Munich to distribute Linux CDs to get people to ditch Windows XP

[Dr. C]

http://www.geek.com/microsoft/munich...ws-xp-1559894/
From the article.

... The goal is to reduce the amount of electronic waste its citizens generate when upgrading their computer systems. ...

Finally a municipality is paying aattention to the electronic waste problem by going to a major source of the problem operating system software. Local governments bear the brunt of the electonic waste problem and can be part of the solution. The reality is that with older Windows XP systems the only practical solution when Windows XP reaches its end of life is either creating more electronic waste or installing GNU/Linux.

[sanderj]

Sounds noble. But I wonder what the result will be: if you giva a Linux CD to people, 95% will not know what to do. And even if you give a instruction with it (for example in the form of a magazine), it can turn into a support nightmare: "Word / my Scanner / application X is not working anymore". "How can I find my pictures?". "My bank / employer does not support Linux. Now what?"

Only if the owners are willing to accept a completely new system (= Linux), I see it as feasible.

FWIW: I'm typing this on a low-spec, 2008 laptop (Celeron 2,1Ghz, 1GB RAM) running Lubuntu, and it's great. Just installed Lubuntu yesterday.
However, it was my father's, it was running Vista extremely slowly, and I didn't dare to advice my fathter to switch to Lubuntu; I adviced my father to buy a new laptop ... with Windows 7. Just to stay clear of a lot of support questions ...


EDIT:

A nice test: do *you* dare to give Linux-CDs to your family, friends and neighbours, with the advice to install it to replace their WinXP?

[lykwydchykyn]

It’s estimated that the 2,000 discs will cost around €4,000 to produce.

Sounds about right for government... :-/

[monkeybrain2012]

A nice test: do *you* dare to give Linux-CDs to your family, friends and neighbours, with the advice to install it to replace their WinXP?

Do you dare to give Windows8-CDs to your family, friends and neighbours and tell them to install it to replace their XP WITHOUT HELP? (even if you pay for the license)

Most people don't install or upgrade their OS themselves, they probably get some family members or friends to help them if the OS is not preinstalled. This goes with Winodws and Linux.

In North America you probably can't find anyone to install Ubuntu for you if someone just dumps a CD on you. But it seems that in Europe Linux does have a much higher public profile. I travelled in Spain and Italy, almost everyone (young people in their 20's and 30's)I met knew about Ubuntu whether they used it or not. Recently I met a German exchange student in Canada who asked me to help with fixing his computer (turned out to be hardware problem so couldn't be fixed) His knowledge about computers is on par with the normal user here, --not much. But he had Kubuntu installed on his laptop. He told me his room-mate in Germany installed it for him. So point is, in Europe there seems to be a better support system for Linux usage, the general users don't have to be more computer savy than their North American counterpart, as long as help is more readily available.

[mastablasta]

. So point is, in Europe there seems to be a better support system for Linux usage, the general users don't have to be more computer savy than their North American counterpart, as long as help is more readily available.

maybe could be true.

it's been quite a long time since firefox captured majority share in my country. maybe now Chrome took over. not sure there. But i remember quite a few yars ago Firefox was the main browser people used as opposed to IE popularity in USA. also plenty of notebooks below 500., 600 EUR are sold with no OS or with linux preinstalled here. so i can only wonder how popular linux desktop is in Europe. although majority definatelly still uses Windows...

[Erik1984]

Where I live it doesn't feel like Linux is popular. These statistic (I know, lies damn lies etc.) do support that and the notion that Linux is relatively popular in Germany.

Okay, this got a bit out of hand but I was curious about the differences between nations (just picked some nations per area)

Western Europe

Germany
http://gs.statcounter.com/#os-DE-mon...205-201305-bar

Netherlands (no Linux in the stats!)
http://gs.statcounter.com/#os-NL-mon...205-201305-bar

Denmark
http://gs.statcounter.com/#os-DK-mon...205-201305-bar

Belgium
http://gs.statcounter.com/#os-BE-mon...205-201305-bar

UK
http://gs.statcounter.com/#os-GB-mon...205-201305-bar

France
http://gs.statcounter.com/#os-FR-mon...205-201305-bar

Eastern Europe

Poland
http://gs.statcounter.com/#os-PL-mon...205-201305-bar

Ukrain
http://gs.statcounter.com/#os-UA-mon...205-201305-bar

Czech Repuplic
http://gs.statcounter.com/#os-CZ-mon...205-201305-bar

Southern Europe

Spain
http://gs.statcounter.com/#os-ES-mon...205-201305-bar

Italy
http://gs.statcounter.com/#os-IT-mon...205-201305-bar

Portugal
http://gs.statcounter.com/#os-PT-mon...205-201305-bar

Greece
http://gs.statcounter.com/#os-GR-mon...205-201305-bar

And now the United States
http://gs.statcounter.com/#os-US-mon...205-201305-bar

So in most (definitely not all!) European nations on this list the market share of Linux is higher than in the USA.

[mastablasta]

interesting how the use of XP rises as you move towards the east....

Mac OS usage falls.


It's interesting to notice how much people in developing countries would rather use pirated windows and compalin of viruses and such then switch to a free OS instead. And then they have virus scanners on those mashcines. let's say they help a little but if they never update virus database or anything else how secure is that? internet is accessed often prepaid via 3G dongles....

[sanderj]

Do you dare to give Windows8-CDs to your family, friends and neighbours and tell them to install it to replace their XP WITHOUT HELP? (even if you pay for the license)

No, certainly not. My advice to a Windows-user that wants a newer Windows: buy a new computer, or upgrade yourself and call Microsoft if things go wrong.

Most people don't install or upgrade their OS themselves, they probably get some family members or friends to help them if the OS is not preinstalled. This goes with Winodws and Linux.

Exactly. 95% of people don't install an OS, so providing an OS CD without support is not going to help 95% of the people.

[kurt18947]

Sounds noble. But I wonder what the result will be: if you giva a Linux CD to people, 95% will not know what to do. And even if you give a instruction with it (for example in the form of a magazine), it can turn into a support nightmare: "Word / my Scanner / application X is not working anymore". "How can I find my pictures?". "My bank / employer does not support Linux. Now what?"

Only if the owners are willing to accept a completely new system (= Linux), I see it as feasible.

FWIW: I'm typing this on a low-spec, 2008 laptop (Celeron 2,1Ghz, 1GB RAM) running Lubuntu, and it's great. Just installed Lubuntu yesterday.
However, it was my father's, it was running Vista extremely slowly, and I didn't dare to advice my fathter to switch to Lubuntu; I adviced my father to buy a new laptop ... with Windows 7. Just to stay clear of a lot of support questions ...


EDIT:

A nice test: do *you* dare to give Linux-CDs to your family, friends and neighbours, with the advice to install it to replace their WinXP?

I just did that. A friend has a Dell P4 with XP. I had previously wiped it and restored XP. There was a file system corruption, even Ubuntu was unable to access the partition. The same thing happened a couple weeks later. Okay, I guessed a bad hard drive and replaced it. I also installed Xubuntu rather than XP. It's a P4 w/512 MB RAM so wouldn't run Windows 7 or 8. It runs Xubuntu 32 bit perfectly. She has very modest requirements, she just needs to be able to browse the web and check email. I asked if she needed to print her emails out. She said no, had a Dell printer that she didn't think worked anymore. On the rare occasion she needed to print something she went to the public library.

I put a Firefox launcher on the desktop and saved a screen capture of the desktop. She was happy once she saw the Firefox icon on the desktop. I printed out a screen cap of the desktop with arrows pointing to the applications menu and power options. I set updates for security updates only and told her how to install other updates if she wanted to. I installed Libre Office in place of Abiword & Gnumeric. Did a couple printed pages explaining about SUDO and normal passwords, why there isn't antivirus installed etc. It's been a month or more and not a peep. No news is good news.

Would this work for everyone? Of course not. Anyone with uncommon hardware or who needs 100% file compatibility with work systems is going to have to dance to the Redmond tune. But I'll bet there are a great many people much like my friend.

[mastablasta]

ive recently tried MS office 2007 (the only one i could think of needing file compatibility). works ok in wine (Word, Excel and Powerpoint).


online pro banking is another issue.

but if you don't need games then linux is just fine and much faster than windows.