wants to downvote because they disagree (not that I think that's proper use of the downvote), please at least state your opinion. I want to know.

msiyer2• 8 years ago

I totally agree.

I have come to realize that capitalism is a narrow-minded approach towards progress. It does not work in the long run.

Capitalism and democracy are incompatible.

rehemiau• 8 years ago

Linux Foundation needs to run a hardware support testing program for desktop linux to be successful. In a situation where hardware manufacturers don't support linux and there's no regression testing for community developed drivers, it will never be successful.

baybal2• 8 years ago

They will heavily regret this decision.

If MS was offering them "cheap N years contract," than it is already decided that they will jack up prices the second their contract expires.

teget• 8 years ago

They will heavily regret this decision.

Unlikely. Yes, this is a political decision as most actual users of the systems were ok with the linux client. However, the article is a bit misleading. They are bringing the systems used by a subdepartment of the states department of finance in line with the stack used within the remainder of the department (about 1/3 were linux clients, the state already owns over 50.000 other windows clients (lower estimate, most likely more if you include organization which manage their own infrastructure (like universities)), they know what to expect from microsoft). While the systems worked it always required special attention when interoperating with other states (for example: certain informationrequests by other states are standardized between all states (based on a shared windows solution). Lower saxonian employees could not interact with it directly and had to rely on their inhouse solution instead of reusing the existing and proven solution used by all other states). There are notable costs associated to beeing a special flower while maintining conformance to financial regulations.

Yes, I believe that biting the bullet and migrating more departments to open systems would be the better longterm solution (which would also force vendors to port their solutions). But there will be several elections before that pays off and would require a significant investment before the benefits show (and possible coordination between the states) and in the midterm moving to Windows might be the better option. Moving to linux doesn't win an election, but failing to move to linux might loose you one.

However, even after the move about 1/4 to 1/3 of the computers/servers owned by the state will run linux/bsd (iirc).

LiterallyDoge• 8 years ago

If Linux (or somebody) would focus on the UI and stability in a the non-perfect world of the dumb tweaks I do to change the gem color on my flux capacitors, I think it would be viable, but right now, Linux feels like owning a fish tank, and I can't do business on a fish tank, even though I really want to.

jagermo• 8 years ago

In my opinion, Munich's Linux project could have been saved if they invested a little in the UI part. It was horrible out of date, a pain to use and looked like something out of a 90's geocities web page.

The work flows were slow and had too many unnecessary clicks.

Another German regional government is switching from Linux to Windows

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