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On 16/02/14 15:24, bad apple wrote: > > Take a lifetime office worker, who has spent all their working life on > Windows 2000, XP, Vista. Which OS do you really think is going to be > easier for them to adapt to - Win8 without Metro, or any Linux system? Windows 8 without Metro or with "Classic Shell" is different from Windows XP. > If you say Linux, I will be very cross because it's f**king obviously There really is no need to use this sort of language. > not the case. Sans Metro, Win8 is the *very damn same* system they've > always used, functionally identical to the boring Windows GUI they've > used for a decade or two. You could drag someone out of the nineties > who's only used Win95 or Win98, put them in front of a de-Metroed Win8 > machine and they'd instantly be at home. The actual fact is that Windows 95, Windows 98, Windows ME, Windows 2000, Windows XP, Windows Vista, Windows 7 and (DeMetrofied) Windows 8 have differing UIs. Whilst they may all follow the same basic concepts there are differences between them. Apparently "trivial" or "subtle" differences can cause all sorts of problems to users. > Or you could stick them in front of a Mint or Ubuntu machine. Which they > won't understand and will hate you for. And that's before they even get Many KDE and Gnome desktops follow much the same concepts as MS Windows. Unlikely to be identical to one of the eight (or so) Windows options but still fairly close. (Potentially closer to Windows XP than anything easily achievable with Windows 7 or 8.) > started on the clusterf*ck that is LibreOffice instead of MS Office, or Again with the language. > wonder why SharePoint no longer works or Visio won't run... Assuming they actually use SharePoint or Visio (which only became a part of MS Office when Microsoft bought the company). There are plenty of users who only ever handle simple (a few pages) word processing documents or simple spreadsheets. In other cases MS Access or MS Publisher can be problem applications. (MS Publisher files have historically been very troublesome between different versions of Publisher itself. Though are now readable by LibreOffice. With Writer also having DTP features.) If they are familiar with MS Office 2003 (or earlier) then OpenOffice or LibreOffice is likely to be considerably less of a change than MS Office 2007 (or later). (That's before even considering MS Office 2013's "cloud features". Which can easily become a huge hole in terms of data protection.) Also LibreOffice will (still) open files MS Office simply refuses to touch. (Being able to recover data from "corrupt" files is generally useful.) > All of you claiming that for normal corporate users of Windows are > better off or would be more productive moving to Linux are quite frankly Your "normal corporate users" of Windows may or may not be anyone else's "normal corporate users". > delusional. You do realise that I have to deal with this stuff almost > daily right? I'm not pulling this out of my arse, I contend with issues As do many other people here. Their experiences do not (always) appear to be the same. > like this all the time: I actually have to train the users we move from > crappy old XP workstations to Debian or CentOS or whatever. > > I like Linux a lot. I vastly prefer it to any Microsoft OS. But I have a > very large "real world sample" to work from as well and I highly suspect There's "large" in terms of total numbers and "diverse" in some cases that latter can be a more meaningful group. > it's a lot bigger than most of yours. Also my users aren't morons - they > don't have to be simply pointed at the Firefox and Thunderbird icons on > the desktop, that's frankly insulting to them. They have a great deal > more responsibility than that and whilst they might not be particularly > skilled in IT, they have important tasks to complete with their It can often be those who think they "know about computers" who are the most troublesome. > computers. Computers that I am paid to ensure work as well as possible, > which is why I don't unnecessarily mess with them. > > Lifetime corporate Windows users will always be more productive and What's a "lifetime corporate Windows user" anyway? It simply hasn't been around long enough for people near retirement to have been using it for their entire working life. > happiest using the systems they've always used, i.e., Windows. This > isn't even up for discussion, it's just a fact. Sure, some of them might The claim is nonsense since there is no constant of "MS Windows" (or "MS Office"). Microsoft constantly changes these and how they work. (Including by the application of "service packs".) The "more productive and happiest..." probably is a big factor in the continued usage of Windows XP however. (But Microsoft dosn't want people to use the same software for ever.) The idea of Windows (or office) being a constant is just a popular myth. > have no problem transitioning to Mint or whatever, and good for them. > But when that first business-critical VB macro fails to run, or Samba > can't connect to the DC because of a kerberos library mismatch, or one > of any little Windows/Linux integration issue raises it's ugly head for Because VB macros never fail in an all Microsoft environment; Windows servers always communicate with each other and there are never any Windows/Windows (or Windows/third party software) integration issues. > the first time then money is lost, productivity goes down, and the boss > gets very angry and goes looking for the idiot in IT who thought rolling > out Ubuntu to the finance department was a good idea. But because "nobody ever got fired for buying Microsoft" it dosn't appear to matter how much money or productivity is lost as a result of using Windows. e.g. a piece of Windows specific malware taking out workstations and severs which have no actual reason to run Windows. Just because such attitudes are common does not make them any less irrational. No doubt the real idiot in that situation would still try and blame the "not Microsoft" if the actual problem was nothing to do with software at all...
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