Munich, Germany: Linux was disaster, back to Windows

Back in 2004, Munich, Germany decided that they were going to switch to Linux (specifically, LiMux) as their primary operating system and drop Microsoft's Windows operating system. At the time, the decision was said to be cheaper, more reliable and politically correct for the city and this would be the on the same scale as the Berlin Wall falling for politics but for IT.

Read more at: Munich, Germany realizes that deploying Linux was a disaster, going back to Windows - Neowin
 
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All H*ll must be breaking loose on ZDNet. :D
 

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Allowing cross-platforming communication is the killer. When you are the small fish (Linux) trying to talk to the big fish (Windows) it can get very jumbled in the interpretation. Software is like human language, heck it is language. If you are speaking Chinese and I'm speaking English, then we need an interpreter. If the interpreter sucks then the communication sucks.
 

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I have to admit, trying to communicate between Linux and Windows is a b*tch. If the rest of Germany is Windows and only Munich is Linux, I don't see how it could work well.

I have never enjoyed the thought of setting up Samba (the network link between Windows and Linux). To me it is not well documented, confusing and a nightmare.
 

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The title of that article alone lends itself to sensationalism.
Basically it appears a new mayor has commissioned a feasibility report on the implementation, which in itself is merely good governance - thus not withstanding incompatibility issues that may have arisen, those could well be fixed with a more modern application deployment (particularly regarding OpenOffice), there is no reason to whole-scale drop the OS.

No says the council, in spite of numerous reports to the contrary. Suggestions the council has decided to back away from Linux are wrong, according to council spokesman Stefan Hauf.

Read more at: Ditching Linux for Windows? The truth isn't that simple, says Munich - TechRepublic
 

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Reminds me of that terrible idea to go with ipads for Califorinia. They also realized it too late.
 

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It is all about politics. That is all. I have personally never suffered with Linux and Windows on the same network...
 

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I gave linux a spin, a couple times, half heartedly. Never really took.

At the end of the day, the question is always the same, for me: what's the point..??
 

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Got to keep in mind that Linux used on such level is not your ole' everyday free consumer distro. It costs a lot of money to implement it and specialty programs are not something you download from linux.com. Everything costs to develop, so just OS costs are probably the least of worries for such stuff.
 

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Hi there

I think in every country in the world any sort of Govt (Local, National, Federal etc) I.T system ALWAYS ends in collossal mistakes, goes over budget, doesn't get delivered on time (or at all) or is simply cancelled with huge benefits to (invariably) the same set of consulting companies - while yielding nothing except disaster to the long suffering taxpayers.

It's not usually the fault of the I.T personnel - but of a total misunderstanding by "public service managers" who have no useful experience of proper commercial large scale project management - especially those in which the technology changes faster in time than the end project was designed for making it often redundant, or tempting the addition of new features that weren't possible at the start of the project. Further these projects are often driven by Politics - rather than research involving the REAL end users of the system.

I suspect that the whole Linux idea was conceived byf some "Smart Alex" who thought he / she could get a nice swift promotion in quickly appearing to save the City some money without realising ALL the implications.

Linux is absolutely fine for SOME individuals and as commercial servers nothing wrong either - but to be used as a traditional desktop workspace in an environment like Local Govt -- forget it.

Cheers
jimbo
 

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Economics 101 :p

A friend that works IT (manager) for a large lab certification institution tells me they have no MS products just for this reason.

No comment from whs? :)
 

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All H*ll must be breaking loose on ZDNet. :D
;)
From the start of the comments page on ZDNet's version of this story
Please play nice
I realize this is a controversial topic.

But surely we can all just get along, right?

(In the movie Mars Attacks, the President, played by Jack Nicholson, gets incinerated by vengeful aliens moments after asking that same question. Oh well.)
 

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Guys, calm down and check your sources. I'm a native German speaker and I have read at least a couple of articles about this subject (one from Spiegel online). According to the articles I have read nothing has yet been decided. They are just evaluating if it makes sense for them to (at least partiallly) switch back to Windows. So what's the big deal here? So far no deals have been concluded, no decision have been made...
 

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Linux is fine but still a little bit complicated to use by the majority of windows user especially government employees
 

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Not unusual to conduct a review every 10 years or so, is it? It would be unusual if they didn't. Daft comments about 10 yrs to realise mistake.

Who knows yet what they will guess is best to last them the next 10yrs.
 

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I gave linux a spin, a couple times, half heartedly. Never really took.

At the end of the day, the question is always the same, for me: what's the point..??

If you have many computers, software licensing can get outrageously expensive.

My company just went through a Microsoft audit. We had changed licensing from our Australian office to our US office and we managed to trim down our costs. This raised a red flag at Microsoft who forced us to undergo a software audit. It was a pretty long drawn out process, time consuming, and a lot of effort. The vast majority of stuff came back perfectly fine, but we did have a few areas where we didn't have a sufficient # of licenses, or we were running a newer version than what MS had us on record for. After finding it, we agreed to simply uninstall those copies and stay in compliance with that we had, but MS wasn't having any part of it. They more or less are "forcing" us to pay, regardless if we continue to use the software or not. They got back about 50% of what we saved by switching licensing.

Our upper management is considering more Apple or more desktop Linux and less Microsoft software as it's so ungodly hard to license and understand (cal's, per user/per device, software assurance, msdn, etc). It really was a laborious process to prove that we were 95% in compliance.
 

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The title of that article alone lends itself to sensationalism.
Basically it appears a new mayor has commissioned a feasibility report on the implementation, which in itself is merely good governance - thus not withstanding incompatibility issues that may have arisen, those could well be fixed with a more modern application deployment (particularly regarding OpenOffice), there is no reason to whole-scale drop the OS.

No says the council, in spite of numerous reports to the contrary. Suggestions the council has decided to back away from Linux are wrong, according to council spokesman Stefan Hauf.

Read more at: Ditching Linux for Windows? The truth isn't that simple, says Munich - TechRepublic

We at this point in time it really is time to move forward. Like it or not, Microsoft is dominating the market in business solutions one way or another. Yes, there are other OS's and network solutions, but somewhere in that infrastructure is Microsoft.

That said, this isn't going to be a wholesale ditch overnight so naturally things will have to merge for a moment before Microsoft eventually takes over.

Anyway....

The city is now in the process of jumping back to a Microsoft solution and is now converting those 9000+ machines back to Windows.

I just heard the city just let out a loud sigh relief with that news :D

My two cents
 

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Hi there

What all these people seem to forget it's just not "The up front" costs that are the only costs - but also the "Cost of Ownership".

Linux can be absolutely 100% fine for some people or even some small work places that use their own bespoke software or applications but if you are in an organisation with a large number of employees who also interact with a load of similar organisations (such as local govt) and rely on common software then Windows is realistically the only sensible solution unless you can still run everything on an old mainframe (IBM type of system). Here we are talking about DESKTOPS - I don't think anybody seriously has any problems with understanding the great use Linux has in the SERVER market -- another issue entirely with multi million dollar businesses such as RED HAT ant NOWELL/SUSE.

Upgrading 100's of Linux desktops is NOT a trivial matter -- people often spend a lot of time just upgrading a SINGLE box to a new release judging by posts on this forum - and presumably people on here are more "computer literate" than the average person.

Like all these things the overall plan often gets lost just because the "Initial Dollar costs" look good - often CEO's can't see further than the next 6 weeks or - especially in Local Govt - they walk away with huge bonuses and pensions - even after FAILING. !!

It only can work if all the front end and backend software run easily on it - some stuff will inevitably need windows which of course can be provided by a "Virtual desktop Integration" scenario -- again a huge cost to implement initially and you are effectively still using Windows anyway.

I'd imagine any big Govt organisation would have special people at Ms to deal with licenses and they would get probably big volume discounts too.

The most useful desktop programs like EXCEL still aren't that good on Linux -- WPS office (used to be Kingsoft Office) is about the best so far but realistically for business purposes you can't beat Ms office -- and once you start thinking about decent email(CORPORATE and BUSINESS) clients on Linux -- you've got a DISASTER on your hand compared with people who are used to using Outlook.

It would be nice if someone who worked in Munich could post experiences of this particular experience - if they do it in German I (and many on this Forum) could translate if needed.

Cheers
jimbo
 

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