The city of Munich switches to Open Source Software

Great to see this project being completed after almost ten years. Several similar projects in Germany have failed (e.g. the parliament's attempt to converting to Linux) or Wienux in Vienna (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wienux). IMO, a major reason for the success of LiMux was the gradual change with extensive training and that the included developing custom templates and generators for Open Office etc.

For a timeline on the project: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LiMux

Awesome news, I always wonder how the users react to these kind of switches. They switched everyone to open office, firefox and thunderbird while on Windows and then gradually switched to LiMux. It seems like they tried to make the DE very similar to windows NT to ease the transition[0].

[0] http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:LiMux.jpg

WIll be interesting to see how this fares long-term. The article doesn't mention why a custom distro was needed rather than one of the standards, and the running cost of now patching their own OS every time a linux bug or vulnerability is found.

some more detailed info, and lot of comments http://www.techrepublic.com/article/how-munich-rejected-stev...