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Munich's IT Lead: 'No Compelling Reason' To Switch Back To Windows From Linux (techrepublic.com)
"The man who runs Munich's central IT says there is no practical reason for the city to write off millions of euros and years of work to ditch its Linux-based OS for Windows," reports TechRepublic. Long-time Slashdot reader Qbertino summarizes a German-language article:
Karl-Heinz Schneider, lead of Munich's local system house company IT@M, goes on to claim, "We do not see pressing technical reasons to switch to MS and MS Office... The council [in their recent plans] didn't even follow the analysts' suggestion to stick with using LibreOffice." Furthermore, Schneider stated that "System failures that angered citizens in recent years never were related to the LiMux project, but due to new bureaucratic procedures..." and apparently decisions by unqualified personnel at the administrative level, as Munich's administration itself states.
Windows paid off the right people to switch back.
That said, open source software is great until you have to use it. OpenOffice, GIMP, KiCad...all needlessly convoluted.
Better than Micro$oft Office 365.
Do you rejoice when you get an email about an upgrade of the vending machines in the company cafeteria, or do you worry about the new machines not carrying the kind of soft drinks or candy bars you're used to? That's basically how a typical office worker feels about computers. Spend a week working helpdesk and you'll understand that very very clearly.
That's why when you manage a large pool of workstations you want the bare minimum that users need to do their work, and why you want that bare minimum to be set in stone. Otherwise you're just annoying users and adding more support tickets to your queue.
lucm, indeed.
Whenever I read stories like this, ie. Windows vs. Linux vs. OSX vs. it seems to always be from the perspective of the implementers or those looking to make a point about whether it can be done. Why not offer choice?
If you use Microsoft office, you put a straitjacket on your system. Not compatible with OSX version of Office, no software at all for Linux.
Choice is nice, but why choose the most limiting OS and Office Suite? I run LO, and my Mac shows the same as my Windows shows the same as my Linux shows the same.
That's why I use it.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
The trouble is that Microsoft don't like their users to have choice. They bake-in proprietary features and incompatibilities that prevent users from sharing documents and files across operating systems or going outside their software walled gardens. How many prosecutions against Microsoft for anti-competitive practices will it take to convince you? They don't want their users to have choice, they want their users to be stuck with using their products and services and unable to easily switch to others.
I can see that for people whose jobs are doing stuff other than ICT will see the transition from one OS and office software to another as a problem. It's one transition, once. Anyone who's experienced Win10 can attest that it's so different to previous versions and that they've changed around MS Office so much lately, that the learning curve to switch to Linux is comparable. So why not? Also, there's the privacy issues with Win10 (Microsoft calls their key-loggers and spyware "telemetry") that all governments should be wary of. Keep your privacy and control with Linux as well as save a few € in the process.