The alternative, in my experience, is that our government spends millions in creating a fork of Ubuntu, which is just regular Ubuntu with a different default set of packages, a custom background, and maybe one or two misc utilities (think of a disk formatter, etc) written in PyGTK which fucking suck.

Obviously, after a few years, they get tired of that rubbish distro, and go back to Microsoft.

Not to mention the fines the state has to pay when school teachers and other civil servants install Windows without licences and get caught.

So, yes, better if they just keep using fucking Windows.

>Obviously, after a few years, they get tired of that rubbish distro, and go back to Microsoft.

Funny you should say that, because it has happened exactly that way in the past (e.g. in Germany):

http://www.zdnet.com/article/after-a-10-year-linux-migration...

You know that Munich is currently expecting Microsoft to create a big center in their city and the major (a pro-Microsoft guy) try to court them. That has nothing to do with the quality of Linux.

I don't think that's all of it (simple payola). While that might have been involved, as it says:

The Second (deputy) Mayor of Munich, Josef Schmid, said the re-examination is necessary because of complaints from employees, who Schmid said are “suffering” in the transition.

(...)

Sabine Nallinger, who ran for mayor for the Greens, noted that data exchange was especially problematic and didn’t work properly. Schmid agreed, telling Munich’s largest newspaper, Süddeutsche Zeitung, that “Linux is very expensive” because of the need for custom programming.

And getting rid of all proprietary software isn’t realistically an option. That 2008 EC report noted that Munich uses 300 “specialised administrative software packages” to perform its official duties. Although the goal was to replace those proprietary applications with platform-independent alternatives, the reality is that most would probably end up running in Windows inside a virtual machine, which of course requires paying Microsoft a license fee.

"would probably" are in the top ten of weasel words.

Didn't that involve a constant lobbing pressure from MS?

It is a marketing victory instead of a technological one.

Nothing in my post was a joke, because I've seen it happen here in person.

And what's sad, is that anybody with half a brain could've expected the outcome. But of course, there are far too many people in the government who want a slice of cake.

The only viable (and vastly superior) alternative I think is running macOS, which would be prohibitively expensive for most organisations, especially schools.

Schools and government use GUI's for everything and Ubuntu's is just not good enough.

Ubuntu itself is good enough. If you mean GUI software providers different to the OS provider, then I agree. But not for the base OS.

Do you have any particular example explaining your opinion?

> spends millions in creating a fork of Ubuntu

Just install plain Ubuntu ffs

I thought most government institutions are using Red Hat?

The overwhelming majority are (at least in the US), primarily because Redhat will actually work with upstream projects and fix bugs. Canonical will say, "Lets see if Debian will fix it for us".

One of my employers spent a multi-year effort to replace Ubuntu entirely (with RHEL) after Jane Silber came onsite and agreed that their support organization could not work on the things we'd wanted them to, because Redhat was already the upstream working on those things or the preferred partner of said hardware vendors. This isn't heresay, I heard it from her myself (maybe 4 years ago?).

Call me petty and vengeful but every dollar the government wastes on Microsoft's useless spyware os is a dollar not spent on Oracle / people soft.

Oracle seems to have the best salespeople and good for them but I hate how our tax dollars are going to Larry Ellison.

What the hell? What impresses you so much about Oracle?

He's impressed at the caliber of Oracle's sales team since they can actually sell Oracle products. Frankly, I agree and would like to know what kind of jedi mind tricks those guys use on their customers.

They go straight to your boss' boss and if they don't get what they want from him they go to his boss.

Oracle's grip is slowly diminishing. I know a bank that's scaling back Oracle usage, especially since it wants to implement microservices.

Windows is a strong and stable operating system, and the best choice for the security of your family and your country.

All praises to Dear Operating System!

Not sure non-Brits will get the sarcasm.

We May

Sarcasm? On my HN?

It's more likely than you might think!

Anyone who dares suggest otherwise, must have been suborned by Mr Putin, ISIS or Mr Andrew Breitbart...

From the number of downvotes I have received, I can see that sarcasm is a foreign concept to many....

(Do not despair, Mr Trump will make all these evil foreign things go away )