[Klug-general] answer to my FOI request from Kent County Coucil

Tue Oct 14 21:06:15 UTC 2014

Hi all
Interesting reading too...It's not just Munich: Open source gains new ground in Germany

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| It's not just Munich: Open source gains new ground in Ge...Another municipality in Germany makes the switch to open source from Microsoft software. |
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| Ver en www.techrepublic.com | Vista previa por Yahoo |
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IMHO, I think it is all about commodity, "easyness" and lazyness in terms of a "centralised" management and maintenance, as Dan pointed. Also due to the lack of knowledge and awareness of other ways to do things.On top of that, how the KCC would be able to justify the costs of a bespoken software to manage the whole Council they bought a few years ago, software that did cost a "fortune" at the time and never worked or did what they wanted properly. Sorry, although I remember reading about that in the newspapers I cannot remember the source of this, but I remeber it brought out quite a discussion as it was a "recesion/crisis" time and they where closing centres because they could afford/maintain them.When Munich council (among others) and a whole country as Brazil have done the step (the brazilian government in a whole and all their administrative offices moved to Linux many years ago), why KCC shouldn't be able to do so.
Regarding end users my sister is quite illiterate in computers or any other technical stuff, and she is using in a daily basis my very old laptop which is running Linux. She has no problems in logging in, browse the internet or accesing files and documents in the system. How long (or how expensive) can take to explain an end user how to open a (non-Internet explorer) browser or basic IT work if they already know the very basic as Windows users. How long can take for a novice to learn the basics when they are not still "polluted" by a Microsoft environment.I think everything is about lack of interest or personal interests and business relationships.
RegardsAntonio.
      De: Jonathan Kaye <jdkaye at riseup.net>
 Para: kent at mailman.lug.org.uk 
 Enviado: Martes 14 de octubre de 2014 21:31
 Asunto: Re: [Klug-general] answer to my FOI request from Kent County Coucil
   
Dan Attwood wrote on 14/10/14 17:01:
> It's about management of those machines as well not just user experience.
>
> All the machines in KCC will be windows and they will all be being
> managed centrally via SCCM and AD.
>
> Having of pool of machines that are different would be a pain.
>
I'd like to see evidence for this assertion. I'd like to compare it with
the upheaval of changing from Windows XP to Windows 7.  In point of fact
all this has been done with not much loss of life as a result. I'd
really like to hear from admins who have actually gone through the
change from Windows to Linux as to the level of trauma experiences by
such a change compared to a Windows "upgrade". If it turns out that
changing the administrative system is indeed an easier route than so be
it and lets compare all open source vs. all Windows machines for the
Kent library system.


Jonathan


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