Munich's Move To Linux Exceeds Target

jrepin writes "In May 2003, Munich's city council resolved to migrate municipal workstations from Windows to Linux and open source. Munich's LiMux project has announced that it has exceeded its annual target for migrating the city's PCs to its LiMux client. To date in 2011, the project has migrated 9,000 systems; it had originally planned to migrate 8,500 of the 12,000-15,000 PC workstations used by city officials in Munich."

Comments

steve balmer

[Anonymous Coward]

in 2003 steve balmer travelled to munich to convince the city council to keep running windows

Re:steve balmer

[hairyfeet]

Well anyone who has seen Steve Ballmer hooting like a madman while leaving sweat pools across the stage would know that Ballmer is waaaay more offensive than Goatse. Frankly i think he makes the Pepsi guy that ran Apple look like a fricking genius.You know its bad when Gates actually had to come out and say "I'm not coming back to MSFT, quit with the rumors already' because so many are unhappy with Ballmer they were hoping for a Jobs style saving of the company.

As for TFA its nice to see that some that try switching aren't doing it for the WRONG reasons, because they always seem to lead to failure. if you want to switch to Linux because its open? Because it lets YOU decide how long support will last? Because it allows you to look at and modify the code to suit YOUR needs? Congratulations you have switched for the RIGHT reasons and will most likely succeed. Where you see Linux fail time and time again is at these companies where they only care about "free as in beer" and they quickly find out that if all you want Linux for is to save money you are gonna lose and lose big.

Lets face it folks Linux isn't gonna save you a dime, not in the short or medium term anyway. You are gonna need more expensive Linux admins instead of dirt cheap MCSEs, you are gonna have to hire developers to code FOSS versions of any and all niche programs you have, you are gonna have to pay people to get your files out of proprietary formats and into FOSS ones, its not gonna be cheap friends. That is why the ones that ONLY care about price are doomed to fail, as when they don't see their budgets magically drop by half and in fact see costs initially rise they are gonna bail.

But if you do it for the right reasons listed above you will stick with it and end up probably better off than you were before since you won't be tied into any products by proprietary vendors like Adobe or MSFT and buy hiring internal coders and admins will be able to DIY instead of going out and buying solutions that will have to be re-bought when the support date ends.

So its nice to see someone looking like they are gonna have a happy outcome by doing it for the right reasons after all the stories we have seen of Linux being used for the wrong reasons and failing. I bet if you looked at their budget they probably haven't saved squat yet and possibly have even had the price go up as they have paid for all of the above that I listed, but they now have more control and can pay to have it customized any way they desire.

Any information on LiMux?

[astropirate]

Anyone have any information on what LiMux looks like? What DE does it come what? Screenshots would be nice... I googled around but couldn't find any information on it.

Cost saving?

[xushi]

Interesting move,

I wonder, how much will this save them cost-wise? That's 9,000 less licences they'll need to have, but I recall Microsoft usually gives discounts on bulk licences, and further discounts if they hint someone is considering an alternative. Also, along with what you'd pay for in licence fees, you get support from them. How much will it cost now to get support (and on demand support) for the Linux OSs (including training, re-training, hiring, etc..)

Re:Cost saving?

[DamonHD]

Yes, one place I was at there were 10x the support staff per Windows desktop compared to the Sun workstations. Sometimes I was the *only* Sun support guy for over 500 machines, which was quite hard work but do-able. Actually, they were so low maint that an audit discovered 100 or so Suns that we had forgotten about and that were doing their jobs just fine! (This was a long time ago...)

And still, the effort that has to go into keeping Windows boxes (even W7) running is hugely more than the Solaris and Linux servers that I have deployed all over the planet, in my experience, though less so than previously.

Rgds

Damon

Re:Cost saving?

[prefec2]

They require fewer service personal, the developed Debian/Ubuntu based distribution can be shared with other cities, and all the money spent for services by the city stays in Germany and with German companies which is very clever for a Municipal, as this results in jobs and taxes. Instead of a money transfer to the US.

As a city you should not think in business and macro-economic terms, you have to look on it from a macro-economic viewpoint. And you have to look at the long run. Well you should look on long term results in a company as well, but a state hast to do so. Otherwise it goes bust.

Re:Cost saving?

[Lumpy]

If they were smart, $200.00 base PC's netbooting from a central server.

Doing this with linux = support heaven. Weneed to update Libre Office? ok, 20 minutes later it's done for ALL MACHINES.
Update the OS for security issues? Ok, 1 hour later ALL MACHINES are now up to date.
Push out a new application.... the same.
etc...

Plus a dead workstation is a 10 minute fix. replace the box with a new one, power it on. I can fix a exploded desktop computer while the person is on a smoke break.

Lost documents? don't exist, they all are on the servers and backed up regularly. with an advantage that is hard to achieve in windows. If a user deletes a file, It's still there in the repository. in fact all changes are saved there as well. so a disgruntled employee has zero damage impact capability.

For 80% of the staff and executives this system works perfectly. the 20% which are IT staff, engineers, and Programmers they have their own separate stand alone desktops and/or laptops. All the IT staff have both, a Thin client on their desk and a stand alone laptop.

Number of high power servers dropped from 8 to 5 when we switched, we no longer need a stupid powerful exchange server so that was re-purposed as a application server. and we have a hot backup application server as well.

If you have ran a Citrix farm, it's much like that except easier. the servers need a buttload of ram and fast drives, but configurations allow the thin clients to take advantage of local ram and processor+video. so the browsers, java, and other processor wasting apps run locally to the thin client but store all data to the server and load from the image.

It required competent IT admins though, so we pay 2X the typical MS drone rate, but have 5X less employees in IT to deal with every possible issue.

Re:Broken link / Florian Schießl blog gone

[erroneus]

Yes, I saw that too. I was a little amazed that despite their need to change their approach they stayed with it. This is Microsoft's favorite opportunity to step in and "heal the pain" with discounts and assistance in putting things back as they were.

I would like to be able to see more about this and how the transition went and most importantly, the lessons learned in all of this.

Re:Broken link / Florian Schießl blog gone

[Daniel Phillips]

He says that 1,000 staff had been maintaining 15,000 Windows computers. Fifteen computers per tech? Not impressive, by an order of magnitude.

This isn't about Linux

[Deliveranc3]

As much as it is about German efficiency.

The real amazing thing is that they beat the communists.

Linux uber alles!

I feel their frustration

[erroneus]

At every turn I am faced with more Microsoft lock-in. Most recently has been an inventory tracking database system. They advertised a "web interface" option but were unable to provide a demonstration of it. After the company bought the product anyway, it was revealed that their "web" interface was actually Silverlight. I realize that Microsoft just released an update to Silverlight, but isn't it already slated for extinction? And when I asked the vendor if they have any HTML 5 intentions, they had no answer at all. So here I am facing yet another application which requires Microsoft Windows, MSIE 8 and a proprietary control set which cannot easily exist in any other way. We already have Documentum which is supposed to be able to use Firefox and the like but thanks to Mozilla's insistence on their INSANE version escalation practices, every update is an X.0 update meaning Documentum thinks it can't support it.

Frustration all around. Thank you Microsoft for shoving your crap through developers and vendors. Thank you vendors for buying into their crap only to find yourselves having to re-write your software AGAIN as Microsoft drops support for the platforms you built your apps on. Thank you Firefox for making the task of trying to migrate to your client all the more difficult. Thanks go around pretty evenly.

Re:User satisfaction level . . . ?

[Anonymous Coward]

I love Linux and use it everyday at work, but what you describe sounds like you had a horribly misconfigured Windows environment replaced by a nicely configured Linux environment. My guess is that if someone had torn the old Windows patchwork down and rebuilt it nicely you'd get the same benefits you mentioned.

Re:Thanks To Your Stupid Managers

[jrminter]

I think all sides would benefit from seeing this as a symbiotic relationship and treat each other with mutual respect. Yes, IT staff needs that troublesome salesman who rakes in the orders. That salesman also needs IT support to be productive. And those managers are really only effective when they create an environment where their minons can do what they hired them to do.

The system breaks down when any one group deludes themselves into thinking they are more valuable to the organization than they are. In my case, I remind myself that even the "lowly janitor" who cleans my lab (always with a smile) and keeps the dust away from my sensitive instruments, the skilled tradesman who fixes the water chiller that keeps my electron microscope running, and the technician that refills my liquid nitrogen cylinders enable my productivity. They each deserves my respect - and admiration. It is honest labor; tasks that I don't like to do or am not good at. It is a much more pleasant work environment when everyone realizes that the whole is more than the sum of the parts...