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Munich Finally Starts to Embrace Linux
sankyuu writes "After years of rumor and vacillation over fear of patents, the city of Munich has decided to trickle in its first 100 linux terminals. The floodgates are scheduled to fling open by 2008, when 80% of government PCs should be running Linux."
The current projected costs are 35 Million Euros (up from 30 Million) to convert 14,000 computers.
2,500 Euros per computer.
Do you even lift?
These aren't the 'roids you're looking for.
They fail to mention how many government servers have been running linux behind-the-scenes for years. Changes are, at least a handful. I realize the excitement of this is in bringing Linux to the desktop, but people aren't always aware of its presence, even when quietly surrounded by it. Now I don't have any facts on Munich's server architecture, so I could very well be wrong.
Snarkiness aside, I think this is a cool project. It'll be interesting to see who else follows Munich's lead, and what ol' Ballmer aims to do about it. Maybe he'll chuck a chair (doh.. there's that snarkiness again... time for me to creep back into my hidey hole).
Support a true independent artist - Leila Lopez
It should be noted that Mayor Christian Ude's PC is slated to be among the first batch of systems to run the Debian-based Linux-desktop Munich will be using.
Windows 2000 - from the guys who brought us edlin
the standard configuration will be Debian GNU/Linux 3.1, KDE 3.5 and OpenOffice 2.
however, the main reason for the delays and the slow roll-out are that a lot of custom applications had to be ported and for some existing client/server apps interfaces had to be created from scratch.
cheers from Munich,
Andreas
Most of those computers are probably used for almost exactly the same. The first 200 computers are probably representative for the 80%.
So they use the first 100-200 to learn and to develop deployment procedures etc. When that works, they roll it out to all the similar computers.
Just like in some smaller places, they use days to test something on one or two computers. When it works they spend an hour putting it on all 500 company desktops, most of the time just waiting for network transfers and rebooting.
They tried. They gave them every chance to come up with a better operating system. They even delayed the switch to Linux by many years to give them a chance. Even now, they're giving them until 2008 to get at least some share of the cake.
But Microsoft just couldn't get Longhorn ready in time.
Please correct me if I got my facts wrong.
Some Open Source headways in Europe, indeed, can clearly be seen in EU site.
Quite heartening indeed! Maybe the big conservative companies will finaly notice this trend. I am sure Microsoft did.
I am not Remy Mouton, unfortunately: http://remy.mouton.free.fr/art/
> Why Debian?
1 47197/index.html
See here:
http://www.muenchen.de/Rathaus/dir/limux/english/
OK?
Windows 2000 - from the guys who brought us edlin
But seriously, I am surprised more governments don't move to Linux as a terminal/front end solution anyway. With more services being handled on central computers far away from the actual customer access points, it doesn't really make sense to have full-featured OSes put in place only to hobble them with security software. It is better to create simple remote terminals which can run programs remotely over the network, saving hardware costs and reducing IT headaches.
I honestly think it has something to do with them having been convinced once already to move away from that type of architecture(their old mainframe systems) towards PCs, and in the process, getting reamed nicely for the effort. At least the government agencies I'm aware of here in the states. IMO, the best line of attack for opensource adoption is through the apps, and not through the OS. It's a lot easier to teach people new apps, than it is to teach them new operating systems. It's also a lot easier to teach them new operating systems, if their apps will be the same on the new OS. My 2 cents.
"Our morality is good, theirs is repressive."- Partisanship Rule #3
They're taking a big one-time hit although. Once they've rewritten/replaced all their software and migrated their data the cost to add new units will be significantly lower.
I agree with you and I don't understand why so many people assume that a migration from a Windows infrastructure to an OSS one will cost €0.00? If Munich is going ahead and doing this in the first place they might want to make some fundamental changes to their IT infrastructure since they will be ripping the guts out it anyway. Take for example the proposition of replacing dumb Windows PCs that just stand around all day giving users access to a single application (Why pay a Windows XP license for every one of those PCs?) with Linux based thin clients. In this case they might be factoring the replacement of some quantities of computer equipment and infrastructure changes into that figure of €30 million. Then of course there are the costs of testing the whole system, the costs of writing custom software to aid in the migration of entire data bases, websites and other applications previously hosted on Windows 2003+MSSQL+IIS to open source platforms, porting custom made GUI applications/clients to Linux or replacing them with new webapps. I can see why the costs would go up but in the long run I agree with you that their costs should go down as a result of this measure if they handle the project properly which, admittedly, is asking a lot of a German bureaucracy. I would really like to see a financial breakdown and progress report of this project when they are done, this project is really interesting due to it's scale.
Only to idiots, are orders laws.
-- Henning von Tresckow
The cost of switching would apply both in both directions of an OS migration. What Linux has in it's favour is that it's support for Microsoft closed formats (e.g. via Openoffice) is far better than the reverse. Once documents are in open formats it's hard to make a case to back out.
I do wonder whether we'll start to see Microsoft supporting these Open Standards as a way to ease the migration path back - supported of course by heavy subsidies on licensing.
Python coder | PyQt Applications | Writer
...not to go back.
Python coder | PyQt Applications | Writer
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The sentence should read, "Munich Finally Starts Implementing Linux."
The embrace happened a few years ago. It's (Linux) implementation is what has just happened. By the way...does anyone know whether it's KDE or GNOME at the forefront here?
sigh.
u x%E2%80%94Free_Software_for_Munich
that site has general information about the Linux-Project and a link to this site:
http://www.ssrc.org/wiki/POSA/index.php?title=LiM
Windows 2000 - from the guys who brought us edlin
Probably won't be doing much migrating next month.
Munix?
Meta will eat itself
I hope the Germans have a better missile defense system than we do. Intercontinental Ballmer Missiles (ICBM) incoming!
The only change I can believe in is what I find in my couch cushions.
After staying in Germany, people seem to get y's and j's all mixed up...
Dont mistake the EU for the government or administration of Europe. Germany is very much an independent country with its own political structure and system. The EU court is located in Luxembourg where it tries cases of unionwide importance. Everything else is left to the national governments and the local legal apparatus. The EU system is NOT like the federal government of the US (yet).