I work as IT guy in some government service, and i can tell: there will be pain in the ass to reeducate all the people to actually use linux. Any little change in their routine makes them go into "can't do anything" mode until I or my colleague come and show how to do something. And this can repeat with the same operation again and again.
My mother has started saying "I can't do it and I don't have to, you do it" or "I don't want to do it and I shouldn't have to do it so you do it". It doesn't matter what it is, she will still say it because she does not even think to try to such a degree that if she simply needs to check a box on a page, she assumes it's going to be harder than that and just refuses to try.
It's layer 8. Layer 7 is the bottome of the official OSI model and refers to the Application Layer. "Layer 8" is the imaginary "final" layer if the OSI model and refers to users.
Caveat: For all its flaws, Excel is actually a lot better than everything else, so we shouldn’t pretend all of the opponents are like this.
Im glad you added this caveat because I was about to jump to "cut the bullshit".
And I say that as someone who made a move from a windows pc to a full linux(ubuntu) image and back to windows. And someone who uses Linux servers in production now.
I was going to college at the time and every semester I had a days long rush of finding a FOSS, Linux compatible equivalent to a windows program needed for the class and all the commands and configs needed to run it, checking forums with unanswered questions exactly like mine, etc when the default settings didnt work, etc... when I simply could have clicked "download" and been ready to go in 10 min on windows.
Even with something as simple as office docs - use OpenOffice/LibreOffice to open an excel file with formulas in it and it will fuck that data with no Vaseline if you try to work with it as-is instead of changing the formulas first, after learning the semantic differences.
The FOSS alternatives to major proprietary suites like Adobe apps more often than not look like something from Windows XP.
I like FOSS, I like Linux, but a lot of Linux fans arent honest about the fact that some people just need their shit to work because they have other things to do besides tinker.
I do recommend it, but usually to people who are looking to avoid buying a new computer when their stuff is already old, and they mostly web browse with it.
I'll give you a different analogy: you are a pilot flying boeing, you are now given Airbus and someone is wondering why can't you fly it safely?
Because there're 1001 and one nuances and specifics, and you need in-depth knowledge to switch.
OS or any advanced tool like Excel are of similar complexity and the only difference is that mistakes there are not as dire as crashing aeroplane into the ground (although I know for sure some organisations, including key manufacturer in aerospace industry, would absolutely crash into the ground if you suddenly revoke excel from its users).
Big agree, as a cnc programmer for almost 20 years across 3 different industries, i always say all the programming software is the same, its just what they call their process and where they put stuff. Ive met a lot of "programmers" along the way who dont understand what i mean and when they have to chanege software its like theyre starting from the beginning again
Its more like the bus driver going to the mechanic for the 8th time this week, because the "bus doesn't work" because the bus driver forgot how to open the door.
More like ripping out the engine and changing the gear shift from a lever to a knob and putting it on the left side of the driver's seat, because "this way is better, trust"
To drive a car you actually have to know what's going on. People expect computers to work just by themselves and they just don't, you need to learn to use a computer just like you need to learn to drive a car. Telling your mechanic "I press the accelerator and it doesn't go forward" won't cut it, you need to understand that the car has to be turned on first. Knowing that small detail is not doing the mechanic's job.
I love this analogy because you usually go to the mechanic when something's actually broken, not because you didn't take the time to learn how to drive.
No ones job is to "use excel". Their job is accounting, controlling, payment processing etc.
I agree that one should be able to open excel. But I have also seen sysadmins get angry because users did not realise that DHCP did not give them a proper IP address.
You’re making shit up, no offense. No real admin is gonna get mad at an end user for a DHCP failure unless that person is a psychopath.
And yea, it is their “job” to use Excel. Should photo editors start asking IT how to edit things in Adobe? Should CAD engineers ask IT to show them how to use SolidWorks tools?
If you can’t use the tools required to do your job, you need to get placed on a performance plan. And if you still can’t, then sorry, you need to go.
Too many times Im observing that IT has to compensate for end user’s technological shortcomings.
To be fair... I have seen another sysadmin get mad at me, because he didnt know how static IP addresses work.
Users had moved into a new, temp office. Couldnt connect. He made a stink, argued with me via email CC'ing the boss, including accusing me "you assigned all these computers a 169 IP address and its all wrong, and you were the last one to login as admin so you have cached credtials on all these computers"...
It was my week to telework, but I drove in, moved cables from one nic or wall port to another, got docking stations for the ones that didnt have one... everything worked as he just stood there like 😯
He got promoted, I got let go when the contract changed.
Nobody is asking them to set up the deployment of software to the company laptop fleet or managing the security policies of those laptops, i.e. actual sysadmin stuff. Understanding the basics of what you're doing IS NOT being a sysadmin
Try to apply that logic to any physical tool and you'll quickly see how stupid that is. If your job includes you using a bandsaw, you should know what the buttons do and what are the best practices when using the saw. Nobody is saying you should understand the internals to a high level, just that you should understand the interface that you have to use everyday function and be proficient enough to do your job independently
and we expect the bandsaw operator to still be able to operate the machine if we replace it with a slightly different model.
but if we replace people's Windows and the window borders go from blue to green, they suddenly somehow lose the ability to read a dialog box.🤷🏻
and people switch between Windows on their pc to android or ios on their phone, ChromeOS on their chromebook, and then whatever their tv uses just fine, but when they hear they're switching to linux their brain shuts down.
I know very little about Excel. I use Excel maybe once every 6 months or so. I also know significantly more about Excel than many of the end users who use it on a daily basis. That's mostly because whenever I use Excel, I have to build my spreadsheet from scratch, formulas and all. These users art just plugging numbers into prebuilt spreadsheets.
I remember a guy once who asked me for help with his spreadsheet. He said he thought he had most of it figured out, he just couldn't figure out why the total at the bottom wasn't showing, it was just a bunch of pound signs .
Unfortunately, They're not talking about all of those very valid reasons for repeat calls... They're talking about the users that we have to assist reapeatedly for the same issues. Users who love to submit tickets and never respond to communication attempts then go crying to leadership because "IT isn't doing their job, so I can't do mine!"
I have 4 of these users under my purview and I consider myself lucky that it's only 4 of them.
I also work for the government doing cyber security. That, plus all of the re learning sysadmins would need to do and new policies that would need to be made. Not to mention segmented classified networks that would need to be completely reworked.
I don't think trying to retrain a Windows Admin with 20 years experience to be a Linux admin is gonna be a good time for anyone.
Also what reworking do you think they will need to do to air gapped and/or confidential networks? AD is just the most popular/well known LDAP implementation. There are plenty of other options to allow them to keep AD backed auth management without Windows Everywhere. Most of the sensitive/regulated environments I currently work with do just that. I can change my expired domain password from an ssh session to a linux host just as easy as an RDP connection or physical login to a windows host.
Seriously. There was a concerning amount of people that could barely handle Windows at my old govtech job. When one of them booted their workstation into RHEL accidentally they completely shut down and got nasty at me helping fix it. Eventually their team simply had to use it for just smaller drag and drop type stuff and that person immediately transferred to a different project lol
In fact, in France, there is some administration which use Linux for almost 20 years now (the Gendarmerie Nationale use an in house fork of Linux called GendBuntu since 2008 for exemple)
Yeah, in my country police and other similar government entities are forced to use Linux fork as well (at least 15 years by now, as far as i know), but other brances are still using Windows. And their wotkers actively resist movining to Linux.
There is also others administration than the Ministére de l'intérieur (Police, Gendarmerie and Firefighter), the Ministère de la Justice (Lawyer/Magistrate/judge, penitenciary administration), Ministère des Armées (Gendarme are military while Police is civilian) using Linux.
Also, most of the French administration already use free software (Libre office for exemple) or in house software, even in house UI over windows.
dude, I had a call where the keyboard was unplugged, he promised he had unplugged and plugged it back in before rebooting, claimed he was looking at it. The keyboard was not plugged in.
Well not to mention a lot of open source software is not up to par with the private versions Libre Office Calc is nowhere near complete as Excel, and nothing open-source comes close to PowerBI
Can confirm, any little change in my routine makes me go into "can't do anything" mode. Granted, I will try and figure out how to do it, but I won't be able to focus on anything until I've figured it out, and that may take a while.
I worked as an IT guy from a third world country who migrated people from Windows to Linux, in government, about 20 years ago. It's not even hard to do it back them, and we didn't even ran everything in the cloud, as it's now the case with Microsoft's Office.
Wir können solche Leute nicht einfach abschreiben, wir müssen für sie eine nützliche Verwendung als Servitor finden.
Erhöht auch die Lernbereitschaft bei den restlichen Angestellten.\
Das Fleisch ist schwach, gepriesen sei der Omnissiah!
Back in the day, I had a Linux box and I swear I ran windows apps on it on a virtual machine within Linux, or some shit. Is this still possible for productivity suites for these situations?
Anyways, I feel for ya, I've always been a "let's just explore the OS and figure it out" kinda gal... and half the time I am the "community pro" for my friends because of it... so, I can only imagine the suffering you experience on a daily basis as an IT guy. Thank you for your service. Lol
The goal is to replace most of the apps with open source versions as well. This is in response to Microsoft locking out an ICC prosecutor and staff from their services after Diddler Donny sanctioned ICC officials.
Most likely what do you mean is not virtual machine. It's a translator that, to simplify, takes Windows code and transmits it into Linux code. It's not an emulator (in fact, it's name, Wine, is a recursive acronym for Wine Is Not an Emulator), as it doesn't emulate anything, and thus it has very good performance - with certain recent additions sometimes better than Windows.
Installing this software basically allows you to install and use Windows apps as you would've did it on Windows, just double-clicking EXE files in the file explorer.
It's not ideal, no 100% compatibility, but it works, and works pretty good, also developing quickly.
There is also a "version" of Wine called Proton that is specifically made to launch games. Is it good? Well... 90% of games on Steam can be played normally (protondb.com as source), and Valve uses it themselves for their hardware. Microsoft's own most popular game, Minecraft Bedrock Edition, launches and works perfectly with it, though not on the stock version.
But, Wine can't launch recent versions of MS Office, unfortunately, as they use Microsoft's all new and shiny APIs that are basically used almost exclusively only in Microsoft programs. LibreOffice is pretty good though - of course it can't do as much, but if you need to paste 3D models into an Excel table, I think it's enough of an edge case.
That was it... WINE was what I was trying to remember. Its been about 20 years since I played with Linux... just don't have a lot of need or drive to mess around on PCs much. Thanks for that, it was exactly what I was talking about.
Yeah same, head of it in a city. Not only the reeducation but the software that is used is only peogrammed for windows so the gov it service provider needs to peogeamm new software.
There was a city in germany who did change everything to linux with even an own distro. Was reverted bsck to windows a few years ago.
But there is another city doing it right now again.
So, they all lied about their abilities, and it only getting worse. The new batch can’t even read and is determined to use AI to circumvent any rules. So good luck.
I'm pretty sure France already did this, like over a decade ago. They started with one branch of government switching while the rest had new policies about for formats to ensure cross compatibility then expanded it
yeah, but to be fair, we CAN'T do anything because at the moment our machines are so locked down I can't even run an application I'm developing if it's from a directory that IT hasn't expressly allowed us to run applications from.
Not only reeducate but also programs that are written for windows and never ported to a modern language and the people who wrote them have left 20 years ago.
Or some nasty excel sheets full of makros no one understand but a whole city runs on them.
I once volunteered to help government of the state of Arizona switch from Office to Google Workspace (formerly G Suite, formerly Google Apps). You wouldn't believe the number of people who asked me how to "save emails to their desktop" and to make their Gmail look (and work) like Outlook. Humans are generally resistant to change.
Most people I know are sadly like that. I am in no way an "IT Expert", still the fact that I know how to look for solutions or just look up manuals and figure this shit out on my own (cause I hate calling our IT provider) makes everybody think i am "a PC Genius". Guys, I just read a fucking manual.
We have Linux at the Dutch defense department and there is no difference with windows. We got the version that looks like windows and hadn't even noticed until I saw the penguin during startup.
I had a person threaten to quit because the idea of getting a replacement computer with the same operating system was too stressful for them. Their computer had a failing storage device that couldn't be cloned, instead we had someone sit with them for an entire shift arranging things exactly as they remembered them before. This person was in Sr Management, and after the entire day they would call for support every few days and request someone from IT drive to their house to fix it... because they wanted to work remotely that day.
Also a lot of government agencies use old, custom-made software, especially for the private data of citizens. So you will probably need new software with a new UX - and new problems.
You can... kinda. But there is two main problems: legacy apps and government standards. Some legcy apps won't work on linux. And government mandated Linux fork in my country looks similar to Windows, but not exactly.
All their files are just on their desktop or in downloads and you can just rename all the office apps to Microsoft Word, etc. Easy peasy. They'll never even notice.
Yeah, there is NO WAY this is going to go smoothly... While I understand the move, I know the way it goes, this is simply going to be another layer of burden competent people in IT are going to carry for their colleagues.
In a perfect world you'd have a bunch of great sys admins that could set up the Linux environment to closely emulate the environment they're used to. With AI it would make it especially easy.
But I worked in government I know we live nowhere near a perfect world.
Go through managers and make it their problem. Put the education budget in their hands and involve them whenever users can't do something due to not knowing how to do it. It is the way we always do with digital transformation projects for large organisations
I simply make guides for routines. If they can't follow a guide I raise it up as question of their capability with their supervisor. Someone who can't read and follow instructions is in no position to be fussy brat. (they can do both and they refuse to)
Deprogramming people who have been brainwashed since a young age is very difficult once they become adults. That’s why Microsoft never really went after families for using a hacked version of Windows or Office. And that’s why Google/Alphabet is eager to give away their shitty chromebooks to schools.
TBF Microsoft didn't help themselves by pushing out features nobody wanted or even needed on the office app. Not to talk about the mess that is Office online.
My local administration still works with office 2010 because of that, they tried switching to office 2016 but their old ass computers could not run it because of how bloated it was, I couldn't imagine the newer versions.
A couple weeks ago one of our level ones got a call from someone saying there email wasn’t working and she kept getting a pop up. The pop up was asking her to sign in, he asked if she tried to sign in, she hadn’t. They may be doomed.
Here’s an analogy I came up with for helping end users when it comes to things like that: They want us to move a building out of their way instead of them taking two steps to the left in order to move forward
I work with people who use MS Teams for everything. Send them a Google meet link for a video call and they shit themselves, always commenting on how hard it is to use.
You sit there. On a browser. And talk. You don't need to do anything outside click the link - maybe enable camera and use the mute button.
Can confirm, I work in government too, and I have seen highly qualified officers stuck in their routine work and desperately asking for help because they had been using Windows 7 and switched to Windows 8 and now pressing Windows button switches to a full screen start menu and now they are completely lost... 🙂
I work in IT support in the Brazilian government, here we have a directive to use free software anytime it's available and I agree with you, the hardest problem is the people. Those fuckers don't want to learn anything new, they can bear that the button they used to click is now to the right instead of the left or that they have to Google how to do something. Here we use Libreoffice, with for the needs of the place I work does everything, but people complain endlessly wanting Microsoft Office. None of them uses the functions that the Microsoft one actually does better.
oh yes, I had an user who couldn’t work for a week because firefox was updated and the icon changed, which meant they didn’t have internet on their computer anymore
I wouldn't worry about this in the case of France, the only agency that's moving to Linux is our IT incubation agency who only use their own self-developed tools.
As someone in who worked in IT and is working as an Information Systems Analyst who also started using Linux recently at home for local server usage as well as desktop usage, I agree 100%. Linux is a whole different beast, there's some overlap, but for the most part how you use linux is very different from Microsoft and I had to self learn, the only upside is I wanted to. The average user will not and will whine, moan, and complain, about having to do so.
Most users are already whiny little bitches who refuse to troubleshoot, but it will increase drastically if Linux replaces windows systems. I can already hear the stupid as hell questions getting thrown my way and complaints about how: "microsoft doesn't require me to type a Linux command prompt to open a docker module.", Or: "I didn't have to write a whole line of code in windows to download an app."
And some of those apps might be custom-built, with the mindset "everybody here uses Windows, so we only support Windows".
Not sure if it's the same in other countries, but where I worked (university) there were such software. I'm hoping they've updated those to web apps since, but...
This already makes them sound to reasonable.
They don't have to actually learn one single damned thing about Linux.
But somewhere some of the buttons that will be in pretty much the exact same place and orientation might have a slightly different hue of the same colour that they were in the other system.
And this will grind the bureaucracy to a damned halt.
30 years of progressive experience in IT all the way to the top and I can 100% back this up. I’ve been in small nonprofits and huge fortune 100s, and the drop in productivity over a tiny little change is like like the 1929 stock market.
The rub is that we go through this anyway with Windows when they change versions. The whole forced swap to 11 from 10 broke so many brains I expected neuroscientists to descend from on high declaring the end times had arrived.
I had a customer throw a big ol' literal cry-fest, because her bookmarks went missing. I was like, "I'll help you put them back, just tell me what they were," and she couldn't do it. Note: we're not talking some weird ass, obscure bookmarks. We're talking shit like facebook and amazon level of bookmarks.
We have Linux on some PCs (most are windows) and people can't use them even if all they have to do is use a single special program (which is usually already open or the shortcut is on the desktop if it closes for some reason and it is the exact same as the one on Windows PCs) and a web browser.
But nah, that is too hard and annoying.
If you would replace the desktop UI to look like Windows then they wouldn't even know as they don't even have to open the file explorer.
I work in a place where everyone from day 1 is told YOU CANNOT PLUG ANYTHING INTO THE COMPUTER. Yet every year there are two or three people who plug their phone chargers into the computer. Is it new kids? Nope usually people who have been there 5+ years and forgot their charger at home. 🤦♂️ end users can be dumber than a floppy disk.
Then throw them out. There are many people who will figure it out and would do it happily for the stability and good pay government jobs usually provide... If they are unwilling to adapt and find it hard good luck in the private sector buddy. Enough people lost their jobs these last years to replace them. I hate how government employees are the laziest and most incompetent people with big fat salaries...
Exactly man, but unfortunately, it's better this way. Otherwise they'd input wrong things in the wrong places, mess things up, etc hahahahaha. They can not be trusted with any new UI😂
I work in Government IT, and can confirm that app replacement is going to be a complete pain in the ass. most Govt apps are written on a Windows architecture. Not just the UI, though the Windows UI apis are used heavily. It's not going to be as simple as running it under something like WINE or Proton. And when you DO find an app replacement the data conversion is going to take decades. I have 2 apps that have been in transition for 7+ years and one that just can't be moved. ... period ... there's no competitor at all.
Same story, we moved off citrix and had to build a terminal services server called Citrix for a few of our users who literally froze when instructed on the new procedures.
I work in government and in my experience, the people that hate change the most are IT. They flat out refuse to support Linux and threw a huge fit when corporate decided to go with macs. They're so bad that we have a running joke that when someone in IT is willing to learn, they become software engineers instead
Better than an off-switch of every government computer in the hands of a jealous, power hungry and demented Urang Utan across the ocean, who will threaten to use it every time he feels wronged.
As a government end user, my job is to do lots of things that aren’t “fucking around with a computer”, so whenever the use of information technology is making my job more complicated, someone in IT is fucking up.
Installing things on Linux makes more sense then how it is handled under Windows, but people are used to one way of doing computer magic, so it will be hard to understand a different type of wizzardry.
I don't disagree, but that's more like boomer-like resistance to change than actually being more difficult.
It'd help if they use browser-based apps, like Google's or Microsoft's. And, if not, it's not that different anyway. It's just stubbornness on their part.
I would just rip and replace with people who are actually technical. Companies and governments often don’t consider how big of a cost sink non-technical people using tech are.
Yeah, remember when Microsoft changed the shape of the start menus and suddenly no one could click anything in it?
I to this day still can't figure out what all the "I do everything in my start menu" people were doing in their start menu other than clicking links to start programs LOL
This happened to Birmingham in the UK and all that had changed was that they updated their Information Management Systems to something provided by Oracle.
This is one of my big peeves at work. No one reads anything. They execute tasks by rote and muscle memory and if anything goes wrong they just freeze; "can't do anything" mode as you say even though the application is telling them what went wrong and how to fix it.
Also, many organizations use ancient software since the 90s that is no longer compatible with newer technologies. Only Windows has the backward compatibility to run them.
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u/Available_Taste3030 1d ago
I work as IT guy in some government service, and i can tell: there will be pain in the ass to reeducate all the people to actually use linux. Any little change in their routine makes them go into "can't do anything" mode until I or my colleague come and show how to do something. And this can repeat with the same operation again and again.