7 ms·

Munich ends its long-running love affair with Linux

10 points by antouank 9y ago

Annatar 9y ago
Stunned silence ensues while reality sinks in (:-D) Can’t wait to read n-gate’s take on this.
MsMowz 9y ago
Microsoft just moved an office into Munich and now, over the objections of the municipal IT staff, the city is switching to Windows. Interesting.
- javajosh 9y ago
  >objections of the municipal IT staff Where? I'd read that.
  - craftyguy 9y ago
    The link is literally in the article... anyways, here you go: https://www.techrepublic.com/article/linux-in-munich-no-compelling-technical-reason-to-return-to-windows-says-citys-it-chief/ https://www.techrepublic.com/article/linux-in-munich-no-comp...
    - javajosh 9y ago
      My understanding is that this was commentary by the head of the IT staff, Karl-Heinz Schneider. I was thinking a slew of staff (plural, not singular) were raising a clarion call about this, but it's just one guy.
  - sturmen 9y ago
    https://www.techrepublic.com/article/linux-in-munich-no-compelling-technical-reason-to-return-to-windows-says-citys-it-chief/ https://www.techrepublic.com/article/linux-in-munich-no-comp...
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
reacweb 9y ago
I think I can understand some complaints about Linux because I use it as my main desktop OS since many years, but I want to fix two points: - "compatibility headaches" is a problem caused by the usage of Microsoft office. Linux has no compatibility problem with itself or with standards. - "apps and hardware that absolutely needed Microsoft's platform to run, and those were destined to stay". Since 2003, these products are 14 years old. It is hard to believe most of them could not have been renewed without this dependency. I think that acceptance of Microsoft office proprietary format is the main cause of failure.
- Annatar 9y ago
  Linux has no compatibility problem with itself or with standards. Linux in general has huge compatibility problems with himself: right now I’m building binutils because RPM from RHEL6 encodes dependencies into the SRPM that are not backward compatible. Then there is NFS V4 as another example of incompatibility with reference implementations. Then there is ss versus netstat, yet another incompatibility, this time architectural. There are many, many such examples which desktop users and developers aren’t even aware of but system and kernel engineers and system administrators suffer on Linux daily.
creshal 9y ago
"Love" affair is a bit of a misnomer. Munich forked most of their userland software in '03 and were surprised to find out that handling so much software maintenance on their own is a) expensive and b) leads to poor results. IMO, LiMux was always doomed to fail, and it's a testament to the slowness of public institutions that it took this long to realize their mistake. If the same project was undertaken now, with the lessons learned (no goddamn forks of entire desktop environments just because Janice in accounting wants her buttons in a different order!) it would give much better results.

10 points by antouank 9y ago

Stunned silence ensues while reality sinks in (:-D) Can’t wait to read n-gate’s take on this.

Microsoft just moved an office into Munich and now, over the objections of the municipal IT staff, the city is switching to Windows. Interesting.

javajosh 9y ago
>objections of the municipal IT staff Where? I'd read that.
- craftyguy 9y ago
  The link is literally in the article... anyways, here you go: https://www.techrepublic.com/article/linux-in-munich-no-compelling-technical-reason-to-return-to-windows-says-citys-it-chief/ https://www.techrepublic.com/article/linux-in-munich-no-comp...
  - javajosh 9y ago
    My understanding is that this was commentary by the head of the IT staff, Karl-Heinz Schneider. I was thinking a slew of staff (plural, not singular) were raising a clarion call about this, but it's just one guy.
- sturmen 9y ago
  https://www.techrepublic.com/article/linux-in-munich-no-compelling-technical-reason-to-return-to-windows-says-citys-it-chief/ https://www.techrepublic.com/article/linux-in-munich-no-comp...

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

reacweb 9y ago

I think I can understand some complaints about Linux because I use it as my main desktop OS since many years, but I want to fix two points: - "compatibility headaches" is a problem caused by the usage of Microsoft office. Linux has no compatibility problem with itself or with standards. - "apps and hardware that absolutely needed Microsoft's platform to run, and those were destined to stay". Since 2003, these products are 14 years old. It is hard to believe most of them could not have been renewed without this dependency. I think that acceptance of Microsoft office proprietary format is the main cause of failure.

Annatar 9y ago
Linux has no compatibility problem with itself or with standards. Linux in general has huge compatibility problems with himself: right now I’m building binutils because RPM from RHEL6 encodes dependencies into the SRPM that are not backward compatible. Then there is NFS V4 as another example of incompatibility with reference implementations. Then there is ss versus netstat, yet another incompatibility, this time architectural. There are many, many such examples which desktop users and developers aren’t even aware of but system and kernel engineers and system administrators suffer on Linux daily.

creshal 9y ago

"Love" affair is a bit of a misnomer. Munich forked most of their userland software in '03 and were surprised to find out that handling so much software maintenance on their own is a) expensive and b) leads to poor results. IMO, LiMux was always doomed to fail, and it's a testament to the slowness of public institutions that it took this long to realize their mistake. If the same project was undertaken now, with the lessons learned (no goddamn forks of entire desktop environments just because Janice in accounting wants her buttons in a different order!) it would give much better results.