On Monday 21 January 2002 01:04, Joshua b. Jore wrote: > I'm working with one of the Minneapolis city council members (and his > office manager) to demo free software. My argument is that that free > software can save on the IT budget and any money involved would be more > likely to stay local. (staff/consulting/support instead of licensing) > My personal take on this is that unless they were going to make a change, for example upgrade Win2K to XP (or better NT4 or 9X to XP) then there would be a savings for the IT budget. If all you're going to do is replace the existing environment it'll cost money. (Downtime for conversion and training, cost of a commercial distribution if you go that way.) So think about your arguements very carefully when playing the "cost card". > I would like some suggestions for how best to present this stuff. I figure > there is a different case for free software in the server room and on the > workstation. Since this will be on his personal computer I'd like to show > off something functional that will compare nicely to his pre-existing > Windows 2000 installation. > <flamebait type=opinion> I spent sometime last year with the support team in a government organization that dealt directly with elected officials. Since they ultimately "write the checks" and because they are elected officials they can do what ever they want. In this situation one influential elected official chose to use a "non-standard" software configuration. (No, it wasn't Linux.) While the support crew had to provide service for this "lone wolf" it was for a one-off configuration that was difficult for them to replicate. As a result they spent a lot of time dealing with this individuals issues. In your case while the lack of license costs might be a savings. Doing it in one office in the entire city (which is heavily invested in a M$ infrastructure) will most likely cost more due to the support issues than was ever saved in license costs. Converting the whole city systems to being Linux based might accomplish the goal, one individual won't. </flamebait> <alternate opinion> That said, removing the dependency of governmental organizations on a single supplier of "critical" equipment is a good thing. If the councilmember and staff want to "blaze a trail" and prove it can be done and from their try to get movement away from M$ that's a good thing. </alternate opinion> > I assumed I would use some variety of Linux with a GUI desktop. Which > variety and GUI is probably where I could use the advice. If anyone has > any specific experience advocating for free software in government I'd > like to hear about it. > Personal favorite is SuSE, (I know its not a US distro. but hey, its a global economy, right?) and for this situation (user workstation) 7.3 personal would probably do the trick. It loads KDE, StarOffice and Netscape 6.1(?). Its on the shelf locally for $39.95 with a nice box and 3 manuals. ;-) > Joshua b. Jore > Minneapolis Ward 3, precinct 10 > http://www.greentechnologist.org > -- Jack Ungerleider jack at jacku.com