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Linux Pioneer Munich Confirms Switch To Windows 10 (techrepublic.com)

The German city of Munich, once seen as a open-source pioneer, has decided to return to Windows. Windows 10 will be rolled out to about 29,000 PCs at the city council, a major shift for an authority that has been running Linux for more than a decade. From a report: Back in 2003 the council decided to to switch to a Linux-based desktop, which came to be known as LiMux, and other open-source software, despite heavy lobbying by Microsoft. But now Munich will begin rolling out a Windows 10 client from 2020, at a cost of about Euro 50m ($59.6m), with a view to Windows replacing LiMux across the council by early 2023. Politicians who supported the move at a meeting of the full council today say using Windows 10 will make it easier to source compatible applications and hardware drivers than it has been using a Linux-based OS, and will also reduce costs associated with running Windows and LiMux PCs side-by-side.

3 of 336 comments (clear)

  1. Will not solve their problems by gweihir · · Score: 5, Insightful

    The did about the most dumb thing possible: They blamed Linux for their dysfunctional organization. They will have pretty much the same problems after the move with some new ones on top. And the only sane alternative, moving everything to web-apps, was not even considered.

    What happened here is that the ones in charge let themselves be bought by MS.

    --
    Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
  2. Paid off by Major_Disorder · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I suspect someone got paid off big time.
    Seems to me that is the only way that spending $59.6 Million on windows could be seen as a method of reducing costs.

    --
    First law of people: People are generally stupid.
  3. Re:WAT? Windows? Easy to maintain? by Billly+Gates · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Even then. There is still after 20 years no opensource solution for Outlook/Exchange. PHBs want meeting invites. They also want to see free/busy on all the recipients for their day.

    I supposed in the last 4 years Office 365 has enabled some of the functionality on the web version now for Linux users, but it highlights in business there is no solutions.

    MS may have made crappy OSes in the past, but their business software is certainly top of the line with Outlook and Excel. Before anyone goes on how Calc is good enough I have to say it is not for EVERY scenario. Even a city organization has financial anaylsts gurus and statisticians. These guys use add ons for Excel and proprietary software. Some who do not use advanced macros that LibreCalc can't do.

    R and Python is now just started to hit some of these but these guys are not professional programmers. They knew macros and mathematics. Linux has no solution for these 2 scenarios.