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Comment by quanticle | Hacker News Reader

To be honest, I don't see how migrating to Linux would actually solve the problem the IRS is having. If anything, it would make the problem worse. Ubuntu LTS is only supported for 5 years on the desktop. RHEL goes up to 13 years, which is about how old Windows XP is right now. Windows or Linux, the IRS would have run into migration pain as support for its outdated operating system ended. Yes, if they'd used Linux, they would have had the possibility of backporting fixes. Realistically, though, very few organizations outside of the distros themselves backport kernel fixes. Instead of hearing about the IRS making extra payments to Microsoft, we'd be hearing about them making extra payments to Canonical or Red Hat.

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Now I'm not saying the move to Linux is necessarily the right move for the IRS, but you missed the point entirely. The only thing stopping the transition on time was that the upgrades were put on hold because of budget issues, not because it was hard to upgrade. Last I heard, Ubuntu was free to install, so sure they would still have a similar upgrade schedule, but this wouldn't be an issue here, at least in terms of budget for such an upgrade.

You're just thinking about the cost of the OS licenses, think about how many man hours it would take to update all those machines.

Oh come on, the man hour cost to install the update is miniscule to the cost of a Windows license per machine (even if they do get site licenses). And if their problem is budget, switching to Linux is a potentially valid fix for this problem, as the cost (even though there is still a cost) would be dramatically lower. Although again I'm not advocating for the change as there are many other issues that would be caused by this transition.

Most places I've worked - organizations far smaller than the IRS - have had site licenses, so the costs of upgrading don't lie in paying for the OS.

The costs lie in training, upgrading hardware, and upgrading user applications (including things that are closed source, discontinued or developed in house by people who have left the organization).

Unfortunately you'd get most of these problems in Linux too.

If you read the article, they have already upgraded some of their computers, so the upgrading user applications has already been done, as the machines that have been upgraded would have needed this. The training required to go from one version of an OS to another version of the same OS, is very miniscule, as (at least for the standard user usage, which the majority of IRS users, they fall under) OS developers go out of their way to make the changes as seemless as possible. And sure upgrading hardware may be a cost, but again this generally a much smaller problem with Linux, as Linux is generally a much lighter weight OS than Windows is.

> If you read the article, they have already upgraded some of their computers, so the upgrading user applications has already been done, as the machines that have been upgraded would have needed this.

But they've upgraded to another Windows version, not a * nix. Windows has taken backwards compatibility support to plaid (11 if you're a fan of a different movie). I worked in an office with a data analysis tool written using Visual Fortran in the 1990s for Windows 95. Without retargeting it it runs just fine with a single launch flag set for Windows to use the appropriate compatibility mode. The cost of upgrading user applications is really the cost of testing user applications. Moving to * nix wouldn't be upgrading, it'd be rewriting/porting or significant testing with Wine or some other compatibility layer. [1]

[1] As others pointed out, as more applications run on the CLR porting to * nix will become easier as CLR support improves on those platforms. But that also requires a rewrite, you can't take an existing Fortran or VB or C++ project and retarget it without effort.

The issue is clearly not about the price of the licenses. The IRS is paying 200$ per machine to extend XP support (which is more in a single year than what they would have paid for new Win7 licenses).

The expensive part is upgrading the hardware to support Win7, rewriting all the software that aren't compatible with Win7, training the personnel to use Win7 (and all the newly re-written software). Now, imagine if they were actually trying to upgrade to Linux. They'd pay much more to train the personnel, they'd have to re-write almost every single software they have been using. On top of that, they'd still pay for custom support (and Linux support is considerably more expensive than Windows support).

>Linux support is considerably more expensive than Windows support

In my experience running a small business, Linux support was much cheaper than windows support. The Linux professionals seem to charge more but can almost always fix a problem twice as fast as a the support I get from Windows "professionals". I also ended up having less problems with Linux than I did with Windows (after a few initial bumps in the road). I've also talked to quite a few other entrepreneurs and many of them agree that Linux is a fine and much better choice for start-ups simply because you're starting from a clean slate (So there is no legacy code to deal with) and because 90% of small businesses and start-ups consists of a network of 10 or less computers.

This might be true for startups, but the IRS certainly have more than 10 computers.

>Last I heard, Ubuntu was free to install

Ubuntu is free to install only because your free time has no monetary value. For organizations whose time has monetary value, the cost of an OS license is swamped by the cost of the time it takes to rewrite applications, retrain users, roll out the upgrade, and fix the inevitable breakages.

And like I said above, these costs are present whether you're using Linux or Windows.

Also, if you are the type of person who hangs around on HN, you are more likely to be the type of person with friends who run linux or who is comfortable working through software configuration problems by googling for things and trying thinks from internet forums. Most people don't have that privilege, and so linux is actually pretty expensive for them in terms of time and frustration.

(I run ubuntu with xmonad but have never written my own packages)

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