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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."
now the poor souls miss out on all that upcoming Vista goodness.
Officer workers don't care what their system has as long as it can run (a) solitare and (b) popcap games.
Particularly government workers.
Free Beer!
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.
Over the next few years as we see more governments organizations (and some schools) moving to desktop Linux solutions, I think we'll see a corresponding upswing in home use. Maybe massive citywide conversions like Munich's will be the catalyst that the desktop Linux market needs to gain traction. 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.
I'm sure it's been discussed, but I think the risk of losing home users is the real impetus behind Microsoft basically giving away software to schools, and offering STEEP discounts to governments.
Crack - Free with every butt and set of boobs
"I am not a computer geek, but I must admit that it was easy to switch to the new software."
It's lines like these that give Linux more promise and hopefully brings out the "If they can switch, so can we" line of thinking among others.
Conversely, I'm sure Microsoft HATES lines like these.
Respect the laws of physics, for the laws of physics have no respect for you.
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.
I can't believe how wrong they got the client name! ...LiMux?!
How about Munix? Doesn't it sound a lot better?
Why is it taking too long? Isn't this information about 2 or 3 years old? I thought they had completed the migration.
They decided to go with Gentoo Linux couple of years back. They are still waiting for the damn thing to finish compiling
They have migrated less than 200 work stations. Can we wait till the project actually approaches completion before deciding upon its success
Do not try to read the dupe, thats impossible. Instead, only try to realize the truth
What truth?
There is no dupe
Except Germans call their city München and not Munich.
Oh, and there is no 'k'-sound in the proper german pronounciation.
Actually you have hit on the major reason why Linux is not popular in many Business because "it is not like Windows". The real problem with Linux is while it can happily inter-operate with nearly all distributions of Linux and Unix, *nix OS's don't inter-operate well with MS Windows, due to fact that MS Windows does not have open formats while Linux not only has open formats it also has its source open for all to see. Unfortuantely the desktop will always be the hardest to migrate since many Business are very conservative, the lead to the acceptance of the Linux desktop will come first from Government.
The slow but steady adoption of Linux by Governments in Europe and Asia is not due to them being altruistic but pragmatic since the openness of the Linux (or all *nix) formats makes a great deal of sense and they are under scrutiny by their electorates and opposition (unless it is a dictatorship and then anything anti US business is acceptable) to cut costs. Once enough Government groups move to Linux, business and eventually the home user will follow.
There ain't no such thing as proprietary standards only proprietary formats. Standards are by definition open.