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Wow... it's taken the Munich government a decade (2003-2013) to switch desktops to Linux and Free software, and they're still working on it. (There are still a

• perlgeek 13y ago
  The second good news is that, in the case of Munich, the migration is financially self-sustaining. That's because the saved license costs exceed the costs of the project. This is mostly because a large number of fairly standard desktops could be migrated early on.
  • brudgers 13y ago
    What evidence do you have that the switch is financially self-sustaining based upon license fee savings? I'm not saying this isn't true, but I've never seen a reputable ROI analysis for Munich's switch. [caveat: my German is very very weak.]
    • perlgeek 13y ago
      I was in a hearing of a committee ("Enquete-Kommission Internet und digitale Gesellschaft") of the German Parliament (Bundestag) where the technical leader of the LiMux project mentioned the numbers in passing. IIRC he mentioned that if you only consider the license costs, the balance is roughly even, and if you also consider that you need to upgrade the hardware less often (because of lower resource usage of limux vs. windows), limux comes out clearly ahead. Sorry that I don't have anything to link to, and I notice that my source is biased too.
      • brudgers 13y ago
        The hardware upgrade argument is interesting since the reason to upgrade hardware is because something breaks [same for Linux or Windows] or additional capability is needed [again the same for Linux or Windows] or just for the sake of upgrading [again the same]. It would seem that a hardware argument would be that Linux requires less expense for a replacement, e.g. Word Processing on a Raspberry Pi, though the idea of a Raspberry Pi in 2001 did not really exist. But the idea that Windows requires a more frequent upgrade cycle doesn't make sense since XP support only ended recently and still runs the hardware on which it was initially installed. Anyway for me, the elephant for FOSS is support. There are just lots of moving parts in Linux and many development teams all rowing in different directions at best and losing interest in maintaining a package at worse, or perhaps being acquired by Oracle is worse. The price of all the innovation is the risk that comes from no roadmap.
        • mschuster91 13y ago
          > But the idea that Windows requires a more frequent upgrade cycle doesn't make sense since XP support only ended recently and still runs the hardware on which it was initially installed. Windows is more and more a resource hog with every version update. Many machines able to run a WinXP are not able to run a Win7 or even 8.1, same for Vista and 7/8.1.
          • brudgers 13y ago
            Yes, of course. But upgrading from XP hasn't been necessary until last month. Until then, any machine that shipped with XP could be kept up to date via Download Tuesday without any change to the hardware, and upgrading remained as much a choice for Windows XP as for Linux. It's like saying that the existence of the Linux x64 kernel requires upgrading 32 bit machines to x64 hardware.
          • Arainach 13y ago
            Windows 7 had lower system requirements than Windows Vista. Windows 8 and 8.1 have the same system requirements as Windows 7, and in my experience often use less resources (presumably as part of their focus on mobile/tablet scenarios). The trend for the last 8 years has been one of reduced requirements, not increased.
• jnky 13y ago
  When you consider how long it is taking organizations to move away from XP, a decade for a Linux migration doesn't seem so bad.
  • webreac 13y ago
    It seems, it is same difficulty to switch from XP to linux than from XP to 8.
• danford 13y ago
  Well, it's a decade to migrate 15,000 computers. The french did over double that in the same time and plan on migrating 72,000[1]. Don't forget Munich saved 10,000,000 Euros doing this[2], and --let's be honest -- doing the same thing with windows computers wouldn't have saved more than maybe a couple years at most. [1]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... [2]http://linux.slashdot.org/story/12/11/23/1732222/limux-project-has-saved-munich-10m-so-far http://linux.slashdot.org/story/12/11/23/1732222/limux-proje...
  • josefresco 13y ago
    "The comparison with Windows assumes that Windows systems must be on the same technological level; this would, for example, mean that they would have been upgraded to Windows 7 at the end of 2011" That's a big assumption, and one that no doubt helps push the price of the MS solution up considerably.
    • drzaiusapelord 13y ago
      Relaly big assumption there. Lots of shops, including government, are only now getting off XP and migrating to 7 or 8.1. There's no case study more massaged by those who want certain outcomes than the Munich linux migration. I also believe they were running NT4 when they started this project, so they're definitely the type of organization that is very behind the tech curve. I don't have a preferred outcome and wish them the best, but there's so much BS and massaging of data here that its all fairly useless to those of us interested in how this really turned out for them. Pardon me if I don't considering slashdot as a reliable and unbiased source regarding TCO of Windows.
    • sergiosgc 13y ago
      The devil is in the details. Did they account for migration costs between windows and office versions, or just licensing costs? Migrating between windows versions is far from easy (see the XP weaning process for proof). Technology deprecation also happens on a stable platform (VB6, for example).
  • 13y ago
• wfjackson 13y ago
  > now that Munich has shown the way for others to follow Have they published any whitepaper or technical guide to switching to Linux in a corporate setting? Is there any open source CRM or other tool that they released? It would be cool if they kickstart a corporate Linux distro that everyone contributes to. I heard they spent a lot of money on IBM and SuSe consultants and also inhouse to develop software during the switch, it would go waste if they didn't publish it. Is there anything technical from them? All I see are the same stories resubmitted and upvoted ad nauseam with chest pumping about Ballmer etc. I hope to see something of substance.
  • orkoden 13y ago
    They published a LibreOffice extension to help working with forms http://www.wollmux.net/wiki/Hauptseite http://www.wollmux.net/wiki/Hauptseite
• bernardom 13y ago
  That was my reaction as well. At the conclusion of the story, they said: >> Surprisingly, the success of LiMux hasn’t resulted in a flood of similar projects across Europe I haven't been to any council meetings at major cities, but "we can maybe save a few million with a ten-year effort that may alienate lots of workers and requires winning hearts and minds" doesn't sound like a winning proposition. Good for Munich, though. Maybe they can take the people who ran the project and set up a consulting gig to make this easier for other cities?
• lifeisstillgood 13y ago
  But the "apps" are still proprietary ... The OS is important sure, but what your desktop runs these days is less and less important. I kick around a campaign on http://www.oss4gov.org/manifesto http://www.oss4gov.org/manifesto that basically says local government like Munich has at least 2000 legally mandated services to deliver and software is or will be involved in all of them and almost all that software is proprietary I swear that there is a huge amount of OSS development still to be done for the public sector - but it will not spring up organically - I mean who scratches the itch for "election management software" And yet I keep trying to get a gig as public sector open source development and boy it is tough - despite the rhetoric all the tenders assume you will chRge a license
  • higherpurpose 13y ago
    > but what your desktop runs these days is less and less important. Not if you care about US government backdoors.
    • wfjackson 13y ago
      The trend is that everything important goes to the cloud, where people add and access data from all their devices including PCs, tablets and phones. What's running on your desktop is not really important, when the cloud providers have access to it because it their servers, not yours and governments just happen to either scoop up the traffic or have special access to it. What's more private, a Word document sitting only on your drive on Windows, or the same information in a Google Doc that you uploaded from a hardened Linux machine over TOR? In that sense, what the desktop runs is becoming less important. In the first case, your file is unlikely to be accessed unless you're a person of significant interest to a government and takes some effort. In the second case, as it was revealed, it's almost routinely scanned or can be accessed with the click of a few buttons. A super secure USB booted secured PC running OpenBSD is not going to help you once the document reaches the internet/cloud.
      • FollowSteph3 13y ago
        What happens if the cloud service closes? Cloud services have some risks too: http://www.followsteph.com/2012/04/19/what-are-the-risks-of-cloud-services/ http://www.followsteph.com/2012/04/19/what-are-the-risks-of-... This is especially true for a government entity.
• leccine 13y ago
  It does not work entirely, it is unstable, it does not support X Y Z, it is harder to work with but it is LINUX!!@# Seriously though, if people think the the TCO of owning an IT infrastructure is equal to the price of the operating system than what is left to say? You should grow a brain? :) Bashing on Windows is pretty cool in the Linux community but there is hard evidence that Linux was never meant to replace desktop operating systems because those have different requirements than having a kernel and a minimal userland. Munic is learning that lesson.
• timClicks 13y ago
  There are lots of government departments still running Windows XP. These migrations are difficult.
• dredmorbius 13y ago
  Given that it frequently takes a Windows shop most of or more than a decade to migrate from one version of Windows to another, the duration of this project really isn't too surprising. As a long-time Linux user and advocate (since 1997, Unix for another decade prior to that), I've long pushed for desktop use, but it's a hard sell at many shops: they've got something that (mostly) works, external partners (businesses, customers, vendors, suppliers) are using (mostly) compatible systems, there's a workforce that's (mostly) familiar with the tools, there's a stable of application-specific software that is (mostly) aimed at that one platform, etc., etc. Change is hard, especially when the near-term benefits of that change aren't large or obvious. The Linux landscape has also been somewhat unstable. Not so much if you live on the commandline and don't follow the whims and foibles of leading distros, but desktops, office suites, package management systems, and even preferred distributions have been in constant flux over the past decade. Sometimes there's a lot of benefit is choosing one solution and sticking to it. It's also a fair argument that while the free software licensing and, open source development models have done an excellent job at delivering highly usable standards, tools, utilities, and infrastructures, their success in the end-user, GUI, desktop, and application space has been less exemplary. I still prefer many CLI tools to the GUI alternatives, and basics (text editors) to full office suites. Even now, I only fire up StarOffice, sorry, OpenOffice, sorry, NeoOffice, sorry, LibreOffice, when I need to access a (usually Microsoft-formatted) document, often to print it to PDF and read that instead (using editors to read static content is stupid). What's making such transitions far more viable is that the desktop monopoly is finally fracturing after over 20 years. I walk into offices today to find what's usually a mix of Windows and Mac systems, with a few Linux boxes for developers. Increasingly you'll find iPads or Android tablets, particularly in meetings. Chromebooks will undoubtedly start to show up. Apple cracked the OS, Google are tackling the office apps space with Google Docs (though as with LibreOffice, I generally use these only once in a blue moon). The SAAS model has gotten people used to using services offered online rather than hosted on their own infrastructure, though post-Snowden security concerns, NSA or otherwise, are definitely affecting this logic. I'm starting my next 20 years of advocacy based on the concept of small, cheap, automatically-configuring service platforms which can provide a distributed SAAS experience without relying on a central provider, think FreedomBox. Another factor is those legacy industry or nich-specific programs. Increasingly those are not clustered on a single platform, but function only on some legacy (and often unsupported) version of Windows, which must then be kept running, but also somehow secured. Virtualization is increasingly used for this, and with it the realization that no one OS offers access to all the tools a modern information worker uses. I routinely keep multiple VMs at hand to run Windows (often for software to manage my Linux servers), and find that teams will adopt Mac-specific applications that aren't available on either my Linux laptop or Windows VMs. Welcome to the future. Incidentally, the issues noted in the article with the tight coupling of WINE to Windows applications is an instance of this. And the truth is that Munich's transition was successful and had strong positives from the start (I've been following it for much of its 13 year life). It was a major transition accomplished gradually with feedback and lessons learned from early deployments applied and adapted as the project progressed.