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Munich still uses 41 proprietary apps that will only run under XP or 2000. The city has estimated it will cost $18M to replace them over a 4-year span.
Nick Heath at TechRepublic reports
Windows XP and 2000 are used by fewer than 1,500 of the more than 16,000 staff at the council, which relies on the aged Microsoft systems to run 41 applications.
[...] In order to stop using Windows XP and 2000, these 41 applications will either be migrated to a newer, supported operating system, replaced with more modern software, or phased out--as part of a four year project costing €16.6M ($18.03M).
[...] Munich carried on using XP and 2000 due to these 41 applications being used for crucial work in the city, from monitoring emissions for air pollution to flood protection.
To secure the OSes, Munich ran them on virtual machines and on standalone computers, as well as using what it calls "restrictive data interchange", quarantine systems, and additional protective measures.
The council has decided to stop using these older unsupported versions of Windows now as, not only are they a security risk, but according to a report [PDF, Deutsch] they have limited support for network and data security features the council wants to use.
[...] Often it can be the case that organisations can't update the application to run on a newer OS because the people with the necessary skills are gone or the company that originally wrote the software no longer exists.
[...] The project at Munich will be split into two phases: The first will assess the work needed and the second will carry it out. Work got underway at the end of [2015] and is expected to be complete by the end of September 2019.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Immerman on Friday January 22 2016, @04:36PM
To be fair though, there's exit costs for any OS. Good luck getting binaries from one linux distro to run on another from a different "family", or even the same family several years later. It's hit or miss even getting source code to compile without modifications, assuming you have access to it at all.
(Score: 1, Troll) by kurenai.tsubasa on Friday January 22 2016, @04:58PM
This is why it's important to have all the source. The binaries are merely a convenient way to get the computer to go, sort of an intermediate step in 1.) perform analysis 2.) instruct the computer to perform that with which we are now acquainted 3.) binaries 4.) the computer goes.
The real danger of closed source software is that others will just flat-out assume that you can do things to it you can't without breaking the EULA and probably DMCA and TISA when that one's ratified.
This can lead to the determination that you're just refusing to do what a woman is asking you to do because you hate women. Your attempts to explain why you're not going to reverse engineer the piece of shit and maintain a binary patch will be seen as mansplaining. This is why I swear I will never ever accept another job where I have to touch anything closed source again. Then again, I'll probably just be content to flip burgers, since nobody's called me sexist for making a good burger. Besides, when I make a burger, I have open access to everything I need from the beef (or bison/turkey/etc), condiments, lettuce, buns, bacon++, etc.
(Fine, mod off topic, I don't care.)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 22 2016, @05:52PM
(Fine, mod off topic, I don't care.)
Off topic? No, not really.
That was a nice comparison, yet it made me hungry.
--
“War… war never changes.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vE25wHQPHIE [youtube.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 22 2016, @08:04PM
Whereas with Windows XP you could have the same driver working for 15 years and many executables for even long (yeah some of them might be malware but hey backward compatibility ;) ). Of course Microsoft is changing that now - they're very aggressively trying to force people to Windows 10.
Sad times ahead, since the Desktop Linux bunch have a track record of making their stuff even worse whenever Microsoft makes their stuff crappier. Breaking/fragmenting GUIs, breaking sound, picking stupid defaults (Microsoft picks stupid defaults too but they're the incumbent monopoly).
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 23 2016, @04:05AM
The Linux Driver Project has hundreds of guys waiting in line to make your stuff Linux-compatible.
Look for the number 300. [googleusercontent.com] (orig) [lwn.net]
Give them a sample of the stuff you want to be compatible with Linux and they'll have it figured out in no time.
with Windows XP [...] yeah some of them might be malware
I'm sold. Where do I sign up? 8-)
the Desktop Linux bunch have a track record of making their stuff even worse
Not familiar with Trinity (fork of KDE 3) or MATE (fork of GNOME 2) or Cinnamon (fork of GNOME Shell)?
Hope you got all the bile out of your system.
I'd say that mostly you are shooting blanks.
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 23 2016, @07:31AM
the Desktop Linux bunch have a track record of making their stuff even worse
Not familiar with Trinity (fork of KDE 3) or MATE (fork of GNOME 2) or Cinnamon (fork of GNOME Shell)?
Hope you got all the bile out of your system.
I'd say that mostly you are shooting blanks.
Are you that retarded? Why the fuck do you think they forked in the first place?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 23 2016, @10:41AM
The Linux Driver Project has hundreds of guys waiting in line to make your stuff Linux-compatible.
Look for the number 300. (orig)
Give them a sample of the stuff you want to be compatible with Linux and they'll have it figured out in no time.
Waiting "in line" and "in no time" huh? So where are those non crappy working full featured 3D drivers for all AMD/ATI and NVidia's video cards?
Stop drinking too much of the kool-aid?
With Linux's approach whenever they break compatibility there is a cost to everyone else - whether it be $$$ or time contacting those hundreds of people you mentioned, or those hundreds themselves. Someone has to do additional work. Remember if the hardware company is long dead you may not get any documentation or source code.
With Windows those drivers don't need to be changed. So fewer required to notice it it's not working anymore, fewer required to figure a way to get it working again. There's no need to realize that the company in Taiwan that used to sell the hardware is long gone and isn't going to help you or "the hundreds" to write that driver.
But Microsoft's latest strategy with Windows seems to be towards a different path: http://www.computerworld.com/article/3023533/microsoft-windows/microsoft-support-windows-10-new-hardware-itbwcw.html [computerworld.com]
Maybe a few large corps that need to stick to older versions of Windows should get together and make threatening noises about sponsoring something like ReactOS ;).
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 23 2016, @11:48PM
It's obvious that you're talking about closed-source device drivers for crappy hardware that YOU bought from a crappy manufacturer who has crappy support.
It is abundantly clear whom you -should- be blaming--but aren't.
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 24 2016, @10:05AM
You're the one who claimed:
The Linux Driver Project has hundreds of guys waiting in line to make your stuff Linux-compatible.
Thus it's more accurate to say they're only waiting in line to make certain things Linux-compatible and not other stuff.
Thus you will lose support if your stuff doesn't happen to be one of those "certain things" when the kernel devs break compatibility.
You can play the blame game all you want. The fact is even if AMD goes bust and stops supporting their drivers, you'd be able to use their video cards on Windows for a longer time than on Linux.
That said nowadays video cards seem to die within 3 years, so won't really be a big problem in practice, since you should be budgeting for a new card...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 24 2016, @07:53PM
When the software you use is open, you might not even need the big boys to solve your problem.
Why Software Openness Is Important [googleusercontent.com] (orig) [goodbyemicrosoft.net]
...and, as he notes there:
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by darkfeline on Saturday January 23 2016, @12:53AM
A Linux compiled binary will run on any and all Linux distros, and will even run on BSD as BSD has Linux emulation (within reason, no guarantees for a binary compiled for Linux 0.11, or for a modified Linux kernel).
Now, of course there are packaging issues or dynamic library linking issues, but those exist even on the same OS distribution across installations.
Join the SDF Public Access UNIX System today!
(Score: 2) by canopic jug on Saturday January 23 2016, @09:49AM
Good luck getting binaries from one linux distro to run on another from a different "family", or even the same family several years later.
The binaries are irrelevant. It is the source that matters with Linux distros. That is the currency to track, and what enables portability and endurance. However, to take it a step more abstract, it is really FOSS's use of open standards for data and protocols that really reduce long term costs. You don't work with programs, they come and go, too, as much as you use the programs to work with data. It is the data that sticks around the longest and open standards enable independence from individual vendors or programs. The article blames "old applications", but I wager that it's really access to the data that these applications work with that is the bottleneck.
Money is not free speech. Elections should not be auctions.
(Score: 2) by Immerman on Sunday January 24 2016, @07:44PM
That's great if you're using open source or internally developed software -but there's no guarantee that the software you need/want to use is available as such.