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More Linux Activity in German Government

Posted by timothy on from the first-a-trickle dept.

__past__ writes "The decision of the bavarian capital city Munich to switch their desktop systems to Linux has caused a lot of discussion, and has been widely regarded as an important step for Linux on the desktop. And even if Microsoft tried hard to make their offerings more attractive since, including a special license contract that could save the public sector 'a lot of money' according to interior minister Otto Schily, it looks as if Munich was only the beginning."

"9 more cities in Rheinland-Pfalz, including the capital Mainz, are seriously considering to replace most, if not all of their Microsoft software with Linux after their current contracts expire in early 2004, noting that there are many other cities in a similar situation, and with similar plans.

Meanwhile, the police in Niedersachsen (german) is busy rolling out RedHat Linux on 11,620 desktops and 120 servers, running both standard Linux software and a custom information system called "Nivadis" based on WebLogic and Oracle running on Itanium servers, citing savings of about EUR 20 Mio compared with a Windows-based solution.

In a less desktop-related project, the state Mecklenburg-Vorpommern started a project with SuSE, IBM and others porting a mission-critical system called ProFiskal from Reliant Unix to Linux on zSeries, again citing cost as the primary reason, but also noting the benefits of using open standards for both software developers and users."

9 of 367 comments (clear)

  1. applications by Tirel · · Score: -1, Flamebait

    Which applications will it be running?

  2. The Linux Cycle by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Flamebait

    Something inane aquires Linux.

    Slashdot posts.

    Giant security holes become prevalent.

    Entity drops Linux.

  3. Re:Will.. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Flamebait

    Well, Apple was one of the bads but it seems that its core system has already retreated to neutral territory: FreeBSD.

  4. Use Linux? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Flamebait

    Replace my Windows with Linux? They can pry it from my cold, dead fingers...

  5. At least one western country by Krapangor · · Score: 0, Flamebait

    which isn't totally owned by the industry and where the goverment strives to work in the interest of their citizens. The situation in the US is much worse they even start wars just to give some companies more revenues. This makes me wonder when France starts to adopt Linux.

    --
    Owner of a Mensa membership card.
  6. Re:Metric and Imperial by pe1chl · · Score: 0, Flamebait

    That probably is because US citizens cannot think of any empire besides their own.

  7. Re:Will.. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Flamebait

    I knew you hippies would mod me down. Slashdot is so predictable: Troll = Doesn't agree with Linux hippies.

  8. Right news for the right time zone... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Flamebait

    ...man, am I happy that this article has shown up when the most americans were sleeping.
    Imagine the pro-US propaganda those in majority "educated" minds would have spammed us with. Even if that would mean defending M$ against a non-US firm like SuSE.

    I mean those never ending rhetoric questions like: "Why do germans use their own german distribution instead of our fine US product? Have they software-fascists now or something?.. blablabla".. you know it... that FUBAR stuff they say sometimes ;-)

  9. Re:Bavaria rulez! by Knuckles · · Score: 0, Flamebait

    good education for the few, right. It's easy to have high standards in education if you are so selective that you are actually educating fewer people than you need yourself. Bavaria is importing people with Abitur and academic education from other German states.

    --
    "When I first heard Daydream Nation it quite frankly scared the living shit out of me." -- Matthew Stearns