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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.
You have to understand users, whatever is easy - and whatever gets them trough the every day life - is what they will chose.
I'm a Linux user since 1998. I still use the Linux platform (Mint 18.1 right now, but I was a slacker...slackware for most of the time, I just grew old and didn't want to spend endless time finetuning everything), but I use windows 10 for my gaming pleasures, and at work we use windows 10 too (I work at a HUGE worldwide company now), and it doesn't suck. In fact, I'd wager that after 1 year...windows 10 actually kinda rule. It's easy to use, it's not ugly, it's functional, it's not breaking down every second day, it's fairly well protected and it actually just work. I'm a fan already, but it was a long road, because at home - I'm one of those 50+ something that still is a gaming freak, I have the latest hardware as always (1080Ti graphics card, and the latest i7 generation motherboard and processor), and on windows 10 it just doesn't suck. Not even at work, where we have MUCH less hardware, we're using vanilla Dell laptops with i5 processors, SSD storage devices, and D6000 Dell docking stations with 3 screens connected, works like a charm every day.
So yeah, I totally get it - if it works perfectly, if it runs smooth every day, if I don't have to concentrate on my freaking setup every day...but can concentrate just on my job - then I'm all for it!
Good job MS, for once!
What this world is coming to - is for you and me to decide.
To do a quick financial audit of the officials making this decision.
Lobbying is really just another term for paid bribes.
While no one but the actual deciders know for sure, but I'd be more than willing to step out on the limb and say: This has absolutely nothing to do with Linux or Windows fitness for the job. They've been doing it for 10 years now, I'm pretty confident any bumps were long ironed out and everything works pretty decently.
Just as TFA said, Microsoft had been lobbying heavily. Never said they stopped. Obviously they kept at it, and finally got their foot in the door. Greed seems to be on a helluv a winning streak in our society.
MS moved its base in Germany to Munich. Subsequently, Munich had a new election for the city council. Surprisingly, the new major decided that Linux does not work and that there are too many security restrictions with Linux. This is what effective lobbying can do for you. Still other cities and towns go in the the other direction.
In the case of gnope, every release either breaks something, or takes away some functionality that distributions have to excessively patch in order to give some consistency to their userbase. And kde has never been more buggy. Just when a version starts to get stable, they ditch it and start over. The whole Linux mantra of "release early and release often" just doesn't work for desktops (or phones for that matter). Users want consistency and stability, which neither gnome or kde give them.
Okay, working with a few groups that have to keep confidential data and medical data secure I can say that Windows 10 sends out data routinely that you cannot shut off that people working with such data can't afford to have leaving the organizations part of whose mandate is to protect that data. Moving to windows will probably introduce problems, is unlikely to fix any, and with Windows 10 (they can get Windows 7) they are sending out citizen data to a foreign power. (The USA loves this). This was recognized by China who told Microsoft point blank they were required to make a special China version of Windows 10 that would not send data to a foreign power. Microsoft of course said "yes" to this. If it got out that private public data was being sent directly to a foreign power, the German people would be up in arms. Germany's privacy laws are more strict than most countries. If they insist on this experiment (which will be a death march, just watch), they should at least use Widows 7.
"Imagination is more important than knowledge" - Einstein
I think the point is they're easier for users. For actual IT departments, my experience is Windows is at best no easier than *nix, and in some ways a great deal worse (I much prefer plain text readable config files to registry files, though sadly XML is invading the *nix config world too). The one thing I've always loved about working in *nix environments is that if I want to do some significant configuration changes to the OS or a daemon, I can literally go "cp whatever.conf whatever.conf.bak" try out my changes and if they don't work I can quickly restore original functionality. It's possible to do the same thing in Windows by saving keys, but it's a pain in the rear, requiring the regedit application as an intermediary.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Some people have argued that Linux does not work out for bureaucracies, civil servants or "large organizations". That made me laugh.
The French Gendarmerie (miltarized police) switched to Linux. But the organization was different. For example in lieu of bitching about non microsoft word processors not being compatible enough with whatever version of microsoft word, they dropped the proprietary formats and went to the .odt format. So, microsoft incompatibilities are not their problem anymore.
Because they made choices. And it worked out for them. A wikipedia summary here:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
P.S. I sense an army of astroturfers on this topic, you guys aren't good at what you are doing.
LibreOffice is a no go as it doesn't do free/busy calandar functions for the executives for meetings that they waste time in all day which is a must have for their jobs.
We had a MS meeting scedule and room booking system in our company. I don't know what it was (Outlook? You tell me), but no-one used it because if you tried you found that all the meeting rooms and managers were booked solid for the next six months "just in case they were needed".
To get a meeting room or find a chairman manager you had to go to one of the senior manager's secretaries the previous day who kept the real booking system, which was an unofficial paper diary.
Verizon ditched office for Google for business. Even their email is handled by google and employees can use Linux or Mac as their OS.