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33 Comments
- hans0, on 10/12/2007, -2/+17Well, let's hope this move affects the neighboring city in which I live.
- Orbatos, on 10/12/2007, -1/+11This decision comes across far more as a political than a technical issue.
- brunovernay, on 10/12/2007, -1/+6Reading your comment, I though that they installed Linux and then had too many problems that forced them to move back.
But according to http://www.itweek.co.uk/itweek/news/2163379/bergen-postpones-desktop-linux , they use Linux on their servers and for the desktop, it is just postponed.
"However, Lars Tveit, director for competition and development at Bergen City Council, said his comments had been taken out of context" - thedreaming1, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4I'm happy for them. As more and more people adopt linux, hardware manifacturers will have to either start making linux drivers for their hardware or allow the open source community access to the information they require to allow them to make their own. Either way, linux gets stronger and windows will get weaker!
- rodrigo74, on 10/12/2007, -1/+5Thanks for pointing out the rebuttal.
The picture painted by Computerworld Norway (where I got the information originally from) is much darker. - XVampireX, on 10/12/2007, -2/+4not only money but also stability and security.
- sjalloul, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3Seems like Munich does not have need for Microsoft in the first place since most station are running an office suite and no system and server integration are needed. Small shops do not necessarily need for AD, Exchange for these bigger name apps for overall collaboration.
- krz9000, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3its about money.
- Aureum, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2oh boy, you don't know what you're talkin about.
Decision for Linux as operating system at the city of Munich has been made 3 years ago. Then there was lots of planning involved. The actual development started at about 15 months ago and 1.0 was internally released and deployed at 19th Sept. 2006. Theres more to come and there is already lots of contributed code in gosa and fai. come to the systems in munich if you can, the work will be presented there and you can ask if you're into hard facts. - dtietze1, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3A) It's not just about the money.
B) Huh?? WTF?? MIcrosoft is just finalizing a massive update (Windows Vista). which they will be charging lots of money for. Every new PC you buy has to have all the Microsoft software licenses, so you end up paying for those as well.
Your whole calculation is *way* off (e.g. nobody's forcing you to update Windows, while you HAVE to update your Linux distribution? Where does that come from? The last time I checked, SUSE Linux comes with five years free updates and product upgrades (not just security fixes, in fact), plus automatic update installation, etc.).
C) It's "their", not "there" ! - inactive, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3Don't use VMWare for iTunes. Use Wine.
- JQP123, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2"I have not been able to find solid fact."
Munich was supposed to provide some hard facts ... if they're not too embarassed to show the world their numbers. - GMorgan, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2This is for the cities state services not the entire city. Think about it, forceful migration of all computers to Linux would be a basic rights infringement.
- dtietze1, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LiMux
- alucinor, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1@Orbetos
"This decision comes across far more as a political than a technical issue."
If politics hadn't been involved in PC computing, then we'd in all likelihood be using some advanced version of Japan's bTRON computing environment today. bTRON was an "open source" (before that was a term) PC desktop environment being developed by Japan, but Microsoft lobbied the US government to pressure Japanese companies into not supporting the environment, citing that it was non-competitive and hence unfair to businesses. - Aureum, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1~14.000 Desktops (not all will be migrated)
~25.000 employes
Many, many servers (no windows!) - dtietze1, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2You need to learn to distinguish between your private little world where you're using XP and are happy with it and large-scale corporate deployments of operating systems, applications, etc. Do you have any idea how much money large organizations and companies spend to keep their Windows-based infrastructure up-to-date?
This really is not about using a niche distribution put together by "everybody and their dog" and then not finding appropriate tech support for it. Quite the opposite, in fact.
Plus -- did you REALLY just call me a Linux fan-boy? - dtfinch, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2Only 3.4 years since they started, they're already 0.71% complete. Hurray!
- JQP123, on 10/12/2007, -2/+2The question everyone wants answered is; "What is a realistic cost per desktop for this sort of mass transition"? The hope was that Munich would provide the answer but I suspect that in the end, they may be too embarassed to make their numbers available.
- Archer1980, on 10/12/2007, -2/+2@dtietze1
First, i use Linux and XP on a daily basis, so learn how to read.
Second, our IT guys, who are in the same office as me, are laughing there asses of at you because over the past 5 years since we upgraded to XP, we haven't spent a dime on keeping our computers up-to-date. and an organization that has spend any money keeping XP up-to-date since it's release, has an idiot working in there IT department. The only cost we've had associated with XP, is the administrator, which we would have to have to keep Linux up-to-date. The reason we haven't switched our office to Linux is the fact that we would have to shut entire departments down to train all the staff to use Linux, where as everyone is already trained in XP because the basic interfaces haven't changed.
Third, yes i just called you a Linux fan boy and the fact that you respond the way you do, without any proven facts, just proves it. - alucinor, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1An open source commodity desktop is kind of an inevitability if you think about it. Could you imagine billions of computer users still paying Microsoft for Windows and Office upgrades 100 years from now? Microsoft would be basically the World Government or something, they'd be so rich and powerful.
- ChiliJ, on 10/12/2007, -2/+2And a counter pointed out if you bother reading the comments: http://www.itweek.co.uk/itweek/news/2163379/bergen-postpones-desktop-linux
- Aureum, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0This mixture of the names Linux $ munich is intended and the codename for the project.
- Archer1980, on 10/12/2007, -2/+2@JQP123
I believe you are right that they will be to embarrassed to make there numbers available. I think they will find it's a LOT higher then anyone originally expected.
@dtietze1
a) When is anything politically not about the money?
b) The funny thing is that i have been running XP for years now, with no problems. and then funnier thing is i am still able to run programs that were released in the 90's on XP. and i am aware that SUSE has a 5 years update and upgrades package. and you are right, no one has to update a Linux distro, but it's been my experience that most Linux fan boys, as yourself I'm sure, won't give you the light of day if you aren't using there distro or are running an older distro. Not to mention that finding tech support for your single distro becomes incredibly complicated because of the massive amount of distro's currently available. IF every programmer and there dog didn't has a custom distro, maybe tech support in the linux world wouldn't be so self centered and ego-tistical.
c)their and there? big deal, stick to the topic at hand. - inactive, on 10/12/2007, -3/+2I'd tend to agree. Administering a cluster of linux desktops like that would seem to be a much more difficult task than administering a cluster of windows desktops in an Active Directory domain. I'm primarily a windows admin, so maybe it's just a matter of me re-learning everything?
But then there's also the problem that there's hardly any corporate applications written for the Linux platform for things Government agencies would normally use (citizen service request systems, document management and workflow, parks and recreation management systems, police force dispatching/reporting, etc...). I work for a city government, and the options just don't exist currently to replace our windows network. It'd be nice to move to a 100% open source environment, but there aren't suitable replacements for 80% of our software in the Linux world. Try going out to get bids for software solutions - and then tell them you're on a 100% GNU/Linux environment... watch all the bids get retracted. And it would be entirely too costly for us to write all our own software in-house.
That said, I love Linux and I use Linux desktop exclusively on my home PC, and enjoy using Ubuntu under VMWare on my business laptop occasionally. - acorkery, on 10/12/2007, -1/+0I thought there'd be more than 14000 computers in Munich. It's a pretty big city. Irrelevent I know....
- sweetnjguy29, on 10/12/2007, -3/+1Does anyone know wtf Limux is? Is this a typo or the name of the government program?
- Archer1980, on 10/12/2007, -6/+3You know what makes me laugh, everyone is on there high horse saying oo it's so much cheaper if you switch to Linux you'll save money, and then all of the major areas that are switching to Linux, such as Bergen with there thousands or Desktop PCs, are having to postpone or stop migration because of cost over runs. The directors themselves are talking about how they have to call in expensive Linux support staff, and have to retrain there office workers to use Linux which will run a really big cost. not to mention they've mentioned having a hard time administrating large groups of Linux desktop computers.
So the way i see it, commenting that Linux is so much cheaper, is a little bit misleading, because say it costs you a million $ to convert all your pc's to Linux, and it takes you say 2 years to make that money back, which you wouldn't have had to spend in the first place because microsoft doesn't update Windows that often. So, in 2 years when you finally get that paid off, then you'll probably have to go and spend even more money because the Distro you decided on is grossly outdated, in which case you may have to train everyone all over again depending on how much the distro has changed, given a 6month cycle for Linux.
So in 4 years you've spend how many millions changing to Linux, while windows hasn't changed at all except Security Updates? Perhaps they should be starting smaller, switch to something like OpenOffice first on windows, then switch something else to an open source version, and then switch to linux. Switching all computers to Linux instantly is retarded because you have to change every single piece of Software installed on that computer which means not only do the users gotta be trained on using the new OS, they have to relearn every piece of software to do there daily work.
and before anyone goes calling me a windows fan boy, i am currently running 3 versions of Linux, 2 versions of Windows, and 5 Unix. - jbrevik, on 10/12/2007, -10/+5I feel that right now, Linux desktop is only suited for personal use. Not a massive migration away from Windows. There needs to be hard evidence to support a move to alternatives. Not just opinion. I have not been able to find solid fact. If anybody can point me to studies on this issue, please show me.
- yaosio, on 10/12/2007, -7/+2Cool, only 5 more years until they switch back to Windows because Linux is a horrible OS.
- Aureum, on 10/12/2007, -6/+0Old news: http://digg.com/linux_unix/City_of_Munich_releases_version_1_0_of_their_debian_based_client_internally
- rodrigo74, on 10/12/2007, -20/+12In the meantime, Bergen (Norway's second biggest city) is moving back to Windows, after a frustrated Linux migration attempt: http://www.geekzone.co.nz/juha/1191
- ech0, on 10/12/2007, -16/+2maybe try not to pirate the software and you'll have a better experience. oh and if the itunes installer is spitting out errors its not microsofts fault, its apples/vmwares fault. fanboys, they never stop do they? :)
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