Ubuntu in Government

[poofyhairguy]

Here is good link that describes the challeges Ubuntu faces as it tries to make inroads in the United States:

http://www.linuxjournal.com/article/8253

[panickedthumb]

Well, that's going to be quite hard to get any new distribution into government, or ANY major change for that matter-- they have to have stability guaranteed.

[Brunellus]

A bunch of guys from the Northern Virginia LUG (novalug) manned a booth at FOSE this year (http://www.cyberigor.com/fose/index.php?n=Main.PostMortem). They handed out scads of Ubuntu CDs to assorted Federal IT types.

Now, I hope at least some of those seeds take root....

[panickedthumb]

A bunch of guys from the Northern Virginia LUG (novalug) manned a booth at FOSE this year (http://www.cyberigor.com/fose/index.php?n=Main.PostMortem). They handed out scads of Ubuntu CDs to assorted Federal IT types.

Now, I hope at least some of those seeds take root....
Nice! Some of that LUGgy goodness needs to come to southwest VA.

[YourSurrogateGod]

Pretty soon there'll be conspiracy theories associated with Ubuntu :wink: .

[panickedthumb]

haha. There probably already are-- there are consipracy theories about EVERYTHING with a corporate backing.

[poofyhairguy]

Pretty soon there'll be conspiracy theories associated with Ubuntu :wink: .


Already is. Haven't you heard? The word on the street is that Ubuntu was created to Kill Debian, OEDIPUS REX style.

[fintler]

I currently work at a regional center for a federal agency and we have a Dapper LTS server setup for mostly lamp. There's also a Mediawiki for our team to document projects (which is growing at an insanely fast rate). When we first setup the box, we were tempted to disguise it as Microsoft Server 2003 so we would get asked less questions about it ;) However, it seems that we have encountered more curiosity than hostility. What initially gave Ubuntu its credibility was (believe it or not) beryl when I first brought it in to the agency. Eye candy has an effect on people and makes them fear stuff less. Anyway, Ubuntu is in government, it's just not in any high profile position that I know of.

Oh, and BTW, the support that Canonical offers is a great way to smooth things over. Especially in government, employees like to be able to pass on problems to someone else. Even though we currently don't have a support contract, the inability to get one would of been a show stopper.

[fintler]

Nice! Some of that LUGgy goodness needs to come to southwest VA.

It already has :-#

[Frak]

The high school I work for has...

Dapper installed on the servers
Edgy installed on all client computers
Kubuntu edgy installed on the art departments computers (don't ask me why) and
Xubuntu on the older computers

Thats about it.

[Frak]

Already is. Haven't you heard? The word on the street is that Ubuntu was created to Kill Debian, OEDIPUS REX style.
I wouldn't see why, I use debian for things I can't do with Ubuntu...

[maxamillion]

To be really honest with you, it sounds like some fan buy on dig.com said that ubuntu was made to kill debian. If this were true Shuttleworth wouldn't be paying full time debian developers. Why does he pay people to work on debian? because ubuntu IS debian and without debian, ubuntu essentially dies (or atleast has one interesting ripple in its development process.

http://www.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/relationship

In my opinion, ubuntu has done for the desktop what debian never had the drive to accomplish because to the debian community, it was fine for desktop use. Which it is, many people still use it as a desktop distro even today but the fact of the matter is that ubuntu takes debian and puts it on the desktop with the ease of use that the masses have been asking for, is there room for improvement? of course, always will be but ubuntu is doing really well at what they do.

[leftcase]

Unfortunately MS has a tendancy (at least here in the UK) to ensure that government agencies don't use open-source software by offering massive discounts to keep them tied into windows..

http://news.zdnet.com/2100-3513_22-6138154.html

[macogw]

A bunch of guys from the Northern Virginia LUG (novalug) manned a booth at FOSE this year (http://www.cyberigor.com/fose/index.php?n=Main.PostMortem). They handed out scads of Ubuntu CDs to assorted Federal IT types.

Now, I hope at least some of those seeds take root....
With the DC Ubuntu LoCo team, they set up Yorktown HS (in NoVa) with an Ubuntu system. I don't go to NoVaLUG though, I go to DCLUG.

[Polygon]

Unfortunately MS has a tendancy (at least here in the UK) to ensure that government agencies don't use open-source software by offering massive discounts to keep them tied into windows..

http://news.zdnet.com/2100-3513_22-6138154.html


well, ubuntu and linux in general has one discount that microsoft can never give: free!


my school, uses mac os X, and is like the ONLY district in the state i believe to be a only mac district. It isnt that bad, it allows the school to prevent wannabe hackers from simply deleting a few files in the system folder and gaining like complete access to the computer... and its pretty stable and runs basically all programs that students need (word, photoshop, etc)

but since its a remote account setup (as in the operating system is on the computer your using, but basically all your preference files and home folder are on a server), if the server goes down, say good bye to whatever you were working on =/

i dont think it would be that hard to get something like that up and running with ubuntu, and id bet the server would be a lot more stable as well...

[Mateo]

You have to walk before you can run. Linux users (and I'm one, of course) want mainstream acceptance, but the OS is not ready for the mainstream. It's still entirely too difficult for laypeople to use. Until you are able to install software with little-to-no user interaction -- that means the user doesn't have to download dependancies ever, and that he doesn't have to know specifics of his own hardware, or ever use a terminal, then governments and schools will not switch. Why should they. Who wants to train employees to become computer experts for the minimal benefit for doing so.

[patrick295767]

Well, that's going to be quite hard to get any new distribution into government, or ANY major change for that matter-- they have to have stability guaranteed.

Mother Debian is already in use for government ...
http://www.debian.org/users/#gov

Maybe Ubuntu ...(?) I saw Ubuntu in a small eng. school once ... not Debian

More use of reportbug should be used for ubuntu maybe (?) and significantly lot more attention to it
apt-get -f install reportbug
Why my Debian never crashes, and for Edgy that was rather the opposite ...

[scrooge_74]

You have to walk before you can run. Linux users (and I'm one, of course) want mainstream acceptance, but the OS is not ready for the mainstream. It's still entirely too difficult for laypeople to use.

I will differ with you, at a coporation, be it public or private, users are not expected to know how to configure their system, that is the job of the IT staff,


Until you are able to install software with little-to-no user interaction -- that means the user doesn't have to download dependancies ever, and that he doesn't have to know specifics of his own hardware, or ever use a terminal, then governments and schools will not switch. Why should they.
Who wants to train employees to become computer experts for the minimal benefit for doing so.

in fact ask in any normal office how many people know what they have inside their XP computers.

And, most of the problems in a Windows enviroment comes from wanabbe power users trying to install things and change configurations.

[maddog39]

Already is. Haven't you heard? The word on the street is that Ubuntu was created to Kill Debian, OEDIPUS REX style.
Really? Lol, if it was out to kill debian, why would it be based on debian. ;) :P

[Frak]

Really? Lol, if it was out to kill debian, why would it be based on debian. ;) :P
And why would Mark Shuttleworth hire active Debian Developers. ;)

[WiseElben]

The high school I work for has...

Dapper installed on the servers
Edgy installed on all client computers
Kubuntu edgy installed on the art departments computers (don't ask me why) and
Xubuntu on the older computers

Thats about it.

Were you the one who persuaded them or did they persuaded you? =o

[Hex_Mandos]

I'm actively working to see Ubuntu (or at least some Linux) in my city's government. I work (for free) with a councilor, and I'm writing a Free Software Only ordinance for her. Basically, that would require the city to use only FOSS unless there was a specific need they can't meet with it (plus, any development coming from municipal IT people must be GPLed). I want to make a Xubuntu demonstration on govt computers sometime soon, using a LiveCD.

[Frak]

Were you the one who persuaded them or did they persuaded you? =o
I told them I would quit if they didn't take Windows off of the computers in the school, and since I'm one of the only qualified people here (or the only decent one), they really didn't have a choice, plus they new the benefits, and since vista was coming out, and the school wants to have as much compatability with the students as they could, which was just making a couple of scripts that could be executed over a network, all the learning applications either run under wine, or the linux app is just as good, plus they new if anything went wrong one of us could fix it, and they are now very happy, we save thousands a year in repairs and what not, as you can't fix some problems in Windows without permision from Microsoft, which is a burden, so now we can fix anything without getting sued by somebody.

So I guess I pursuaded them, I hated waiting for the approvals from microsoft lackies, when now I can fix now!, and have the added luxury of command line which all geeks/nerds need, and the students can't screw it up.

[Gargamella]

The high school I work for has...

Dapper installed on the servers
Edgy installed on all client computers
Kubuntu edgy installed on the art departments computers (don't ask me why) and
Xubuntu on the older computers

Thats about it.

wow...my school has 2 computer labs and it spent 3000 € to upgrade it to win xp...I know it because I am the representative of the students

[Frak]

wow...my school has 2 computer labs and it spent 3000 € to upgrade it to win xp...I know it because I am the representative of the students
We all here really enjoy the 6 month upgrades, where Edubuntu lets us upgrade all computers off of the main server, we aren't a mirror for Ubuntu, but we have all packages needed for upgrades, so all of the packages can come off of the server, very convenient!, plus...

We have 7 computer labs, and paid $15,000 to upgrade to XP, now we can upgrade all computers (at the exact same time, in under half-an-hour), for a grand total cost of.... wait for it.... $0.00!