Will Munich's Linux Desktops Be Running Windows?

An anonymous reader writes "Remember that story about the city of Munich choosing Linux to power 14,000 desktop computers? One aspect of this story that most people don't know about is that up to 80 percent of those Linux desktops will be equipped with VMWare, a virtual machine emulator, under which they will run Windows and Windows applications. That's right, folks: The majority of those 'Linux desktops' will be used to run ... Windows." This Gartner report from early June seems to be the one mentioned in the article, though I'm not sure exactly where Thurrott gets the 80% figure.

Comments

VMware as a stepping stone

[derrith]

My Computer repair class last year switched to linux my behest and because my instructor wanted to anyways. we setup VMWare and a win2k install on all of our machines as a stepping stone, throughout the year, people stopped using windows as much, as they had to start IT up from inside linux and that was "too much of a hassle" to lazy high school kids. However, they did start using linux more and more, and ultimately the b3ecame more proficient. So I believe Munich is using these VMware installs to allow their workers to be able to go back to a familiar enviroment while they learn the new one and how it functions

Re:Not smart.

[Lumpy]

You are so off you're not funny.

First it's a brilliant move. Make the entire part of windows A pain in the arse to every user. now if you have linux stations running say win95 or 98 for your legacy apps in a Vmware session, you eliminate the headaches of windows system management. Simply only have the desired legacy apps on the windows side, and remove the web browser,ftp,etc... the users now cant hose it by installing elf-bowling or clicking OK to install gator. next you can simply have linux replace the windows VMware file every time it reboots. plus have a new image rolled out to all systems without any intervention.

finally, when you roll out your linux native or web based versions of the apps, all your users welcome the deletion of that damned windows.

It's brilliant! and about time someone in a IT department made such a great decision to start a migration from microsoft and closed source in a smoother way.

Re:What a bunch of bullshit

[letxa2000]

Hmmm. I was a Linux fan but a Windows user until XP. Each computer I got came with Windows pre-installed. I eventually converted my desktop station to be a Linux server, using Samba to serve up files and printer to my Windows laptops which I was far more hesitant to mess around with.

When I got a new laptop last August it came pre-installed with XP. Despite everyone's complaints about Win98, I had had good luck with it on my previous 550MHz laptop. Anyway, when I upgraded to a 1.6GHz Athlon and found that VB, Word, and QuickBooks all ran SLOWER than they had run on my 550MHz laptop I decided it was time to make the dive. Not to mention my new XP machine was crashing quite a bit and the WinModem wasn't working even after a few driver upgrade attempts, alternately from HP and from Microsoft itself.

I bought a new laptop HD rather than risk the current XP installation. I installed RedHat 7.3 (because it was the same version as on my desktop server and on my dedicated hosting server). It worked great! Network card detected, USB mouse and keyboard detected. A few tweaks and my WinModem--which HADN'T been working under XP--even worked under Linux. I then went out and spent $80 on Win4Lin so I could still use Windows when absolutely necessary (I still do some VB/VC++ development occasionally). As it turns out, Word, VB, VC++, QuickBooks, Adobe *ALL* run faster under Win4Lin under RedHat 7.3 than they did on the exact same machine running XP. I couldn't believe it.

So... I switched to Linux for stability and security. And as it turns out my Windows applications actually run faster than they did with XP. I ain't looking back and I won't be running a Microsoft OS ever again.

That said, I can't say Linux is perfect. Kate seems to crash when I click the "Open" button so I have to have the "file dialog" window open and open files that way. Kopete (ICQ/MSN/Yahoo/etc. client) works fine but usually crashes when I shut it down, and doesn't support file transfers. So life is not perfect yet--but at least when these programs crash they don't take the whole OS down with it.

Anyway, I'm going to upgrade to RedHat9 so hopefully some of these issues will be handled. Even if they aren't I'll take the Linux problem to the Windows problems any day of the week.

Really? :-)

[toolz]

Just for once, I am glad to see the Windows bigots being more prominent with their propaganda than the Linux bigots. ;-)

Here are a few facts for everyone to chew on:

• The VMware installs are to run legacy windows applications during the period of transition.
  
  
• MS doesn't make any money of licenses here - the machines are currently running Windows 3.1/95/98, and the same licenses are being reused on those machines.
  
  
• The VMware environment will almost certainly not be used to run MS Office - Germany has been a heavy user of starOffice (and now OpenOffice) for a loong time - unlike in the rest of the world (read that as "U-S-A"), MS Office is not the leading office package in Germany.
  
  
• I can almost guarantee that 6-12 months down the line, people will have reduced their dependence on VMware by a substantial percentage, as they actually start using Linux/OSS apps.
  
  
• In the *meanwhile*, those 100+ Windows-only apps are (already) being ported to OS-agnostic Internet/Intranet web-based environments.
  

Let me also point out that this isn't some little "ThirdWorld" (tm, USA) country with no economics or tech savvy we are talking about - this is Germany - probably the economically most powerful nation along with USA, and the driving force behind Europe. These guys have what it takes to do an evaluation of this sort, and come out tops.

And they have proved that *again* with their decision to switch to Linux while also giving their users the psychological crutch that they will be able to use their existing windows applications. In one fell swoop, they have swept all objections off the table, and have set up a scenario where people will now actually begin using Linux/OSS apps, rather than just reading about them.

And as we all know, that is the *one* single obstacle that Linux/OSS has been facing in the past - getting people to actually try it.

Go, Germany! Show the world how it is done!