German State Plans To Migrate 13,000 Workstations From Linux to Windows (zdnet.com)

An anonymous reader quotes ZDNet: The German state of Lower Saxony is set to follow Munich in migrating thousands of official computers away from Linux to Microsoft's Windows. As initially reported by Heise, the state's tax authority has 13,000 workstations running OpenSuse -- which it adopted in 2006 in a well-received migration from Solaris -- that it now wants to migrate to a "current version" of Windows, presumably Windows 10.

The authority reasons that many of its field workers and telephone support services already use Windows, so standardisation makes sense. An upgrade of some kind would in any case be necessary soon, as the PCs are running OpenSuse versions 12.2 and 13.2, neither of which is supported anymore.

According to the Lower Saxony's draft budget, €5.9m is set aside for the migration in the coming year, with a further €7m annually over the following years; it's not yet clear how many years the migration would take... Munich's shift away from LiMux -- the city's own Ubuntu-based distribution -- is expected to cost more than €50m overall, involving the deployment of around 29,000 Windows-based computers.

Comments

No problem

[TimothyHollins]

This should be easy. The German state has become quite the expert on migration as of late. Let's just hope no-one gets raped in the process.

Shame

[110010001000]

It is a shame. Willingly paying for closed source malware and spyware isn't my idea of using money wisely.

Re:Shame

[Anonymous Coward]

That should tell you how much desktop Linux sucks ass.

Re:Shame

[superdude72]

Here's the value of Windows: When something breaks, you can blame it on those dumbasses at Microsoft and no one will hold you responsible because you're just using the same platform that 95 percent of the world uses. When something breaks in Linux, it's all your fault because you took a chance on a screwball operating system to save a few euros.

Back when IBM ruled the industry they had a slogan: "No one ever got fired for buying IBM." Well that's been the case with Microsoft since the '90s.

Re:Shame

[Phics]

An excellent question, but unfortunately organizations don't always have the luxury of selecting software that isn't. Different industries have different software requirements that often bind their hands with respect to OS choice. For example, healthcare require specific features in an EMR, and there may not be enough of a selection out there in that specialized field to allow for the luxury of selecting Linux, at least not in a simplified way... and part of the reason for this, is, even if you could run such clients on Linux, (with the help of Mono or other tech), the proprietary support from some of these companies would not allow for it. It becomes too much of a hassle, and nobody in these industries care much for starting a "holy war" over an ecosystem that they don't invest much heart or soul into. In healthcare, for example, patient care is all that matters, and whether that happens in Linux or Windows is typically a very minor concern.

Re:Shame

[Anonymous Coward]

Sad but true - it's your fault.
A few years ago I was porting an application to Linux and had a recurring problem with one particular workstation which would loose keyboard functionality and freeze after a reboot. It turned out that Linux became confused about which keyboard was active during system boot if the workstation was connected to a network with an active VPN session between other workstations. That resulted in corruption of a critical configuration file which then needed to be reinstalled before the next reboot or the keyboard would disappear. It was terribly irritating and I wanted to make sure my code wasn't messing things up. I am not a "member of the community" but took a few hours to document how to reproduce the bug at will (it was weird but not that hard and definitely not related to my code), document the corruption in the configuration file, and submit a bug report. I stupidly thought someone would appreciate the effort I went to documenting the situation that exposed the problem. Nope. Instead, I was told that I should fix the bug myself. When I tried to explain that I was working on a project for my employer and had neither the time nor Linux OS skill to do such work, I got a nasty reply basically saying that if I didn't want to support "the community" by fixing the bug then "the community" could not help me because "that's how the community works." . I finished my port and documented the malfunctioning configuration for "my community" so my users could avoid it. The experience soured me on "the Linux community" for a long, long time.

Re:Shame

[Anonymous Coward]

So you got a rude reply. Guess what happens in the commercial world? They write a compiler that doesn't manage to do a typedef correctly, you need to debug, provide a trivial test-case and quote them the spec that they are actually wrong (as they keep claiming there is no bug), months later and after a lot of time invested they acknowledge it. Yet another few months later they come back and say they are too busy, couldn't we do without it for a while longer.
I've seen few companies where you'd get something better than the same reaction as you got from the "community", just with more politeness but minus the option to fix it yourself.
Same company has a tool that would be very useful if it supported pipes. Unfortunately someone felt they needed to add a stat call to make sure the input is a file. They've not managed to remove that single line of useless check in about a year.
They don't say "fuck off". But they're happy to leave you hoping until you die of old age (or at least retire). I still consider "fuck off" the reply I'd rather get.
Even though I admit your frustration at the episode is justified. I just disagree on it being an argument FOR proprietary.

Interesting dilemma

[Kohath]

Idealism vs. getting shit done. It's no surprise that Germany's government is choosing getting shit done.

They should try that for electricity generation next.

Re:Interesting dilemma

[Calydor]

After dealing with German bureaucracy for the past eight years I can assure you, the German government's list of interests doesn't include "Get shit done".

Where tax payers should be concerned is...

[mykepredko]

That this is being done *without* a cost-benefit analysis.

There is a certain amount of politics here, but if I were a citizen/tax payer of Lower Saxony I'd be mostly concerned that this is being done before an analysis is available.

I understand that Open Suse 12.2 and 12.3 are obsolete, but I would think that migrating to Leap 42 or Leap 15 would would be a lot cheaper than buying Windows 10 licenses. In TFA, they cite the issue that telephone support is now being done on Windows - but I would think that it would be more cost effective to move them to Linux.

But, without any kind of analysis, the people who are going to pay for this won't know.

POTUS declares EU as fiend

[sanf780]

If EU is not a friend anymore according to Trump, why does the EU allow USA software in their administration?

Re:POTUS declares EU as fiend

[PolygamousRanchKid]

If EU is not a friend anymore according to Trump, why does the EU allow USA software in their administration?

Snarky answer:

. . . probably because the EU is thinking long term, and that in six years, Trump won't be POTUS anymore.

And then everyone will pretend to be friends again.

Realistic answer:

. . . probably for the same reason that the US government is using software from SAP, produced in Germany, an enemy state of the US in the current government's eyes.

Re:LOL

[Tough Love]

This is the graph that should worry Microsoft.