Munich Council: To Hell With Linux, We're Going Full Windows in 2020
'The German city of Munich, which received much popularity back in the day when it first ditched Microsoft's services in favor of open-source software, has now agreed to stop using Linux and switch back to Windows. If the decision is ratified by the full council in two weeks, Windows 10 will start rolling out across the city in 2020. From a report: A coalition of Social Democrats and Conservatives on the committee voted for the Windows migration last week, Social Democrat councillor Anne Hubner told The Register. Munich rose to fame in the open-source world for deciding to use Linux and LibreOffice to make the city independent from the claws of Microsoft. But the plan was never fully realised -- mail servers, for instance, eventually wound up migrating to Microsoft Exchange -- and in February the city council formally voted to end Linux migration and go back to Microsoft. Hubner said the city has struggled with LiMux adoption. "Users were unhappy and software essential for the public sector is mostly only available for Windows," she said. She estimated about half of the 800 or so total programs needed don't run on Linux and "many others need a lot of effort and workarounds." Hubner added, "in the past 15 years, much of our efforts were put into becoming independent from Microsoft," including spending "a lot of money looking for workarounds" but "those efforts eventually failed." A full council vote on Windows 10 2020 migration is set for November 23, Hubner said. However, the Social Democrats and Conservatives have a majority in the council, and the outcome is expected to be the same as in committee.' -- source: https://news.slashdot.org/story/17/11/13/1714220 Cheers, Peter -- Peter Reutemann Dept. of Computer Science University of Waikato, NZ +64 (7) 858-5174 http://www.cms.waikato.ac.nz/~fracpete/ http://www.data-mining.co.nz/
On Tue, Nov 14, 2017 at 8:56 AM, Peter Reutemann <fracpete(a)waikato.ac.nz> wrote:
'The German city of Munich, which received much popularity back in the day when it first ditched Microsoft's services in favor of open-source software, has now agreed to stop using Linux and switch back to Windows. If the decision is ratified by the full council in two weeks, Windows 10 will start rolling out across the city in 2020. From a report:
A coalition of Social Democrats and Conservatives on the committee voted for the Windows migration last week, Social Democrat councillor Anne Hubner told The Register. Munich rose to fame in the open-source world for deciding to use Linux and LibreOffice to make the city independent from the claws of Microsoft. But the plan was never fully realised -- mail servers, for instance, eventually wound up migrating to Microsoft Exchange -- and in February the city council formally voted to end Linux migration and go back to Microsoft. Hubner said the city has struggled with LiMux adoption. "Users were unhappy and software essential for the public sector is mostly only available for Windows," she said. She estimated about half of the 800 or so total programs needed don't run on Linux and "many others need a lot of
You don't need 800 programs. The council should be scaling back. But never going to get that with big govt :( It's a shame they can't just pay developers to work on features that they need, and share these features with others. Bad idea to use Microsoft Exchange. It's never going to run well on Linux, better to use/develop something on Linux. Cheers, William.
On 11/14/2017 04:41 PM, William Mckee wrote:
On Tue, Nov 14, 2017 at 8:56 AM, Peter Reutemann <fracpete(a)waikato.ac.nz> wrote: You don't need 800 programs. The council should be scaling back. But never going to get that with big govt :(
It's a shame they can't just pay developers to work on features that they need, and share these features with others.
Bad idea to use Microsoft Exchange. It's never going to run well on Linux, better to use/develop something on Linux.
You can take the Windows away from the user, but you can't get the Windows out of the user. RIP LiMux.
On Tue, 14 Nov 2017 10:56:16 +1300, Peter Reutemann wrote:
'The German city of Munich, which received much popularity back in the day when it first ditched Microsoft's services in favor of open-source software, has now agreed to stop using Linux and switch back to Windows.'
Update <http://www.theregister.co.uk/2018/01/04/munich_linux_costs_ownership/>: That decision will cost the city upwards of €50m plus another €50m to revert to Windows 10, according to reports. The bill results from a combination of buying Windows 10 licences and converting some 12,000 LibreOffice templates and macros along with developing a new templating system for Microsoft Office. The article also quotes instances of many other Government departments in France, the Netherlands, Italy and Denmark successfully making large-scale deployments of Linux OSes and LibreOffice. The Document Foundation maintains a list here <https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/LibreOffice_Migrations>. I suppose Munich can serve as an opposite data point: what it would cost to migrate from Linux to Windows.
participants (4)
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Bryan Baldwin -
Lawrence D'Oliveiro -
Peter Reutemann -
William Mckee