City of Munich Considers Switching Back From Linux to Windows (In German)
sueddeutsche.de
sueddeutsche.de
- Second Mayor Josef Schmid (CSU, conservative): "Every department I talk to reports user complaints. Our employees are suffering. The original decision to switch to Linux was politically motivated. We feel that Linux is not cheaper for us, because it requires a lot of software development. We're missing a program to handle email, calendar, and contacts in one place. The city will get an opinion from an independent panel of experts."
- First Mayor Dieter Reiter (SPD, social democrat): "Linux software sometimes trails behind Windows software."
- Sabine Nallinger (Green Party): "Data exchange with government agencies outside of Munich does not work well."
It sounds like they're just making up variations of "we don't like doing things except the exact way we learned it".
- something they know
- something that works with the world
And while we can talk about the benefits of the Linux environment/free software and being independent all day, that is absolutely irrelevant for the administrative workers in they day to day jobs. Derision isn't helping here, they're just wanting an easy way to do their job - and arguably Outlook/Exchange is one of the weaker spots if you're thinking of OSS replacements (vs. LibreOffice for Office stuff, for example, which is different but comparable. A comparable mail solution is missing in my opinion).
Thank you, I'm aware. The point is that neither are the preferences of whichever random government person they're quoting. There is no issue with Linux here; the issue is that the people complaining about Linux are too inflexible to deal with a slight change in process.
Belittling their issues is not very helpful.
(The following argument, complaining about a missing alternative to Outlook might have some merit, alternatives exist but aren't quite there yet imo)
Disclaimer: I am from Germany
I switched about 6 months ago from a windows machine to a Mac and dumped my (broken) Lumia for a second hand iPhone 4S. I went from exchange to dovecot IMAP for email with no calendar or contact implementation all hosted by me on a Linux box on Linode. I used Mail, iCalendar and address book.
About 2 weeks after setting that up I got pissed off with it as managing contacts and calendars was messy to say the least so I did some research and for a CalDAV and CardDAV server together. This never worked properly and was a bastard to integrate and manage.
So I said screw all this shit, moved it all to Google Apps laboriously and bought a Moto G phone. Now someone sends me an ICS file, I can't add it to my calendar as nothing opens ICS files on the device, I keep losing contacts and everything wants my contact list. Not only that, every attachment I was sent means I had to upload the thing to Google docs and convert it before I could open it in sheets/docs.
So here I sit this evening with my broken Lumia 820 and a Torx T4 replacing the screen and a fresh Office 365 account.
That was the last thing that works properly for me. I imagine they'v gone through the same hell.
Whilst I understand that not all workflows are like that and this is an anecdote, I appreciate what compatibity does for people and why ecosystems are persistent.
People have grown accustomed to Windows, the Windows version of Office, and domain-specific custom apps that only run on Windows.
Even Mac users struggle to integrate into this infrastructure, and that difficulty, plus the higher cost of Macs, is why you rarely hear a city or government agency declaring it is going all Mac.
For (desktop) Linux, the situation is even worse. Unlike Mac, Linux isn't usually pre-installed, so you never seem to get things working right. Unlike Mac, there is no version--not even an old version--of MS-Office.
The flip side of Linux's freedom to build anything you need is that you almost have to build everything you need, beyond the browser.
Three years ago I was struggling to deal with my kids' (Silicon Valley) school system, because teachers would always send me important information in the form of MS-Word docs, and I no longer owned a copy of Office. By last year, almost all of them had switched to Google docs, and the problem is almost gone.
What I expect to happen over the next decade is that the skill/habit/assumption infrastructure will turn away from desktop Windows toward cloud services usable through any browser from any platform (desktop, phone, tablet, wall screen, wearable....) Munich might need some new Windows machines during the transition, but they should probably also work on a transition to online services at the same time, after which desktop Linux will be more practical than it has been in the past.
Any other EDI systems would operate at the top of the software stack.
That's only talking client and even there it falls short.
Ignoring that users are happy with one thing for everything mail/contacts/calendar/tasks: What's the editor like in TB (I know, playing devil's advocate)? Auto correction? Can you easily embed weird content and expect it to work on the other side (drag stuff from Excel..)? It sucks, but that's what happens day in and day out.
And you ignore the server side. AD is really not that bad. Better than most 'virtual users on postfix' setups, if you go beyond a family or tiny team. Now you need the other server features. Calendar (w/ sharing, rights management -> AD?). Decent sync and push (IMAP IDLE is the closest you might get, I guess) for mobile clients. Delegation (i.e. 'You can write in my name') and out of office replies that don't require Joe User to write sieve scripts.
I run my own setup and I am NO fan of Outlook/Exchange, but trying to replace what they do with a random selection of OSS tools will probably fail (and hence they couldn't do it in Munich).
Also I get two reminders for everything. Very clunky.
:)
The advantage of the first option is it preserves the original site name, and prevents dupes. The advantage of the second option is that most of the user here can read English and perhaps other language, but the common denominator is English.
MS offered Munich Windows completely free, or even offered to pay for the transition.
MS probably also offered the decision makers free travel around the world, free laptops and other gear, and some under the table money for being "convinced". This was done in my University so I could only imagine what will be with a big city like this.
The decision makers argument that given that Windows is "free"(first dose s free until you are hooked) and Linux takes development money (to German developers)then it is a better decision to just switch.
It is quite significant that there is so many Linux mini distros in government, instead of uniting and solving the general problems Linux have on a State or even multi State.
E.g Solving the program to handle mail,calendar and contacts is common for Spain, French, German and UK gobertment. Why can't they work together to solve it?
Example: "The department will thoroughly investigate the police officers' fatal shooting of the unarmed teenager to ensure justice is upheld."
TRANSLATION: "The police officers will get paid leave, possibly a vacation to Hawaii to escape the media spotlight, and then get a promotion in rank."
That said, whether gp's "translation" adds any insight is questionable.
An actual translation from German to English is what's expected, and would have been a lot more useful.
I agree. I was simply explaining to thebear why Htsthbjig used the word "translation" in a non-language-mapping sense in case he might be unaware of "translate" as a cynical idiom. Apparently, the downvote shows my explanation was not helpful. :-)
Those are some pretty big accusations. Do you have any sources for them or are these just your speculations?
As a Linux advocate, I hate admitting that this is correct. One reason is that the Linux desktop experience is too fragmented and has too many competing players. Windows avoids this by being one company with one goal.
> Obviously they should have stuck with Windows all along.
This may be true in hindsight, but it wasn't obvious at the planning stage. In principle, Linux is a less expensive way to run a large enterprise. But only in principle, it seems.
Linux will succeed as a desktop environment only when (and if) its various factions agree on a single model and a single goal.
Many Linux users probably don't want to see a single model. They like the choice of being able to choose from different distributions and their own desktop model.
Ubuntu is probably the closest to being a consistent desktop environment and look how much grief they get from some Linux users over their UX choices. The open source model works for software, but it can't work for UX or design (at least I'm not convinced it can) because you can't design by commitee - any yet everyone wants a say in the UX.
Would it have been better for Munich to have specified open document or data formats rather than the choice of software? This is what the UK government has recently done [1]. The choice of software is up to the individual departments as long as the software can read or create the open formats etc. At least this gives you the choice of switching to dfferent software without being tied to a single vendor's closed-sorce document format.
[1] http://blogs.computerworlduk.com/open-enterprise/2014/07/hug...
Yes, true, but it would be nice to see more consensus for a single default desktop for new users. I guess that's Gnome as things stand, but Gnome has some serious usability issues and would seem very strange to someone coming over from Windows. On that topic, Windows 8 seems strange from someone coming over from Windows too. :)
> Ubuntu is probably the closest to being a consistent desktop environment ...
Well, sort of, by their advocacy of Gnome, but I was thinking of KDE versus Gnome and a handful of other desktop environment choices.
> Would it have been better for Munich to have specified open document or data formats rather than the choice of software?
That might have been a smarter course to take. It leaves the implementation up to individual departments and makes the Linux versus Windows issue less important than the end result, which is portable documents.
Naturally, once the open document format issue heated up, Microsoft tried to create their own "open" document, but one that was actually proprietary, in a time-tested Microsoft strategy.
It's going to be pretty hard. I think something great about Linux is the freedom you get to choose the software that fits your needs the best, and that might be one of its weaknesses at the same time. I'm more than happy with how Linux is right now (but I agree that for someone with little or no experience it can be hard to get up and running, or using it). Oh, well, nothing can't be perfect.
Good point. I know a number of Windows end users, and they don't want so many choices, they just want things to work and be stable and reliable. To these end users, the idea of choosing between email clients or word processors seems to be just asking for trouble, in particular when they realize the file formats are incompatible.
Linux is great for some things, Windows for others. I'm currently using desktop versions of both (Windows 7 / Ubuntu) and Windows beats Ubuntu hands down for user friendliness. I'm using Ubuntu only when absolutely must to (mainly dev).
In fact, I'd venture to say that if you put someone with zero computer experience in front of a Linux box and a windows box, they'd figure out the relatively straightforward and intuitive Linux UI before figuring out the dozens-of-inconsistent-layers-deep windows UI.