5 ms·

So the result after more than 10 years is: - not all desktops can be transitionend to Linux because of the required Windows only software. - some of the Linux d

by orkoden 12y ago

So the result after more than 10 years is: - not all desktops can be transitionend to Linux because of the required Windows only software. - some of the Linux desktops run Wine to support Windows applications. Which is a huge hacky configuration nightmare. The project has seen huge delays and missed deadlines over its duration. See http://web.archive.org/web/20120214072347/http://limuxwatch.blogspot.com/ http://web.archive.org/web/20120214072347/http://limuxwatch.... to get an idea of how long it took them to get anywhere and how often the goalposts were moved. Many other city administrations canceled plans of switching to Linux because Munich had such a hard time making it happen.

pessimizer 12y ago
>some of the Linux desktops run Wine to support Windows applications. Which is a huge hacky configuration nightmare. Wasn't that a total of two? From the article, it seems that they generally just used a Windows computer when they needed a Windows computer.
biehl 12y ago
Wine is pretty good, and supports a surprising amount of windows applications. I am not sure why you call it a configuration nightmare. Have you tried Wine lately?
- kiallmacinnes 12y ago
  I have, it wasn't pretty... For simple apps, It seems to do well.. For anything complex, it's painful.
- orkoden 12y ago
  RTFA > “We have a very limited Wine installation, because there’s always the need to save the configuration of Wine together with the application. They’re deeply dependent. If you change the version of Wine, you have to do something with the application, and vice-versa. We saw that we’d have to use 10 or 15 different configurations of Wine on the same machine in some cases
  - stcredzero 12y ago
    There are tools that will package a Wine installation together with the app.
    - brudgers 12y ago
      This is nothing against Wine or Linux, but shows why organizations will choose Windows after a business analysis - fixed costs. Wine like other Free or Open Source Software sends people down the rabbit hole because there is no single source of responsibility other than the individual user or organization themselves. You can't 'get Wine on the phone' when there's a problem and the business case for Wine developers to fix edge cases is comparatively weak compared to the business case at Microsoft. To put it another way, there's a solution for experienced Wine users, but the government of Munich's business is not developing software expertise in regard to Wine. Solving problems with Wine doesn't scale to other parts of Linux. That same troubleshooting process has to be repeated again and again for other software with varying support documentation quality and community sympathy.
      - riquito 12y ago
        > You can't 'get Wine on the phone' when there's a problem Actually you can: first item in the help page http://www.winehq.org/help/ http://www.winehq.org/help/ Of course if you meant "support on the phone for free" that's not gonna happen.
        brudgers 12y ago
        One option is reading the FAQ...114 line items all on a single page, and then going to the User Guide, and then the man pages and some online community forums, etc. and developing your own expertise. Maybe, after something between a few minutes and several months, a user will discover some of these tools to which the above post referred. But only maybe. The other option is hiring a consultant. A copy of Windows is $200. The reason for using Wine is running Windows programs. The business case for Wine becomes weak for many people pretty quick when time is money, e.g. how long does it take before the cost in cash and time associated with consultants costs more than Windows? The quality of support for non-technical Linux users is why a company can make a business out of supporting Wine. Indeed, it's why RedHat can be a public company.
- adwn 12y ago
  I have. I'm using it for a German tax reporting software (ElsterFormular), and I couldn't get it to run at all with the current Wine version (1.7.17), so I had to downgrade Wine to 1.6.1 so it would work (but not without prepending "taskset -c 0"). So yeah, when Wine works flawlessly, it's great. When it doesn't: good luck.
  - pritambaral 12y ago
    1.7 is not stable, I think. The last time I had issues with wine, I learned that 1.odd is unstable and 1.even is stable.
    - adwn 12y ago
      Ah, thanks, that's good to know. Still, the 1.6.1 version crashes if started without "taskset -c 0", so either it's a concurrency bug in Wine, or Wine exposes a concurrency bug in the software. In any case, this is one more data point showing that using Wine in a production environment is not necessarily a good idea.
flexie 12y ago
Why didnt they just change OS as they bought new PCs?
- kiallmacinnes 12y ago
  Most places won't refresh entire departments at a go, and allowing a single department to "mix" windows / linux without a clean cutover would likely make the migration more work.
- orkoden 12y ago
  The OS is not the issue. Users mainly use applications not operating systems. Software that people need to accomplish their work is much harder to replace. The team in Munich had to develop their own extension to OpenOffice/LibreOffice to support existing workflows http://www.wollmux.net/wiki/Hauptseite http://www.wollmux.net/wiki/Hauptseite
  - danford 12y ago
    It looks like they had to develop it for windows too.
    - orkoden 12y ago
      That was part of their phased transition plan. 1. Transition to LibreOffice on Windows 2. Transition to Linux
danford 12y ago
You make it sound as if the migration wasn't a success while the original article claims it to be more than successful. In my experience, switching over PC's to something like Ubuntu is no issue in most cases. So they had to set a up a few computers with windows/wine?? That's no reason to keep all your PCs windows. Plenty of government have it the other way around where they're running Linux on a few computers and windows on the rest. Also, while you quote a few articles that show organizations "changing their mind" on Linux, there are plenty of articles that show governments and organizations still attempting a migration, most recently the entire Indian government (http://itsfoss.com/tamil-nadu-switches-linux/ http://itsfoss.com/tamil-nadu-switches-linux/), The French switched 37,000 PCs to linux (http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2013-10/01/french-national-police http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2013-10/01/french-nation...), Don't forget the Munich saved 10,000,000 Euros by switching to Linux. I could keep going. In my experience Windows is not needed in 90% of cases and when it is it's for a skilled task that involves skilled workers. It's a fact that skilled workers do not make up even close to a majority of the work force. Also, Ubuntu is certified to run on 70% of desktop computers: http://www.ubuntu.com/certification/desktop/ http://www.ubuntu.com/certification/desktop/ . One of the the manufacturers I work closely with is Dell and for the most part I haven't had any problems installing Linux on any business model Dell desktop that there is. Business models don't typically come with high end nVidia GPUs and other unnecessary hardware, so upgrading to Linux is no problem most of the time. On budget and typical business systems Linux seems to be the king of resume times and performance (at least in my experience). I've only used windows 8 on an employees laptop and from what I can tell, it wasn't made to perform well on his Toshiba to say the least. I've seen both windows 7 and windows 8 running very well on the right hardware though. The performance of windows on budget hardware (~75% of consumer) is mediocre at best. Can we stop pretending Linux has no use for anything?
- throwaway235622 12y ago
  The 10 million euro saving seems to have put the costs as solely the costs of 1) Upgrading to Windows 7 at the end of 2011 (lol) 2) Upgrading versions of Office 3) Upgrading PCs to be able to run Windows 7 They assumes all other costs are the same. Which confuses me a bit because they said they had consultants working to develop the underlying OS itself (so wouldn't you save the cost of those consultants if you're buying Windows?). But I don't mean to be begging the question, as there's no real reason to not trust them (but isn't there no real reason not to trust HP by the same token?). Anyway, I can't read German so maybe I missed something. http://www.h-online.com/open/news/item/Linux-brings-over-EUR10-million-savings-for-Munich-1755802.html http://www.h-online.com/open/news/item/Linux-brings-over-EUR... http://www.ris-muenchen.de/RII2/RII/ris_vorlagen_dokumente.jsp?risid=2773053 http://www.ris-muenchen.de/RII2/RII/ris_vorlagen_dokumente.j... I'm not a huge fan of their numbers, but I guess if they hold up and people are 100% equally productive then it's fine. But really saving 10 million over the course of a 10 yr project for a city government the size of Munich doesn't seem that significant to me. >You make it sound as if the migration wasn't a success while the original article claims it to be more than successful Why does it have to be either a failure or more then successful? Why couldn't have just been a completed project that wasn't a huge success or failure. Honestly that the article doesn't mention any issues other then a handwavey "there have been hurdles", doesn't inspire me to think the article is the greatest in the world. But maybe I'm just cynical.
sliverstorm 12y ago
This is where things like Citrix could come in.

by orkoden 12y ago

pessimizer 12y ago

>some of the Linux desktops run Wine to support Windows applications. Which is a huge hacky configuration nightmare. Wasn't that a total of two? From the article, it seems that they generally just used a Windows computer when they needed a Windows computer.

biehl 12y ago

Wine is pretty good, and supports a surprising amount of windows applications. I am not sure why you call it a configuration nightmare. Have you tried Wine lately?

kiallmacinnes 12y ago
I have, it wasn't pretty... For simple apps, It seems to do well.. For anything complex, it's painful.
orkoden 12y ago
RTFA > “We have a very limited Wine installation, because there’s always the need to save the configuration of Wine together with the application. They’re deeply dependent. If you change the version of Wine, you have to do something with the application, and vice-versa. We saw that we’d have to use 10 or 15 different configurations of Wine on the same machine in some cases
- stcredzero 12y ago
  There are tools that will package a Wine installation together with the app.
  - brudgers 12y ago
    This is nothing against Wine or Linux, but shows why organizations will choose Windows after a business analysis - fixed costs. Wine like other Free or Open Source Software sends people down the rabbit hole because there is no single source of responsibility other than the individual user or organization themselves. You can't 'get Wine on the phone' when there's a problem and the business case for Wine developers to fix edge cases is comparatively weak compared to the business case at Microsoft. To put it another way, there's a solution for experienced Wine users, but the government of Munich's business is not developing software expertise in regard to Wine. Solving problems with Wine doesn't scale to other parts of Linux. That same troubleshooting process has to be repeated again and again for other software with varying support documentation quality and community sympathy.
    - riquito 12y ago
      > You can't 'get Wine on the phone' when there's a problem Actually you can: first item in the help page http://www.winehq.org/help/ http://www.winehq.org/help/ Of course if you meant "support on the phone for free" that's not gonna happen.
      - brudgers 12y ago
        One option is reading the FAQ...114 line items all on a single page, and then going to the User Guide, and then the man pages and some online community forums, etc. and developing your own expertise. Maybe, after something between a few minutes and several months, a user will discover some of these tools to which the above post referred. But only maybe. The other option is hiring a consultant. A copy of Windows is $200. The reason for using Wine is running Windows programs. The business case for Wine becomes weak for many people pretty quick when time is money, e.g. how long does it take before the cost in cash and time associated with consultants costs more than Windows? The quality of support for non-technical Linux users is why a company can make a business out of supporting Wine. Indeed, it's why RedHat can be a public company.
adwn 12y ago
I have. I'm using it for a German tax reporting software (ElsterFormular), and I couldn't get it to run at all with the current Wine version (1.7.17), so I had to downgrade Wine to 1.6.1 so it would work (but not without prepending "taskset -c 0"). So yeah, when Wine works flawlessly, it's great. When it doesn't: good luck.
- pritambaral 12y ago
  1.7 is not stable, I think. The last time I had issues with wine, I learned that 1.odd is unstable and 1.even is stable.
  - adwn 12y ago
    Ah, thanks, that's good to know. Still, the 1.6.1 version crashes if started without "taskset -c 0", so either it's a concurrency bug in Wine, or Wine exposes a concurrency bug in the software. In any case, this is one more data point showing that using Wine in a production environment is not necessarily a good idea.

flexie 12y ago

Why didnt they just change OS as they bought new PCs?

kiallmacinnes 12y ago
Most places won't refresh entire departments at a go, and allowing a single department to "mix" windows / linux without a clean cutover would likely make the migration more work.
orkoden 12y ago
The OS is not the issue. Users mainly use applications not operating systems. Software that people need to accomplish their work is much harder to replace. The team in Munich had to develop their own extension to OpenOffice/LibreOffice to support existing workflows http://www.wollmux.net/wiki/Hauptseite http://www.wollmux.net/wiki/Hauptseite
- danford 12y ago
  It looks like they had to develop it for windows too.
  - orkoden 12y ago
    That was part of their phased transition plan. 1. Transition to LibreOffice on Windows 2. Transition to Linux

danford 12y ago

You make it sound as if the migration wasn't a success while the original article claims it to be more than successful. In my experience, switching over PC's to something like Ubuntu is no issue in most cases. So they had to set a up a few computers with windows/wine?? That's no reason to keep all your PCs windows. Plenty of government have it the other way around where they're running Linux on a few computers and windows on the rest. Also, while you quote a few articles that show organizations "changing their mind" on Linux, there are plenty of articles that show governments and organizations still attempting a migration, most recently the entire Indian government (http://itsfoss.com/tamil-nadu-switches-linux/ http://itsfoss.com/tamil-nadu-switches-linux/), The French switched 37,000 PCs to linux (http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2013-10/01/french-national-police http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2013-10/01/french-nation...), Don't forget the Munich saved 10,000,000 Euros by switching to Linux. I could keep going. In my experience Windows is not needed in 90% of cases and when it is it's for a skilled task that involves skilled workers. It's a fact that skilled workers do not make up even close to a majority of the work force. Also, Ubuntu is certified to run on 70% of desktop computers: http://www.ubuntu.com/certification/desktop/ http://www.ubuntu.com/certification/desktop/ . One of the the manufacturers I work closely with is Dell and for the most part I haven't had any problems installing Linux on any business model Dell desktop that there is. Business models don't typically come with high end nVidia GPUs and other unnecessary hardware, so upgrading to Linux is no problem most of the time. On budget and typical business systems Linux seems to be the king of resume times and performance (at least in my experience). I've only used windows 8 on an employees laptop and from what I can tell, it wasn't made to perform well on his Toshiba to say the least. I've seen both windows 7 and windows 8 running very well on the right hardware though. The performance of windows on budget hardware (~75% of consumer) is mediocre at best. Can we stop pretending Linux has no use for anything?

throwaway235622 12y ago
The 10 million euro saving seems to have put the costs as solely the costs of 1) Upgrading to Windows 7 at the end of 2011 (lol) 2) Upgrading versions of Office 3) Upgrading PCs to be able to run Windows 7 They assumes all other costs are the same. Which confuses me a bit because they said they had consultants working to develop the underlying OS itself (so wouldn't you save the cost of those consultants if you're buying Windows?). But I don't mean to be begging the question, as there's no real reason to not trust them (but isn't there no real reason not to trust HP by the same token?). Anyway, I can't read German so maybe I missed something. http://www.h-online.com/open/news/item/Linux-brings-over-EUR10-million-savings-for-Munich-1755802.html http://www.h-online.com/open/news/item/Linux-brings-over-EUR... http://www.ris-muenchen.de/RII2/RII/ris_vorlagen_dokumente.jsp?risid=2773053 http://www.ris-muenchen.de/RII2/RII/ris_vorlagen_dokumente.j... I'm not a huge fan of their numbers, but I guess if they hold up and people are 100% equally productive then it's fine. But really saving 10 million over the course of a 10 yr project for a city government the size of Munich doesn't seem that significant to me. >You make it sound as if the migration wasn't a success while the original article claims it to be more than successful Why does it have to be either a failure or more then successful? Why couldn't have just been a completed project that wasn't a huge success or failure. Honestly that the article doesn't mention any issues other then a handwavey "there have been hurdles", doesn't inspire me to think the article is the greatest in the world. But maybe I'm just cynical.

sliverstorm 12y ago

This is where things like Citrix could come in.