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Munich Migrating To Linux
Rockgod writes with a progress report on the open sourcing of the city of Munich's administration. From the article: "The capital of Bavaria plans to complete its current migration of more than 80 percent of its desktop systems by 2008 and says that the first users of open software in the city's administration are pleased with the initial results. On Tuesday, Munich's mayor Christine Strobel said at the Systems trade fair that 'up to now, we are very happy about the results' of the migration currently underway. 'I am not a computer geek, but I must admit that it was easy to switch to the new software,' she reported. By the end of the year, some 200 workstations... will be running on a special LiMux client. If everything runs according to schedule, most of the approximately 14,000 PCs will be migrated to open source in the next two years."
First off, they have to state what their requirements are. Just as with any other project.
Then they look at what is out there and how closely it matches those requirements and how much time/money would be needed to fill in the gaps. Munich decided to go with a Debian base with KDE and OpenOffice.org.
One of Munich's requirements seems to have been to become "independent of monopolists like Microsoft." In this, Debian's social contract would have been a major plus.
But the problem with home use is NOT about being easy to "install and maintain".
Home users tend to stick with whatever was pre-installed. Once you have a city using Linux, there is a financial incentive for OEM's to build boxes with 100% Linux friendly hardware and a nice recovery CD with all the Linux drivers on it. After all, a city buys a lot of computers and parts over the years.
But that's just the base platform. That still doesn't address the apps (games) that the home users will want to run. So the market will
I'm on 100% Ubuntu Edgy Eft and it handles everything that the average home user would do with the exception of games and certain IE-only websites.
From here, regarding Chicago:
Given that they're migrating their Solaris server boxes rather than Windows desktop workstations (as seems to be happening in Munich), I'm not sure if it's quite the same thing.
The thrust of this rather positive FA seems to be that user acceptance has been good, and the delays were caused by such things as legal concerns and complex negotiations with project partners. The indications are that a massive migration to desktop Linux is perfectly feasible. I think Wilhelm Hoegner's view that this project, by itself, will not cause an avalanche of further conversions will prove correct. That said, a few projects like this can dramatically change perceptions leading to major change over time.
One of Munich's requirements seems to have been to become "independent of monopolists like Microsoft."
The actual requirement was to avoid vendor lock-in, for which the free distribution of Linux is very useful. Red Hat and Novell don't have to be monopolists to present the same danger of exorbitant support fees and lack of choice.
Controlling complexity is the essence of computer programming. -Brian Kernigan
Except Germans call their city München and not Munich.
Oh, and there is no 'k'-sound in the proper german pronounciation.
Nope! They delayed it. The microsoft crowd declared "HEH! They are not switching after all, hurrah! Bill! Bill! Bill! Bill!...." However, Munich worked on centralized management software in the interum (which is now completed). They are deploying at a tremendous rate as they now have an extremely powerful central management and deployment system (and are using to great effect). Better than that: they are planning on releasing the software to others as a Free Software project, so that other cities can benefit from their efforts. One more obstacle to adoption got a kick in the teeth. The City of Munich's contribution will be greatly accepted and apprecieated by all (except for the previously mentioned microsoft crowd).
As this same topic has been on slashdot many times before, it should be noted that the 'Microsoft solution' is less expensive because of discounting by Microsoft to avoid the switch over. I do not know how deep the discounts where, but I suspect a standard contract would have been considerably more expensive.
I do not expect that I would get the same treatment from Microsoft and told them that I was moving 25 desktops and 3 servers to linux.
Munich is the Capitol of Bavaria, Germany. Bavaria is the high tech capitol of Germany and the richest state in Germany. They have always been ahead of the curve. It is no wonder that they are migrating to Linux and adopting open source software where it makes sense. With Munich being home of some of the largest high tech companies in the world, it would make sense for the government of Munich to adopt similar policies. I for one, praise Munich and it's government for thinking out of the box. The licensing fees they will save on Windows can certainly be spent better elsewhere.
Yahma
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I'm sorry that i have to correct some misconceptions here. Obviously Munich is not Bavaria, quite to the contrary. Munich is a long-time social-democratic (somewhat left, conservative) run city while Bavaria is run for about forever by the christian-socialist party (very right, conservative). Then they have not "always been ahead of the curve", actually, Bavaria was one of the most backward and poor states of Germany up to the 1980s, one of the major money-receivers from the nationwide "Länderfinanzausgleich" -- that's a program to transfer money from the economically stronger states of Germany to the weaker ones -- and only recently started to pay into this pot. Guess who's aggressivly lobbying the abolishment of this program now?
Bavaria managed to turn itself around towards a more high-tech stance and cudos to them for doing that but this turnaround is limited to a few cities, such as Munich or Nuremburg. The rest is still pretty much tourist country and agriculture dependent.
That doesn't devaluate the GNU/Linux adoption but it should be clear that this is not happening because Bavaria or Munich are especially progressive. They just know very well where their interests are lying and i wish more city or state governments would get this. Whatever...
This fits pretty well into the conclusion of http://www.psychocats.net/essays/linuxdesktopmyth. If you've got the time, please read the article.
:)
Personally I were delighted to discover http://www.system76.com/ and is looking forward for a Swedish reseller.