The city of Munich tried to develop a Linux distribution "Limux" that was used for some time, but political considerations ultimately reversed the decision.
Take a computer that used to run Windows 2000 and install KDE on it, it's no wonder people got pissed and they had to revert their decision.
I'm not going to say that the project failed entirely because of technical reasons, but at first glance it really looks like they took bad decisions. It's hard to defend a move where you end up with worse software and a worse experience for users, no matter how much money you save.
Whilst KDE is a much bigger project that is actively developed.
Second, you haven't given us any arguments for your "indications of quality" regarding MATE and KDE.
Third, like Gnome, KDE has a huge legacy in FOSS, and is a great project in itself based on a top notch GUI backend. Some of its code even went on and become the basis of the modern web (KHTML -> Webkit -> Blink -> Node -> now also Edge), other tools like KDevelop, Krita, etc are among the best in class in what they do.
What are you, some teenage Linux nerd, with a "favorite" desktop to promote in flame wars?
For strict accuracy, MATE is not a fork of GTK2, but of GNOME 2. MATE did originally use GTK2, though without forking it, and it has since switched to GTK3 (while still keeping the GNOME 2 "look").
It's not quite as as snappy as XFCE, or probably MATE, but it's still easily good enough to get the job done.
On CentOS, being a stable platform, KDE itself is also really stable. (important to me, as I have better things to do that screwing around just keeping a desktop updated)
out of a museum, or a skip perhaps
>and install KDE on it
Then put Windows 10 on it, or any other fully featured modern GUI OS. And we have proved what? Computers from 18 years ago don't run modern OS's very well, but can run ok with an OS specifically pitched as 'lightweight'.
On the other hand I have a PC right here on my lap that is 10 years old that is running Kubuntu problem free.
And it's not even that expensive. £8/month/person. Slack is £5/month/person and that's just for chat.
Considering an average employee probably costs at least £3000/month it's a bit silly to worry about these small expenses.
Cost accumulates at scale.
Does MS Office have real competitors? Google Docs is very casual compared to MS Office. LibreOffice needs a lot of work.
My money was on Corel Office for Linux (with solid products like Wordperfect and Quattro Pro), but Microsoft bought a large share of Corel and it was mysteriously discontinued.
It's quite surprising given how relatively simple it is.
I've got a CS degree, have used Linux since 1998, used and developed for several commercial unices, and have used Open Office since it was Sun's. I still prefer MS Office.
I only use it for collaborative editing of docx and xlsx.
Because I don't know about German specifically, but with some languages, Libre office is very buggy.
( star office -> open office -> libre office )
Surely most of the problems with the opensource tools they were using could have been resolved by helping the opensource projects fix bugs.
Actually LiMux did that. From an external PoV, I saw quite a number of commits coming from LiMux sponsored people in a few FOSS projects I follow.
They way the decision came into play is crazy however. Just around the elections Microsoft moved their German headquarters from outside the city into the city and the next elected deputy mayor from the conservative party was disappointed that it took much time to get an official mobile phone from the IT department and setting up mail on that device was complicated ... not idea how that's related to desktops, but that triggered the debate ...
Thats a very one-sided portrayal of the situation. There were problems regarding usability, the resulting low user acceptance and issues with external MS Office files due to compatibility bugs.
If anything, funding the project for so long was a symptom of putting ideological and political considerations before user needs.
I find it very weird how even most software developers prefer MBPs with MS Office on them, but some poor souls elsewhere are supposed to do their daily work on a sub-standard platform. I mean we're still joking about the "Year of the Linux Desktop".
The resulting standard was 6,546 pages long (in comparison, ODF is just 867 pages long), and Microsoft Office was not fully compliant with it, making the entire process a waste of time. 10 years later situation is the same.
It is reasonable to believe that interoperability and standardization were not in the best interest of Microsoft. They have the largest market share and they have not much to win by giving opportunities to competitors.
You can read more here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standardization_of_Office_Open...