From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).
Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.
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... told them 20 years ago already. Well then, finally ...
o7
Awesome. Now stick with it!
And remember, different isn't wrong, it's different.
If they put as much money into these foss projects as they where giving microsoft before, maybe Libreoffice will become halfway decent.
I use Libreoffice and it's fine for a non-power user, but it sure has some rough edges
But let's be honest, most seats at the government does not use anything much advanced anyway.
There are places where nested formulas in pivot tables are needed to work, but most places are using just simple documents.
It has some rough edges to be sure. I've found myself fighting with it quite a bit. But it's usable.
I'm just glad there is more incentive for [organization] to help patch the issues.
While I'm all for OSS, I'm also objective enough to know where it's not a good idea. And I think this is one of them. They have commercial one available in their own country called softmaker, which comes with support which is really important for a business or organization. I've been using it for many years because the OSS where just not right for me. Also liked WPS more but Linux dev was slow, but now I found my match
LibreOffice does "develop and maintain a certification system for professionals of various kinds who deliver and sell services around LibreOffice."
A good number of European cities and countries have tried Linux and open source software in the past. They use it for a few years and then they have almost always have quietly gone back to MS Windows and Office products.
As much as I enjoy using Linux, (and no, I don't use Arch), and open source for my own needs, I would be willing to bet after a few years, this German state will quietly move back to Micosoft products again.
As the result of a change in the city's government, to leave LiMux and at the time, critics of the decision blamed the mayor and deputy mayor and cast a suspicious eye on the US software giant's decision to move its headquarters to Munich.
Just a coincidence.
The intense pressure from Microsoft doesn't have anything to do with it I'm sure.
It’s cheaper to find support
*at first
Its only cheap because its normalized in that domain. As more work is done to iron out bugs and get people in the office space the feature they need on Linux the more experience IT folks will get support.
Its an investment as always. There is no such thing as a free lunch
Society favours the short term and it will be a long time before Linux sys admins are cheaper than Windows sys admins
Or even asking random kid out of high school how to do x
You have too look at it at scale too, and most places should either be adopting some platform that already does or be planning on scaling some special service they do.
Every Podunk municple probally should have to have a AD expert, a security expert, a hardware/software lifecycle management person, etc etc
That's how o365 can be cheaper total cost of ownership then an army of siloed sys admins, even if the software is at no cost to them.
Its an investment in total operations of the organizations of the state, from the current state of 1990s tech most operate off of to a modern IT infrastructure.
Who else to start the trend than the government that was created for the public good in the first place.
Microsoft certainly tries it's best to keep you locked into their ecosystem by making it inconvenient but not impossible to leave though that's not the real reason, it's security. Businesses and especially governments are scared of nation state hackers contributing malicious code to open source products and falsely assume it's safer to use closed source software because those incidents aren't public. There's so much great software out there I'd love to use and the first question I'm asked when I bring it up is can you prove China hasn't contributed code?