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City of Vienna Chooses Linux

Posted by timothy on from the penguins-ah-kuhl dept.

Bill Kendrick writes "Back in January, ZDNet reported that the city of Vienna, Austria was looking to move at least a portion of its desktops to Linux. Well, it looks like it happened (in German; use the fish). Their official distro is based on Debian with KDE, and is called WEINUX." Update: 07/06 12:49 GMT by T : Several readers wrote to correct the spelling here: the correct name of the distro is "WIENUX."

11 of 268 comments (clear)

  1. Ambitious targets by Mattygfunk1 · · Score: 4, Insightful
    It is up to the individual workers to choose if they prefer a KDE Desktop or a Microsoft based system. The officials expect that about 4,800 machines can run KDE in the short term.

    That's a very ambitious target if they are only offering it, not saying "you will use this".

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    1. Re:Ambitious targets by Freaky+Spook · · Score: 3, Insightful

      I agree, I don't see why they wont migrate acrosst to it, the basic user only needs email, internet & office products which all can be operated easily from KDE, they don't really need to know powerful desktop functions.

      They should aim to make Linux the standard SOE & using Microsoft products to support users who require more specialised programs.

      PD in basic linux isn't hard especially with KDE.

    2. Re:Ambitious targets by drsmithy · · Score: 4, Insightful
      They should aim to make Linux the standard SOE & using Microsoft products to support users who require more specialised programs.

      Amazing how quick the battlecry goes from "users should have choice" to "users should use linux"...

    3. Re:Ambitious targets by JamesTRexx · · Score: 3, Insightful

      I think this is better. Let those that are afraid to switch to Linux hear from their own colleagues how well it works, and see how little they're affected by spyware and virusses. Then they'll switch voluntarily and have no reason to start complaining about how they're forced to give up windows.

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    4. Re:Ambitious targets by replicant108 · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Nice attempt at a straw man argument.

      The battlecry (as you term it) is actually "customers should have choice".

      In a corporate environment the customer is the organisation.

  2. Why must... by concept10 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    We get the report when a decent sized city and/or organization switches to Linux? I would rather read some reports of how the transition to Linux was, what software they use, initial user reactions to the OS. You know basic shit like that.

    1. Re:Why must... by /ASCII · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Well, Slashdot is a news aggregator, basically a collection of interesting links. Since Slashdot does not employ any investigative journalists, they simply can't decide their own content. Try contacting a site that actually writes real articles, and ask them to write the article you want to read. If they do, I'm sure the Slashdot editors will happily link to it.

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  3. nice approach by scheuri · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I like the idea and the approach, that the city turn s to linux on the desktop AND using a own distro for this.

    After all, with this everything is implemented THEY need, nothing more and nothing less...they take advantage of the biggest advantage of OSS:
    Choice!

    Instead of using a company or existing product per se (I know, its based in Debian), they changed it to their needs and they offer a voluntary change for the employees (at least at the beginning).

    I wish them luck and hope they will make progress fast.

  4. Re:Please, people. Lets not start a distro war... by remmy1978 · · Score: 3, Insightful

    My advice to people is, if you want something easy and are willing to spend $100, get SuSE in the box. There are a ton of applications to help you configure your system. You can use SuSE to run a server, and not worry about downtime (unlike Mandrake which will crash, I have seen it happen at a linux fest, where 12 of us stood in disbelief looking at the new blue screen of death). I knew another guy who had a webserver and ssh set up on SuSE and it ran for over 200 days without a glitch (he took it down when he upgraded his system).

    For someone not wanting to start a distro war you do an amazingly good job of starting one using little more than anecdotal evidence. My Mandrake box which I use for all my computer work has been running for almost 420 days now without a reboot. Just goes to show how much a single experience is worth.

  5. Re:Please, people. Lets not start a distro war... by l3v1 · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Redundant or offtopic, don't care:

    Lets just say Gnome is better than KDE regardless of distro. ;)

    And you get Informative when starting an post with that line.

    Go Gnome-ers, just please, keep it [i.e. Gnome] out of my face.

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  6. Follow Up Story by gregarican · · Score: 5, Insightful
    I have read a decent number of articles about cities choosing to adopt Linux but would be more curious to read a follow up story of how the transition went using hindsight, say a month later, a year later, etc. What were the major obstacles and how were they overcome? After the dust settled how does worker productivity and cost effectiveness stand? These sort of facts could help start a domino effect where other IT execs could build cases to present to their respective PHB's in order to make the switch.

    Kind of like some of the countless U.S. reality shows where people and houses are made over (e.g. - The Swan, The Biggest Loser, Extreme Home Makeover). Rather than short term focus I'd love to see the shows check in a year later to see how things look. That's more indicative of true success and failure.