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Munich Has Saved €4M So Far After Switch To Linux
New submitter Mojo66 writes "Mayor Ude reported today that the city of Munich has saved €4 million so far (Google translation of German original) by switching its IT infrastructure from Windows NT and Office to Linux and OpenOffice. At the same time, the number of trouble tickets decreased from 70 to 46 per month. Savings were €2.8M from software licensing and €1.2M from hardware because demands are lower for Linux compared to Windows 7."
Linux is better, faster, and more stable. Just the savings on support calls alone would be enormous.
Get rid of that office shit and replace with Vim and Emacs. :) :)
"Also in the bill were included training costs and costs of migration" FTFA
Training? Ahahahaha, ohohohoho, eehehehehee.
Purely from an office drone's perspective (all software proselytizing aside), training is the bogeyman. The vendors bring it out to scare the customer, but it doesn't exist. It "costs" eleventy billion dollars! Nobody will know how to do anything if you don't buy training!
But big offices make big changes all the time, and they don't *really* do squat for training. They might gather the group around a conference table and click through some slides, and tell everybody that Joe has used the program before and they should ask him if they're having trouble.
Hooray, you wasted a day watching powerpoint and you got a photocopied certificate that you get to scrawl your own name on!
How many offices have gone from something, to Lotus, to Exchange, to Google... etc.? And it's not just email infrastructure. Your billing system as a consultant might change every few years; your code management system as a programmer might change. Your document control system might change. The way your network space is apportioned, the way you print; any number of things can change depending on the way the wind blows in management.
And then, you top it off with planned obsolescence: remember going from Office 97 to Office XP? And then to the new craziness of Office 2010? A little old lady secretary wouldn't be any more confused by moving to Open Office... and she's not getting any training when MS Office 2014 comes out and scraps everything she knows for touch-screen inspired insanity!
Even universities, where you would expect old systems to soldier on for far too long, seem to do that kind of thing in less than 10 year intervals. And the employees who you would expect to get some "training" (office staff, geezer professors) don't--they complain, they suffer, and then they figure it out ;-)
Repetition does not transform a lie into the truth. - FDR
It has been a desperate struggle for all in the computer business to come up with the least usable software ever! Apple had a good long run with their 1 mouse button because options just give users options. MS for a long time stayed with its tried and tested "crash more often then the stockmarket" while Unix just had to rely on making even the manual an arcane command line.
But then stupid users tried to improve. Apple was forced to accept that with the PC, users could always just buy a multi-buttoned mouse! Can't have that Jobs said and have the word iOS, to get rid of not just right-click but double click in one go.
Aha! MS said, we can beat that, behold, the RIBBON, a beautifull piece of AI that ensures whatever command you want, you won't be able to find it.
Oops, said Linux, we started to lag. Quickly, upgrade the desktops so that whatever one you pick, you get the worsed ideas ever combined in a buddy alpha package!
But unbeknown to all, queitly working away were the OpenOffice people, show casing just how utterly evil you can get with opensource code... TADA! The text editor with NO USER INTERFACE AT ALL! MWAHAHAHAHAA!
Even Nintendo who gave us the handheld you got to move to control the game but hold still to be able to see can't top that.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.