Robert Pogson

Again, a big article was written to support a false thesis:
“why hasn’t Linux on the desktop taken off?”

In it Maria Korolov trots out a long list of “problems” with GNU/linux for large businesses. Here’s an example: “a typical organization will have one application for every 10 users, and, today, about half of those applications require the Windows operating system”

That makes no sense at all. It means businesses, money-making organizations, are foolishly paying for far too many applications. The largest organizations on the planet are governments and as we saw in Munich, it is worthwhile to shed unnecessary applications and rationalize the rest.

Then, there’s training. As if using a desktop paradigm that has been around for two decades requires a lot of training for users familiar with XP! I have often handed a GNU/Linux desktop over to a visitor with no hand-holding and some are not even aware that it is not that other OS. Munich found it did not reach its budget for training even though they were formal about it. Networking amongst staff costs little, is a part of normal business and gets the job done without phoning IT.

Even money. TFA suggests that the savings in licensing are eaten up by higher support costs. Nonsense! What about the malware and slowing down and re-re-reboots and Patch Tuesday? That costs a lot. There’s huge saving in using a package manager such as APT to manage a fleet of PCs. Large organizations like the French national police, IBM, Google, Munich, have no problem at all saving money with FLOSS.

Get over it, Maria. The world does not owe M$ a living.

For a good laugh, read Why Linux is a desktop flop

The bottom line? Even if everything in TFA article were true, none of it applies to non-business use of IT which is huge. The same people who quote NetApplications as stating GNU/Linux is 1% of something have nothing to say when NetApplications shows the region around San Francisco, USA, has 28% GNU/Linux clients. That would not happen if anything in TFA were true.

Darned if one of the in-laws hasn’t figured out how to lose weight… So, now “the little woman” is on my case to eat right. In the North I did eat right because I had only lean meat, fruits, vegetables and cereal to eat, you know, nutritious, filling stuff.

Here, the refrigerator and pantry are always stocked with “munchies” and quick foods so it is easy to over-eat.

Well, Free Software is coming to my rescue. One of the applications in the GNU stable is GNUtrition, a database of nutritional facts about everything. It told me what I already knew. I could eat just about as much as I want of beans, vegetables, fruits, and rice without being fat…

Should I share with her my analysis?

Anyway. I downloaded the source from here and checked the signature here, with the public key from here…

gpg –recv-keys 47486962
gpg –verify gnutrition-latest.tar.gz.sig
tar xzf gnutrition-latest.tar.gz
cd gnutrition-0.31.1
./configure
make
make install

On my system I had to add two packages to ./configure the package: python-mysqldb and python-gtk2. On the first run the programme asked for database passwords for MySQL.

The government of Venezuela which supplies computers, was caught agreeing to buy 205K licences for “7″ despite its own policies to prefer FLOSS. The blast in a blog by COLIBRIS is quite thorough and debunks all the usual myths trotted out to prop up the monopoly. They demand a reversal and other action.
“

• MYTH 1: “People prefer Windows”
• MYTH 2: “Windows is better”
• MYTH 3: “Give people opportunity to choose what they want”
• MYTH 4: “Canaima is difficult to use”
• MYTH 5: “Windows is for everyone”
• MYTH 6: “In Canaima, support is more complicated”
• Myth 7: “We must make the transition for people to adapt”

“

Besides debunking the myths, they list their own facts:
“

• FACT 1: The acquisition of 205 000 licenses harms national development
• FACT 2: It discourages those who work to develop our own technologies
• FACT 3: It strengthens the monopoly status of Microsoft at the expense of our own technologies
• FACT 4: He spends an important amount of currency that could be used on higher priority projects
• FACT 5: The 3390 Presidential Decree violates the Free Software
• FACT 6: violating Presidential Decree 6649 against luxury spending
• FACT 7: Microsoft has repeatedly tried to intervene in internal affairs of our country
• FACT 8: Microsoft supports legislation harmful to human rights and development of our people

“

Amen. They left out that M$ is evil but I guess one could sum it up that way. The sad thing is that after decades of monopoly people still have to prod others to fight for freedom. It should be obvious that promoting that other OS is weird/unnatural. The world can and does make its own software cooperatively.

I recommend Debian GNU/Linux for many reasons including having more control over IT. Allowing a remote corporation to run our IT is unnecessary, dangerous and wasteful.

see Lubrio – Cantv y VIT gastarán Bs. 53,7 millones para comprar licencias Windows: Por qué no estamos de acuerdo (Spanish)

Lubrio –
VIT Cantv and Bs 53.7 million spent to buy Windows licenses: Why we disagree(Google Translation)

OEMs have figured out that “8″ will not drive a wave of replacements of PCs because of the cost of touch-screens, CPUs and the licence of that other OS. Consumers are going to prefer small cheap computers with */Linux. This is what M$ feared a decade ago when PCs were ~$1K. The difference is that tablet PCs running */Linux are on retail shelves and consumers can see the prices… M$ and “partners” have nowhere to hide.

In other news, Digitimes reports that 21.5 million tablet PCs are expected to ship in Q2 2012, compared to 90 million x86 PCs…

Can you hear the shackles falling off a billion or more users of PCs?

see Digitimes – PC vendors reportedly facing challenges from Windows 8