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The State of Munich's Ongoing Linux Migration
christian.einfeldt writes "The Munich decision to move its 14,000 desktops to Free Open Source Software created a big splash back in 2003 as news circulated of the third-largest German city's defection from Microsoft. When it was announced in 2003, the story garnered coverage even in the US, such as an extensive article in USA Today on-line. Currently, about 60% of desktops are using OpenOffice, with the remaining 40% to be completed by the end of 2009. Firefox and Thunderbird are being used in all of the city's desktop machines. Ten percent of desktops are running the LiMux Debian-based distro, and 80% will be running LiMux by 2012 at the latest. Autonomy was generally considered more important than cost savings, although the LiMux initiative is increasing competition in the IT industry in Munich already. The program has succeeded because the city administration has been careful to reach out to all stakeholders, from managers down to simple end users."
This blog chronicles the failure of this project: http://limuxwatch.blogspot.com/
Nobox: Only simple products.
Typical Slashdot moderators. Unable to face the fact that not everything is perfect in their own little world.
I provided two useful blogs that gave facts and opinions from both sides of the migration, plus my own opinion... and I get modded "Flamebait". If this isn't a perfect example of how your opinion WILL be punished if it's not totally for the FOSS line of thought, then I don't know what is.
I love open-source when it's applicable, but I'm not going change my opinion if I think it's fallen short. Got to laugh at those who can't stand dissent. But thank you to anyone who can post with some maturity.
I didn't write the failure blog. Unless your criticism was directly towards the actual writer, in which case so be it. But if you were having a go at me for initially siding with his blog, then fuck you. It's a differing opinion, get used to it.
Or, conversely, the number of users who, having been forced to use Linux at work, have run screaming back into the loving embrace of Windows back home, where their MSN Messenger and IncrediMail Just Work (tm).
I say this as someone who has rolled out some complete company-wide Linux deployments to companies that have previously has completely free-reign on their badly maintained, totally unlicensed, unmanaged Windows deployments. Technically, they were a complete success. In terms of user acceptance, they were an utter disaster.
"The dew has clearly fallen with a particularly sickening thud this morning"