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German Foreign Ministry Migrates Desktops To OSS

Posted by Soulskill on from the saving-some-geld dept.

ruphus13 writes "Here's another example of 'German Engineering' — The Foreign Ministry in Germany is migrating all of its 11,000 desktops to GNU/Linux and other open source applications. According to the article, 'this has drastically reduced maintenance costs in comparison with other ministries. "The Foreign Ministry is running desktops in many far away and some very difficult locations. Yet we spend only one thousand euro per desktop per year. That is far lower than other ministries, that on average spend more than 3000 euro per desktop per year ... Open Source desktops are far cheaper to maintain than proprietary desktop configurations," says Rolf Schuster, a diplomat at the German Embassy in Madrid and the former head of IT at the Foreign Ministry ... "The embassies in Japan and Korea have completely switched over, the embassy in Madrid has been exclusively using GNU/Linux since October last year", Schuster added, calling the migration a success.' The Guardian has additional coverage of the move."

8 of 147 comments (clear)

  1. Yes. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Troll

    If it's good enough for Nazis, it's good enough for me. Hey everyone: let's all be like Nazis! Make Hitler proud!

    1. Re:Yes. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Troll

      Being "like the Nazis" is not always a bad thing. After all, Hitler did make the trains run on time!

      Yeah, but he also made the big mistake of failing to exterminate the jews.

    2. Re:Yes. by MrNaz · · Score: -1, Troll

      "They gassed retards instead of modding them down."

      You say that like it would be a bad thing.

      --
      I hate printers.
  2. so.. by Keruo · · Score: 0, Troll

    On windows environment you use active directory and sus.

    How do you centrally manage software installs and permissions on thousands of machines with oss?
    Handful of servers is easy to handle but how are logins and home directories handled in environment this scale?

     

    --
    There are no atheists when recovering from tape backup.
  3. Re:OSS is not cheaper by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Troll

    I thought the headline was, "Open Source Software Aids Nazi Expansion."

  4. Do you think RH doesn't have to do that? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Troll

    What do you think?

    What.

    A.

    Moron.

  5. Yes, but... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Troll

    What distro are they using? Do they have plans to create a Supreme Distro? Will they round up Ubuntu Jewish Edition users and send them to 'work camps'?

    Don't be surprised if they still ally themselves with Emperor Ballmer to keep the US busy on the Pacific front.

  6. Best of both worlds -- os x by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Troll

    Since its 100% secure, why not use Macs? OS X is the best of the commercial and open source worlds. Its also immune to security threats that plague Linux and Windows shops on a minute by minute basis.