uk gov want to switch to linux

[soni1770]

save £100 per machine = £400m across government


http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2010/jan/27/cloud-computing-government-uk

[Devi1903]

Lets hope they pump their saved money back into opensource development

[BramWillemsen]

I expect Microsoft to offer them some price reductions in secret in order to keep them as customers. As soon as enough people start to make the switch and get used to linux it would be harder to keep a monopoly.

[beastrace91]

Lets hope they pump their saved money back into opensource development

Agreed. Even if they payed back a quarter of what they saved it would be a huge boost to a few projects.

~Jeff

[The Toxic Mite]

I expect Microsoft to offer them some price reductions in secret in order to keep them as customers. As soon as enough people start to make the switch and get used to linux it would be harder to keep a monopoly.

http://linsux.org/forum/public/style_emoticons/default/bandwagon.gif

[Paqman]

Lets hope they pump their saved money back into opensource development

As a UK taxpayer i'd much rather see money the NHS (for example) saved on their IT budget put into patient care.

It's unusual to hear someone that high up in the UK government talking about open source, and even Linux specifically. I'm not going to hold my breath though. MS is dug in pretty deep.

[Techsnap]

I'd also like to see some of that money being spend on roads I pay my roadtax and for what? Potholes? Then when they resurface the roads the electric or waterboard are there 2 weeks later digging it all up again.

[Devi1903]

As a UK taxpayer i'd much rather see money the NHS (for example) saved on their IT budget put into patient care.

It's unusual to hear someone that high up in the UK government talking about open source, and even Linux specifically. I'm not going to hold my breath though. MS is dug in pretty deep.
Yer, but if u gonna use it please donate to improving it!

[Devi1903]

I'd also like to see some of that money being spend on roads I pay my roadtax and for what? Potholes? Then when they resurface the roads the electric or waterboard are there 2 weeks later digging it all up again.
As a UK Citizen now living in LEsotho, Southern Africa, i tend not to complain about what u have in UK. I pay 24% tax here and for a hospital that kills more than it cures and same with the roads!

[Devi1903]

Didn't they say this a while bck though and nothing really came of it? I seem to remember hearing something about it.

[Kai69]

I am an MOT tester the system they use is Opera so its already happening.They brought this in in 05/06 when the system went computerised ,new bigger printed MOT cetificates

[NoaHall]

I am an MOT tester the system they use is Opera so its already happening.

The "system"? Opera is a web browser. It is also not GNU/Linux, nor really related in any way.

[Kai69]

Sorry my bad all i know is it dosnt look or work like windows or mac.

[Paqman]

Yer, but if u gonna use it please donate to improving it!

It's not like they'd be paying nothing. There would be massive support contracts involved.

[.•*´]

With all the training involved it may be cheaper to stay with Windows, unless they're planning to upgrade either to Linux or Windows 7.

[scottuss]

It's a shame but this probably wont get past hot air stage. I really hope it does, but who knows.

As for Open standards, that's a given. No Government has any right to store public data in closed formats.

BUT this is the work of politicians, so we know it may not happen.

Edit: On a similar note, the Tories have some pretty good policies on Open Source, maybe this is just a reaction to that..

[handy]

Governments going for open-source software is the best insurance for FOSSs survival.

China & Russia are going with Linux in a big way.

We really need some of the big countries like Britain, in the West to do the same thing.

Opening up to small businesses, as the article mentions, will also support FOSS as there will be specific development done to meet a variety of government needs. Also the government itself could hire programmers for certain jobs, or use University IT departments to further development.

Good news, I hope it goes the distance.

[audiomick]

I expect Microsoft to offer them some price reductions in secret in order to keep them as customers. As soon as enough people start to make the switch and get used to linux it would be harder to keep a monopoly.

From what I heard, Microsoft offered Munich deals to the value of 4 million marks when Munich decided to go open source. I am quite sure the story is at least to a large extent true. I was living in Munich at the time.

[SuperSonic4]

This will get swept under the rug for there is a general election upcoming. Too often parties'll use anything to score pointd against the other

[handy]

<cynicism> Perhaps the whole thing is just a ploy to get the best deal out of MS? </cynicism>

[Kai69]

I think alot of companys are switching to linux (london stock market) even in europe mabey its because windows xp is only going to be supported until 2014 and vista HA Windows 7 is too expensive BTW what did it cost the UK gov to update the NHS computers and then it didnt work UK debt £6000.00 per second I think its a step in the right direction.

[phrostbyte]

They are talking about a Linux-powered cloud, which is not so special. Linux is actually the rule, not the exception, in web infrastructure. :) If they were switching to Linux on the desktop it would be impressive.

[betrunkenaffe]

indeed, rather than trying to simply replace windows, looks like they are planning on taking advantage of web based technologies to make the OS redundant... so why pay for it.

[BramWillemsen]

From what I heard, Microsoft offered Munich deals to the value of 4 million marks when Munich decided to go open source. I am quite sure the story is at least to a large extent true. I was living in Munich at the time.

Yeah I read the article about that too. That's why I came up with this statement.

[ukripper]

As a UK taxpayer i'd much rather see money the NHS (for example) saved on their IT budget put into patient care.

It's unusual to hear someone that high up in the UK government talking about open source, and even Linux specifically. I'm not going to hold my breath though. MS is dug in pretty deep.

Well said. Firstly, MS Office users will cry surely..

[Swagman]

I really don't think Joe Public comprehends just how much windows licensing costs the public purse each year.

All those government terminals (They leave quite a few on trains each year as well)

NHS
Police
Libraries

You could probably build a brand new super hospital with research centre and man it EVERY YEAR just on licensing costs alone.

[Skara Brae]

I expect Microsoft to offer them some price reductions in secret in order to keep them as customers. As soon as enough people start to make the switch and get used to linux it would be harder to keep a monopoly.
The Belgian federal government (well, part of it :) ) switched to Linux (SLED 10) back in October 2008. The switch went flawlessly for my (computer illiterate, Windows-only) colleagues.

I heard that the IT folks prefer Linux over Windows ("duh?":p). But I also heard we may get Windows back.
Aaargh.
As there is NO reason whatsoever to get back to Windows, I wonder where this might come from... Or do I already know?...
If you know what I mean?

At the end, it took Windows 2000 on my PC two minutes 20 seconds (or was it 3 minutes 20?) to start up :shock: Really.

Pity we did not get (K)Ubuntu, though :)

-oo-

( Just last night, OpenSuSE messed up the (dual boot) Vista installation on my laptop and I can not get it fixed. As the Restore partition is also not accessible, I am kind of stuck... Thanks, Samsung.).

This is the second time that OpenSuSE (more particularly GRUB, I suspect) "messes up" something on a PC of mine.

OpenSuSE is crap.

Ubuntu rocks!(As does Xubuntu)

How strange: both GNU/Linux, and yet so different... )

[scottuss]

They are talking about a Linux-powered cloud, which is not so special. Linux is actually the rule, not the exception, in web infrastructure. :) If they were switching to Linux on the desktop it would be impressive.

Don't be so sure about that. As much as I am of the opinion that Linux is a much better web infrastructure OS than Windows, MS has a fairly tight grip on many organisations, not just on the desktop.

Windows Server is still way more popular than it ought to be! :P

[Andreas1]

Lets hope they pump their saved money back into opensource development

let's just hope they don't screw it up like our city administration (Vienna). for some reason their distribution is currently based on Debian 3, and they insist they need to keep using software designed specifically for internet explorer, so they went back to Microsoft. fail :-(