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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.
The best chance Linux has of taking of is when support for Windows 7 ends in 2020.
But it won’t just like it didn't when XP support ended or when Vista bombed out. But, hey, this time it’s gotta work, right?
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.
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.
To do a quick financial audit of the officials making this decision.
Lobbying is really just another term for paid bribes.
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.
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 past decade Linux on desktop/laptop use has gone from 0.8% to ~2%. At this rate it'll only take about 900 more years to totally replace Windows on the desktop.
Yeah, nerds don't want to admit that Microsoft have actually improved their products in the last 20 years. Meanwhile, on the Linux side of things, we got Ubuntu. *shudder*
Linux, you magnificent bastard, I read the fucking manual!
This is something that often gets lost on Slashdot. People are so busy complaining about privacy (which the average user can't give a crap about), or lost work because you haven't saved your work for the night and ignore the notifications that an update is pending (which the average user can't give a crap about), and all the talk about start menus and control panels (which the average user can't give a crap about) to realise what has actually changed under the hood.
In the mean time we have an OS that in its current iteration is incredibly stable (no, not things like the on screen keyboard not popping up, but rather no reboot forcing crashes), relatively well protected (very few attacks go directly for the Windows OS now because of it) and even has similar active protective features to SELinux.
Under the hood it's faster than the previous versions, more capable out of the box, actually works as a tablet OS (not that I imagine most people here will care), and in general end users don't really care much about it, neither for nor against.
Shame about the privacy aspects.
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.
But are they? When support for XP finished I switched over the living room to CentOS with gnome 2. Mrs Hog, not the most tech savvy person on the planet, didn't notice the difference.
That's cute. You are browsing the web just like I am on Ubuntu right now.
I decided drunk last night to give Linux a shot again on my PC as a native OS and not a VM. I plan to do fedora Mate 27 next.
Now, for the non-nerds can your Linux install (outside of your living room TV in the workplace) do Free/Busy on Exchange/Outlook for the PHBs? Can they schedule Skype meetings in Evolution or Thunderbird? Can they run SAP? How about the senior directors run WebEX for those in the federal German Government? Can Linux run ancient IE 6 and 7 sites written last decade before web standards took off? Can the smartcam just work for the above scenarios?
Can LibreCalc run the megaStat add-on for Excel? Can it do all of the Excel functions? Can the I.T. department managing 3,000 PCs with some off, some on, some in different configurations on Active Directory? Can the I.T. department create a Group Policy to lock down some clients with sensitive information? Can NFS support ACL (access control lists) with nested groups easily for permissions? Can the I.T. department automate a MASS installation whether computers are on or off?
Yes, what I wrote sounds like dauntte's inferno for nerds reading this who get to be sys admins and programmers at .coms. But, in my world doing corporate I.T. my job depends on these things and it is the real world. Management NEEDS THESE DONE. They do not care if I have 2,000 PCs when they get a certificate error in a browser due to a critical website being upgraded. It needs to be fixed NOW!
Linux doesn't cut it and I would be fired if I installed it. If all you do is browse the web and use NetFlix then a tablet or Roku is the best fit. An enterprise environment is a different beast and is underestimated how complex it is.
http://saveie6.com/
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.
http://saveie6.com/
Verizon ditched office for Google for business. Even their email is handled by google and employees can use Linux or Mac as their OS.