The City Of Munich Now Wants To Abandon Linux And Switch Back to Windows (techrepublic.com)

"The prestigious FOSS project replacing the entire city's administration IT with FOSS based systems, is about to be cancelled and decommissioned," writes long-time Slashdot reader Qbertino. TechRepublic reports: Politicians at open-source champion Munich will next week vote on whether to abandon Linux and return to Windows by 2021. The city authority, which made headlines for ditching Windows, will discuss proposals to replace the Linux-based OS used across the council with a Windows 10-based client. If the city leaders back the proposition it would be a notable U-turn by the council, which spent years migrating about 15,000 staff from Windows to LiMux, a custom version of the Ubuntu desktop OS, and only completed the move in 2013...

The use of the open-source Thunderbird email client and LibreOffice suite across the council would also be phased out, in favor of using "market standard products" that offer the "highest possible compatibility" with external and internal software... The full council will vote on whether to back the plan next Wednesday. If all SPD and CSU councillors back the proposal put forward by their party officials, then this new proposal will pass, because the two parties hold the majority.
The leader of the Munich Green Party says the city will lose "many millions of euros" if the change is implemented. The article also reports that Microsoft moved its German headquarters to Munich last year.

Comments

but but but

[Osgeld]

libreoffice is just as good!!!*

*as MS Office 2000

Re:but but but

[AchilleTalon]

Seriously, anyone using animation in a presentation is a disaster himself.

Re:but but but

[Opportunist]

Could you name the features the contemporary (or any) MS-Office has that are important to the average secretary and that are missing in LibreOffice?

Re: but but but

[james_gnz]

Could you name the features the contemporary (or any) MS-Office has that are important to the average secretary and that are missing in LibreOffice?

Ease of use.

Yup, and this essentially amounts to doing things the way that MS Office does them. The way you've already learnt to do things is the easy way, because doing things any other way first requires unlearning the way you've already learnt.

100% perfect compatability with MS products since 99% of the people you will be exchanging info and docs with use MSkype products.

Yup, and it's exceedingly difficult to get 100% compatibility with MS Office without being MS Office. (Whereas MS Office gets it for free, by definition.)

Help and assistance on the Web when you need to figure something out. Easy with MS products just Google what you are trying to do and get 100s to 1000s of sites showing examples. With the FOSS options. That only works about 10% of the time.

Yup, and there'd need to be a large user base to change this

Need I go on?

Nope, that about covers it.

FOSS products for productivity and the desktop do not yet belong on the desktop in a corporate or government environment. They are still at least another decade away from such compatability.

About a decade away from compatibility with today's MS products. In another decade, they'll still be about a decade away. It's a moving target.

Re:but but but

[vux984]

Kindof unpleasant experiencing a total system lockup when you are presenting to 200 scientists. People in the audience actually said: "I can't believe you attempted this using Libre!", "Why are you using Linux for this?"

But the funny thing is I've also seen, MANY TIMES, someone try to present only to pull up their laptop...

"Windows is updating. 3 of 97. Please do not turn off your computer." ...

I've seen presentations rescheduled, the order juggled, or a presentation even outright cancelled because there was no other time, and there was nothing the presenter could do ... his 45 minute allotement was the only spot, and there was NOTHING he could do now but wait until Windows decided he could use his laptop again.

And the audience? They don't generally berate you for using Windows... they just groan in sympathetic empathy; because that's interrupted nearly all of our workflows at some point... although perhaps not so catastrophically.

Re: but but but

[dbIII]

It's fine if done well.

Not for the people being subjected to it.
Also since the final resting place of a good presentation is on an intranet to be viewed by a web browser it's a pretty stupid idea unless a web browser can also render it.

Re: but but but

[dbIII]

Yup, and this essentially amounts to doing things the way that MS Office does them. The way you've already learnt to do things is the easy way, because doing things any other way first requires unlearning the way you've already learnt.

That sounds obvious but it doesn't apply as much as you would think.
A few years ago I was running practical class sessions for first year engineering students that included a segment on graphing a stress-strain curve of a specimen that the students had tested, and doing a few very simple calculations based on the data. At a staff meeting we decided to change to MS Excel to do the graphing because "they have already learned how to use Excel". It turned out that they hadn't. The prac class turned into a nightmare that always ran over time that ended up being a class on how to do line graphs in MS Excel.

So I and everyone in that meeting had the same preconception you do and we were wrong. Just because a lot of people have used MS Office to do things does not mean the fastest way to get them up to speed on a task you want them to do is to use MS Office to do it. That especially applies now with the ribbon making it much harder for people unfamiliar with a task to find the way to get MS Office to let them do it.

Someone has been visited by an MS rep

[bradley13]

I've seen this: some high-powered MS rep chats up a boss, and *presto*:

MS is great
We've got to migrate

Put that to whatever jingle you want. Also: inspect bank accounts and campaign funds.

Note also that the study supporting the move back to WIndows was carried out by Accenture (some of us know them better by their old name, Andersen Consulting). Accenture was Microsoft's Alliance Partner of the Year in 2016, so I'm sure that they have a neutral, objective reason for recommending Microsoft software.

Re:Someone has been visited by an MS rep

[Frosty Piss]

I've seen this: some high-powered MS rep chats up a boss, and *presto*:

Believe it or not there are other issues beyond "Libre/Open/WhateverOffice is just as good", because you see, big organizations such as municipalities use more software than just office, and many of them simply don't run or run well on Wine or such. And the alternatives to Excel for very complex spreadsheets leave a lot to be desired.

It's easy to think that money changed hands, but there may just be more to it than that.

Re:Someone has been visited by an MS rep

[Anonymous Coward]

There is no need to try to guess...it was widely reported the choice varies the two dominant political parties. It is just a matter of who is in the office. One has probably the hands greased by Microsoft, and the other party does not want to.

Re:Someone has been visited by an MS rep

[guruevi]

Quote: The article also reports that Microsoft moved its German headquarters to Munich last year.

There you go - take our software and we'll move to Munich, that way you gain the income taxes of our workers regardless of how shitty our software is.

The issue here is that these decisions are made for political reasons, not technical ones.

Re:Someone has been visited by an MS rep

[Darinbob]

You can also continue using LibreOffice and Thunderbird on... Windows! By saying they want to dump those applications, which have the highest compatibility, they're essentially saying that they want to buy in into the classic corporate culture (spend, spend, spend) with no true reason for it except marketing. Meanwhile the classic corporate culture is moving away from a Microsoft monoculture.

An AMA

[MeanE]

I would love an Ask Me Anything from some of the sys admins. I'd be curious how the switch went, the troubles or lack of them they had during and after the switch and why there is pressure to switch back to Windows.

Follow the money

[Wolfrider]

--I bet somebody's getting "compensated" in some way to bring this forward. Not only would they be giving up flexibility for a corporation-centric solution, but they would be giving up privacy as well. This site alone is full of Win10 articles detailing what a POS bit of spyware it is, masquerading as an OS. Not to mention random reboots due to upgrades.

--I can only hope this doesn't get approved, but in this world currently nothing is apparently safe or predictable.

Invest those millions to improve the FOSS in use

[Anonymous Coward]

If the leader of the Munich Green Party is right and the city will lose "many millions of euros" if the change is implemented, it's too bad they don't use all that money for hiring an army of programmers. They could implement the changes they want in the FOSS themselves, and give something back to the community for the billions they will save over the next 100 years.

Re:Linux is only free if your time is worth nothin

[rubycodez]

A lot of "enterprises" including my employer went to office365 and it doesn't matter what the client OS is. I use Linux at home and Mac at work to do employer's things, it just doesn't matter

Monopoly Abuse

[Anonymous Coward]

The desire to switch to an office suite with the "highest possible compatibility" clearly indicates they've had trouble opening MS Office documents, and that people with MS Office have had trouble opening ODF documents.

To maintain their position in the market Microsoft make a deliberate attempt to make other software incompatible with their formats, and make their software incompatible with other formats. For example, they claim 100% technical comparability with the ODF formats, but if you open an ODS spreadsheet in Excel it strips out all the formulas, thus rendering the spreadsheet worthless.

This seems like intentional abuse of their market position to me.

Re:It's not office.

[Stephan Schulz]

I am starting my phd soon and when I do will have access to a discount office. There is no way in sweet hell I would use libre to write my thesis!

Well, a cheap office is nice for writing a thesis in. But writing a thesis in any technical field with MS Office (or Libre Office, or Apple Pages) is just masochism. That's what LaTeX is is made for.

Re: I predict

[cfalcon]

I mean, that's just an assumption about what Linux users do with their systems. Microsoft has great data on what their users use their systems for- timestamps of executable programs, all data typed by keyboard, which ads are most likely to lead to sales, etc. Until someone starts tracking everything done by Linux users in the same manner Microsoft tracks all Windows users, I'm afraid your assertion is likely to remain unproven...

They were mostly alone, continue to be alone

[Kjella]

I'm sure the founders of the LiMux project thought that by 2017 the YotLD had long since come and gone, that mainstream drivers and software would be there almost by default at near zero cost. The latest stats from StatCounter says that worldwide Linux has 1.55% desktop OS market share. Even if I pick Germany which is a very pro-Linux market it's 3.46%. From a local politician's view I can understand that it looks like an endless uphill battle, regardless of the actual merits of the OS there will be far more solutions for Windows. It's just a fact of running an obscure solution.

Re: I predict

[OrangeTide]

If web based services are what most office staff and bureaucrats use all day long, then you only need a browser. And Linux runs a browser just as well as Windows. And ChromeOS, if you can call it Linux, runs a browser way better than a desktop. (but that's about all it does)
Office software on a desktop is still a little better than the web based options. There isn't a huge difference in terms of capabilities and usability between Office 16 and LibreOffice, but the compatibility between the two is quite poor so it's best to pick just one. Throwing data into a spreadsheet, making some graphs, and slides is pretty much a solved problem on Windows and Linux. Web based stuff is a few steps behind, I anticipate in 3-4 years that it will be to a point that my company can switch (10000+ employees)

When you get into content creation that you have to think carefully about what OS to us. Desktop publishing, graphic design, etc.

Re:Linux is only free if your time is worth nothin

[james_gnz]

We're stuck with Vista because several of the Microsoft apps we have to run won't run on any newer version of Windows.

Never heard of a place that standardized on Vista of all things, that's kind of weird. Your employer better get themselves some 7 or 10

I'd guess that might be problematic on account of the apps they use that won't run on those versions of MS Windows? Good suggestion though. Are you an MCSA?

Re: I predict

[geoskd]

I remember, oh, around 1995, when people were proclaiming "Linux is ready for the desktop" ! I was a full-time user myself and was in full disagreement with that idea too. Yes, some users can adapt and would do okay, but not the business world, average office workers, and so on.

I have seen a number of offices with employees ranging from superuser to imbecile. These days, even the imbecile level users are not afraid to poke the computer various ways until it does what they want. A decade of smart phones has given them confidence that they can't really break it, and in the few cases where you have an employee that just can't hack it, hiring a replacement that can, costs less than a windows license... For almost everyone else, you put icons on the desktop for the things they would normally need, and they wont even care what the OS is, they'll be able to just use it. Hell, most of them even know how to save their own bookmarks to the desktop *in any OS* because chrome / firefox / safari already do that from within the browser. That is the fundamental reason why MS pushed the new user interface with win 8 and 10, and has been trying to push the surface. If they can get the users used to an interface that is fundamentally incompatible with other OS's, then the value proposition for switching away from windows is far less attractive. The problem they have is that they screwed the pooch, and the majority of users have seen IOS and android, and they don't like windows 8 or 10. That means that the entire employee base has already grown up knowing how to use alternative operating systems and have no fundamental love of windows like Gen Y did. It's over now, and all that is left is watching Microsoft die by inches the way IBM has been doing for the last 30 years.

Re:Linux is only free if your time is worth nothin

[geoskd]

Confirmed basement dweller. None of these are problems if you buy Enterprise versions..

Right, so the solution to the problem of Microsoft software getting in the way and reducing productivity is to..... Give them more money?

Where I come from we have a word for software like that.

Re: I predict

[Applehu Akbar]

Let's all take a moment to remember (and laugh at) Microsoft's attempts to foist upon the world a smartphone that ran Windows.

To Microsoft's credit, it did usually start on the third pull.

My business went Linux, then back to Windows

[SpaceDave]

I own a private museum with about 100 computer-driven displays and half a dozen admin/office PCs. Originally I used Linux for 95% of it. Ten years later I have 2 Linux boxes left and the rest are Windows 10. I used to believe all the pro-Linux arguments I'm reading again here, but in the real world there are just too many problems with Linux. It's not any one problem - it's the plethora of annoying niggles that eventually wear you down. For example:

- Unavoidable but incompatible 3rd party hardware and software.
- "Linux-compatible" versions of software that are just crap.
- Driver issues.
- Minor but frequent differences in the way MS Office docs are rendered.
- Browser rendering differences and problems with 3rd party websites (shouldn't happen but does - nothing I can do about that).
+ many, many more little things.

If I was a better sysadmin/programmer and enjoyed spending time addressing these issues then maybe I could make Linux work better. But I'm not and I don't, so Windows it is.

Re:My business went Linux, then back to Windows

[Gussington]

I'll back that up. I've been part of a few "let's dump Microsoft" projects, and they all ultimately failed, because the driver behind them wasn't let's use the best product, it was an ideology that MS sucks so let's use something else instead regardless. That is a poor requirement for any solution.

Re:My business went Linux, then back to Windows

[terjeber]

However, expecting Microsoft Office docs to work 100% in OpenOffice or LibreOffice was your first mistake

Here's the thing. An enterprise has to be able to work with old documents (from well before you were born) and documents created in other enterprises and elsewhere. If OpenOffice or LibreOffice can not do this, then OO and LO are 100% useless. Period. Enterprises are not playing, they are trying to make money and not being able to properly use and exchange documents is vital.

This is only one problem here, and it's not really the fault of OO, LO or Linux. If Linux had ever made a dent in the desktop market place then the other players would have taken Linux into consideration. It never did. Never will.

Re: I predict

[Gussington]

Anal ventriloquism; impressive. I've switched over hundreds of my clients [who are casual users] from Winblows to Mint over the past six years or so and the less technically adept they are, the more likely they are to benefit.

How, by being tied to you for paid support?
I've run Linux farms, and won't go anywhere else for most application servers, because they can configured perfectly for the task at hand. But user machines need to be prioritised to UI, device compatibility, and familiarity and Linux is horrible by comparison.
I don't expect much agreement in here, but I've worked in several places that allow techy staff (non-MS techies) their own machines (laptop/desktop), and most of them choose Mac or Windows. I know of precisely zero non-techy staff that have even heard of Linux.
There is a reason that the Linux desktop has failed outside a few fringe experiments (like Munich) because it simply doesn't stack up.

Re: I predict

[Zemran]

This discussion is like talking about socialism or religion. Logic has no place in the discussion. Yes, those that have done it know that Linux is far more stable and reliable for the average user but those that shout the loudest will convince people that they cannot live without Windows. Why? Just like you ask the average person about socialism and they will shout about Stalin and not let you discuss Scandinavia or Germany or explain that the best economies in the world are socialist. Try and talk about Muslims and people will focus on the 0.05% that are a problem and ignore the fact that that does not represent the truth. I have set up Linux workstations for people that need reliability and they work for years without attention. That is the main thing that most people want. When I was not around, one client was talked into returning to Windows but after 6 months ended up switching to Apple because having got used to Linux, Windows is terrible. I cannot stay around to support people but I have not had anyone who spends long enough to actually get used to Linux choose to return to Windows.