Hardware Lasts Longer under Linux, or How Politics Don't Have a Clue

As you can read at Jan Tielens’ Bloggings, one of our political parties suggests using Linux instead of Microsoft products.

One of their arguments is that “PCs last longer”. Why does hardware last longer depending on the OS that’s running on it? Have you ever seen Office destroy your GPU? Maybe when you fool around enough with Linux you can get a driver to damage your hardware, but just like with Windows, that’s very unlikely unless you’re into low level driver development.

Another great argument of theirs is they can customize it better. Why do you want to customize PCs in a government building? What would you want to add? It’s meant for your end-users, so they’ll look at the desktop.

Regarding the sysadmin side. Guess which one will cost more: a Windows sysadmin or a Linux one. No Active Directory for managing your stuff ;)

They both have decent file permissions and other security settings. Mind you, we are talking about end-user systems here. Not some 24/7 nuclear power plant control server.

It provides jobs. And installing, configuring and maintaining those Windows PCs doesn’t provide jobs? They take care of their own or what? (If that would be the case I should start thinking about switching jobs)

Then they start talking about Open Standards. There’s a difference between Open Source/Software and Open Standards. Microsoft uses open standards as well.

I’m guessing it’s because elections are coming, and we Belgians mostly choose the role of the underdog, Linux in this case. And their party knows how to play the media. With the great ‘free’ and ‘open’ words everyone falls for. (Remember, with open software it’s free as in free speech, not free beer)

They like to point to Munich in their project. Well one of their arguments that it’s cheaper gets destroyed by pointing there, because it costs more in Munich.

Ah, and price, a Linux version for the desktop (with support, because that’s what a company takes), starts at $179, SUSE is at $598 and Windows XP is at $299. Now tell me, where’s the huge difference everyone is talking about?

We are talking politics here, they interfere in business they totally have no clue of, something they want to do quickly, and now even more than otherwise, because elections are coming, quickly get some arguments and launch them, everyone not into computers will believe us!

Should I talk about support as well? Who just extended their support for Windows 98? Which is quite old already. Can I get some support on my Linux distro X which seemed to have stopped last year? Can I get some support on package X, developed by an informatics student in his free time who now “doesn’t feel like working on it anymore”? That means, if you want to use it, you’ll have to get the knowledge to develop it further, and in the long run that is not cheaper.

And lastly, what about professionalism? They advertise with a movie of the Bill Gates pie-in-the-face happening. And with a page called microsuck.htm …

There is one party I’m really not going to vote for. Hopefully they won’t ruin it for the rest, because it’s us who’ll pay for their crazy ideas.