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I doubt this will work out. They also tried that in many countries, they all go back to using Windows. I hate Windows, but I can envision how much money AND tim

I doubt this will work out. They also tried that in many countries, they all go back to using Windows. I hate Windows, but I can envision how much money AND time it's gonna cost them to move out, and I'm sure that they will either run out of money before they do the transition, or machines would have already dominated the earth before they are done with this "transition"l I would believe it much more if they said that they will try to use more Linux, try to mix them up, or create APIs for everything etc. Nowadays it's so easy to create services and use LDAP or whatever thing you want with whatever programming language or service. You can host it on Linux and start changing some computers and systems to Linux. But "switch from X to Y" seems a terrible idea. Even as a personal computer user, for me, it's impossible to "switch". Imagine for a government. It's a hilarious statement, one of those that politicians do say, but they have no fucking clue of what they are saying.

jcelerier 7y ago
> They also tried that in many countries, they all go back to using Windows. uhh... no, here in France a lot of public infrastructure runs on linux.
- klingonopera 7y ago
  The list of LibreOffice users hasn't grown, but hasn't shrunk either[0]. Kudos to the French for so far being the biggest Western-state to implement FOSS. Apart from the obvious benefit of lower cost, security and personal individualization are further benefits. No matter what the politicians or business will tell you: Any government running Windows on their systems is basically broadcasting their data straight into US secret services. There's nothing stopping them from doing that. Who would prosecute them? Would US law enforcement have motivation to do that? And when it comes to individualization: Any open standard that allows any other third party to develop products with will (if left to its own means) always win out against proprietary solutions, since you can pitch all the third parties against each other to compete for the lowest bid. But since it's not about getting cost-effective IT, the governments don't appear too concerned of the US knowing all their secrets and Microsoft is definitely more capable of pampering politicians than 3rd party Linux developers could, absurd requirements dot every government contract to bar said Linux developers and leave Microsoft as the only "viable" choice. [0]: https://www.libreoffice.org/discover/who-uses-libreoffice/ https://www.libreoffice.org/discover/who-uses-libreoffice/
  - codedokode 7y ago
    Also, the maintainer of Linux distribution can be a local company so that public funds don't go to USA.
nisa 7y ago
Munich did it this way: 100% Linux, no compromises - they didn't even had an central Active Directory so if you required Windows due to software in your part of city government you were on your own - no central updates! They also forced everyone on an ancient OpenOffice 3.x version with KDE 4.x and KMail? That Munich migrated back has less todo with Linux or Windows or Microsoft politics (maybe..) but more with badly run infrastructure and in-fighting and big egos there. Sadly. That there is such a huge group of Linux proponents that cry foul and suspect some conspiracy is not really helping...
- macspoofing 7y ago
  That's the missing piece with these large scale deployments: is there an infrastructure to provide support, training and maintenance of the deployment. It's one thing to push for moving from Windows to Linux, it's another to actually figure out the thousands of details that go along with it. What Munich did was essentially created a homegrown solution which suffers from all the problems of homegrown solutions. Yes, you get to tailor it to your business, but then you have to maintain it for decades. Inevitably industry passes you by, and you end up paying for a sub-standard proprietary (ironically) solution that has no widespread support and you're own your own for everything - from new features, to security updates, to training, to compatibility and interoperability. It's always great at the beginning, and it's always miserable 10 years later when the excitement goes away and the original champions have moved on.
- gridlockd 7y ago
  > badly run infrastructure and in-fighting and big egos In other words, the same situation that exists everywhere.
- yorwba 7y ago
  > 100% Linux, no compromises Not exactly. When the decision to go back to Windows was announced, they were even still running Windows 2000 on some machines. [1] The initial reason for overhauling their infrastructure was certainly due to the proliferation of outdated software, but the consultancy they hired to evaluate the situation made the more conservative recommendation to update everything to the latest version and let each department choose which operating system to use. (Since they were de facto already doing that, just without a reasonable process.) That this turned into "100 % Windows, no compromises" was probably due to Microsoft politics, i.e. someone convinced the mayor that Linux was the cause of their infrastructure issues rather than bad infrastructure management. I bet they still have the same problems, except now they also have a few machines running outdated versions of their homegrown LiMux distribution. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13643182 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13643182
yjftsjthsd-h 7y ago
There's also the sheer political force that Microsoft brings to bear against Linux every time this kind of thing comes up.

jcelerier 7y ago

> They also tried that in many countries, they all go back to using Windows. uhh... no, here in France a lot of public infrastructure runs on linux.

klingonopera 7y ago
The list of LibreOffice users hasn't grown, but hasn't shrunk either[0]. Kudos to the French for so far being the biggest Western-state to implement FOSS. Apart from the obvious benefit of lower cost, security and personal individualization are further benefits. No matter what the politicians or business will tell you: Any government running Windows on their systems is basically broadcasting their data straight into US secret services. There's nothing stopping them from doing that. Who would prosecute them? Would US law enforcement have motivation to do that? And when it comes to individualization: Any open standard that allows any other third party to develop products with will (if left to its own means) always win out against proprietary solutions, since you can pitch all the third parties against each other to compete for the lowest bid. But since it's not about getting cost-effective IT, the governments don't appear too concerned of the US knowing all their secrets and Microsoft is definitely more capable of pampering politicians than 3rd party Linux developers could, absurd requirements dot every government contract to bar said Linux developers and leave Microsoft as the only "viable" choice. [0]: https://www.libreoffice.org/discover/who-uses-libreoffice/ https://www.libreoffice.org/discover/who-uses-libreoffice/
- codedokode 7y ago
  Also, the maintainer of Linux distribution can be a local company so that public funds don't go to USA.

nisa 7y ago

Munich did it this way: 100% Linux, no compromises - they didn't even had an central Active Directory so if you required Windows due to software in your part of city government you were on your own - no central updates! They also forced everyone on an ancient OpenOffice 3.x version with KDE 4.x and KMail? That Munich migrated back has less todo with Linux or Windows or Microsoft politics (maybe..) but more with badly run infrastructure and in-fighting and big egos there. Sadly. That there is such a huge group of Linux proponents that cry foul and suspect some conspiracy is not really helping...

macspoofing 7y ago
That's the missing piece with these large scale deployments: is there an infrastructure to provide support, training and maintenance of the deployment. It's one thing to push for moving from Windows to Linux, it's another to actually figure out the thousands of details that go along with it. What Munich did was essentially created a homegrown solution which suffers from all the problems of homegrown solutions. Yes, you get to tailor it to your business, but then you have to maintain it for decades. Inevitably industry passes you by, and you end up paying for a sub-standard proprietary (ironically) solution that has no widespread support and you're own your own for everything - from new features, to security updates, to training, to compatibility and interoperability. It's always great at the beginning, and it's always miserable 10 years later when the excitement goes away and the original champions have moved on.
gridlockd 7y ago
> badly run infrastructure and in-fighting and big egos In other words, the same situation that exists everywhere.
yorwba 7y ago
> 100% Linux, no compromises Not exactly. When the decision to go back to Windows was announced, they were even still running Windows 2000 on some machines. [1] The initial reason for overhauling their infrastructure was certainly due to the proliferation of outdated software, but the consultancy they hired to evaluate the situation made the more conservative recommendation to update everything to the latest version and let each department choose which operating system to use. (Since they were de facto already doing that, just without a reasonable process.) That this turned into "100 % Windows, no compromises" was probably due to Microsoft politics, i.e. someone convinced the mayor that Linux was the cause of their infrastructure issues rather than bad infrastructure management. I bet they still have the same problems, except now they also have a few machines running outdated versions of their homegrown LiMux distribution. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13643182 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13643182

yjftsjthsd-h 7y ago

There's also the sheer political force that Microsoft brings to bear against Linux every time this kind of thing comes up.