Slashdot Mirror
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."
I work with both Windows (various versions) and Linux on a daily basis. As a long time user of Linux and a former UNIX (Solaris, HP-UX and AIX) sysadmin, I don't like to say this but the reality is that Windows is far more stable and reliable than Linux these days.
Despite dealing with far more Windows systems than Linux systems, I haven't had to deal with a Windows booting problem in ages. On the other hand, I've had to deal with numerous incidents where Linux systems wouldn't boot properly due to various problems with systemd. Some of these problems have been truly idiotic.
It's not 1995 any longer. Recent versions of Windows have been remarkably stable.
It's also not 2005 any longer. Recent versions of Linux have been disturbingly unstable.
While Windows has gotten better than it was in the past, I'm sad to say that Linux has gotten worse than it was in the past. Linux used to be all about stability and reliability and robustness. Now Linux is all about frivolous changes and software like systemd, GNOME 3 and PulseAudio that I've found to be crap.
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.
This is so spot on. There are some parts of Windows, especially on the server side e.g. the Service Control Manager or the RRAS admin console that look EXACTLY the same as they did in 1999. Why you ask? BECAUSE THEY DON'T NEED TO FUCKING CHANGE. They are "done" and the only changes are to fix bugs.
If this was Linux these dialogs would have changed 6 times by now, because OSS developers prefer to fuck with things to feed their creative brains rather than focusing their energy on fixing bugs. Why? Well you can consider OSS developers are not being paid and in many cases are volunteers. You can't criticize or fire them since they're doing it for free. New design is more fun than fixing bugs which everyone will agree is boring. QED. So what you have is a constant influx of new features / requirements creep and moving shit around in the UI for no good reason while legit bugs never get fixed. The best example of this is Firefox and we all know why.
In commercial (proprietary) software you're typically working to a list of requirements and churning through them. Going off and doing whatever you feel like? You're fired. There's a lot of guys in Bangalore right now working for Intel, MS, IBM, etc doing boring as fuck work fixing bugs and software maintenance. It's a job, it pays the bills, they go home after 40 hrs but bugs get fixed.
In the OSS world this model is completely inappropriate to their development philosophy. It's apples to oranges.
Now if you'll excuse me I need to restart Firefox because of the fucking memory leaks.
So Linux adds some dumb audio drivers, whereas Windows changes it's entire UI that makes even GNOME 3 look good. So you say, that Metro UI is for home users and not servers? Well, GNOME 3 and PulseAudio aren't for back office servers either. Your Red Hat server is going to run the same software from 10 years ago most likely, whereas Windows is bad at doing this.
You will often hear the Windows guru say "have you tried shutting it off and turning it back on?" Yes, sounds like a joke but it happens. But you don't hear that from the Linux guru.
Windows 8, windows 10... suffering. Change not just for change sake but also with more instrumentation to spy on you, to advertise to you. Ultimate goal is that we pay a monthly fee AND we have to put up with commercials to use our own computer.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
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.
A lot of what you write resonates with me. I'll add another variable that I don't see mentioned yet: Linux support of notebook computers. Its another layer of problems (power management, nvidia optimus, even wifi drivers) that really put me over the edge. Many of the 'client' machines out there in 2017 are laptops, and poor support on those makes things difficult beyond the "interoperability" issues.
Things are clearly constantly changing, including my own ability to keep up (generally decreasing over time). Makes it hard to get a handle on comparisons between MS Windows, Linux; but my view is that when I started using Linux in 2001 it was clearly superior to the Microsoft offering. By the time I moved off of Linux for as a primary client computing platform (2015) it was much less clear. Today, as I have dabbled around, the tables seem to have turned, at least on notebooks. I'd be interested to read what others think on this aspect.
And this attitude - why would user even need x - is exactly why Linux on desktop will never happen.
"It's such a fine line between stupid and clever" -- David St. Hubbins, Spinal Tap
Windows 10 (32 bit) runs Word for Windows 6.0, which was written for Windows 3.x.
Claus
And I forgot to mention the ribbon bar interface change where some functionality was completely lost for 6 months before I figured out how to do it again because it had been so well hidden.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
for the vast majority of systems administration work a GUI is superior.
Indeed, and it automates so well. Right?
CLI paste? paste.pr0.tips!