4 ms·

Did not work well in Munich, my hometown, in 2004. Hope the lessons have been learned. https://itsfoss.com/munich-linux-failure/ https://itsfoss.com/munich-linu

Did not work well in Munich, my hometown, in 2004. Hope the lessons have been learned. https://itsfoss.com/munich-linux-failure/ https://itsfoss.com/munich-linux-failure/

zoobab 3y ago
Microsoft spent so much money to make it fail.
- boxed 3y ago
  How do they do that? I mean, practically? If the open source solution works, where do Microsoft spend money to make it fail?
  - hans_castorp 3y ago
    I am not saying this was the reason, but it is suspicious that the Munich Linux project was dropped, after Microsoft moved their headquarters back into Munich. And the reasons given were made up. The recommendation written by Accenture claimed that "users weren't satisfied" while a poll from a newspaper showed that most users were indeed satisfied
  - mhitza 3y ago
    Bribery can also work. I'm not saying that this is what they have done in Germany, but in Romania it was a big scandal https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_licensing_corruption_scandal https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_licensing_corrupti...
  - marksbrown 3y ago
    Embrace, extend, extinguish.
    - boxed 3y ago
      Again: be specific.
- f_allwein 3y ago
  If I remember, there was also an issue around people working in the administration not wanting to get used to new software/ not being able to do some tasks.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- Rinzler89 3y ago
  Still. They got a Microsoft office with a lot of well paying jobs. It's something. Most countries could dream of such leverage over a company like Microsoft.
  - 3rd3 3y ago
    Much of our wealth is grounded in immorality.
3rd3 3y ago
The "lesson" does not seem so clear according to the article you have linked: > Schneider claimed that the decision had been political, “not made on the basis of facts” > “We do not see any compelling technical reasons for a change to Windows and Microsoft Office… We solve compatibility and interoperability problems by providing MS Office, mostly virtualised, at workplaces that need to work together with external offices on office documents.” One point of critique was the difficulty involved with 3rd party programs on the Linux laptops. But with MS Teams, Zoom etc. running in the browser and/or having actual Linux clients these days, this may be much more feasible today. The opposition claimed the decision to abandon Linux was a purely political one. The mayor who pushed the return to Microsoft, Dieter Reiter (SPD), was a known Microsoft fanboy, but he (of course) denied personal investment in the reversal. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LiMux https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LiMux
jonesjohnson 3y ago
It's a sad story. My spouse is working for the city in some legal department and she was happily using LiMux for years with no big issues. The main problem was that the IT department was understaffed and underpaid... One reason for their switch might be that Microsoft thought about opening up a big office here. Another reason might have been the study conducted by Accenture [1], who have some close ties to Microsoft... I also enjoyed reading the interview of former Munich mayor Christian Ude [2]. Apparently, Steve Ballmer was interrupting his ski vacation in Switzerland to visit Ude and personally try to convince him to ditch LiMux. [1] https://web.archive.org/web/20170219053640/https://www.ris-muenchen.de/RII/RII/DOK/SITZUNGSVORLAGE/4262725.pdf https://web.archive.org/web/20170219053640/https://www.ris-m... [2] https://www.linux-magazin.de/ausgaben/2019/10/interview-2/ https://www.linux-magazin.de/ausgaben/2019/10/interview-2/ [edit: typo]
- mschuster91 3y ago
  > It's a sad story. My spouse is working for the city in some legal department and she was happily using LiMux for years with no big issues. The main problem was that the IT department was understaffed and underpaid... I worked on LiMux in the developer team at the start of my career. HN is a village, lol. And the situation is more complex, and long enough has passed for me to detail out what actually were the problems without revealing anything top secret... 1. most of the desktop hardware was OLD. Like really fucking old. We're talking of systems with 256M of RAM. Anything would send these into swapping. But instead of blaming the finance department for not upgrading the computers, everyone was more than happy to blame LiMux because many people hoped that enough blaming would bring Windows back eventually (as it did...) 2. A lot of the hundreds of sites that the city of Munich has weren't connected to fast fiber, but via 10/10 SDSL (or slower) links. That's enough for Active Directory to work, and most sites had cache servers on-site to make life bearable, but still: everything was SLOW for a lot of users. From what I hear through the grape vines, that has changed at least for everything inside the Mittlerer Ring demarcation as M-net/SWM built out FTTB across the entire area, but some sites more remote still are on crap links. 3. LibreOffice, or rather OpenOffice was shit back then - I was there right when the fork happened. (And from what I hear, it's not gotten much better... developing an office suite actually requires funding which barely anyone wants to provide) 4. Many of the special applications ("Fachverfahren") were only available for Windows. Some (e.g. SAP) were available as Java apps (with all the problems JVM has, particularly being a memory hog), a few were available as Linux applications but usually in rpm format and not deb which made every update a PITA with alien (LiMux was Ubuntu based), but the utter majority were Windows-only. Some could be made to work with WINE, but some (particularly those interfacing with proprietary hardware such as specially hardened printers) still required a few Windows workstations here and there. 5. We were fucking understaffed. Like 4 FTEs working on packaging and development, but a whole externally sourced test department (that was, to be fair, really needed to catch regressions, and there were a lot of them). But each and every single one of my colleagues were absolute experts and a joy to work with and learn from. Without them, the situation would have been much worse. 6. Political interference. Not just from the city government and its bullshit, but especially from the entrenched "micro fiefdoms" in the administration. No one wanted to cede control to us or the central IT@M organization that was being formed when I was there, instead they all wanted their own decentralized teams (dIKA). Some wanted to opt out of LiMux entirely, and had good reasons for that (chiefly, their applications not running on LiMux). 7. Dieter fucking Reiter, the successor of Christian Ude as mayor after the 2014 elections, as well as the Social Democrat-Conservative government that came into power with him. Ude, for all he turned wrong after he left office, was a staunch protector of LiMux, and we all knew what would come once he left, and so it inevitably happened. And that's just one thing in the long list of reasons to despise Reiter.
Zhyl 3y ago
A lot can happen in 20 years.
1970-01-01 3y ago
I predict it will yet fail again. Desktop Linux maintains it's bad reputation very well, and 20 years is just enough time for everyone to forget the details. Unless they have an insane user to IT ratio (perhaps 6:1), the adoption pain points will soon be rediscovered and overwhelm the project.
- jraph 3y ago
  Do you have actual elements? Actual pain points? The details you are mentioning?
  - 1970-01-01 3y ago
    The simple fact that 30 years got the Linux Desktop to 3% desktop market share should be a very loud signal that this isn't going to work.
    - CRConrad 3y ago
      So... No elements, no pain points, no details. Thank you.
- zaik 3y ago
  Why do you think they stopped using Linux in Munich? I'm sorry, but it feels like you didn't read the article you're responding to at all.

Did not work well in Munich, my hometown, in 2004. Hope the lessons have been learned. https://itsfoss.com/munich-linux-failure/ https://itsfoss.com/munich-linux-failure/

zoobab 3y ago

Microsoft spent so much money to make it fail.

boxed 3y ago
How do they do that? I mean, practically? If the open source solution works, where do Microsoft spend money to make it fail?
- hans_castorp 3y ago
  I am not saying this was the reason, but it is suspicious that the Munich Linux project was dropped, after Microsoft moved their headquarters back into Munich. And the reasons given were made up. The recommendation written by Accenture claimed that "users weren't satisfied" while a poll from a newspaper showed that most users were indeed satisfied
- mhitza 3y ago
  Bribery can also work. I'm not saying that this is what they have done in Germany, but in Romania it was a big scandal https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_licensing_corruption_scandal https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_licensing_corrupti...
- marksbrown 3y ago
  Embrace, extend, extinguish.
  - boxed 3y ago
    Again: be specific.
f_allwein 3y ago
If I remember, there was also an issue around people working in the administration not wanting to get used to new software/ not being able to do some tasks.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
Rinzler89 3y ago
Still. They got a Microsoft office with a lot of well paying jobs. It's something. Most countries could dream of such leverage over a company like Microsoft.
- 3rd3 3y ago
  Much of our wealth is grounded in immorality.

3rd3 3y ago

The "lesson" does not seem so clear according to the article you have linked: > Schneider claimed that the decision had been political, “not made on the basis of facts” > “We do not see any compelling technical reasons for a change to Windows and Microsoft Office… We solve compatibility and interoperability problems by providing MS Office, mostly virtualised, at workplaces that need to work together with external offices on office documents.” One point of critique was the difficulty involved with 3rd party programs on the Linux laptops. But with MS Teams, Zoom etc. running in the browser and/or having actual Linux clients these days, this may be much more feasible today. The opposition claimed the decision to abandon Linux was a purely political one. The mayor who pushed the return to Microsoft, Dieter Reiter (SPD), was a known Microsoft fanboy, but he (of course) denied personal investment in the reversal. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LiMux https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LiMux

jonesjohnson 3y ago

It's a sad story. My spouse is working for the city in some legal department and she was happily using LiMux for years with no big issues. The main problem was that the IT department was understaffed and underpaid... One reason for their switch might be that Microsoft thought about opening up a big office here. Another reason might have been the study conducted by Accenture [1], who have some close ties to Microsoft... I also enjoyed reading the interview of former Munich mayor Christian Ude [2]. Apparently, Steve Ballmer was interrupting his ski vacation in Switzerland to visit Ude and personally try to convince him to ditch LiMux. [1] https://web.archive.org/web/20170219053640/https://www.ris-muenchen.de/RII/RII/DOK/SITZUNGSVORLAGE/4262725.pdf https://web.archive.org/web/20170219053640/https://www.ris-m... [2] https://www.linux-magazin.de/ausgaben/2019/10/interview-2/ https://www.linux-magazin.de/ausgaben/2019/10/interview-2/ [edit: typo]

mschuster91 3y ago
> It's a sad story. My spouse is working for the city in some legal department and she was happily using LiMux for years with no big issues. The main problem was that the IT department was understaffed and underpaid... I worked on LiMux in the developer team at the start of my career. HN is a village, lol. And the situation is more complex, and long enough has passed for me to detail out what actually were the problems without revealing anything top secret... 1. most of the desktop hardware was OLD. Like really fucking old. We're talking of systems with 256M of RAM. Anything would send these into swapping. But instead of blaming the finance department for not upgrading the computers, everyone was more than happy to blame LiMux because many people hoped that enough blaming would bring Windows back eventually (as it did...) 2. A lot of the hundreds of sites that the city of Munich has weren't connected to fast fiber, but via 10/10 SDSL (or slower) links. That's enough for Active Directory to work, and most sites had cache servers on-site to make life bearable, but still: everything was SLOW for a lot of users. From what I hear through the grape vines, that has changed at least for everything inside the Mittlerer Ring demarcation as M-net/SWM built out FTTB across the entire area, but some sites more remote still are on crap links. 3. LibreOffice, or rather OpenOffice was shit back then - I was there right when the fork happened. (And from what I hear, it's not gotten much better... developing an office suite actually requires funding which barely anyone wants to provide) 4. Many of the special applications ("Fachverfahren") were only available for Windows. Some (e.g. SAP) were available as Java apps (with all the problems JVM has, particularly being a memory hog), a few were available as Linux applications but usually in rpm format and not deb which made every update a PITA with alien (LiMux was Ubuntu based), but the utter majority were Windows-only. Some could be made to work with WINE, but some (particularly those interfacing with proprietary hardware such as specially hardened printers) still required a few Windows workstations here and there. 5. We were fucking understaffed. Like 4 FTEs working on packaging and development, but a whole externally sourced test department (that was, to be fair, really needed to catch regressions, and there were a lot of them). But each and every single one of my colleagues were absolute experts and a joy to work with and learn from. Without them, the situation would have been much worse. 6. Political interference. Not just from the city government and its bullshit, but especially from the entrenched "micro fiefdoms" in the administration. No one wanted to cede control to us or the central IT@M organization that was being formed when I was there, instead they all wanted their own decentralized teams (dIKA). Some wanted to opt out of LiMux entirely, and had good reasons for that (chiefly, their applications not running on LiMux). 7. Dieter fucking Reiter, the successor of Christian Ude as mayor after the 2014 elections, as well as the Social Democrat-Conservative government that came into power with him. Ude, for all he turned wrong after he left office, was a staunch protector of LiMux, and we all knew what would come once he left, and so it inevitably happened. And that's just one thing in the long list of reasons to despise Reiter.

Zhyl 3y ago

A lot can happen in 20 years.

1970-01-01 3y ago

I predict it will yet fail again. Desktop Linux maintains it's bad reputation very well, and 20 years is just enough time for everyone to forget the details. Unless they have an insane user to IT ratio (perhaps 6:1), the adoption pain points will soon be rediscovered and overwhelm the project.

jraph 3y ago
Do you have actual elements? Actual pain points? The details you are mentioning?
- 1970-01-01 3y ago
  The simple fact that 30 years got the Linux Desktop to 3% desktop market share should be a very loud signal that this isn't going to work.
  - CRConrad 3y ago
    So... No elements, no pain points, no details. Thank you.
zaik 3y ago
Why do you think they stopped using Linux in Munich? I'm sorry, but it feels like you didn't read the article you're responding to at all.