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The world is not octal despite DEC.
Just wait, de-clouding isn't the end of it. (Score:5, Insightful)
One day, managers will realize that if you have to hire IT people, there's no difference between Linux and Windows in terms of 'knowing it' because you hire people who already do.
One day, managers will realize that a Linux desktop is good enough, and no, you don't really need all those extra things shoved into Windows that Microsoft changes every few years anyway. 99% of what goes on at the desktop level these days is checking email, instant messaging, and maybe very basic MS Office suite. A lot of busine
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Why windows over Linux in many business environments?
2 reasons:
1) most staff already know windows. Yes, this is a chicken and egg problem for corporate desktop Linux. It is what it is.
2) Microsoft Office. Specifically Word, Excel, PowerPoint. People know how to use them and expect them to work as they do. Anything that varies won't be adopted. No one wants to learn a new app to get the functionality they already had.
1 not reason:
1) costs. The cost of the OS is already wrapped into the hardware. No o
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Every major Windows version change, I hear people complain about the desktop differences... and it seems to last until the next major change. Remember when the Ribbon became a thing?
I run default Mint on a couple of computers in my home and my wife, who is almost completely computer illiterate, has no issues switching between it and Windows. We use Bluemail as an email client and sometimes the interface annoys her, but then so do Hotmail and Outlook. I know several companies that somehow manage to use a
Re:Just wait, de-clouding isn't the end of it. (Score:0)
1) your wife is not the typical user. The typical user is more like the DMV person who I had to gently point out that "maybe if you hit enter..." to get her data entry app to go to the next screen when she was sitting there for 30 seconds doing nothing
2) there is still no benefit for retraining everyone to Linux or to a free Office clone. None. Why should any IT Manager do this? It will confuse his users, require rewriting a ton of documentation and yield what positive result for his company? None.
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I mostly agree with you here but this doesn’t really address the point that microsoft will happily fuck with everything for silly reasons. Unless you use extremely niche features libreoffice is closer to office 2003 than the ribbon offices
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The big problem with LO for me is Calc. I use Excel at work fairly regularly and it is just less painful to use in honestly every single way. The interface is more comfortable with fewer clicks and keypresses required, the onboard help is excellent, the context help likewise, and perhaps more important than any of those things it's very noticeably faster in every regard. The functionality is also light years ahead, e.g. live pivot tables. I'm thankful to have a free of cost office suite that does a reasonab
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LO Calc has some ridiculous bugs and missing features. I gave up and went back to Excel. Additionally, when I report a bug they tell me it isn't a bug, so clearly they will never fix some of these things.
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Right. But guess what is even closer to Office 2003 than LibreOffice? Yup, you guessed it. The answer is Office 2003. Which is why I keep using it. There are very few features I ever need from later versions. True, Office 2003 has a few annoying bugs. But LibreOffice has an enormous quantity of annoying bugs that have been deal killers for some things I've tried to do, like stuff as simple as putting images into a document.
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I have to admit I keep a copy of office 2003 as well but keep it confined to a few use cases because it has so many unmitigated CVEs. It’s peak office and even if you go back a few editions it only has a few compelling features (aside from docx support)
Soooooo fast on modern machines.
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I mostly agree with you here but this doesn’t really address the point that microsoft will happily fuck with everything for silly reasons. Unless you use extremely niche features libreoffice is closer to office 2003 than the ribbon offices
I was tasked a few years back with word processing and presentation applications. The main demand was it had to act identically on Windows, Mac and Linux.
The vaunted industry standard Office failed right out of the gate. No Linux variant and not even compatible with itself on Mac. Mac and Windows interface completely different. Printer plain failure between them. Utter failure.
So OO to the rescue. Operated identically on all three platforms. Take a document between them and it looked the same. And it
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For someone who is 'way smarter than me', you seem to have a lot of trouble grasping the underlying point that there isn't much difference between retraining between Windows versions and retraining to one of the friendlier Linux distributions.
You keep saying, "It's different". It's not. There's always retraining and documentation regardless of whether you stay with Microsoft or not. Are all your users still trained on and using documentation for Windows 3.11 for Workgroups?
Re:Just wait, de-clouding isn't the end of it. (Score:4, Insightful)
There is a huuuuuge difference between training someone to use Linux and the next version of Windows/Office.
The significant changes to windows are very rare and not a stumbling block to half the users.
Switching them to Linux is definitely harder, requires a complete rewrite of all documentation and -still- has absolutely no benefit to the company.
What is this amazing as yet to be named benefit to switch to corporate desktop Linux/office?
Literally no one in corporate gives a shit about the extra $100 pass through for MS Windows or Office license. Larger places just buy an enterprise license anyway. Still waiting to hear from -anyone- why desktop Linux is a better option.
Show me how you're smarter than me. What is this mysterious benefit?
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If I remember XP didn't meet various security standards so Chromebook happened. There's valid reasons to not use windows, besides choice.
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What? XP was 2001.
Chromebook was 2011.
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XP went out of support in 2014.
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Chromebook was the marketed device, the beta testing inhouse was long prior to that, IIRC.
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Uh it could have been in beta for 50 years but the only date that matters is when users could buy one.
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That's simply not true. What matters is the reason why Chromebooks exist and why Google felt it was worth embarking on.
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Using the DMV example, it makes me wonder why they got rid of the 3270 terminals. For a lot of things, especially forms that needed to be filled out, nothing beat those for being effective, as one winds up having to tab through all the fields anyway. Maybe some better handling of complex, hierarchical menus like finding a product, but overall, from what I've seen, moving to Web based terminals has made things closer than just going through fields.
OS-wise, going from skeuomorphic UIs to flat-file with butt
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There are essentially no productivity improvements with most windows U/I changes. Absolutely, I agree.
My point is that there are far more things the same between versions than differences. Thus even if they do some stupid shit like move the start button that's easier for even the dumbest users to figure out than starting them over in a new UI/OS (which itself brings no user benefits).
As far as DMV lady goes, I dunno man, it was Oakland in California. I assume the systems are the same across the state but
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> and yield what positive result for his company?
Choosing when you upgrade next and perhaps not being on the receiving end of eternal blue like problems because MS don't see it's a problem.
Give the staff the option, just like most get a choice between Windows/Mac.
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Have you run IT before?
The typical replacement cycle is 3 years.
Maybe windows updates are far more than 3 years apart and even then updates to new major version are not mandatory as MS supports the old version for several more years and if necessary a company can pay for extended support to go way longer than sanity allows for.
As far as giving users choice goes, you definitely haven't run a large IT group. The last thing you need is a multi OS environment for your users which more than doubles your work as
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Non-profits should do whatever is cheapest. Cash is more important than IT man power time and the expectations ftlm the users and management are much lower.
Corporations: 3 years, 5 years, shrug, doesn't matter. There's no sword of Damocles that wasn't always there. At some point the underlying hardware dies or ages out or gets damaged, lost, etc and needs to be replaced. At most places that laptop is something like a Dell for about $1k msrp but negotiated down from there in bulk. The CFO's office alrea
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No, I haven't run a large IT budget. My career has been almost entirely spent working for startups and non-profits. The amounts of money that you are thinking of as trivial absolutely DO matter in those environments.
The makerspace that I'm doing stuff for currently is looking at having to replace 30 or more computers in October 2025 because they are systems that are not supported by Windows 11. We currently own 5 systems that ARE supported, which means that nearly all of our systems will have to be replaced
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That couldn't be further from the truth. Most large organisations give their users BYOD options if they don't fit into one of the existing buckets.
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And what level of support does BYOD get? Zero.
If your BYOD doesn't allow you to finish your project on time your boss will be cool with that. Right?
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If your BYOD doesn't allow you to finish your project on time your boss will be cool with that. Right?
I have a lot more confidence finishing ontime with BYOD than relying on corporate IT to resolve a ticket this week.