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."

Comments

It depends upon the requirements of the government

[khasim]

With so many distributions out there, how does a government decide upon which one to deploy?

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.

Eventually.

[khasim]

For the everyday user, if they use Linux at work, they'll probably want to use Linux at home ... assuming they can get a distro that's easy enough to install and maintain.

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 ... slowly ... be changing. As grandma gets her Linux computer with Internet access, email, web browsing and basic photo editing (look at my lovely grandchildren), more ISV's will attempt to sell software to her.

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.

Chicago's migration is from Solaris

[jesterzog]

From here, regarding Chicago:

The city's infrastructure had historically been a multi-platform environment that included about 100 Solaris servers used to run a large number of Oracle databases and applications. As these servers neared the end of their life cycles the City of Chicago began the migration to cost-effective Red Hat solutions.

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.

Relatively few technical issues, it seems

[Mostly a lurker]

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.

Re:It depends upon the requirements of the governm

[Bretai]

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.

München not Munich

[andersh]

Except Germans call their city München and not Munich.

Oh, and there is no 'k'-sound in the proper german pronounciation.

Re:My favorite line of this article

[PlusFiveTroll]

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 has always been ahead of the curve

[Yahma]

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
ProxyStorm - A Free, Anonymous apache based proxy service, for security minded individuals.

Actually

[rawler]

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. :)