Slashdot Mirror
The Man Behind Munich's Migration of 15,000 PCs From Windows To Linux
An anonymous reader writes "It's one of the biggest migrations in the history of Linux, and it made Steve Ballmer very angry: Munich, in southwest Germany, has completed its transition of 15,000 PCs from Windows to Linux. It has saved money, fueled the local economy, and improved security. Linux Voice talked to the man behind the migration: 'One of the biggest aims of LiMux was to make the city more independent. Germany’s major center-left political party is the SPD, and its local Munich politicians backed the idea of the city council switching to Linux. They wanted to promote small and medium-sized companies in the area, giving them funding to improve the city’s IT infrastructure, instead of sending the money overseas to a large American corporation. The SPD argued that moving to Linux would foster the local IT market, as the city would pay localcompanies to do the work.' (Linux Voice is making the PDF article free [CC-BY-SA] so that everyone can send it to their local councilors and encourage them to investigate Linux)."
Any large-scale deployment takes significant man-hours to achieve, but can be made easier through the use of imaging and common platforms. If I standardize on only a handful of models of computers then I can load-up the OS and build everything that I need for that OS on each model, then simply duplicate the drive over all of the others of that model, change the few things that need to be changed (name, network credentials, possibly some security hashes) and I'm done.
This is arguably even easier in Linux than in Windows because there are no particular licensing issues with just copying a Linux installation or with how many Linux installations are deployed. One's backend servers are now for updating and package management rather than for licensing.
And with Microsoft deciding to change their UI every few years now, coupled with competing UIs from Apple and Google, it's much easier to change people to a diffrent platform when they have to learn a new UI anyway. Had Microsoft kept variants of the Windows 95 UI going past Windows 7 then it would be harder, but with the Metro debacle it's a lot easier to make that change, and since most users won't go deeper than the UI anyway it's not so bad.
The hardest part is training the support staff if they've been Windows-centric their whole careers. Somehow just reiterating that everything-is-a-file isn't enough, and many professionals struggle to understand UNIX-style paths.
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
If only the linux community could come up with some kind of "packaging" mechanism that would make software deployment easier.
This "package" could be comprised of compressed files that the OS could then "copy" to relevant locations on the system. I don't want to get to Star Treked out but perhaps we could then send these "packages" over the network to computers, instead of manually copying the files on our tape drives like we do right now.
If only Red Hat or one of the other distros had a system like this in place, it would make Linux so much more competitive. Perhaps Microsoft has a patent on this new technology?
Mod me down, my New Earth Global Warmingist friends!
And you took that out of context. That was on the initial 5 year plan, where moving to linux was a big migration, while moving to windows XP from windows 2000 would have had far less impact.
So of course in the first years such a massive migration and education of your users costs more. But now 10+ years later they estimate they saved money (and that was also mentioned in the part where they mentioned that linux was more expensive. For the 5 year plan microsoft was cheaper, but strategically they were pretty sure linux would be cheaper after that).
1. Initial costs of staying with Microsoft's software were lower.
2. Customizable security was one of the pros of switching to Linux.
3. Initial costs were projected over 5 years.
4. 10 years have now past and the city made an assesment of cost. Conclusion was 10 mllion euros saved.
5. HP made there own analysis and concluded that the Linux conversion had cost the city 60 million Euros more. However, when contacted for their methodology and numbers for the analysis, they declined to provide the information.
"Screwed" because MS only supported their OS for 13 years? Riiiight.
They still sold brand new Windows XP licenses till Win 7 was ready in order to get a foothold into the netbook/subnotebook market and that was not full 4 years ago (Debian LTS is 5 years with free upgrades). The 13 years only counts if you had it from day one, in which case the pain of pre service pack 1 Windows XP would have screwed you at the beginning instead of the end.
And with Microsoft deciding to change their UI every few years now...,
You've hit on what I consider to be Microsoft's biggest problem: they are no longer making basic functional improvements to their products. Instead, they are adding bells and whistles, and changing file formats to force upgrades (if your clients have ver XYZ+1, then you need it to read the default format of the files they send you).
To me, this indicates a change in attitude. No longer are they striving to put out the best software, they're churning revs to keep revenue up. It's a sign of desperation and it has been going on for several years, now.
"Screwed" because MS only supported their OS for 13 years?
But also sold it on some new machines as recently as 4 years ago...
Hell, which Linux company is going to maintain a version of their OS (for free) for 3 years?
Err...several, for free, for considerably more than 3 years.
Common examples:
Ubuntu LTS: Now 5 years (increased from 3 years at V12.04)
CentOS: Pretty much follows Red Hat. e.g CentOS V6 maintained for 9 years (2011-2020).
Given that XP was atypical with 13 years support and Win7 gets 11 years (2009-2020), CentOS is very much in the same ballpark.
But wait: CentOS 6 will get 9 years of *full* support (including new hardware support every 6 months and new features mainly every 2 years). Win7 only gets 6 years full support and 5 years extended (security updates only).
I'd say that's a draw between CentOS 6 and Windows 7.