City of Vienna Chooses Linux

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."

Comments

Re:when sahll we have a critical mass?

[william_w_bush]

ahem...

Large corporations usually dont lose nights of sleep when the `pro` segment of their customers, the ones who know well enough to ask for better, decide to switch to solutions that require more effort and/or knowledge.

Large corporations sell to people who know no better, and cant be bothered too. Smaller, more boutiqued, and/or specialized firms or user groups tend to cater to the everyday Joe Slob who just wants the simple music downloads and fastest pr0n access box for cheap, especially when if anything goes wrong they have other people to call up and yell at.

Seriously, nobody ever researched all the possible pros and cons of different architectures, and decided `hey, you know what? Im gonna design my mission-critical, or high-performance application on the one operating system rated to have the most extensive vulnerabilities, which cause billions of dollars of loss a year, cause well im feeling kinda lucky today.`

Know some admins I wouldnt piss on if their servers were on fire who use linux... badly, but most of the good admins i know who use windows do so because they have no choice. Seriously, EVERY pro app in engineering, accounting, and most of the other things people use in real life has an up-to-date version on windows, not so much for linux or even apple, and MSs beautiful `bundling? what bundling, its innovation` crap means any of those apps that needs a network framework needs a complete active directory or even windows PDC to work properly. Its hard to keep kids off crack when the schools serve it with lunch.

My greater fear is that over the last few years, linux has been getting better and better at being completely invisible. You can set up a linux openldap and samba system well enough that no one can tell the difference. Half the transparent gateways nowadays run some brand of linux, along with those new insta-nas boxes. Its not a bad thing for linux, but its kinda bad for linux on the desktop, because it makes the desktop part of linux the least neccessary. Windows demands a MS framework to run, linux is so nice you could slave it to a crazy, naked popcorn machine and it would work happily without a squeak.

Its not that linux has a disadvantage, MS just plays their (unfair, and greedy)advantage a lot harder on everybody else, and in the OS wars homecourt advantage is everything, ask OS/2. Bundling does hurt, just not the way youd think.

Re:Ambitious targets

[Freaky Spook]

Im just coming from the economical side, I work as a technician in public schools and the money that the Government spends on software licences for M$ products is huge.

90% of all my problems are troubleshooting desktop problems with WinXP and also problems with Word, Excell & Outlook. I am not saying that by using Linux these problems will disapear, but it will be cheaper to support these Programs because less is being spent on software licencing.

Its simple economics the only difference between a Linux system & Windows system for users who only need to use the basics is price, why spend X amount of dollars on one thing when you can get the same result much cheaper.

I do believe in choice, but I don't see the logic in going to the expense of something because its believed to be easier, I am not completley Pro linux, but in a government environment where Tax payers are paying for everything, the best value alternative seems much more appealing.

Difficult to overstate the importance of this

[SimianOverlord]

I don't think many slashdotters really realise the significance of Wien, and so the importance of this move. I don't blame them, Wien is part of the German speaking world, and so the local importance of the city and its habits is really only appreciated by German speakers like myself and not the general readership. Let me just say - this is very significant indeed.

Historically, Wien has always been to the german speaking world what Carthage was to the Greeks - the centre of learning and the export of culture and ideas. Although its importance waned somewhat in the early 20th century, the Cold War and events since has cemented its position as the premier exporter of German business innovation.

So, instead of reading Wien in the summary above, in a few years you can read it as "Germany and Austria". My bet is, such is the influence of Wien, that a successful Linuks experiment will "trickle down" into emulation by a whole host of cities throughout the german speaking world. Linus deserves a pat on the back for his bargaining prowess.