The swiss canton Solothurn is migrating 2000 desktops to Debian GNU / Linux

The IT adminstration of the swiss canton Solothurn will conclude the 2000 desktop migration to Debian GNU / Linux by the end of 2008.

Kurt Bader, director of the Office for Computer Science and Organization (Amts fur Informatik und Organisation - AIO) in the canton Solothurn, presented the strategy for more economy, security and flexibility under GNU / Linux during the congress " Open Source Meets Business" in Nuremberg, DE, January 2008.

The largest open source project in Switzerland runs "smoothly, the conversion is a complete success and a major step forward", summarizes Kurt Bader.

The carefully planned three phase desktop migration, currently at around half way, started in 2006. According to Bader, 21 companies offered assistance, proposing several combinations of Open Source operating systems and applications, then narrowed to 3 offers and 3 prototypes for evaluation.

The administration, in September 2006, decided to use the Debian GNU / Linux distribution, OpenOffice.org, Mozilla Firefox and the KDE collection of desktop applications, starting first phase, the deployment of the desktops.

Now at the second phase, staff workers can access, through thin and fat clients, some applications that only run on Microsoft Windows®, which are hosted on a central server, without legacy data and applications conversions. In the third phase of the migration project, these Windows®-only legacy applications will be replaced by software that are able to run on more than one operating system.

Among the decision factors as stability, security, virus immunity, flexibility, liberation of market constraints and objective savings, two arguments stood out:

"The independence from suppliers and its business policy played an important role with our decision. Beyond that, the low cost of optimization was an important argument for the free operating system Debian GNU / Linux".

In a 2000 desktops environment, the Debian GNU / Linux allowed 70% savings in costs.

The desktop migration was resisted by the users fears against changes, as expected. "The substantial success factor is the direct communication with our coworkers", said Bader.

All department representatives and or users were involved since the conceptual analysis. The applications, systems and support are evolving processes with the help of them.

"A single day of training is enough to get started on the new desktop", he says. Also, the staff have a support infrastructure at disposal, like feedback meetings, intranet documents and FAQs and more channels will have to be created.

The solution is based on internal GNU / Linux know-how, developed since 2001, when GNU / Linux servers were installed throughout the IT environment.

The stability of the system and the potential savings helped to convince the government of the canton of Solothurn. It decided, in the autumn of 2007, to keep the current IT strategy without substantive changes, and continue for the next four to eight years to have validity.

The central swiss government is being already formally questioned by local representatives about some planned migrations to proprietary systems, and the case of Solothurn will bring objective local data for analysis.

More details at the original European Communities announcement.

About Debian Project

Debian GNU / Linux is one of the free libre operating systems (GNU/Linux, GNU/Hurd, GNU/NetBSD, GNU/kFreeBSD), developed by more than two thousand volunteers from all over the world who collaborate via the internet on the Debian Project.

Debian's dedication to Free Libre Open Source Software, its constitutional non-profit nature, its open and meritocratic development model, organization and social governance make it a first among free libre operating system distributions.

The Debian project's key strengths are its volunteer base, its dedication to the Debian Social Contract, and its commitment to provide the best operating systems attainable, following a strict quality policy, working with an established QA Team.

You can help Debian Project without joining it and even not being a programmer, or being a development and or service partner company or institution at the Debian Partner Program, or simply making various donations to the Debian Project.

Debian Project news, press releases and press coverage can be found from the official Debian wiki page.

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What it does If you haven’t heard of the Cult of the Dead Cow, well listen up: they’re a group of Texas hackers who champion internet privacy, security and liberty. This group counts among their members a Harvard researcher, a former UN official, published authors, and programmers from every which way. They’ve recently released Goolag, a web auditing tool aimed squarely at Google. It enables anyone to audit their own web site via the search engine. It uses Google search terms to find vulnerable systems. Basically, they want to expose the vulnerability of the web, and what better way to do it than using the Giant itself? The scanner is being released under a GNU license. It’s a standalone windows GUI based app and can be downloaded for free. In their own words “Goolag Scanner enables everyone to audit his or her own web site via Google. The scanner technology is based on "Google hacking," a form of vulnerability research developed by Johnny I Hack Stuff. He's a lovely fellow. Go buy him a drink. "It's no big secret that the Web is the platform," said cDc spokesmodel Oxblood Ruffin. "And this platform pretty much sucks from a security perspective. Goolag Scanner provides one more tool for web site owners to patch up their online properties. We've seen some pretty scary holes through random tests with the scanner in North America, Europe, and the Middle East. If I were a government, a large corporation, or anyone with a large web site, I'd be downloading this beast and aiming it at my site yesterday. The v ulnerabilities are that serious." Why it might be a killer The Dead Cow folks are certainly making an incendiary statement; however, like it or not, the web is susceptible to all sorts of things half of us couldn’t even imagine if we tried. The web is vulnerable, and Goolag scanner will point those vulnerabilities out. Companies, corporations, networks, can all use the scanner to see how serious their vulnerabilities are. Some questions The problem with this is that it works both ways. Yes, you can find out what your site’s weaknesses are but so can everyone else. Will DeadCow then use their knowledge to wreak havoc? Will others get to it first? Updates » original news

What it does

If you haven’t heard of the Cult of the Dead Cow, well listen up: they’re a group of Texas hackers who champion internet privacy, security and liberty. This group counts among their members a Harvard researcher, a former UN official, published authors, and programmers from every which way. They’ve recently released Goolag, a web auditing tool aimed squarely at Google. It enables anyone to audit their own web site via the search engine. It uses Google search terms to find vulnerable systems. Basically, they want to expose the vulnerability of the web, and what better way to do it than using the Giant itself? The scanner is being released under a GNU license. It’s a standalone windows GUI based app and can be downloaded for free.

In their own words

“Goolag Scanner enables everyone to audit his or her own web

site via Google. The scanner technology is based on "Google hacking," a form

of vulnerability research developed by Johnny I Hack Stuff. He's a lovely

fellow. Go buy him a drink.

"It's no big secret that the Web is the platform," said cDc spokesmodel

Oxblood Ruffin. "And this platform pretty much sucks from a security

perspective. Goolag Scanner provides one more tool for web site owners to

patch up their online properties. We've seen some pretty scary holes through

random tests with the scanner in North America, Europe, and the Middle East.

If I were a government, a large corporation, or anyone with a large web site,

I'd be downloading this beast and aiming it at my site yesterday. The v

ulnerabilities are that serious."

Why it might be a killer

The Dead Cow folks are certainly making an incendiary statement; however, like it or not, the web is susceptible to all sorts of things half of us couldn’t even imagine if we tried. The web is vulnerable, and Goolag scanner will point those vulnerabilities out. Companies, corporations, networks, can all use the scanner to see how serious their vulnerabilities are.

Some questions

The problem with this is that it works both ways. Yes, you can find out what your site’s weaknesses are but so can everyone else. Will DeadCow then use their knowledge to wreak havoc? Will others get to it first?

Updates


 » original news

Google Search Application is the third S60 application from Google. The previous two applications were Google Maps and GMail. What does Google Search App do? It adds a shortcut, i.e. Pencil key (a.k.a. Edit key) on your idle screen. When you press the shortcut, it launches a window where you can do search using Google.

Point your Web browser to http://mobile.google.com to download Google Search App

(or use Bar Code application and scan the code below)

The only problem with this application is that it supports Pencil key only as shortcut. Many S60 devices nowadays don’t have this key any more. I’ll discuss more on how to use Google Search without Pencil key in the next posting. Bonus Links

• Google and Your S60 Device Part I - How to Use Google Search?
• Using Google Search App - No Pencil Key… What to Do?