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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.
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!
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.
I mentioned it once, but I think I got away with it all right.
#DeleteChrome
Surely Java is the answer!
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.
You must be kidding. With everything moving to the cloud, the desktop OS becomes more irrelevant every year. You will start seeing other OS making inroads over Windows as this continues. This is more about some sales people bribing ("lobbying") the right people.
Save the Cloud thing, I've been hearing this for the past couple decades...
...gis sdrawkcab (usually not responding to ACs; don't bother posting as AC)
Bah, in a place as big as Munich Administration you can infiltrate a spy any fucking time. Or bribe someone who already works there. Software has no power to prevent that.
...gis sdrawkcab (usually not responding to ACs; don't bother posting as AC)
> 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.
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.
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!
We will see how that goes.
The cloud is great for new organizations that not already heavily invested in Windows.
The cloud is great for brand new applications that are written to run there from scratch.
I worked with a couple of different city governments here in America. They have a whole slew of applications that while not all that complex, are Windows only. Applications like permit systems and rec center scheduling tools.
The in house tools do not even scratch the surface of the challenges that come from dealing with a public who is 80%+ Windows based. Even if Munich created all of their forms in some sort of interoperable format like RTF or whatever, they are still going to have to deal with the end users who save them as DOCX. Then there is all of the back and forth and wasted time of explaining to some general contractor, or other lay person why Linux is better than Windows, and why they have to go back and do some "arcane computer voodoo" to get their form back into the "right" format.
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?
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.
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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"
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.
> 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.
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...
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