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Comment by Hamuko | Hacker News Reader

What's the cost of training a bunch of public servants to use Linux?

Probably lower then people think once the applications are identical across the two platform. and if Linux turns too complex there is always macos.

The big push is going to be getting rid of old excel and word macro's and replace sharepoint/onedrive with something else as data migrations are newer as simple in reality as they look in theory.

>and if Linux turns too complex there is always macos

I have witnessed in person people switching from Windows to macOS have issues adapting to a different operating system and its concepts, like the fact that pressing the X button in the top-left corner doesn't close the application. Therefore I am rather skeptical that you can just throw some Linux distro at a bunch of novice computer users without large amounts of friction.

> Therefore I am rather skeptical that you can just throw some Linux distro at a bunch of novice computer users without large amounts of friction.

Not your main point, but: If they really were novice computer users it would be a snap; the problem is that they aren't -- can't be, if they're already conditioned to Windows being "the standard".

Then again, I think that this is often exaggerated, even for long-time Windows users. What's so hard about switching -- "Oh, but people are so used to all their handy Windows shortcuts!"? Bah -- they don't even know they exist!

Linux Mint is practically identical to Windows 7/10 in terms of basic interaction. Most people learn only a few workflows and software and do not tinker with the OS. When my SO moved to MacOS, the only thing she asked about was how to launch apps and do things like copy-paste. Everything else is still how I configured it when the computer came. Just like you don’t tinker with container images, people will be fine with Linux GUI if everything they need is there.

Your example feels like shots fired because the programs running without windows concept still confuses me. It just doesn't compute.

I'm a sysadmin and have been using Macs on and off since System 7, Windows since 95, and probably 10000 Linux distros/DE combos. Just as a point of reference.

> programs running without windows concept still confuses me

> I'm a sysadmin and have been using ... probably 10000 Linux distros/DE combos

Most of the things I run on Unix systems do not have windows. This doesn't confuse me at all! :)

I know what you mean of course. A GUI application without windows is superficially confusing, but you can certainly imagine something daemon-like that runs all the time and only occasionally requires interaction in the form of configuration or control.

What you're really talking about is document-based applications, which can continue running when no documents (windows) are open. This may be less intuitive if you think about things in a document-centric way, vs an application-centric way. There are advantages and conveniences to both.

Try using Microsoft Office some time. Sure, Word and Excel go away when you close the last document or workbook -- but Outlook and Teams don't. For outlook, there's a separate menu (Uh, "ribbon"?) item "Quit" under "File"; for Teams, not even that; you have to right-click the icon in the task bar. Close all their windows, and AFAICR they'll still pop up notifications.

Train once and never pay fees for the lifetime of the worker. Or still have to train on windows and pay fees ontop of standard user training for the lifetime of the user. Remember just because it's windows doesn't mean it doesn't require training. All business computer use takes training.

Or use classic approach - pay the lower price now and let the next goverment deal with the future problems.

The cost to show one person "this is the browser icon and these are the excel/word icons; click them when you need to", multiplied by number of people who need to be trained.

Zero. Most of these people are probably not proficient in MS Office either. But since they are mostly not doing any real work, it doesn’t matter.

If they manage to do the training and onboarding within 4 hours then that may worth it (considering minimal hourly rate 12.41 euro per hour). That doesn't look realistic.

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