On Monday 03 December 2001 21:12, Malcolm Herbert wrote:
hi all
all is not doom and gloom on the UK Govt front, despite the NHS deal. It's really a case of 'horses for courses' and last place that you would currently see M$ disposed is on the desktop.
Ah, but that is where the real challenge lies. Why bother with the easy stuff when its so much more interesting to do the tough stuff? :-)
Like any customer (or school) Linux and open source wins where it is currently 'better' that its alternative. Subscribers of this list are biased but be realistic. Had the NHS just spent £70m on web servers running exclusively M$ then i would be worried. In most schools using Linux, this does not go down to the desktop (ok, ok i know there are exceptions), but open source runs the cache, web server, DNS, routing, firewall etc
Not in that many schools. Its improving but I should think in schools there are far, far more Windows based servers than anything else. Still that can be changed. "Better" could be as good as but less expensive, or good enough and a lot less expensive. I believe that is the case with Star Office for example.
In fact, the UK Govt (like the French and German's) has recently tendered for an open source PKI entrant to its current interoperability trials (did Suse respond Roger?) and has recently commisioned a Linux TCO pilot with Red Hat. They have learnt from the Gateway fiasco.
The only way Linux and open source can succeed is to provide better solutions and focus on education and public sector.
That will certainly help, but it isn't the only factor. Entrenched views make change difficult and I wouldn't under-estimate the politics. After all, if it was just about quality, DOS would never have got off the ground. Linux in schools makes a lot of sense in a variety of situations at the desktop. In fact as a server its a bit of a "no brainer" its just lack of expertise that is slowing things down. At the desktop, it requires a targeting of technologies by application where the most used applications are served by low cost solutions freeing up money for specialist things that might well run on legacy Windows systems (Ok or new ones in some cases). With Star Office and a good web browser you have coverage of what most schools do 80% of the time in IT - I have OFSTEDed enough of them to provide a reliable sample. Most schools have machines that can do many other things but they get tied up with office and web browsing most of the time so the fact that they can run a million and 1 applications isn't actually that useful. Its just simple management really, but there are few managers in schools with the IT knowledge and confidence to do what they would in other situations where resources need to be prioritised. Its ab it like the principle of RISC. Optimise the things that get done most often then sort out the others. Regards, -- IanL