[ubuntu-uk] Public library OS choice

[Paul Sutton]

On 12/06/13 12:43, Avi Greenbury wrote:
> Muñiz Piniella, Andrés wrote:
>> A) I do not know about your local libraries but mine are still on
>> windowsxp. So they will have to replace it soon with win8. And that
>> has a steeper learning curve than any of the most common distros. B)
> If Windows 8 does have a prohibitively-steep learning curve (and I
> don't believe it does) then they will probably simply upgrade to
> Windows 7.
>
>> win8 will require new hardware.
> Perhaps following on from XP, but generally hardware will be replaced
> to keep it in warranty as much as anything else. I know people running
> Windows 8 on some pretty ancient hardware, and Ubuntu seems (judging
> by other people's anecdotes) to be getting worse at old hardware, in
> any case.
>
>> Appart from canonical who could provide the service? And why is windows service
>> cheaper than gnu/linux distros? I thought the reasoning was that one gnu/linux
>> admin was more expensive than a windows admin but a gnu/linux admin could
>> manage over more units, so turned out cheaper.
> Windows desktops are easier (and faster) to manage in number than
> Linux because Windows has AD and Linux doesn't. On the *server* that
> thing about volume-per-person is truer. It's been a few years since I
> last looked at this in any great depth, but not enough that anything
> developed in the meantime is likely to be mature enough to really
> rival AD.


Isn't LDAP the equivalent of AD on windows.  ?

paul