How Munich switched 15,000 PCs from Windows to Linux
linuxvoice.com
linuxvoice.com
The good news is that future similar migrations will be much easier and faster, now that Munich has shown the way for others to follow. It's good news because increased competition in the desktop OS market can lead only to better, more innovative products for everyone.
This is mostly because a large number of fairly standard desktops could be migrated early on.
IIRC he mentioned that if you only consider the license costs, the balance is roughly even, and if you also consider that you need to upgrade the hardware less often (because of lower resource usage of limux vs. windows), limux comes out clearly ahead.
Sorry that I don't have anything to link to, and I notice that my source is biased too.
It would seem that a hardware argument would be that Linux requires less expense for a replacement, e.g. Word Processing on a Raspberry Pi, though the idea of a Raspberry Pi in 2001 did not really exist. But the idea that Windows requires a more frequent upgrade cycle doesn't make sense since XP support only ended recently and still runs the hardware on which it was initially installed.
Anyway for me, the elephant for FOSS is support. There are just lots of moving parts in Linux and many development teams all rowing in different directions at best and losing interest in maintaining a package at worse, or perhaps being acquired by Oracle is worse. The price of all the innovation is the risk that comes from no roadmap.
Windows is more and more a resource hog with every version update. Many machines able to run a WinXP are not able to run a Win7 or even 8.1, same for Vista and 7/8.1.
But upgrading from XP hasn't been necessary until last month. Until then, any machine that shipped with XP could be kept up to date via Download Tuesday without any change to the hardware, and upgrading remained as much a choice for Windows XP as for Linux.
It's like saying that the existence of the Linux x64 kernel requires upgrading 32 bit machines to x64 hardware.
But nobody knew that back then; iirc Windows XP EOL has been extended several times, and by the time the support ends, you should have migrated all of the remaining machines. So planning an upgrade for 2013 or 2014 would have been downright irresponsible.
> Anyway for me, the elephant for FOSS is support. There are just lots of moving parts in Linux and many development teams all rowing in different directions at best and losing interest in maintaining a package at worse, or perhaps being acquired by Oracle is worse. The price of all the innovation is the risk that comes from no roadmap.
There are lots of paid support contracts for open source software. Also you can mitigate much of the risk by choosing projects from healthy communities with high bus numbers.
When the company from which you bought support goes out of business, at least for open source projects you have the chance to find another company that provides support; good luck with that when the source is closed.
Don't forget Munich saved 10,000,000 Euros doing this[2], and --let's be honest -- doing the same thing with windows computers wouldn't have saved more than maybe a couple years at most.
[1]http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2013-10/01/french-nation...
[2]http://linux.slashdot.org/story/12/11/23/1732222/limux-proje...
That's a big assumption, and one that no doubt helps push the price of the MS solution up considerably.
There's no case study more massaged by those who want certain outcomes than the Munich linux migration. I also believe they were running NT4 when they started this project, so they're definitely the type of organization that is very behind the tech curve.
I don't have a preferred outcome and wish them the best, but there's so much BS and massaging of data here that its all fairly useless to those of us interested in how this really turned out for them. Pardon me if I don't considering slashdot as a reliable and unbiased source regarding TCO of Windows.
Have they published any whitepaper or technical guide to switching to Linux in a corporate setting? Is there any open source CRM or other tool that they released? It would be cool if they kickstart a corporate Linux distro that everyone contributes to. I heard they spent a lot of money on IBM and SuSe consultants and also inhouse to develop software during the switch, it would go waste if they didn't publish it. Is there anything technical from them? All I see are the same stories resubmitted and upvoted ad nauseam with chest pumping about Ballmer etc. I hope to see something of substance.
I haven't been to any council meetings at major cities, but "we can maybe save a few million with a ten-year effort that may alienate lots of workers and requires winning hearts and minds" doesn't sound like a winning proposition.
Good for Munich, though. Maybe they can take the people who ran the project and set up a consulting gig to make this easier for other cities?
I kick around a campaign on http://www.oss4gov.org/manifesto that basically says local government like Munich has at least 2000 legally mandated services to deliver and software is or will be involved in all of them and almost all that software is proprietary
I swear that there is a huge amount of OSS development still to be done for the public sector - but it will not spring up organically - I mean who scratches the itch for "election management software"
And yet I keep trying to get a gig as public sector open source development and boy it is tough - despite the rhetoric all the tenders assume you will chRge a license
Not if you care about US government backdoors.
What's more private, a Word document sitting only on your drive on Windows, or the same information in a Google Doc that you uploaded from a hardened Linux machine over TOR? In that sense, what the desktop runs is becoming less important. In the first case, your file is unlikely to be accessed unless you're a person of significant interest to a government and takes some effort. In the second case, as it was revealed, it's almost routinely scanned or can be accessed with the click of a few buttons. A super secure USB booted secured PC running OpenBSD is not going to help you once the document reaches the internet/cloud.
And it turns out that most of the interesting and useful stuff is by its nature in the network - who I called, what cell tower took the call at what time, who was on the cell tower at the same time, who I emailed, bought a Starbucks afterwards in the queue.
The document named "My evil plan for world domination" on my hard drive is far less a signifier for my future actions than all the metadata already out there.
It is a form of pollution as Schneier says
Seriously though, if people think the the TCO of owning an IT infrastructure is equal to the price of the operating system than what is left to say? You should grow a brain? :) Bashing on Windows is pretty cool in the Linux community but there is hard evidence that Linux was never meant to replace desktop operating systems because those have different requirements than having a kernel and a minimal userland. Munic is learning that lesson.
As a long-time Linux user and advocate (since 1997, Unix for another decade prior to that), I've long pushed for desktop use, but it's a hard sell at many shops: they've got something that (mostly) works, external partners (businesses, customers, vendors, suppliers) are using (mostly) compatible systems, there's a workforce that's (mostly) familiar with the tools, there's a stable of application-specific software that is (mostly) aimed at that one platform, etc., etc.
Change is hard, especially when the near-term benefits of that change aren't large or obvious.
The Linux landscape has also been somewhat unstable. Not so much if you live on the commandline and don't follow the whims and foibles of leading distros, but desktops, office suites, package management systems, and even preferred distributions have been in constant flux over the past decade. Sometimes there's a lot of benefit is choosing one solution and sticking to it. It's also a fair argument that while the free software licensing and, open source development models have done an excellent job at delivering highly usable standards, tools, utilities, and infrastructures, their success in the end-user, GUI, desktop, and application space has been less exemplary. I still prefer many CLI tools to the GUI alternatives, and basics (text editors) to full office suites. Even now, I only fire up StarOffice, sorry, OpenOffice, sorry, NeoOffice, sorry, LibreOffice, when I need to access a (usually Microsoft-formatted) document, often to print it to PDF and read that instead (using editors to read static content is stupid).
What's making such transitions far more viable is that the desktop monopoly is finally fracturing after over 20 years. I walk into offices today to find what's usually a mix of Windows and Mac systems, with a few Linux boxes for developers. Increasingly you'll find iPads or Android tablets, particularly in meetings. Chromebooks will undoubtedly start to show up. Apple cracked the OS, Google are tackling the office apps space with Google Docs (though as with LibreOffice, I generally use these only once in a blue moon). The SAAS model has gotten people used to using services offered online rather than hosted on their own infrastructure, though post-Snowden security concerns, NSA or otherwise, are definitely affecting this logic. I'm starting my next 20 years of advocacy based on the concept of small, cheap, automatically-configuring service platforms which can provide a distributed SAAS experience without relying on a central provider, think FreedomBox.
Another factor is those legacy industry or nich-specific programs. Increasingly those are not clustered on a single platform, but function only on some legacy (and often unsupported) version of Windows, which must then be kept running, but also somehow secured. Virtualization is increasingly used for this, and with it the realization that no one OS offers access to all the tools a modern information worker uses. I routinely keep multiple VMs at hand to run Windows (often for software to manage my Linux servers), and find that teams will adopt Mac-specific applications that aren't available on either my Linux laptop or Windows VMs. Welcome to the future.
Incidentally, the issues noted in the article with the tight coupling of WINE to Windows applications is an instance of this.
And the truth is that Munich's transition was successful and had strong positives from the start (I've been following it for much of its 13 year life). It was a major transition accomplished gradually with feedback and lessons learned from early deployments applied and adapted as the project progressed.
And this is because governments and administration never choose any kind of product because it is "easy to use", "simple to maintain" or "easy to extend".
Even the switch to Linux was made for the wrong reasons, that is for trying to find something cheaper and better ("better" seems to mean "more secure" in this case). NEWSFLASH: As a government/administration, you should never look for cheaper and/or better things, you should look for something that is "barely good enough" (even when it's a bit worse than what you already have), but easiest to use without training, easiest to teach people how to use it, easiest to replace / throw away and cheapest to extend, even if it happens to be both worse an more expensive.
The fact that they happened to choose Linux, which is probably a pretty good fit for them, was an accident, as they did the same old stupid thing of going to look for something cheaper and better.
The same is true for enterprise software. It's not optimized for the users. It's optimized to appeal to ones paying.
- all internal data storage formats have to be completely specified - an open data format (RTF, PDF, txt?) has to be supported for import/export - the source code has to be licensed suitably, e.g. GPL - open/platform-independent toolkits (say Qt, GTK) have to be used
As I said, I’m not a lawyer and not a software engineer, so these are likely entirely unsuitable. And while they not ensure maintainable software, I think they certainly would not be detrimental.
PDFs can be modified, but you really don't want to do that. Far better to get source in LaTeX, DocBook, RTF, Markdown, or some similar format.
Better: insist that the tool not only be capable of outputting the chosen format, but that it do so by default, as a matter of course, and without any error, warning, or other dissuasive dialog (e.g., "some formatting changes may be lost") in the process.
While it's not the only company to do so, Microsoft's gaming of file formats for lock-in advantage is legendary (and yet another reason I avoid the company's products where at all possible).
Monetary consequences for failing to meet Service Level Agreements; contract-mandated maximum time periods for patches; support for the both oldest and newest OS-vendor supported versions within the window of the contract.
That's not quite accurate. Reducing vendor lock-in was a main goal, compare https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LiMux#Objectives . Cheaper was a nice side effect.
Edit:
Another anecdote from the visit: They said that even the switch from XP to 8.1 will confuse a lot of users (The guy giving the talk said that their average employee is already confused if some icons on the desktop change and they are very reluctant to accept changes). They printed flyers and recorded elearning courses on how to open a program or use the new system. They also added a simple way to migrate to some kind of legacy interface emulating the Windows XP look & feel for users who just won't accept the new system.
It still takes a lot of convincing there especially if there's some kind of "Früher war alles besser" ("Back in the old days everything was better") mentality which isn't uncommon in these parts.
Even if 50 year olds don't "get it", they have something that 20-35 year olds don't -- power and influence within their organizations.
So yes, after getting 50 year olds to sit down and mess around with a computer for a couple months to see if they can "get" it, they should be let go. We fundamentally hire people to do a job. When they can't effectively utilize technology they are holding back society. It would be better to put them on welfare or to have them transition to a lower tech position. I don't want the local police chief installing some browser spamware and having all the juvie records leaked.
I imagine that people in their 40's and above got acquainted with computers in office settings when they were already adult. Adult non-geeks can be very resistant to change, especially repeated one.
This accurately describes my dealings with non-technical people over 50. My parents - now in their late 50s and early 60s - have both worked with computers since the 80s. They worked in the administration of the government and a major bank. Yet they are having a really hard time switching from their previous computer (Windows Vista) to their new one (Windows 7 - I specifically avoided 8 because of the bigger UI changes).
Things like icons being organized differently, bookmarks being missing (how else would you navigate to Facebook or Gmail - the services they use most?) or their homepage changing. Things that seem beyond trivial for us, can pose a significant roadblock for people who didn't grow up with computers all around them.
Forget making fun of people Googling for "facebook" or "gmail" instead of using the simple URLs. A lot of people have a hard time even figuring out they can search for these terms.
I do this all the time actually.
I just mentioned it because I've had several people, both on- and offline, mention it as a symptom of poor technical understanding of how the Internet works. In truth, I think it's more a matter of convenience and habit.
To wikipede something, I write "w <something>" into my address bar.
As a bonus I also have tv tropes, a forum I frequent, etc. etc. in there.
You can also edit the custom search engine list in Chrome's options. I set mine to search Wikipedia on "wiki <term>" and WolframAlpha on "wolf <term>"
It drives me insane.
He said "This accurately describes my dealings with non-technical people over 50.", not "This accurately describes all people over 50." Nothing wrong with detailing your factual experiences.
The project has seen huge delays and missed deadlines over its duration.
See http://web.archive.org/web/20120214072347/http://limuxwatch.... to get an idea of how long it took them to get anywhere and how often the goalposts were moved.
Many other city administrations canceled plans of switching to Linux because Munich had such a hard time making it happen.
> “We have a very limited Wine installation, because there’s always the need to save the configuration of Wine together with the application. They’re deeply dependent. If you change the version of Wine, you have to do something with the application, and vice-versa. We saw that we’d have to use 10 or 15 different configurations of Wine on the same machine in some cases
Wine like other Free or Open Source Software sends people down the rabbit hole because there is no single source of responsibility other than the individual user or organization themselves. You can't 'get Wine on the phone' when there's a problem and the business case for Wine developers to fix edge cases is comparatively weak compared to the business case at Microsoft.
To put it another way, there's a solution for experienced Wine users, but the government of Munich's business is not developing software expertise in regard to Wine. Solving problems with Wine doesn't scale to other parts of Linux. That same troubleshooting process has to be repeated again and again for other software with varying support documentation quality and community sympathy.
Actually you can: first item in the help page
Of course if you meant "support on the phone for free" that's not gonna happen.
The other option is hiring a consultant.
A copy of Windows is $200. The reason for using Wine is running Windows programs. The business case for Wine becomes weak for many people pretty quick when time is money, e.g. how long does it take before the cost in cash and time associated with consultants costs more than Windows?
The quality of support for non-technical Linux users is why a company can make a business out of supporting Wine. Indeed, it's why RedHat can be a public company.
Companies make a lot of money as Microsoft Consultants you know.
The quality of Windows self-support is vastly superior to that of Linux. The quality of free support for Windows programs is vastly superior to that of FOSS when the problem is immediate and my level of expertise with the software is not high.
Yes, the answers to all questions about Emacs are in the manual, but it's six hundred fucking pages plus another twelve hundred on Lisp. Which isn't so much the problem as that googling for answers tends to return, RTFM.
That's the same for Wine. If you have 114 frequently asked questions, it suggests that maybe the product could be improved. Or at least the documentation. I'm not picking on Wine. But using Wine for most people is an ideological statement. It's going to church and professing their faith. It's jumping through hoops if what matters is running Windows applications - you can buy a used computer running Windows for $150 plus shipping allday anyday everyday.
The only viable FOSS business model is providing support. RedHat's yearly per user charge is almost the retail cost of Windows. And that's as mainstream as FOSS gets.
Consultants for both Windows and FOSS make their money B2B. Wine is marketed to end users as a solution to ordinary problems. But there's no infrastructure to support such users. That's the problem MicroSoft solved. They focus on B2B level support and provide it in the consumer sector. It's what allowed them to scale.
Don't misunderstand me. I deeply respect Stallman's philosophy and admire his accomplishments. But that doesn't require me to hate Gates or MicroSoft. He and the company he founded did more to put a computer on every desk and in every home than anyone else. I wouldn't be running Linux or using Emacs but for the commercial success of Windows.
> The quality of Windows self-support is vastly superior to that of Linux.
No, it really isn't. I've had a much better response to requests for information on FOSS than I've had on proprietary software.
> Yes, the answers to all questions about Emacs ...
So you'd have exactly the same problems running Emacs on Windows. You may not have seen thousand page manuals for proprietary Windows software, but I certainly have. Worse, it's usually that terrible documentation that tells you "You can do X to perform Y" but without any indication how to do X.
> That's the same for Wine. If you have 114 frequently asked questions, it suggests that maybe the product could be improved.
They're providing an implementation of Windows. If you think there aren't more than 114 questions about Windows, you've not been paying attention!
> you can buy a used computer running Windows for $150 plus shipping allday anyday everyday.
At which point you've switched from having an up-to-date, solid, repeatable installation to having a buggy, out-of-date version running on failing hardware.
> RedHat's yearly per user charge is almost the retail cost of Windows.
Support with a MS Partner is far more than the retail cost of Windows.
> He and the company he founded did more to put a computer on every desk and in every home than anyone else
So Microsoft PR keeps claiming, but I remember people using computers in the home well before the Windows/PC monoculture took over. It was a massive step backwards when it did.
I also haven't forgotten Microsoft's attempts to destroy FOSS (see the Halloween Documents for more) nor have I forgotten that Microsoft attempted their FUD tactics on the Internet itself, in an attempt to push their Microsoft Network.
Thankfully they failed in that, otherwise we'd all be using Microsoft approved Pages today instead of the WWW and I'd have people telling me how we should be thankful that Microsoft put global communication in every home!
Of course the objective is to devolve a conversation - for the pick-apart is a form of trolling for flame wars. It's power stems from the frustration it instills in one's opponents via low quality arguments based on deliberate misinterpretation across many fronts and the fact that the number of fronts multiplies with a thoughtful response - i.e. when trolling the pick-apart is applied recursively. [1]
One can identify troll sign in the pick-apart because there is no priority to the counterpoints. The perfect pick-apart disputes each sentence rather than the overall ideas. Even at the micro-level, there's nothing but contradiction - just unsupported assertions of whatever happens to be opposite the most convenient reading of each sentence in isolation.
Now in fairness, the pick-apart is often a high quality post on most of the internet, because it at least entails some effort at writing [I forgot to mention one of the ways it wins arguments is simply by leveraging one's ability to out-type their opponent] and produces a maximum of snark. Snark being the primary coin of internet chat as entertainment.
Anyway, here on HN pick-aparts are pretty much noise due to the generally higher standard of quality found in the comments and the general distaste for trolling. Consider this editorial feedback, with the honest intent of improving your writing technique.
Good luck.
[1] The classic insurgent strategy in a Blotto Game is to open up additional fronts against any opponent with superior resources. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blotto_games
Here's a suggestion for you: stop assuming that your lofty air of wisdom is all that's required for people to accept your pronouncements without question. I'm sure it impresses the kids, but I've been around a little longer.
All you've done is claim that Windows without support is cheaper than Linux with support. It's an extremely foolish argument and your attempt to switch this to a meta-discussion on debating styles doesn't change that.
Read the post to which I am responding. Was it thoughtful and reasoned and articulate? What did it accomplish? Did it raise anyone's standing in the HN community? Did it make HN better? Was it well written? What view did it advance?
Ok, I'll answer the last one. It advanced a view that I hold a particular view. Which is more convincing as to what views I hold, my original posts or brief assertions about those posts? And which is more interesting?
If despite the list of persons doing so being rather long, should finding disagreement with me constitutes an accomplishment, congratulations. Though as I've said, for me writing is thinking. Thus, I am also on the list.
You mean vendor lockin - hopefull, more applications will move to the web.
So yeah, when Wine works flawlessly, it's great. When it doesn't: good luck.
The team in Munich had to develop their own extension to OpenOffice/LibreOffice to support existing workflows http://www.wollmux.net/wiki/Hauptseite
1. Transition to LibreOffice on Windows 2. Transition to Linux
Wasn't that a total of two? From the article, it seems that they generally just used a Windows computer when they needed a Windows computer.
Also, while you quote a few articles that show organizations "changing their mind" on Linux, there are plenty of articles that show governments and organizations still attempting a migration, most recently the entire Indian government (http://itsfoss.com/tamil-nadu-switches-linux/), The French switched 37,000 PCs to linux (http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2013-10/01/french-nation...), Don't forget the Munich saved 10,000,000 Euros by switching to Linux. I could keep going.
In my experience Windows is not needed in 90% of cases and when it is it's for a skilled task that involves skilled workers. It's a fact that skilled workers do not make up even close to a majority of the work force. Also, Ubuntu is certified to run on 70% of desktop computers: http://www.ubuntu.com/certification/desktop/ . One of the the manufacturers I work closely with is Dell and for the most part I haven't had any problems installing Linux on any business model Dell desktop that there is. Business models don't typically come with high end nVidia GPUs and other unnecessary hardware, so upgrading to Linux is no problem most of the time. On budget and typical business systems Linux seems to be the king of resume times and performance (at least in my experience). I've only used windows 8 on an employees laptop and from what I can tell, it wasn't made to perform well on his Toshiba to say the least. I've seen both windows 7 and windows 8 running very well on the right hardware though. The performance of windows on budget hardware (~75% of consumer) is mediocre at best. Can we stop pretending Linux has no use for anything?
They assumes all other costs are the same. Which confuses me a bit because they said they had consultants working to develop the underlying OS itself (so wouldn't you save the cost of those consultants if you're buying Windows?). But I don't mean to be begging the question, as there's no real reason to not trust them (but isn't there no real reason not to trust HP by the same token?).
Anyway, I can't read German so maybe I missed something. http://www.h-online.com/open/news/item/Linux-brings-over-EUR... http://www.ris-muenchen.de/RII2/RII/ris_vorlagen_dokumente.j...
I'm not a huge fan of their numbers, but I guess if they hold up and people are 100% equally productive then it's fine. But really saving 10 million over the course of a 10 yr project for a city government the size of Munich doesn't seem that significant to me.
>You make it sound as if the migration wasn't a success while the original article claims it to be more than successful
Why does it have to be either a failure or more then successful? Why couldn't have just been a completed project that wasn't a huge success or failure. Honestly that the article doesn't mention any issues other then a handwavey "there have been hurdles", doesn't inspire me to think the article is the greatest in the world. But maybe I'm just cynical.
I think a lot of people make the assumption that just because you're running windows you're not going to run into any road blocks that require hiring developers to extend this or that or create a plugin here or there. Of course you can't extend the windows OS, and why would you want to? Probably to optimize something. Why would you want to optimize something? Probably to make things run better. Why would you want things to run better? Probably because it saves money. So for all we know the development on LiMux may have been what saved them the money.
If it's an issue or not depends on the software people use to do their work. If 90% of it is spent in a web app and the rest is e-mail plus the occasional presentation or letter, then yes it's not a huge issue. However many people in work environments depend on specialized applications that may not be available on linux. Then you not only have to change OSs but also end user applications.
I have been through a failed migration to Ubuntu from Windows. The new head of IT and CTO were huge linux nerds and wanted to transition promising huge cost savings. As it turns out LibreOffice plus Evolution could just not replace MS Office and Outlook. Our accountants refused after after a week of trying to use Calc instead of Excel. Sales and Marketing people found that Outlook had features that were not available anymore. A major internal FileMaker application was supposed to be replaced by a LAMP web application. That project languished for half a year before it was given up after it failed to become usable. It was never even attempted to replace the Exchange server. The designer never started to switch away from their Macs.
In the end it was decided that everyone could use the OS of their choice. So we now have mix of about 60% Windows, 30% Macs, 10% Linux on the desktop. The attempted migration cost the company a lot of money and time.
> haven't had any problems installing Linux on any business model Dell desktop
Installation is not the issue.
>Can we stop pretending Linux has no use for anything?
Nobody says that.
> performance
Firefox is faster on Windows than on Linux. Battery life usually also is better, though Macs are miles ahead there.
Not on any of my computers. I have windows 8 installed on a separate partition on my laptop and have literally only used it to upgrade the system and I installed firefox to browse the web while I wait for updates.
This pristine OS that has almost never been used boots up fairly fast, but then when I login it takes 3 minutes to load the start screen. Then of course the first thing I want to do is go to my desktop, but guess what? The whole OS chokes when I click the button to bring it up. I've gotten use to giving windows 8 a "warm up" period of about ten minutes, but this still doesn't help. I go to open Firefox on the desktop and literally nothing happens for 3 minutes, I end up pressing the icon again, then I get 5 FF windows, 2 mcaffe pop-ups, some crap from dell, and oh look! more up-dates. This is on a brand new dell with integrated graphics and an intel core i5 with regular HDD. Linux doesn't have any of these problems. Now I'm sure you can tell me all the tricks to getting Windows to run faster, but if I wanted to spend all day configuring my OS I would use Arch.
How many people work in your company if you don't mind me asking? In my experience, a lot of companies that have thousands of computers are employing people who aren't important enough to have a company Outlook account. Believe it or not many companies still use dos (and train the employees to use a command line dos interface in 3 days).
Plenty of companies can switch to Linux, maybe not your 15 person start-up where everyone has a specialized task, but plenty of others can.
> Now I'm sure you can tell me all the tricks to getting Windows to run faster,
No, I can't. But it surely seems pretty slow.
>but if I wanted to spend all day configuring my OS I would use Arch.
:3
> How many people work in your company if you don't mind me asking?
60 people, though I don't work there anymore.
"Look, Windows 8 boots in 15 seconds!" - until the lockscreen, and then it takes 2 minutes to load everything.
Peter’s reasoning for this: Wienux didn’t have the proper political backing required. You need more than just a couple of technically minded councillors to make such a big project a success – you need to know that you have the support of the majority.
I'm definitely not surprised - Austria is a notoriously conservative and very bureaucratic country, which is deeply reflected by the political landscape. Pioneers and out-of-the-box thinkers don't flourish in this country (although migrating to Linux nowadays is not even pioneering anything anymore).
I would generally agree with this, but just for the record: the city of Vienna has been governed by the center-left Social Democratic Party since 1946. And for the last four years they have been in a coalition with the Green Party.
Not that you can't always get better but saying that Vienna is not properly managed, as Greek, makes wanna commit suicide.
I may be alone in this, but those don't seem like compelling, or even believable justifications for switching an entire region to Linux.
Are we to believe that MS flew Balmer all the way there to try to convince them to stay, but wouldn't disclose to them what aspects of Windows called home?
Also, where is the data that shows how the switch to Linux has helped the local IT economy?
Love Linux as much as the next guy, but it seems many of these decisions are driven by staff IT geeks who have it out for MS irregardless of the actual issues at hand.
In light of all the recent links and the sheer cosiness of American corporations with the US intelligence this starts to look prescient.
> and to foster the local IT economy as opposed to sending money overseas.
I could easily see a local government selling that to it's local workers.
> Are we to believe that MS flew Balmer all the way there to try to convince them to stay, but wouldn't disclose to them what aspects of Windows called home?
Microsoft won't disclose that kind of information to anyone, there is still not a clear picture of what various Microsoft products (including these days Skype) do and do not do.
Hindsight is a helluva thing. If you remember back 15 years, not a single person knew of the recent revelations regarding the NSA. The "controversy" was about Microsoft's effort to curb piracy, and many (including myself) within the industry were weary of how authoritarian (or not) their approach was. Don't apply the knowledge of today to past events that did not enjoy the same.
"I could easily see a local government selling that to it's local workers."
What was kind of my point ... its sounds good to the locals but what actual results has it returned? Does Munich now have a robust Linux economy with local providers swimming in work? I can't say whether they do or not, only that the article lacked any proof of either.
"Microsoft won't disclose that kind of information to anyone, there is still not a clear picture of what various Microsoft products (including these days Skype) do and do not do."
I can't speak to this, as I'm not aware of how much or little MS has disclosed about what services within XP called home. I just found it hard to believe MS would exert such effort (how much did Balmer's time cost?), but fail to address the specific concern raised.
I always figured Ballmer flying in to save the day was more a "We really don't want a flagship successful transfer away from our products for the rest to rally around" defense than anything.
Anecdotally I have a friend in local government here in the North of England and their IT internally is already heavily linux and open source (everything from CentOS on machines through to Alfresco) as what they need to do with the budget they have been given makes open source attractive especially when you can't reduce head counts to save costs (councils don't normally lay people off except as a last resort).
I could see a Linux migration happening here in the next few years.
Keep in mind that Ballmer had just become CEO when this decision was made, and going out and collecting facts on the ground is the sort of thing a CEO should be doing in unusual circumstances. If MicroSoft had been on a wining and dining mission, they would have sent Gates because in the early 2000's it was "Steve, who?"
This is technically correct - the rest of the world thought it was the CIA that was spying on them and passing secrets to US corporations. Seriously, the idea of the USA spying on enemy and ally alike for commercial benefit was not birthed by the recent exposure of the NSA.
I did not downvote you.
I suspect that IT geeks have very little power in the purchasing decisions of local government IT software. I suspect that there is a huge bureaucratic structure of tendering and selection. I could be wrong though.
About the time this decision was rolling out, I worked in Municipal government. They had standardized on WordPerfect Office Suite. As part of my job, I attended a few council workshops and can unequivocally assert that these were neither visionaries nor geniuses. Just people making decisions that balanced their personal aspirations and the public good while answering their constiuancy.
This story gets rolled out every few months and draws the expected upvotes. One day I hope to read an inside technical account rather than 'Linux has Risen, Risen Indeed.' Today alas is not that day.
Me too! Most of these feel-good Linux switch stories either fail to look at the long term picture (I switched to Linux last week and so far no problems!) or fail to address the specific reasons why Linux was chosen, or is superior to the MS products.
When I read that in this case they weren't saving any money, I was intrigued and eager to read about the real reason. Yet, after reading the entire account I still don't feel like there is/was any compelling data to back up or justify the decision.
A: We pay lots of money to a company based out of country and get nothing back in taxes.
B: We pay lots of money to several companies inside our own town and get a portion of that back in taxes.
In a global economy, how likely is it that a local company provides the best net value in regard to something like IT?
I gripe frequently about local towns awarding contracts to entities not within the town/state/region, but I'd like to see some sort of data about how this helped the local economy and wasn't just a xenophobic/isolationist response.
If you spend money on something from a local independent company, especially one that has little to pay in terms of inputs and overheads, then the money seems usually to stay local.
I wonder how they coped with EU competition law that - from the little I know - seems to require anything paid for with government money to be put to open tender and to not preference origin in the purchasing decision.
See the arguments about who gets to build the new trains for the UK.
Personally, I would never use OpenOffice or even Linux Desktop. They would have to pry my MacBook Pro from my cold, dead hands - and yes, MS Office on OSX is actually not that bad. At least not as bad as OpenOffice.
> (...) and to foster the local IT economy as opposed to sending money overseas.
Through taxation, the government is suddenly getting a discount of 1/3, after looking at only two levels of capital circulation. Add in effects of reduced unemployment and other positive effects of economic activity, and suddenly it is an unbeatable proposition.
Companies and individuals aren't different, except that individual consumers have no one to charge VAT to. They are the end of the line for the good or service.
Also, at least in the American market, the money poured into sales people to wine-and-dine for government contracts provides even more compelling reasons for politicians and bureaucrats to not rock the boat. And in Munich's case, Steve Ballmer himself flew out, in person, to try to convince them not to quit Windows (and, in the OP's assessment, that apparently was an unwise tactic for Microsoft).
OT: The body font of this article, Roboto (http://www.google.com/fonts/specimen/Roboto), stuck out to me as being both legible and distinctly different than Helvetica...I was reading the article on a tablet but went to my desktop just to see what it was...I think I've seen Roboto before on Google Fonts but not used as body text...I kind of like it, more than some of the common Helvetica replacements (Open/Ubuntu/PT Sans)...even before I started reading the article, I thought, "this is a really nice sans-serif font"
edit: Apparently typography aficionados do not like Roboto, calling it a "frightening cross-breed creature" and a "hodgepodge brute" http://typographica.org/on-typography/roboto-typeface-is-a-f...
>“In 2008 we saw that Debian was clearly stable, a good thing, but not the best if you want to use new hardware. They are always a few years behind. //
Surely they could get a manufacturer to spec them out a new machine that would run on Debian based on an offer to buy ~10k of them and with the potential - should it go well - of selling similar numbers to other major cities.
It's all very chicken and egg, I understand.
I guess the TL;DR question is - is it really not economic for a single mainstream computer seller/manufacturer to sell business spec linux boxes.
The article mentions that the mayor had difficulties communicating in English good enough to feel comfortable. Add to that the slight dislike of American culture common with many people here, the high degree of local identification in southern germany and you get that result.
That said, there CEO flying over was probably the last straw they reverted to when everything else had failed ;)
There is a place for this, like on my desk, because I need a big fast machine and a large monitor and, in my case, I use Eclipse and the Android SDK, but it could be Blender or LMMS or science applications.
For the other 99%, there are two instances where Linux is a hit. But making Linux a hit required jettisoning the desktop metaphor and making a modern managed userland with a single runtime environment. Of course I mean Android and ChromeOS.
The future of open software distributions is going to look more like CyanogenMod and less like Ubuntu.
My major practical benefit from switch to open source by as large organization as city government is the fact that these money will go to local support organizations and results of their work will be owned by whole city. I.e. if taxpayers paid for this software patches, updates, etc it make sense to own this work at very least.
Not only that, how can a government feel confident in depending so much on a single overseas entity?
This isn't even a technical issue.
I'd like seeing all this money going into local software development and open standards.
The federal foreign ministry also canceled the transition http://www.golem.de/1102/81498.html
and no one in the city of munich is really thinking about going back to windows. but there are some people who just like windows more and try to shift that political stance back. but that won't happen.. too expensive.
Too bad I hate open office because that is my last dependency on Microsoft. I'll still take OS X for my daily computer over Linux any day.
Is this hate based on criteria that you can articulate or just a (no doubt strong) feeling?
LO serves my needs well, and the mathematical formula editor is less annoying than the one in MS Office 2010.
How many projects has Limux fronted and donated to the FOSS community that can now be used in other cities - venue booking tools, or street maintenance apps, or payroll systems, or CRM, or ...
How many local developers are currently working in their LiMux eco-system?
http://ibo.nyc.ny.us/cgi-park2/?p=590
Apparently you need a lot of people to keep a city running.
I wonder if the Munich figures include these staff.
Police are employed by the state (Bavaria in Munich) in Germany, but the rest should be included. Teachers and all kinds of other child care workers definitely are. If it isn’t done by the church child care is usually organised by the city. Public schools are the norm (only about six percent of students in Germany go to private schools). Munich has 4500 full time teachers for 72000 students.
Municipal utilities, public transport and the hospital were all privatised in the 90s, so those aren’t included (about 20,000 employees).
Really, to compare the numbers you have to go through them item by item. However, Munich’s number doesn’t seem high compared to US numbers for local government.
State of Georgia, US (likely a small government state) Population: 9M State employees: 82k Ratio: 109:1
Add in county and city, and it's right in line.
You can cut this various ways, but the ratio seems within the range of normal. I would like more data for comparison, but it doesn't seem unreasonable.
The number of people it takes to maintain rule of law, social services, etc. is not a small undertaking and also doesn't ebb as much as the private sector due to the need for consistent levels of service.
Police and fire correlate pretty tightly to population and geography (size). Similarly, licensing, inspection, etc. etc. scale with population. Tiers of management necessarily increase with increases in head count for larger municipalities at fairly standard ratios. For similarly sized populations in wealthy cities and states, I wouldn't expect extreme divergence if services provided are roughly equivalent.
Phoenix, AZ is roughly the same size an Munich (1.38M) and has 17,000 city employees. That's 1 CE to 81 residents.
The city administration in Munich has about 33000 employees.
Since parts of the city administration were privatised in the 90s (municipal utilities with 8000 employees, public transport with 3000 employees, hospital with 9000 employees) the number was higher in the past.
The police is employed by the state (Bavaria), not the city, so they don’t figure into this number, either.
I looked over the list of job advertisements and the offered jobs are quite diverse. Lots of clerks, obviously, but also engineers, mechanics, plumbers, all kinds of IT jobs, lawyers, one painting restorer, all kinds of child care workers and teachers, headmasters, medical doctors, editors, cooks …
Teachers are a pretty big group (and the only one I could easily find numbers for): 4500 teachers for 72000 students in the city.
You do need quite a lot of people to run a city. Of course, this always also depends on what exactly the city does, what is privatised and what is done by other levels of government.
Obviously not all of those need their own personal computer for their work (some don’t need a computer at all), but many do.
Altogether about seven percent (that’s about one in 14) of Americans work for the government (I think it’s about six percent in Germany, so a very similar number), so the number for Munich’s local government shouldn’t really surprise you.
That does seem like a lot to me, I wonder if the council administers some larger area than just the city?
Based on an age-dependency ratio of 50 for Germany[1] as a whole and employment to population ratio[2] of 75%.
[1] http://www.tradingeconomics.com/germany/age-dependency-ratio...
[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Employment-to-population_ratio
EDIT: Fixed math with age/dependency ratio...
A better question might be "Why are you storing important documents on a medium with such a high failure rate?"
This assertion is dubious at best. I would imagine most computers/departments would not have been required to buy each and every new Windows/Office release.
A great counter argument to mine (not that any of you need help) would be to point out a specific Linux feature needed in the last decade that was "free" whereas a comparable Windows/Office feature would have forced an upgrade.
For me Microsoft is still the worst that happened to our industry (Facebook and Google are angels in comparison) and it should stay as a big red dot in the center of our radars.
Now they have to learn a second operating system and set of applications software.
Assuming a five year life for a computer (in government that is) or about 2000 days of use, then the cost of licensing on a daily basis is going to be pennies a day for all of this hardship. Crazy!
Well updating to ribbon based UI is as hard, probably more so, than switching to LibreOffice.
Also, they can install Limux at home for free and so use a consistent system across work and home. That way they can save money on future upgrades at home too.
2004 called. Today, most people use a smartphone most frequently.
Give me a break. For how scalable Linux is & how fast you can automate installations, move data around, script work to be done, it took them 10 years to do this? (Judging by the comments)
It would take a typical Linux Sysadmin 3 years tops, depending on if they have everything they need, planning & getting people trained. This is a joke.
I'd really love to know that
Canon's stuff is a little weirder, but it's not terrible.
I've found network-enabled laser printers generally tend to work really well with Linux.
While you shopping I would advise you to look also for price for their supplies and ability to refill cartridges. While it is not necessary for you to refill these, the fact they are refillable will put a pressure on the price on retail market for supplies for this printer, which make it more cost effective for your. In general I found older HP business laser printers and Brother printers are quite good in this regard.
> May 9th, 2014
They are an entire LTS release behind?