Ridin’ High!
The Inquirer- 06 February 2007:
LINUX IS THE clear winner out of a dispute between the Russian legal authorities and schools over who should carry the can over the use of pirated Windows software.
Rather than attacking mobsters who peddle pirated copies of Windows directly to companies, the Russian coppers decided to lock up a Sepich headmaster who bought hot Windows software which came from Perm region’s Capital Construction Administration.
Microsoft says that the incident has nothing to do with them, but it appears that Russian schools in the area are so scared about being shipped off to a Siberian Gulag, that they are buying Linux gear instead.
Schools in the Perm region will soon quit buying software from commercial companies, said the region’s Education Minister Nikolay Karpushin. The announcement was made in line with the report on ensuring ‘license purity’ in the region’s schools.
According to Karpushin, schools would start using freely distributed software like the Linux OS, Russky office and Open office desktop apps, Ekho Moskvi reports.
The flavour of Linux being used will be one of the cheap localised Russian Linux distributives in Russia.
If only people would take the same approach with music and movies.
#1, it depends how you define free.
With Linux you can buy just one distro, basically paying for a media instead of a download, and can install to as many machines as you want.
So Linux is royalty free, but when considering TCO, far from free.
1. Training
2. Updates
IMHO, Training & Updates costs more with Linux, even though the OS is royalty free. Multiply that by 200 machines, and MS will be cheaper.
The clincher is the anti-virus and anti-malware, and not giving users Admin privileges.
My pet peeve with Linux is often when you get everything to work fine, you break it later. Then you do an update, it downloads a ton of stuff, installs, reboot as required, then oops, VPN doesn’t work anymore, Remote Desktop doesn’t work anymore. Printer driver acts weird.
Well, that was Fedora Core 3.
Hopefully it’s better now. Have to try Ubuntu.
Did they fix the Year 2012 Unix bug???
This Russian school teacher incident is just a cursory nod to the copyright police. There is no love loss between the Russian government and the American capitalist pigs. They have no intention of feeding rubles in to Microsoft’s coffers. They are doing everything they can to undermine the economic might of the United States. Since our economy and exports is increasing based on intellectual property, any way our rivals can undermine our copyrights is a blow to us. Russia couldn’t crush us militarily as Khrushchev promised, but their ability to kick the legs out from under us economically is increasing every year.
3. “1. Training 2. Updates. Multiply that by 200 machines, and MS will be cheaper.”
I don’t know where you’ve been in the last year, but both Vista and Office 2007 have vastly different interfaces that will require training. Businesses are already bitching about the amount of training required to switch over to Office 2007 with its completely different “ribbon” interface.
I’m not entirely sure what you mean by “Updates.” Microsoft provides updates on a regular basis. Vista will make you update your hardware if you want to run Aero. As far as I’m concerned Linux has lower hardware requirements than Vista which would make any updates cheaper.
Much of Macintosh’s continuing popularity is the result of providing cheap computers to schools back in the 80’s and 90’s.
For years many schools featured Macs and Apples with lots of educational software like Oregon Trail. Kids grow up and buy Macs because that is what they learned in school.
Microsoft still has not figured this formula out.
#6 And then as they grow older, and wiser buy PC…
Ok… Just pulling your leg…
On this TCO thing I disagree with Mark. All costs being the same, and assuming a medium to big enterprise has a systems manager, Managing Linux can be easier than Windows. Just refrain to upgrade until all quirks are ironed out.
We’re all at the brink of a major interface shift. I guess some people are thinking already all the advantages to move to Linux instead of Vista.
So Linux is royalty free, but when considering TCO, far from free.
1. Training
2. Updates
IMHO, Training & Updates costs more with Linux, even though the OS is royalty free. Multiply that by 200 machines, and MS will be cheaper.
The clincher is the anti-virus and anti-malware, and not giving users Admin privileges.
Wow, I see you’ve bought into the M$ FUD about linux. I use Ubuntu and last I checked I get all my updates free. And as far as training, if you can use Windows, you can use Linux. What you can’t figure out, there are countless websites and thousands of users that can get you through any problem.
M$ take note, the more you raise your prices and the more douche you get with your licensing, the more smaller, poorer countries will be switching to linux. Before long your much touted 90something % market share will be gone. Good job tools.
I’m only comparing the OS to OS for TCO.
For sure, using actual applications, like MS Office or Open Office both have equivalent training.
Why has windows been so popular? Easy to install, configure, driver management, update management.
With Linux, takes more time to get it just right – but then you can Ghost to each machine, and better control the end users.
The shift I’m seeing in large companies, like insurance companies, is a centralized server farm running Windows 2003 & Citrix. Then each individual PC is basically just a dumb graphics terminal.
In such places, a Linux boot up + Remote Desktop would make sense, since the users don’t even do anything local anymore.
Why has Windows been so popular?
Pre-installed, that’s why. Cripes, who are you kidding with this bullshit?
10. Thanks John, that’s exactly what I was going to say.
John & SN, LOL. I so don’t agree with your POV.
Pre-installed? On what machines? The overpriced non-clones? Cripes, out of maybe 10,000 PC’s I’ve seen in the last 15 years, more than 3/4 were clones that did NOT come with MS-Windows pre-installed.
Windows popular only because :
Easy to install = as in no CD key validation required.
But if it had been a pain, like OS/2 was – which was pre-installed on all IBM machines – then it wouldn’t have been as popular.
But now that MS is enforcing CD-Key validation, this ups the ante for the TCO, making Linux more attractive in a multi-computer LAN.
For having “been there” multiple times, with SCO, Sun Solaris, Red Hat, Fedora, Linux is not a distro for the average user.
I’m glad that Ubuntu has worked hard making that extra layer between the OS and the User, so it works from scratch like XP does. Progress.
I have not bought into MS-FUD, stating fact. Linux is a more complicated beast than XP is.
I’m saying one is better than another.
Ubuntu is finally up-to-par in easy of installation and use, after how many $$$ of investment from many sources?
Personally I’m glad it’s been done, but I know for fact that in the corporate world, Linux -any distro- is not being considered. Yet they are considering Vista.
Similar to Firefox, that I’ve been promoting for two years now, not one of my corporate accounts (like 26 very large co’s) use it in the workplace. The IS/IT guys that have Admin privilege, do use it, but that’s it.
As far as programming language and databases are concerned, all Microsoft, since that’s what my corporate accounts want. I go with the flow.
My laptop dual-boots XP & Fedora Core 3, but in Linux, my VPN & RDP no longer works 🙁 and I also need Cisco VPN client.
windows is only easy to those who spend time learning how to use it. amazing, the same as linux.
if this bullshit claim that windows is so much easier to use…then people like my mom, or ANY AVERAGE USER, wouldn’t call me all the time with questions like, “where’s the send button…” or “why don’t i have word…the little icon isn’t on my desktop…”
I rarely do this.
I’m smiling.
Sometimes greed does change the world.
Windows TCO apparently includes going to prison. Pass.
The Windows TCO that’s stopping me from considering a Vista upgrade is the DRM first and the up-front cost second. I installed Xandros Linux and like it, after trying Ubuntu and having some problems with the local network. Xandros installed just as easily as Windows XP Pro, configured itself just as automatically, put me immediately onto the local network and configured correctly for my Mexican DSL Internet line, and came with Open Office and a slew of other programs.
If I didn’t need to use MS Office for various reasons, I’d be on Linux full time now. The speed penalty is too great when I run it in Crossover, though it does everything I need it to do in Crossover.
I really think the game is finally changing. Linux has finally gotten past that “still has a little ways to go” rut where it was stuck for so long, at least for me. And that’s Xandros, which is far from the most current distribution, at least in terms of application updates. I expect the next iterations of Ubuntu and other desktop-oriented distributions will be even better.
When a new piece of hardware can break your “Genuine Windows” registration, it’s hard even to make a case that Windows is more convenient – unless it has been preinstalled.
#12
And I’m sure there’s a significant number of Linux fans yapping “Ubuntu sucks because it’s too easy to install.”
Hmmm,
windows was created ont he point of POINT and click…
But its changed.
to make windows REALLY work, without any supplied utilities, you have to pay MORE and more.
windows updates augments Everything everytime.
Think about media player and what it USED to do, and what version 9/10 does NOW.
Think about a system that cant clean up its OWN mess’s. like the registry, and SLOWLY takes longer and longer to loadup.
BOw many programs BESIDES windows do you run, just to protect Winodws?? 3, 4, 5??
And then windows updates as it did with 2000/XP and things work differently…For SOME odd reason..
I almost forgot…
That penguin sure has a thing for deep penetration.
Angel you pick the weirdest angles…
#22
Well, just look at the shape of those roofs and then look at where the penguin is sitting on 🙂
I think Bush should force MS/Bill give it’s software away for free, to dumb down potential economic threats.
Russian have created some really bright minds over the years. Maybe by using/requiring linux in their schools, a solid Russian infrastructure for linux will develop with all the applications windows has. If that occurs in multiple countries, MS will be in a pickle trying to maintain it’s current practices. There was some stories about Brazil doing the same.
Using linux may force a better education, one rooted in the basics of computer science, electronics and physics instead of the more common power point based, point and click education of today.
The poor Russian pupil will have to learn to think, imagine that.
That will really be a threat to our national economic security, a populous of people not glued to their TVs.
I might as well make this point here. I hope some expert geeks are listening.
I do NOT want to get forced into Vista. XP has been working fine for me, but many of my favorite applications are old and I’m worried they won’t work with Vista. Turns out, some of those applications have also been made available in, yes, Linux.
I hope Vista is the Waterloo for Microsoft. I’ve had it with those guys.
But…Linux is not doable for most of us. The geeks get really condescending about it, but I simply can’t spend two hours figuring out drivers and what not each time I want each peripheral to work.
Unfortunately, most of what I read about Linux on line is like a bunch of children arguing in a school yard; this leads me to suspect that Linux isn’t being widely used by normal people with work to do.
I hope that Linux becomes a practical alternative for guys like me who are fed up with Microsoft, but I don’t see any signs of that happening, and the longer this drags out, the less credibility the fading promise of Linux has for the millions of us trapped by Microsoft.
Just my observation.
Just depends on your definition of work. If all people do is open some mails and reply them, check some online information, write some documents for your company or online, print them and some ocasional excel or database work, well… Linux can do it just like Windows right out of the box. The regular Linux distro has bundled usually firefox and thunderbird and openoffice. They are the equivalents of outlook, internet explorer and office, and equally competent. Let’s face it: this is 90% of the work done in any corporation.