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Munich Plans New Vote on Dumping Linux For Windows 10 (techrepublic.com)
An anonymous reader quotes TechRepublic:
The city of Munich has suggested it will cost too much to carry on using Linux alongside Windows, despite having spent millions of euros switching PCs to open-source software... "Today, with a Linux client-centric environment, we are often confronted with major difficulties and additional costs when it comes to acquiring and operating professional application software," the city council told the German Federation of Taxpayers. Running Linux will ultimately prove unsustainable, suggests the council, due to the need to also keep a minority of Windows machines to run line-of-business software incompatible with Linux. "In the long term, this situation means that the operation of the non-uniform client landscape can no longer be made cost-efficient"... Since completing the multi-year move to LiMux, a custom-version of the Linux-based OS Ubuntu, the city always kept a smaller number of Windows machines to run incompatible software. As of last year it had about 4,163 Windows-based PCs, compared to about 20,000 Linux-based PCs.
The assessment is at odds with a wide-ranging review of the city's IT systems by Accenture last year, which found that most of the problems stem not from the use of open-source software, but from inefficiencies in how Munich co-ordinates the efforts of IT teams scattered throughout different departments. Dr. Florian Roth, leader of the Green Party at Munich City Council, said the review had also not recommended a wholesale shift to Windows. "The Accenture report suggested to run both systems because the complete 'rollback' to Windows and MS Office would mean a waste of experience, technology, work and money," he said... The city's administration is investigating how long it would take and how much it would cost to build a Windows 10 client for use by the city's employees. Once this work is complete, the council will vote again in November on whether this Windows client should replace LiMux across the authority from 2021.
A taxpayer's federation post urged "Penguin, adieu!" -- while also admitting that returning to Windows "will devour further tax money in the millions," according to TechRepublic.
"The federation's post also makes no mention of the licensing and other savings achieved by switching to LiMux, estimated to stand at about €10m."
The assessment is at odds with a wide-ranging review of the city's IT systems by Accenture last year, which found that most of the problems stem not from the use of open-source software, but from inefficiencies in how Munich co-ordinates the efforts of IT teams scattered throughout different departments. Dr. Florian Roth, leader of the Green Party at Munich City Council, said the review had also not recommended a wholesale shift to Windows. "The Accenture report suggested to run both systems because the complete 'rollback' to Windows and MS Office would mean a waste of experience, technology, work and money," he said... The city's administration is investigating how long it would take and how much it would cost to build a Windows 10 client for use by the city's employees. Once this work is complete, the council will vote again in November on whether this Windows client should replace LiMux across the authority from 2021.
A taxpayer's federation post urged "Penguin, adieu!" -- while also admitting that returning to Windows "will devour further tax money in the millions," according to TechRepublic.
"The federation's post also makes no mention of the licensing and other savings achieved by switching to LiMux, estimated to stand at about €10m."
With all due respect, Germans are very smart people. If they believe that Microsoft is their future then so be it.
Time is what keeps everything from happening all at once.
It can't help that modern Linux distros have become such a shitshow. By that I mean the Linux and open source software ecosystem undergoes totally unnecessary change very rapidly. Often this has made the user experience worse, and it makes it harder to use and support Linux.
Some good examples of this are GNOME 3, systemd, PulseAudio, NetworkManager, and Firefox. They are examples of change for the sake of change alone.
Debian is a good example of what happens at the distro level. For much of its existence it was a stable OS, even if somewhat slow-moving at times. What you learned today could often be applied next year, if not several years after that. When there was change, it was done gradually and in a way that avoided disruption.
But Debian has taken a turn for the worst over the last several years, with things like systemd and GNOME 3 disruptively forced into the distro very rapidly, and even against the wishes of the Debian user community. Problems with such software have effectively ruined Debian for many users, especially long-time Debian users who came to expect a very high level of stability and reliability.
While some people claim that moving to a niche distro like Devuan, or Slackware, or Gentoo is an option, the reality is that such distros don't really provide a better experience. It's much more effective to move to an OS like FreeBSD, where its developers and maintainers have shown that they won't make radically disruptive changes on a frequent basis.
I can't blame organizations from moving away from Linux today. Modern Linux distros are nothing like typical Linux distros were a decade ago. Stability and sensible change have been thrown out in favor of hipster-oriented fads involving radical and disruptive change without much, if any, benefit.
But then I just stopped using the "incompatible software."
For most of my needs, I found new software that was compatible with the new OS. For the rest, I either replaced it with my own software or just dumped the need. After a few years, I did eventually purchase another windows machine, but it was only to drive hardware that required interfacing with Windows. I rarely boot the Windows machine up now too... Since I have had it MS decided to move all their functions around between Windows 7, 8, and 10... it's just annoying.
Munich should take the same approach. If they keep the crutch (Windows) around, their staff will never be able to fully commit to the new OS. They should completely ditch Windows for 5 years and let the shit hit the fan. Then, after 5 years, then can bring it back in a limited capacity if they really need it.
In all likelyhood, they just need Windows to run some other clunky piece of accounting software written in VB that probably needs to be modernized anyway.
Sharepoint is an alternative file system, largely inspired by the web. Hyperlinks and embedded documents as opposed to "folders" and "files".
The biggest advantage of SharePoint in this regard is the ability to add additional "signage" or markups to assist the user in understanding the nature of the data in a particular file.
The MS headquarter is in Munich. The new mayor of Munich is a great fan of MS who always wanted to end LiMux. While the LiMux made some mistakes by not including employees in their process, the Accountability Office determined that the move back would be a waste of money and time. Anyway, Schleswig-Holstein, the most northern state of Germany, us going for OSS.
Nobody copied that ribbon thing on Microsoft and LibreOffice works cross platform, something that is the cause of the cost on Windows now.
It's all the cost of cross training people to Windows that's the big overhead, and that cost needs to be loaded on the Windows side, since its a Windows cost.
PC sales continue to decline (7.3% yoy), its now selling less than 1/8th of Android device volumes sold. You can pretend that isn't important, but the world is moving to tablet devices and Microsoft isn't winning.
Can you imagine someone heavily invested in Microsoft IIS? What a joke they are now, Microsoft server share is nowhere.
The next step would be a plan to migrate from the legacy Windows apps over to open source based alternatives.
This is another case where what appears to be common sense doesn't survive contact with reality.
You live in a fantasy if you seriously believe that there's open source alternatives to everything that runs on Windows. Either that, or you're thinking in terms of "checkbox alternative", such as saying that Gnucash is an alternative to Great Plains or Accpacc, discarding the shitload of missing features or the fact that there's complex integrations and a large ecosystem of plugins required to communicate with vendors, partners or other systems.
Here's an example. Many big suppliers won't allow B2B automation unless orders are pushed via AS2 or EDI, and many requires a full-blown GDSN connection. This means that if the city wants to JIT their toilet paper orders instead of paying a fortune in warehousing, they must be able to have their accounting system approve and transmit orders. This requires specialized plugins in products like Sage or Dynamics. You won't find anything to fork on github to deal with that, and even if you were, it would be a terrible idea because the second the protocols or headers change in the B2B schema, you're fucked since dude420@github is not going to give you a clear roadmap in lockstep with what the big suppliers or vendors request.
In an ideal world it would all be web-based and browser-neutral and maybe even SaaS, but given the level of customization required for a large organization, it's still a pipe dream.
lucm, indeed.
https://systemd-free.org/
There's openRC if you really hate systemd that much. And I would just stick with XFCE and ALSA since that's all you need basically https://sourceforge.net/projec... here's a base installer if you think you have to install then remove systemd.
for the vast majority of systems administration work a GUI is superior.
Indeed, and it automates so well. Right?
CLI paste? paste.pr0.tips!
As someone who builds and maintains Windows server environments professionally, I would have agreed with you about 10 years ago, but now not so much. Really the only two heartburns are older installations still in operation well past their EOL date, and forced Windows updates.
To be honest, nothing would give me more satisfaction to say that Windows Server is dogshit, but it really isn't. Stability and resource usage has improved drastically since Server 2012.
You are not correct:
libreoffice is written in C++. There are some JAVA plugins, but they do not relate to the GUI. I find libreoffice quit snappy, but format conversion to word is lossy and some features (e.g. track changes) are not as mature as in MS word. MS Word on the other hand is a nightmare that everyone has gotten accustomed to.
Moritz