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Munich Council: To Hell With Linux, We're Going Full Windows in 2020 (theregister.co.uk)
The German city of Munich, which received much popularity back in the day when it first ditched Microsoft's services in favor of open-source software, has now agreed to stop using Linux and switch back to Windows. If the decision is ratified by the full council in two weeks, Windows 10 will start rolling out across the city in 2020. From a report: A coalition of Social Democrats and Conservatives on the committee voted for the Windows migration last week, Social Democrat councillor Anne Hubner told The Register. Munich rose to fame in the open-source world for deciding to use Linux and LibreOffice to make the city independent from the claws of Microsoft. But the plan was never fully realised -- mail servers, for instance, eventually wound up migrating to Microsoft Exchange -- and in February the city council formally voted to end Linux migration and go back to Microsoft. Hubner said the city has struggled with LiMux adoption. "Users were unhappy and software essential for the public sector is mostly only available for Windows," she said. She estimated about half of the 800 or so total programs needed don't run on Linux and "many others need a lot of effort and workarounds." Hubner added, "in the past 15 years, much of our efforts were put into becoming independent from Microsoft," including spending "a lot of money looking for workarounds" but "those efforts eventually failed." A full council vote on Windows 10 2020 migration is set for November 23, Hubner said. However, the Social Democrats and Conservatives have a majority in the council, and the outcome is expected to be the same as in committee.
Roll the clock back six months, didn't I read about this before?
I give it 10 days for another article to come out saying "No, we're staying with Linux."
I am always suspicious of things like this because someone is probably getting paid by Microsoft (nothing as obvious as cash, more like items of tangible value) to do the switch.
Also, first post? :)
I don't know what "received much popularity" means, it's like something from a Japanese T-Shirt.
Does this mean WWIII is coming? Don't mention the War.
They will be on Chrome books.
German politicians never rock the boat.
It's not that it's a great product, or even a good product. Microsoft is like kobolds, or Starbuck's; flood the market, drown everything else out. They're the Zerg Rush of the OS world.
mail servers, for instance, eventually wound up migrating to Microsoft Exchange
WTH? E-mail is one of the easiest systems to NOT use any Windows-specific software with --- in fact, the more mature implementations of SMTP and IMAP servers run on Linux and much more robustly, than those pieces of shit called 'Exchange' and 'Outlook'.
"Users were unhappy and software essential for the public sector is mostly only available for Windows," she said. She estimated about half of the 800 or so total programs needed don't run on Linux
Seriously.... 800 "Needed" Windows programs? WTF. I call BS. How about supplying a list.
Part of migrating is CHANGING which business apps you will use, to focus more on Web-based solutions, and replace Windows client apps with substitutes that provide the necessary capabilities.
By the way, Linux or OS X should be EASY to adopt on 100% of endpoints, even with specialized software, even if some legacy apps are still required; thanks to Terminal Services or Citrix-based solutions, specialized published apps can execute from a more limited number of machines.
Doesn't sound like installing Linux was the issue. It was converting all the applications they use to Linux. If all you do is email, write a document, and update a spreadsheet then sure, it is easy. But if you have hundreds of special written applications that use Windows languages and compilers -- not web sites -- that all need to be completely rewritten...that is hard.
Bad User. No biscuit!
Windows is about the ecosystem, not just the OS. Microsoft and everyone who developed every LOB application imaginable in .Net has an insurmountable lead at this point. For the majority of people who use computers to work, but are not IT people, computers = Windows.
Kudos to Munich for spending 15 years learning this lesson the hard way. If any project was going to work, it would have been this one.
No, someone like you would probably call them communists.
Linux, you magnificent bastard, I read the fucking manual!
She estimated about half of the 800 or so total programs needed don't run on Linux and "many others need a lot of effort and workarounds."
Different scenario but the small (about 50 ppl) co I work for looked into and rejected Linux for the same reasons.
What the Linux community needs to understand is people need real world problems solved. They do not need yet another reskin of the login screen, or Desktop Environment #933. They need Photoshop (NOT gimp!). They need their real accounting package (NOT gnucash). They need the applcations which drive real work in the real world, not some inferior hard to use and not very capable substitutes.
THIS is what holds Linux back on the desktop. People ask, "But will it run the software I need?" and the answer often comes up "No". You want to drive Linux adoption? Fix the real problems people have, rather than forking yet another distro or DE and things people don't need or care about. I know that's harder. I know it's not as "fun". But that's what is needed if you want us to use this thing.
Get everyone to migrate to Windows. Exploit Windows vulnerabilities. Win.
Surely Java is the answer!
But if you have hundreds of special written applications that use Windows languages and compilers -- not web sites -- that all need to be completely rewritten...that is hard.
I seriously doubt this is the case. From 2004 to 2013 they migrated 15000 staff to Linux. That means that today the Windows apps they used should be at least 13 years old (probably more, and maybe a lot more).
If Munich is switching back to Windows because of super old software they better just handle a bunch of typewriters to the staff, rollback all the way back to 70s office tech and close the incompetent IT dept.
Idiot, ignorant rethuglikkkans toss the "socialist" label on just anybody who happens to be around. They're so stupid, they actually call Barack Obama a socialist. If only they had even 1 functioning brain cell, they would know that Barack Obama was the best moderate republican president the U.S has had since Dwight D. Eisenhower. The U.S *has no* meaningful left wing, and even Bernie Sanders would be considered a poseur/moderate conservative by European/Scandinavian standards.
Anyway, in the U.S, the word "socialist" is so misused and not-understood (that's different from MISunderstood, mind you), that your question has no meaning.
I guess 2017 is the year of the Windows desktop
I guess no one told them about the new Windows Server licensing nonsense. It's confusing and annoying...and looks like it gets very expensive as well. Client Access Licenses are stupid enough, but now there's CPU core licenses and the "free" core license pack that comes with WS has a lower core count than the newest generation processors...yeah, no thanks, you can keep it.
Open Source software is free until you use it. There is a lot of "sweat equity" involved with adapting and deploying it. Doesn't mean you can't make it work, but you will pay for it one way or another.
By the balls they have us. By the fucking balls
In full sight.
It's basically impossible to have 800 custom windows only apps. Hoards of school districts in the the US have switched to Chromebooks which is basically just linux , that runs one app only , a web browser and that is it. Most likely it is few high up users were 2 years babies "I want my Start button" and "I want to run iTunes"
End-user wise, most OSes today are fine for client devices because web browsers work well on all of them. The killer is the actual business applications...I imagine a city government builds up quite a large portfolio of applications over time, both current and legacy, packaged and home-grown. I work in a non-government but very similar vertical market, where there are really only 2 or 3 vendors supporting any particular system. Getting those entrenched vendors to adapt to anything is hard because they want to keep collecting license fees without having to modernize the applications. There also might be a lot of software that costs an arm and a leg to rewrite, or can't realistically be rewritten.
If you have lots of these applications, especially if they're Windows applications or web apps that only work with older web browsers, that adds the expense of VDI or XenApp-style application virtualization. They don't go away - and you have to move the complexity off the desktop machine for a fee. Most governments operate on a transactional basis -- pay my consulting company $bagofmoney and I will deliver you Solution X tailored to your problem statement. Adding more $bagsofmoney on top for rewrites usually is frowned upon, and that's how these big, old application stables build up.
Linux and LibreOffice are a fine choice for users who don't have tons of these entanglements. But working in end-user computing in a series of niche industries, I see a lot of barriers to full adoption. Just off the top of my head, I can think of:
- Crappy web apps tied to IE, or worse yet, to internal HTML rendering behavior of a specific Windows version (yes, this exists.)
- ActiveX (though this this thankfully finally starting to die off.)
- Office add-ins written by consultingfirmofthemonth that are now integral to the business
- Office "applications" coded in VBA that inexplicably have become the way for departments to handle millions of dollars in business and are extremely fragile
I think these are going to go away as Windows becomes less critical on desktops and new CRUD style apps are 100% web based, but they're definitely still lurking in locations not covered by the press who fawns over SV startups.
You're an illiterate American who thinks an apostrophe indicates a plural. If you're going to write German's, why didn't you also write solution's, finger's, cat's, and thing's?
I really want to know.
> half of the 800 or so total programs needed
They have 800 programs they use?
Color me sceptical. Excluding games, I don't think I've run 800 different programs if I go back even to my Atari days.
I've worked in large public organizations before, and I recall maybe two dozen programs being used, a third of them being Office (MS Project is still out there) and the rest since replaced by web servers.
to many distros as well some apps only have repos for some of them and manual installs / updates can be a pain to do for some that don't have a repo or rpm for your distro.
I work in the public sector on computers all day. The only applications that people use here are office-type applications (word processors, spreadsheets, etc.) and web database applications. Either of these can easily be run or accessed on any OS.
I really do not understand the "Windows ONLY" need at all.
Windows 10 is a disaster. Creators upgrades will randomly crash your systems every six months. If you have a stable environment, keep it. Remember driver hell? It's back, compliments of Microsoft.
If you want java, wait for your coffee break.
Get back to work!
#DeleteFacebook
As much as I personally would not want to use Windows, I think requiring some place with as much churn as a government to use something out of the ordinary as Linux is probably a bad idea. It's better people can come in and use tools they know to get work done sooner ad better integrate with other local governments nearby.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Yes, crawl back to your cruel masters and return to slavery. You had a chance to be free but chose servitude instead. So in the future, don't dare complain about M$FT products or services. You CHOSE your fate. Enjoy your expensive BSOD.
If KDE and GNOME had positioned themselves as full operating systems a la Android and "distros" were an exotic geek thing, desktop Linux might actually be a thing by now. Look at what OS X really is. Most of it is a DE like KDE or GNOME that runs on top of Darwin, but the same company manages both sides. If KDE or GNOME had done that, the results would probably be very similar. Heck, something like going from X.Org to Wayland would be completely invisible to ordinary users.
Hmm... they want to go zuruck to Mikro-Gesoftenwerk Fensteren... vieleicht they didn't fully go F/L-OSS in die ersten Platz, und daß war der Problem.
Es sounds wie they halb-treft GNU/Linux und ofnen-gesourctig Gesoftenwerk, wie LibreBüro, in der zuerst Platz, rather than going ein voll-Schwein.
Heheh lol Germish... wie spaßig!
(Für Männer wer brauchen eine Englischübersetzung... Hmm... they want to go back to M$ Windows... perhaps they didn't fully go F/L-OSS in the first place, and THAT was the problem. It sounds like they half-tried GNU/Linux and open source software, like LibreOffice, in the FIRST place, rather than going whole-hog. Heheh lol, Englman, how fun!).
PS, yes, I know that even the German parts of my Germish were probably iffy. That's what made it so fun to write! I never claimed to be fluent. In fact, after all this while, I'm surprised I remember any of it at all!
Our reign has gone on long enough. Indeed. Summon the meteors.
And before I have to duck for cover, I'll have to say I favoured Munich move to FOSS, I used it as a case example advocating for similar moves (while also pointing out the errors, of course). I've been to Munich (Siemens Training OMC-S, great memories from Kunstpark-ost), and I love the city and its people.
If you are going from Closed source to open source, there are a few pitfalls to avoid.
First, for a project like Munich, the LAST thing you replace is the Desktop OS of Users. You first replace the apps. And DO NOT EVEN CONSIDER a rip and replace strategy.
You replace the apps it in waves, using your chosen crossplatform FOSS alternatives (I understand Munich did something along this lines).
And ALSO for each wave you have a SWAT/Crack team on the Helpdesk specificaly dedicated to help the users master that specific wave of the transition.
And ALSO adequate training for each and every wave to boot (and the training for each specific wave has to be done BEFORE the wave starts, and for Every employee)
Remember, for us techies, changing from IE11 to Firefox, or from word to Libreoffice writer may seem easy, but for a public servant who was trained as, say an administrator or lawyer, it may not come so naturaly.
First you start with the low hanging fruit of things like Your users' browsers (perhaps with a creative use of a plugin like "use IE here", prepopulated with suitable lists) and PDF viewers/generators.
Then along Comes Powerpoint (please notice that I said Powerpoint, not Office), with the trick of setting up PowerPoint Viewer as the default PowerPoint program and things like publisher.
Then comes the turn of Word. This will be a problem because all the damaged formats. Here Word Viewer and your SWAT transition team will prove invaluable...
Then comes a hard nut to crack. Excel. But by now, your users should have the perception that changes from Comercial SW to FOSS are not "that hard", and that the SWAT Team has their back.
Then, comes the boss fight: Exchange Server. Please remeber that exchange server is not only email, but also calendaring, and many of those functions are still unmatched by FOSS alternatives. Let alone migrating the historic data stores....
After all apps are more or less migrated (Including rewriting web apps to be crossbrowser, creative use of wine for some custom apps, directing user to web interfaces of certain packages instead of using custom clients), is the turn (finally) of the OS itself.
And here is were I explain why LiMux was a mistake. If you have limited resources, why on earth would you squander thoise resourses doing your own distro? And with NO commercial support to boot!
Instead they should have choosen a specific distro as prefered parthner, working with them on the distro (trying to steer them to a mutualy agreable middle ground) and then making a complementary package to further customize the distro. In the UE alone there are two well known players (Mandriva and Suse in alpha order). One of then (Suse) is even in your home country. Surely there are many more...
But nooo, for some reason, someone decided to re-implement the weel (without commercial support), henceforth LiMux.
Here in Venezuela, the same happened, instead of using an already created distro, they created something called Canaima (a distro to be used for both Desktops and Servers), with no commercial support, and is just a re-spinig of debian, squandering precious resources...
I am sad to see Munich retreat back to Windows. But I can also understand why they do it, and some of the mistakes they made along the way....
*** Suerte a todos y Feliz dia!
See subject: Linux is pretty good @ what it does (seriously good as a server) but like you said? Don't work on what's solved, work on what's NOT solved (usermode applications for specific tasks/problems) - or you'll NEVER beat Windows (which has an established infrastructure in place for this already & DOES get drivers for hardwares done IMMEDIATELY by hardware makers (even "oddball stuff" that most folks WON'T USE but INDUSTRY will)).
* Linux won on the smartphone - NOT due to "technical superiority" but CO$TING (no OS license cost inflating the per unit cost of 'smartphones' (dumbphones imo, tracking machines)).
Get REAL people... he's right as rain & I'll gladly second it (& I think Linux has potential).
APK
P.S.=> However, here I am talking but not porting an app I've done that it would be easy enough to do via Delphi (does all the majors) https://www.embarcadero.com/products/delphi/ but since I like Windows the most (made me a career/life improving it)? That's "how it goes" from myself even (it's not MY job to help the 'competition' (it IS YOURS though, "penguins" & only a matter of directing your efforts into that which IS probably harder to do than you've been doing (other than Torvald's team - they're doing what THEY ought to, build the foundations more/better), even though I'm long retired from the field in computing - call it "old habit dies hard" here, lol)... apk
How many changes have we seen to the Linux desktop over the past decade?
How many changes to the login screens and the shutdown process etc?
How many different desktops with little-to-no help for an average user to inform them of these options and help them choose (assuming they even want the confusion of HAVING a choice...)
On the flip side:
Lots of basic stuff on Linux still sucks. Audio and printing are still screwed up. The odds are that your printer will not "just work", and if it happens to be supported, it probably will not work well and print jobs will often just queue up rather than printing or will inexplicably print wierdly/incompletely. If your audio system works, controlling it will be "iffy" and the audio apps will be either amateurish stuff aimed at MP3 hoarders (but without built-in MP3 support) or code that looks on-par with a win95 version of solataire...
Why is there no thin "compatability layer" that allows windows apps to run on Linux (individually approved by the user, for safety). WINE proved the tech could work, but average people are not going to want to be bothered to setup and use WINE, the various distros should make this invisible to average users.
The big problem with Linux is that it's a volunteer project done by amateurs with no bosses, no plans, no deadlines, no budgets, etc. As a result, the best coders are working on what interests them rather than on the serRe:That's whatious shortcommings and EVERYBODY is more-interested in their own pet projects than in the drudgery of fixing or completing more mundane things that do not interest them. In a company like Microsoft or Apple, there's a boss who can assign work to be completed and the work gets done because paychecks are on the line.
Probably the only person who could fix this would be Linus. He may be the kernel guy and not directly responsible for the overall ecosystem, but the reputation of the ecosystem has an impact on the perception of his Kernel. If he connot sufficiently encourage people to take on fixing some of the basics of the ecosystem, then perhaps he should start refusing to allow new features into the Kernel until the exising functions of key parts of the ecosystem are properly fixed and maintained. It'd be nice if the big distros would get together on this too; rather than them having 50 different package managers, it would be nice if they could agree on two and make them bulletproof and then spend the saved time making at least one bulletproof printing system and one bulletproof audio system.
One can dream of a better future....
“We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard."
See subject: I am practically the "poster child for Windows" here on /. (& I didn't want to be in an 'echo chamber' of what I already knew on it, I came here to see what the 'opposition' so-to-speak in 'penguins' here have to say/what they were thinking - initially to admittedly CUT YOU TO SHREDS (& I'm not a big example of it, but others here are, & are OFTEN RIGHT (Hairyfeet specifically sticks out)) but I'll agree with you & it's WHY I don't use it (mainly since MS won't 'fess up' on what their telemetry is REALLY sending (screams 'up to NO GOOD' to me when anyone does that (why I wouldn't join the masons after 3 invites over decades for a more 'real life' example of what I mean)).
* I figure it THIS way as far as what MS is up to - they're only going to "spank themselves" with this tomfoolery in VISTA onwards... & it makes me realize WHY Dr. Mark Russinovich called Windows 7 "THE BEST WINDOWS EVER" & he's right (I think he was being clever/subtle from having seen the direction it WAS going to take, VISTA onwards)).
APK
P.S.=> As to my subject? See -> https://news.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=11351163&cid=55541351/ - THAT is where "penguins" efforts OUGHT TO BE DIRECTED - put your energies into that? It'll FORCE MS to shape up (or the stockholders will start screaming - the ONLY way to force capitalism to fly right/straight, is to hit them in the wallet, or let them do it to themselves - they'll learn, lol) - in the end, it works out for ME as a Windows fan too (by force, lol) ... apk
Many LINUX cheerleaders conveniently overlook these points.
The LINUX cool kids are quick to sneer without actually offering insight/solutions of their own.
Windows Server licensing wants to you have an license for the full cluster for each core in it. Even if you don't need that many windows VM's.
First they went there own way with out of date software. They didn't contract this to some outfit like SuSE or Canonical. That would have been the smart thing. Second, Microsoft opened a massive office in Munich. That means jobs, money, taxes. Not too hard to figure out why they went the way they did. Microsoft has spent years throwing money at them to move.
I can sort of see them going back to Windows 7, since that's an OS suitable for real work, but Windows 10?
It's hard to see how to get work done with all those annoying tiles moving around and vying for your attention and the flat white UI with thin borders which cause eye strain. I suppose IT can produce an OS image without all that crap, but will they get any support from Microsoft?
Are you genuinely asking a question or are you attempting to insinuate something? It's hardly shocking that a major German political party is socialist. Every first world country—including the U.S.—employs some socialist mechanisms. It's called the modern world.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
"From the depths of my skeptical and rationalist soul, I ask the Lord to protect me from California touchie-feeliedom."
"We spent 15 years paying people a lot of money to *not* port Windows software to other OSes, and praying that someone else would do the hard work for us. Now we're just going to give MS even more money instead, because we're worried people will figure out just how badly we've been screwing the pooch this whole time."
1) MS has been attacking this from the start. Every Linux misstep is amplified and scrutinized with a double standard.
2) Massive multinationals have more power than most governments and outlast political careers.
3) Early adopters pay an additional price; even at a higher price, Open Source is a long term game. Commercial is a perpetual subscription to a 3rd party's short term game, on their terms.
4) THE TREND IS TO THE CLOUD even MS is going that way! Internal services (indoor cloud?) also.
5) When everything can run in the browser (and most government software should) it doesn't matter what OS you use. So why pay for the USA to copy all your data and raise your security threat?
6) 100s of apps is only possible with poor tech management. They must still have DOS apps! Migrating conditioned users is like deprogramming a cult member. Ask IT...ask a psychologist. ask a former cult member.
Democracy Now! - uncensored, anti-establishment news
Guess someone finally found the missing windows installer floppy disk ... happy install.
don't call me Shirley you insensitive clod!
I hate to brake it to you're law-abiding, rule-following German's, but grammar rules were made too be broken. Losen, up, a bit mate.
Never go full Windows.
i plan to blacklist all their ip addresses in my /etc/hosts file
Politics is Treachery, Religion is Brainwashing
I guess i know where i won't be visiting.
Not quite sure how a discussion about Linux and Microsoft turned to politics, but you managed to do it. And sure enough, out comes the name calling and generalizations. Nice job, you're not biased at all. BTW, it could also be said that China doesn't have human rights violations when compared to North Korea since you opened the door to comparisons between countries. Just in case you don't catch my drift, comparing something bad to something worse doesn't mean the bad thing stops being bad.
into the fire...
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from Macintosh...
LiMux was handled by idiots, plain and simple. Current decisions were brought on by people who know zilch about computers and couldn't tell a client from a server if their life depended on it. Breathtakingly dumb people with a stupid political and personal agenda, most certainly bribed by MS lobbyists. If you want to know how Projects like these get f*cked up by idiots that only know Windows and have zero concept of computers, look no further than the LiMux desaster.
Meanwhile SchwÃbisch Hall is doing just fine with their Linux migration.
Shit like this pisses me off big time, can't help it.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
mac os can work if they just open to more hardware (not tied to there thin and looks ideas)
Where is the tough book laptops for apple?
Say a good $600-$1000 desktop (does not need to be a gamer system) not the very out of date and under powered mini.
A server system or the rights to run mac os server in a VM on any base hardware.
A system that some can pull the storage before sending it out for service?
And still they couldn't find/create the tools they need to do their jobs on Linux:
Hubner said the city has struggled with LiMux adoption. "Users were unhappy and software essential for the public sector is mostly only available for Windows," she said. She estimated about half of the 800 or so total programs needed don't run on Linux and "many others need a lot of effort and workarounds."
I fully expect Linux Zealots will rage about how "if they only gave it more time"...
Ken
I suggest that the open-source community rally around those older Windows apps and make them current and OS agnostic. I'm sure it would only take about 800 hundred developers a few years to pair-program those ports.
mother fucking right.
-linux... they can't *give* that shit away.
What on earth are you saying? That software that was available 13 years ago doesn't exist today, having been developed, released and maintained during that time? That's an awfully stupid argument to make on /. of all places.
"Old man yells at systemd"
Typical conversation between Linux Desktop Support and a newly converted End-User:
LDS: Here's your shiny new Linux computer. It's much faster, much more secure and cost the company a lot less than Windows
EU: How do I get to my C: drive?
LDS: RTFM, you idiot
EU: How do I open the manual to read it?
LDS: man gedit, you idiot
EU: man what? how do I run the man command?
LDS: RTFM or man terminal, you idiot
And the Linux fanboyz wonder why Linux adoption outside of IT professionals is so low... smh
...that an office system that has evolved around one operating system has difficulty adapting to another one. I bet the biggest difficulty was the city's employees who just didn't like the change. Every little bump in the road adds to a growing sentiment that things just aren't the way they used to be. After 15 years of using Linux, when they switch back to Windows as work, they'll get first-hand reminders of all those annoying things that Windows used to do to them. And then there's Windows 10 updates...
Debate is a form of harassment. Do not question my truth.
They aren't further right than Ivan The Terrible.
So that's a yes.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
It's pretty clear that:
1. Money (still) talks. Them that has the gold makes the rules.
2. Democracy is a dead facade (at least in Muenchen).
But after all - if the government of Germany acts in the interests of a foreign country (for whatever inexplicable reasons), why not the government of Muenchen?
All over the world, though, people whose destiny is not controlled by businesspeople hungry for money and power can do as seems best to them.
I am sure that there are many other solipsists out there.
This is one of the dumbest comments I've ever read on this subject. It is factually incorrect on nearly every point, and the conclusion would be irredeemably stupid even if there were reason to believe the arguments.
AC, It sounds like you would like a free version of Windows. Why don't you go ask Microsoft for a copy and see what they say.
Those who advocate genocide deserve every protection afforded by law, and none afforded by common human decency.
No, they're more like democrats, selling their souls to the highest bidder. Geschäft ist Geschäft
The community should try to extract as much insight from this as possible. Why is this not succeeding, what are the pitfalls or mistakes or obstalces to be overcome? To start with, is there an English version of the Accenture report linked in the story? Can we translate it? That seems like half the job is done for us by Accenture so let's read it. For example, what were the 800 or 400+ applications for which there is no Linux alternative? Are they saying there is no Linux version of the same program available from the vendor? That's easy to believe. Likewise, if they have 800 custom-coded applications compiled for Windows - that's imporessive but I can see how that would be a problem. More interestingly, do they consider Impress an equivalent replacement for Powerpoint? Even I would argue No, Powerpoint has more features, works more smoothly and has a nicer, better UI. Did the IT support team instruct users to type crap into the terminal? Because that will generate so many complaints about things being "broken." People like GUIs and fixing things through the GUI, even if it's a script running in the background with a progress bar. Text terminals just remind users of how much we don't understand about how things work or what anything means. That kind of thing. Let's just learn as much as possible and fix the problems or see if the problems are fixable at all.
See subject: Not that I'm aware of! It keeps costs per unit of a phone handset down. Pure economics rather vs. tech superiority + it also keeps down "R&D" cost of developing a NEW OS from scratch (& all the correction that would probably have to happen when they 'miss things' in say, tech security vulnerabilities) AND the surrounding app infrastructure too (more based on Dalvik - which is JAVA based, again, saving on NEW development).
APK
P.S.=> Answer the question, we'll go from there (& yes ANDROID uses a Linux core (which makes it a 'linux' & for SURE not BSD or Windows))... apk
Never go full Windows!
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
it's a defacto standard. I can send somebody an invite an know it'll show up on their Calendar.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
For helping make an American company GREAT AGAIN!!
Wait... This was modded funny?
It's not funny folks, it's a fact.
Mod it up, certainly. But perhaps not as funny.
From 2004 to 2013 they migrated 15000 staff to Linux. That means that today the Windows apps they used should be at least 13 years old (probably more, and maybe a lot more).
You miss the point here -- they are probably going to the city-management, traffic-management and building-management conventions and looking at the specialized software that all their peers are using, and saying "wow, that's cool, why can't we use it?" And the answer is -- those are only written for Windows, because that's what all the other cities use.
There's a whole world of small-market software packages for every industry. Each organization is too small to justify custom software, but their needs are complex and homogenous enough to create a market for a few hundred copies of some package. Those packages may be migrating to a web-services approach, but any of them that have a desktop executable will be Windows-only; the Mac and Linux markets aren't big enough to justify a cross-platform solution. So if you insist on Linux everywhere, you will have to invest a lot of effort "making do," and you will probably still fall behind your peers.
It don't matter which OS you use. If you don't got the right people to admin it, you don't got the right people.
If they were fully committed to the move to Linux (they weren't, or they would not have migrated *to* MS Exchange), then they would not have maintained most of the old windows systems for those odds and ends applications. They would/should have picked off those that are most used or influential or expensive, and implemented a solution for those (in some cases, maybe that'd be vm for those select users; in other cases, maybe retraining on an open solution; in others, maybe just abandoning it; in others, maybe redevelopment; in some, maybe an exception to continue to use and maintain windows+application, but that should be a last resort).
If that were the case (I've never seen a list of what applications/things/etc there are that they can't live without, so I don't know), then yeah, those apps/os/machines should all be over 13 years old. They'll probably need upgraded ($$$ and training) just to run on Windows 10, if they even support it. There will probably be a bunch that still need to stay on XP or 7 or some other windows version... but those should not be counted in the reasons to move to Windows 10.
Moving to Windows at this point will certainly cost them more money up front, require as much training as the move to Linux originally did, and likely cost way more in the long run. There's an awful lot of money involved, and politicians are making the decision, so I'd be absolutely amazed if there wasn't a lot of back scratching and greased palms. This is just sad.
Your precious leftist states hate your Marxist software just as much as anyone else! Get a real job and develop for the proprietors, not the commie-unity! MAGA!!
Sure might as well do that since you opened your borders like dumbasses.
Do they know that Microsoft's sites all run on Linux though? Total douche bags. No male in Germany thought this up.
http://toolbar.netcraft.com/site_report?url=www.microsoft.com
get fucked.
Are bookmakers laying odds on how long it will be before the city of Munich simply stops working?
... and no eyes on the market
I do not believe in karma. "Funny"=-6. Do good and forbid evil. Yours, Oft-Offtopic Flamebaiting Troll.
And like I give a fuck about European/Scandinavian standards...?
I was asking a genuine question, from the viewpoint of an American if the Social Democrats in Germany would be similar to what a Socialist in America would be perceived as...
But from the US point of view...Obama was certainly NOT even a moderate leaning politician.
While I'd not say he was a socialist, he was certainly quite a bit more left than a lot of the US, and actually, truth be known, I think he himself would like to have gone even FURTHER left on most issues, but held back to try to not alienate too many in the US.
But I would say Obama is definitely NOT even close to conservative, and Bernie...definitely leans socialist.
One thing I respect about Bernie, at least he is up front about what he believes and is un-wavering.
I disagree with Bernie objectively on almost everything, but I do respect him at least that he picks his views, explains them and stick to them....
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
So, the claw really works...
Excellent observation.
I retired from a state dept of revenue. We had been in the process of switching our 30 servers from NetWare to Linux. We used Lotus Notes and its groupware. We had developed over two hundred databases in that app, along with its email and calendar components. All tightly integrated. LN made getting work done easy. Then an election brought in a new Tax Commissioner and assistant TC. The assistant never had any experience with LN or Linux. Only Microsoft products. She immediately order the entire 13,000 state employees to switch to Windows and its apps. That meant that over 10,000 LN licenses were scraped, along with licenses for other non-Microsoft apps. At the same time, 10,000+ licenses had to be purchased for SharePoint, Access, Word and other new Windows apps.
Running under Windows servers access time to files and directories more than doubled. There was no effective or practical way to import LN databases and data into SharePoint, Access and other MS applications, so access to lots of data was lost. Crashes and lost data, which required rebooting and data re-entry, were common.
At about the same time a search for a database and dev tools to replace FoxPro took place. PostgreSQL was suggested but discounted because "there was no PAID support". Yes, it's true. When its taxpayer money at risk expense is no impediment. Since then the state has paid millions for Oracle's database products. The "paid" support? It's so poor and slow a website was formed by Oracle users so they could support each other.
All-in-all, the conversion cost state taxpayers millions, and renewal of license fees continued to add millions to the overall cost.
Running with Linux for over 20 years!
There's a whole world of small-market software packages for every industry. Each organization is too small to justify custom software, but their needs are complex and homogenous enough to create a market for a few hundred copies of some package. Those packages may be migrating to a web-services approach, but any of them that have a desktop executable will be Windows-only; the Mac and Linux markets aren't big enough to justify a cross-platform solution. So if you insist on Linux everywhere, you will have to invest a lot of effort "making do," and you will probably still fall behind your peers.
OK, and if you think any of the state of the art city-management software is still written as a Windows App, I have a bridge to sell you. There are software packages that aren't suitable for moving to the web (usually graphics packages that need a real graphics card) but other than that, all (as in 100% if you took VC funding) Enterprise software for the last 15 years has been written for the web (or at least has a web GUI). The argument that there are Windows specific packages that city employees need sounds very spurious. 10 to 15 years ago sure, but today...I seriously doubt it. Anything that the city might need that's Window's only is likely 15 years old or older. If you are basing your public functions on 15 year old Windows software, then you are setting yourself up to fail.
Not to mention that as a city, you are likely handing all of your data over to hackers in short order. Maybe that's not a big deal in every case but I bet that there are quite a few city databases that contain large amounts of PII. This entire thing smells of politics and little else.
"Those that start by burning books, will end by burning men."
Moving their application to web based SaaS cloud would have worked. Could have issued cheap Chromebooks and simplified their IT.
A lot of their decisions are political based though anyway.
In other words, a new person is in charge and decided to be a partner with microsoft and to force the community to pay him/her lots of money and other benefits.
I have seen the same thing at my workplace.
It is just harder to surf porn on linux than it is on Windows.
Online and client-based games run better on windows.
How can you chat up underage citizens without access to the full suite of social media tools like snapchat, instagram, tinder, grinder?
The only people who thought this would be some awesome money-saving program were delusional SlashDweebs still making "Micr0$haft" jokes.
The engineering dept. with specific control software is a very small portion of a city's bureaucracy. Most of it is tax checks, pay checks, record keeping, etc. like any other business. It does not explain why a city would go Windows ONLY. The vast majority of systems on people's desks could be running ANY system. You should get out of your engineering dept once in a while.
> their workers deserve a stable, robust work environment.
Agreed.
> half their applications won't run on Linux
A common, and fatal, mistake. They're trying to keep using Microsoft Exchange and 300 other Windows programs, on Linux. That's certainly the wrong way to do it. It works about as well as trying to run all software made on and for Linux, but run it on Windows.
If you're going to run on Windows, run software developed for and on Windows - IIS, Exchange, Microsoft SQL Server, Edge, etc.
If you're going to run on Linux, run software developed for and on Linux - Apache httpd, Cyrus imapd, MySQL, Chrome or Firefox, etc.
You wouldn't say "I'm switching from Ford to Chevy" and then try to run a Ford alternator, water, headlights, etc in your Chevy truck. Yet that's what so many people try to do when they "switch" from Windows to Linux. They switch out the bare OS, not the whole thing.
My companies have been running purely on Linux since shortly after Windows 95 came out and it works beautifully, because we use Linux software in a Linux way, we don't try to run a Microsoft-centric network, doing things the Microsoft way, on a Linux kernel.
I said:
a Ford alternator, water, headlights, etc in your Chevy truck
I meant:
a Ford alternator, water PUMP, headlights, etc in your Chevy truck
Or to put it another way, you wouldn't say "I'm switching from a truck to a motorcycle" and try to keep your truck engine. Trucks and motorcycles both work well, but if you're going to switch don't keep a few hundred pieces of your truck and try to install them on your bike. Rather you switch entirely to a bike, which even changes how to you dress - you start wearing leathers. You stop trying to eat breakfast during your commute. They are fundamentally different ways of reaching your destination and mixing and matching the two doesn't work well.
I suspect this is blowback for the pro OSS side being too zealous and to some extent unreasonable. For example refusing to allow any apps running under Wine or Crossover.
If that's the case, then they deserve it because they were not qualified to be responsible for the systems.
Look at the parties in control of Munich.
This is just an attempt to bring back East German community intelligence in the digital age.
Mark my words, this is a dangerous precedent being set.
I use linux on all my computers and servers at home. And significantly prefer it to windows. BUT I totally understand this decision.
If you are end of life on your server hardware then you realistically are going to be looking at a cloud solution. You can shift a load of your cost and expertise out of your business, move to an OpEx costing model that is tied into various business lines rather than having the big red IT cost line on your balance sheet. So which provider are you going to use?
You could go AWS, but it's basically just IaaS. Or you could look at Azure, which has IaaS, PaaS & SaaS. Everyone needs a mail client and a calendar client and a word processing system. And office365 just gives you that. Zero real setup required. Sure you might need a cloud brokerage setup if your organisation is particularly complex but if that's they case microsoft will fund you part of the way. That's not even looking at the advantages of SQL as a PaaS offering.
Then, since you have Office365, you have single sign in credentials for all windows machines with zero effort. All users have their software they need in a central place.
Sure linux can do ALL of these things. But they require way way more knowledge and investment to get going.
I honestly believe that in 20 years we will telling youngun's stories about how we used to have our own datacentres and servers in backrooms.
No-no-no, you would call the Conservatives as communists. Or Marxist. Or evil globalist SJW Marxists. Or not Trump supporters. ;)
I think what you call a socialist isn't what the world calls socialist. I think you subscribe to the Breitbart farce where you take 1 part socialism, 10 parts communism, 50 parts Nazi-ism, shake it up and then call it socialism.....
Real socialist nations (like half of Europe) are more free than the US.
The US conservative view is not reality based so your perspective on Obama means fuck all.
Reeeeeee
lol
Breath it in people, the sweet smell of corruption.
Why switch to Windows? Couldn't they get along with Macs instead? They could still get away from at least some Microsoft costs....
Linux as a 3rd desktop platform has failed, and Wine as a workaround was never very good or a feasible prime desktop flavour.
The only way forward ought to be to make a clone of OS-X. It's already Unix based so there's that head start. And the interface is better overall, and a better fit for Linux. If you could make native OS-X apps run, then you'd be way ahead of the game.
And the Gnome/KDE wars (still can't believe this divide still exists), never served anybody. If one of them could be killed, even that would be a major step forward. For normal users, excessive choice actually isn't really a good thing.
Clearly you are not German, because otherwise you would have written:
You'reanilliterateAmerican whothinksanapostropheindicatesaplural. Ifyou'regoingtowriteGerman's, whydidn'tyoualsowrite solution'sfinger'scat'sandthing's?
Why? What for? The Linux/OSS folks are happy with the apps they have, why should they care about SW for municipalities?
They'll be switching back before long.
"Idiot, ignorant rethuglikkkans toss the "socialist" label on just anybody who happens to be around. They're so stupid"
Signed,
Super-Tolerant Liberal
It's been a fucking year and you still think you lost because of Russians. It's because you're a dipshit.
postgres always had paid support.
I don't doubt it was the reason they gave, just saying.
They've saved millions of euros only to now switch apparently just for political reasons, costing them 90M to switch to Windows: https://itsfoss.com/munich-lin...
Twinstiq, game news
It takes more than running Linux to fully convert, I doubt 400 apps didn't have a way to convert and read them in a modern linux app. There's also transcribing the data via workers or scripts. For like the dozen apps you may find it better, VM ambassadors, running Windows. The fact is for archiving, transparency, and the ability to last decades or centuries, Microsoft's environ isn't a player, nor is it less expensive. I'm not sure they even tried 400? wtf? They must be counting the software installed by the Alphabet squad as part of the American led, citizen spy ring lol.
It's not funny folks, it's a fact.
Exact. The way Obama overspent any President in history and the way his ill-advised healthcare racket took money from small business and sent it to his cronies in the insurance companies is in no way typical of those corrupt Democrats.
lucm, indeed.
> As for the other 300 programs, what are they? Do they all have Linux alternatives?
Yes. :)
I'm some instances the Linux software will be objectively better, in some instances the Windows software will be better, and in most instances there will be pros and cons to each. In 20 years I've yet to see any goal that can only be accomplished on Windows, though. Writing software FOR Windows is one major case when using Windows is definitely better, if you have an unlimited budget to spend $10,000 getting started with Visual Studio Enterprise and MSDN. I've certainly written Windows software on Linux and Mac, though.
Where some people don't like the alternatives as much is when they have their heart set on one particular game that is only released for Windows. In one sense, Steam is an alternative, but in a sense it isn't, if you want THAT game, not A game. For business software, though - yeah there's a good option on Linux.
This also happened here in Brazil... can't remember if it was on national level or just some states.
You can say Microsoft bought the change, that it's a stupid move, and a whole lot of other stuff... which is something Linux evangelists always do.
But the reality of it is: Linux is still not a good OS for certain scenarios.
Even back when Brazil was fully into the whole declaration that it was switching to open source software and Linux in general, in actual public buildings what you'd actually see was desktops running some version of Windows with office installed... and most likely someone playing Solitaire or something.
There are multiple problems involved, and it's simply not going to go away. Support is a huge one. Not only it's harder to find someone to solve problems going from small to big on Linux distros, support for Windows machines (whatever the brand may be) will often "get" the enterprise/business coverage better.
Even finding tutorials for simple things, articles, online courses and whatnot is harder when not outright impossible for some Linux distros.
This difficulty also extends to porting application specific software, maintenance of those, plus the historical advantage that Windows already has. Chances are, most people working with computers nowadays had their first contact and learned how to use a computer on Windows. That's a hard thing to break.
And I'm far from being a Windows lover myself... I hate some of the decisions Microsoft made for Windows 10, I have a laptop running Ubuntu, and Linux is pretty much essencial on the server side. But I've heard this story before, and I've seen why it happens, going from large scale governmental adoption down to individual experiences.
Simply put, Linux nowadays can work well in a very pre-packaged, idealized, and boxed in scenario that most "switching to linux" tutorials will show, as well as online courses, books and whatnot. But if your personal usage deviates just a tiny little bit from that, which is the case for the vast majority of people, things tend to break down fast and hard.
It's just like the overall recommendations on stuff like Chromecast, cheap laptop recommendations, desktop configurations and whatnot. The old: this will be perfect if whoever is using it will only need a browser, a word processor, and some other basic features. Yes, it should be. But I think people overestimate too much how many people can stick to only that while also ignoring stuff like standards, what people working in certain businesses and certain scenarios really need, how it affects the relationship between the business, other businesses and their clients, etc.
When you go down to individual scenarios is where the weaknesses starts to show.
I had a personal experience not with Linux, still annedoctal, but that serves as a representative example: I tried switching to LibreOffice during my journalism course. It was all fine and dandy 'till it started to become evident how much of the university standards, model examples, the entire standardization for final term sheets, projects and whatnot were all entirely build on Office and there was no reliable way to convert everything to an open format.
It's not only about the people working there, it's also about standards estabilished years ago, clients, other businesses and companies who have a relationship with them, among several other things. You can see it more or less like a cultural component.
Depends on who 'we' are. The term 'socialist' has different connotations in different places and groups. The SPD in Germany is a moderate, left-of-centre party with generally slightly progressive leanings.
And who's going to supervise that legal boundaries? Oh, yes, the wolves in charge with sheeple's surveillance.
No they have not said that
In before Wine apologists.
What are those 800 applications? I work in a Public Administration in Spain and most of the people I know use Office+Outlook+web apps+Java for digital signing. I dont see many "Windows specific applications that dont work in Linux". I am sure that there are some (well in the past I worked with one but that could be trivialy ported) but for 80-90% of the people this wouldnt be an issue.
Well, now we are in the process of replacing Microsoft Office with Libreoffice.
You are sampling to form your estimate from a biased population. I am in the opposite situation. It seems like everyone I meet thinks Linux is a fad from the 90s. I spend about half my time in a vim g++ gdb workflow and the other in visual studio. All the windows lovers think c# is the only language worth using. These are true c++ experts converted. I use c++ for my work and I still think vs is the best ide ever 2008 and 2015 are the better versions. The betweens were iffy but still better than eclipse or blocks. I work faster with vs than any Linux workflow I have used.
refactor the law, its bloated, confusing and unmaintainable.
Uhhhhh .... socialized healthcare? Is a socialist thing, not a republican thing, moderate or not. Moderate -- WTF, do you know what that means?
What a cogent and excellent analysis! You must be doing very well in your freshman year of college this year. Your parents must be proud, even if you don't clean your basement abode on a regular basis. But I agree that Barak Obama did not rule as a socialist. He may spout socialist ideology, but he operated during his presidency as a fascist.
If by "more free" you mean that the government provides services to large groups of people at the expense of a smaller group of people, giving the perception of "free" as in no-cost services, then you are correct. If you mean free in the sense of individual liberty, you are wrong. If you are a US citizen, I encourage you to renounce your citizenship and please leave and go live in your socialist utopia country of choice, and quit peeing on our great nation. That would involve you moving out of your parents basement though, so maybe you should just go back to restocking the cooler at work, before you mop the floor.
> Active Directory has all those bundled up in a single place with a reasonable UI.
Yes it does. Which is good and bad. Samba4 does the same.
> Sure, you can run LDAP/Kerberos/SMB(or whatever shared filesystem you prefer)/(whatever user management you prefer) on Linux, but you are stuck configuring and integrating those yourself.
You CAN mix and match and configure things how want. It's been done many, many times, so the recipes for doing so are certainly available. You can also just plug in Samba4. You have a lot of options. Some people like having options.
I like Linux and it's a viable alternative to Windows for certain users, not all. I'd say the biggest hindrance was the lack of compatibility with the 3rd party programs (over 800 of them) they were trying to run. I used to be an avid Windows basher, but it has gotten much better over the last few years. Sometimes you just have to go with what works.
It has NOTHING TO DO with Microsoft locating a branch office in Munich. Nothing to see here folks. Move along.
To Helsinki with Linux!'
If you are the same AC then what is your source? Microsoft say it will be supported until 2020 for mainstream support and until 2025 for extended support. https://support.microsoft.com/...
> If these people have a ton of programs that only run in windows thaen they should use windows.
Certainly that's a consideration. Also, just because you currently use Notepad, MS Paint, and a dozen other Windows utilities doesn't mean you should permanently stick with Windows forever. It's easy to switch from Notepad to a much better simple editor. Paint is easily replaced. On the other hand, switching from Visual Studio Enterprise to Monodevelop or Jetbrains Rider would be more significant. People and companies who currently use Windows do of course use Windows programs, unless they live in their browser (which is also common). That doesn't mean they should stick with Windows until they die.
Rather, they should compare the short-term costs of switching with the long-term costs of vendor lock-in, Windows, and proprietary applications. Any software which requires Windows XP has to be replaced right away *regardless*, so that's not a cost of switching. If you're going to replace it anyway, you have the replacement costs whether you choose Windows, Mac, or Linux.
Almost all software will be replaced eventually, so there is an analysis not just of "do we switch everything now, or plan on sticking with Windows forever". It would be quite reasonable to say "in 2018, when we replace our SQL Server 2008, we'll replace it with MySQL". You'll already be replacing a ten-year-old database system, so it makes sense to consider choosing a replacement that will be better in the long run.
PostgreSQL was suggested but discounted because "there was no PAID support".
Ah yes. That same argument came up in my work when I wanted a proper editor (a mere text editor!). No, that was impossible because there were no (implied: Microsoft) options that were supported. I was not allowed to take just any freeware editor of the net and install it because that was "unsupported software".
> Modern Windows in a large corporation is a well integrated platform where each Microsoft application works with the other for central management
Agreed, it's all one big ecosystem. For example, for a short time, Active Directory was the LDAP service included with Exchange. It remained tightly coupled as they were divided into separate products, then MS coupled in several other products and applied "Active Directory" labeling, so just to use Microsoft's mail server you pretty much have to use a dozen other major Microsoft products as well. Integration is both good and bad.
> Sorry but there is no alternative for that on Linux, not unless you have no idea what it does and think that Exchange is just an email system
If you're thinking of Active Directory when you say that,
Samba4 is a similarly integrated suite. But AD and Exchange have been separate products for 15 years or so, perhaps you're thinking of something else. This is how Microsoft marketing describes Exchange:
--
Microsoft Exchange lets you accomplish more with a rich, business-class email experience on phones, tablets, desktops, and the web.
Enjoy enterprise email capabilities with bigger and more reliable mailboxes
--
What do you have in mind other than email and calendar?
The Active Directory suite DOES do a lot. How fucked would your company be if you lost your AD server? If an attacker noticed you were vulnerable to some AD attack and took Microsoft two or three months to get the security fix right, would you still be in business by the time they fixed it? Are you so locked in now that if Microsoft increased prices by 1000% you'd just have to pay it, and keep paying whatever they asked for, because you have no choice? In some ways integration is good. In some ways, having your entire business held hostage by a vendor you have no leverage over is very, very bad. As in it can completely kill your company when it goes south bad.
"I'm going back to New Orleans
To wear that ball and chain..."
> But I write cross platform software for a reason. Most software I write ends up running on linux, but if we have to run it on windows, it's not a problem. This provides flexibility. Having the option to do a gradual migration is better than not having that option.
Absolutely. Cross-platform software makes a lot of sense and greatly eases these things. Many home users only use cross-platform software, specifically Chrome or Firefox.. Their computer is Facebook, webmail, browsing web pages, etc. So they don't care about the OS, as long as they can run their cross-platform software, Chrome. Heck, they're perfectly happy to not really even have an OS, to have a device that *only* shows Chrome in the UI (Chromebooks).
> Even if you plan on migrating to Linux long term, running windows as you migrate individual applications to open source alternatives, provides a way to do the migration gradually rather than all at once.
Certainly. Gradual is good, and has a risk. At some point, interrelated systems probably need to do it "the Windows way" or "the Linux way". Being schizophreniac between closely coupled systems can be problematic.