E-Petition: Migrate all government IT to Linux based systems

[petergriffin]

Found this on the e-petitions website:

Migrate all government IT to Linux based systems - e-petitions

I have signed it and I invite all of you to do so, even if you don't work with Linux and you think this could a threat to your career. If the public administration migrated all IT systems to Linux (which they promised to so many years ago under Labour) this country would save a lot of money, which could be reinvested into implementing local IT solutions, preventing the scandalous offshoring of IT hobs and handling of personal data to disreputable agencies abroad.

There's a considerable number of young IT graduates that would rather accept modest wages to work in open source than be sent to work for free (at taxpayers' cost) at Te-scum.

[MarillionFan]

I have just set up an e-petition stating that everything should be migrated to Microsoft Office, particularly Excel.

Nomadd.

[Churchill]

Found this on the e-petitions website:

Migrate all government IT to Linux based systems - e-petitions

I have signed it and I invite all of you to do so, even if you don't work with Linux and you think this could a threat to your career. If the public administration migrated all IT systems to Linux (which they promised to so many years ago under Labour) this country would save a lot of money, which could be reinvested into implementing local IT solutions, preventing the scandalous offshoring of IT hobs and handling of personal data to disreputable agencies abroad.

There's a considerable number of young IT graduates that would rather accept modest wages to work in open source than be sent to work for free (at taxpayers' cost) at Te-scum.

What a stupid suggestion.

[doomage]

Linux is only free if your time is worthless.

[Diver]

What a stupid suggestion.

So worth a vote then?

[Paddy]

[QUOTE=petergriffin;1519791]Found this on the e-petitions website:

Migrate all government IT to Linux based systems - e-petitions

I am 100% for this. Various European government departments have moved to Linux. The same for Open Office. It is a pointless waste of money handing over millions to Microsoft when the majority of Office users just use the most simple features of MS Office.

The same can be said with overpriced email systems.

[darmstadt]

Where I work the majority of desktop systems (a lot), all laptops and all external systems ( a heck of a lot) are all Ubuntu Linux (we migrated from RedHat last year) and so is Munich

[Mr.Whippy]

Linux operating systems have fully matured and are used by some of the largest institutions and governments in the world. Coming with no licesnsing costs, following initial migration costs and training costs the savings would be substantial.

I imagine the cost of "initial migration" would make the £12bn for NPfIT seem insignificant by the time they select one (or more) of the usual suspects to implement such a migration, unless AtW wants to step up to the plate and put his money where his mouth is?

As it would likely involve purchasing new hardware and taking up floor space (thus power & cooling costs increase) whilst it's all being developed/migrated by an army of technical consultants/managing consultants/project managers costing an arm and a leg per day etc

Also, no licensing? What about the paid for support & other vendor "add-ons" such a RHEL Satellite Server to manage your estate, which isn't cheap by any stretch of the imagination? (not suggesting they use RHEL, just an example).

What about the virtualization layer? What would they use? Might be showing my ignorance on the subject here but isnt VMWare really the only viable option on intel/amd kit? Or if not virtualized, they'd need an inordinate amount of kit & floorspace and infrastructure to support physical machines and therefore people to manage it.

Linux certainly has a place, but I don't think it's anywhere near viable enough to suggest they can replace the whole of gov.uk IT infrastructure with it....It's a tulip idea imo.

[Churchill]

I imagine the cost of "initial migration" would make the £12bn for NPfIT seem insignificant by the time they select one (or more) of the usual suspects to implement such a migration, unless AtW wants to step up to the plate and put his money where his mouth is?

As it would likely involve purchasing new hardware and taking up floor space (thus power & cooling costs increase) whilst it's all being developed/migrated by an army of technical consultants/managing consultants/project managers costing an arm and a leg per day etc

Also, no licensing? What about the paid for support & other vendor "add-ons" such a RHEL Satellite Server to manage your estate, which isn't cheap by any stretch of the imagination? (not suggesting they use RHEL, just an example).

What about the virtualization layer? What would they use? Might be showing my ignorance on the subject here but isnt VMWare really the only viable option on intel/amd kit? Or if not virtualized, they'd need an inordinate amount of kit & floorspace and infrastructure to support physical machines and therefore people to manage it.

Linux certainly has a place, but I don't think it's anywhere near viable enough to suggest they can replace the whole of gov.uk IT infrastructure with it....It's a tulip idea imo.

The last thing I wrote for a certain customer in Cheltenham runs under Linux... And Solaris... And Windoze...

[darmstadt]

Linux certainly has a place, but I don't think it's anywhere near viable enough to suggest they can replace the whole of gov.uk IT infrastructure with it....It's a tulip idea imo.

My last project was moving a lot of applications from Windows servers onto zLinux due to the extremely high costs of Windows software and hardware including both inhouse and remote support. This was for possibly the largest German government department going and it works perfectly well and is a darn sight cheaper. Although that is server based but as per my last posting, we have over 5000 Linux desktop users and costs have been dramatically reduced...