5 ms·

Linux-on-the-desktop pioneer Munich now considering a switch back to Windows

48 points by vilgax 12y ago

untog 12y ago
I'm sure many will say that the failure is the exact implementation of Linux, or miscalculated expectations, or incompetent sysops, or, or... They're all right. But it's also exactly the problem with Linux in a corporate environment. For better and worse, Microsoft have made Windows a single, predictable entity. While we developers see the myriad of Linux options out there as the result of freedom, customers see them as evidence of confusion and lack of focus.
- taftster 12y ago
  I don't entirely disagree with you, I get what you're saying. But I definitely don't see Windows as being tightly focussed nor a single predictable entity. The differences, nuances, and upgrade paths between 95, 98, ME, XP, Vista, 7, 8 are as fragmented and confusing as possible. Linux isn't any better, this is true. But I don't buy that it's because of singular vision that Microsoft continues to dominate. Today Apple has the strongest composed experience, in my opinion. Too bad they have basically zero corporate presence.
  - dmishe 12y ago
    >Too bad they have basically zero corporate presence. perhaps this is exactly why :)
  - untog 12y ago
    Apple has zero corporate presence because as far as I can tell, they don't really try. We tried setting up some Apple TVs at my work to use as an AirPlay target during presentations. But Bonjour can't cross subnets (or something similar), so we couldn't do it. And Apple were absolutely uninterested in providing support.
    - chubs 12y ago
      With the latest firmware + ios7, Airplay now works in such environments because it uses bluetooth for handshaking. Might be worth re-trying?
  - indlebe 12y ago
    >But I definitely don't see Windows as being tightly focussed nor a single predictable entity. This is perhaps because you know about the topic. The average user, because MS dominated most computer interactions that they've had, psychologically feels quite comfortable with it. But I don't know if Linux is ready for the desktop yet. IMHO it's place is in the back-end. Because Linux has more freedom it attracts developers/coders/programmers that also value freedom over vendor support. Any *nix flavor offers more hackability than MS. And I think you'll find that the folks who use it think more freely when designing solutions as well.
jqm 12y ago
Funny. I work at a place with extensive MS systems and we get lots of complaints and have no shortage of issues aside from the complaints. I often dream about how nice it would be to replace crufty sharepoint with some web apps on a Linux server do our own in house mail. I guess the grass is often greener on the other side of the fence. But for me personally.... I chose Linux. It just works better for what I do and doesn't annoy the bejeazus out of me at every turn with push buttons and hidden stuff like MS products seem to. Maybe I am just more tolerant of open source stuff. But push buttons and hidden settings do annoy me. Text file configuration and the command line. It's fast, it's simple, it's what I like.
- aeturnum 12y ago
  It feels very dependant on your company's individual use cases. Sysadmin work is probably going to be easier on Linux, but each time a user has a problem adjusting something it makes more work for a sysadmin. The best of both worlds would be Windows running on a *nix system I suppose, but that seems really unlikely.
  - jqm 12y ago
    ....and don't even get me started on that push button infected bloated monstrosity called IIS......
lostcolony 12y ago
Doesn't surprise me really. Despite the advances of some of the more popular distros, Linux still appeals to the power user, not to the casual user. I was reminded of that just recently when I was having to do some googling, sudo apt-get some libraries, and chmod some stuff, just to use a piece of fairly popular software, on Mint, one of the more approachable distros. I was struck by the thought "...I would never, ever want to have to walk (elderly neighbor who has asked me for tech support help in the past) through this".
- jqm 12y ago
  I actually installed Mint on a few PC's back when windows8 first came out. One was for a grandma in her 70's. It just worked. Of course... she basically uses it for facebook so there was no chmoding to be done. This was nearly 2 years ago and she hasn't complained once.
- _delirium 12y ago
  Have you tried Windows recently? I haven't taken the plunge to move my relatives to Linux yet, but my experiences supporting relatives trying to use some mixture of Vista, Win7, and Win8 are extremely bad. I feel there was a period when many "normal" people did figure out Windows 95/98/XP and it could be taken as a default graphical computer interface. But the experience they gained has bitrotted as Microsoft has changed things around, and the current situation is a mess.
  - m_mueller 12y ago
    It's not even just users I support, I have difficulties with win8 myself. As an example every time I open up a metro windows, there is a big dialog at the right side saying 'swipe left to start (begin swiping from outside the screen) - I can't get rid of it with my touchpad or keyboard or anything. Could be because the VM doesn't send in these gestures, but heck, how could they just assume that everyone is able to do these kinds of gestures? - even for accessibility reasons this is terrible, an area where MS has been pretty good in the past.
  - pistle 12y ago
    All my relatives use Win7 or Win8 and the Win8 ones are the happiest, love OneDrive, etc. etc. My sister then switched their phones over to Lumia 1020s because of Win8 and bought a Yoga 2 Pro. Her comment: "Wait. So what's all the fuss about? I love how this stuff all just works together and it's pretty much exactly like Win7." I guess I should just be proud of the genius that is my sister who figured it all out on her own. I think I've answered 2-3 questions about Win Phone and one, my favorite, about their old printer. Her: "What do we have to do to get it to work?" Me: "Have you plugged it in yet?" Her: "Daaaamn. It just worked."
djur 12y ago
It seems like a big part of the motivation is that every other entity they have to interact with is using Windows. That's a pretty compelling reason to switch back, and also a pretty good example of how Microsoft is excellent at causing vendor lock-in. Also, there's not really anything available in the open source world that provides precisely the features that corporate sysadmins look for in Exchange (and Sharepoint, Active Directory, etc.) in an in-house system. I didn't enjoy switching to Exchange from Google Apps post-acquisition, but I don't know of any self-hosted alternatives that provide vaguely integrated email and calendar that don't suck equally as hard as Exchange.
4bpp 12y ago
Google Translate butchers the article badly, but https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&js=y&prev=_t&hl=en&ie=UTF-8&u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.heise.de%2Fnewsticker%2Fmeldung%2FLinux-in-Muenchen-Stadtrat-verteidigt-LiMux-gegen-Buergermeister-2262506.html&edit-text=&act=url https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&js=y&pr... suggests that this is more of a personal ambition of the vice-mayor and the city council is positioning itself firmly against any move back to Windows. Ultimately, it is more surprising that things even managed to remain this peaceful so far. Windows holds a huge home advantage simply by being the operating system almost everyone in the bureaucracy invariably uses at home. Many of the employees probably already invested years of painstaking trial-and-error, frustrated tech support calls and offering of incentives to more computer-literate relatives and offspring to get where they are in terms of being able to navigate a Windows desktop. No amount of corporate training is going to be able to make up for the feeling of frustration that those people will feel from the realisation that much of that was moot and they will have to relearn the basics.
- click170 12y ago
  As one of those computer-literate relatives / offspring, I can't help but feel like I'm contributing to the problem by helping them "fix" their windows computers. So I've stopped doing it. I've explained politely but firmly that I'll be happy to help them transition to a Linux or Mac desktop because I use those in my daily life and am familiar with them, but I'm not helping them with their Windows 8 PC. I do not use it, don't plan to, and have no interest in it. Anecdotally, the relative who is the most cautious seems to be the one who causes most of the problems by trying to click on all of the "helpful" messages that pop up. This came to light after they got a new laptop that only one of them had been using exclusively.
  - graeme 12y ago
    >As one of those computer-literate relatives / offspring, I can't help but feel like I'm contributing to the problem by helping them "fix" their windows computers. So I've stopped doing it. This happened to me after I switched to mac. Not on purpose, I just stopped knowing how to troubleshoot. Recently, my parents had to upgrade their old XP computer. They bought a mac. They were worried about learning Windows 8 without support.
cm127 12y ago
I'm kind of surprised that they're getting push-back for Microsoft after the whole NSA thing last year. I know it's unfair to blame the company for any of it, but it's still a US company that has to follow US law.
bwanab 12y ago
So far, it seems that people have missed the (to my mind) crucial statement that Microsoft is relocating its German headquarters to Munich. Could that have anything to do with the switch?
- Vik1ng 12y ago
  Well, it's not like it was far away before. Old location: http://osm.org/go/0JBO8dB-?m= http://osm.org/go/0JBO8dB-?m= New location: http://osm.org/go/0JBKuNE-?m= http://osm.org/go/0JBKuNE-?m=
bane 12y ago
The problem ultimately is that any Linux distribution turns what are usually normal user-level issues into sys-admin issues.
- vacri 12y ago
  The problem really is that for those of us who grew up with windows, we encountered all the oddities and breakages gradually over time. Then when we switch to linux, we encounter all the new oddities all at once, and have a preconceived idea of how an operating system should work and even look like.
  - bane 12y ago
    No, it's much more complicated on Linux. Very few normal user "I don't know how to do this" problems on Windows or OS X require sys admin level skills. These days most things you want to do either just work, or are discoverable just by poking around in menus and trying a few things. When something doesn't just work in Windows or OS X there's usually a GUI somewhere that solves it. As soon as you hit a problem in Linux, it almost inevitably requires you to fire up a terminal and start editing config files, dealing with permissions, building from source. And half the time if you screw it up, you're left with an unusable system. If you don't believe me, pick a distro, and start reading through the help forums for that distro, questions that involve normal user type problems like "I don't know how to share this folder on my network" or "audio doesn't work". As soon as a user has to open a terminal to do something, they've become a system admin. For example, here's the instructions for backing up and restoring a hard drive (Keep in mind, this is 2014) http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=2234758 http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=2234758 Again, in 2014, here's the "fix" to keep your windows on the correct monitors. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LwJl3ohmmqc&feature=youtu.be https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LwJl3ohmmqc&feature=youtu.be Or, "I can't browse a windows share on my home network" http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1169149 http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1169149 Here's the instructions for "getting a list of software that's installed on my computer" http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=261366 http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=261366 How to install a scanner http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=2166420 http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=2166420 A fun drinking game you can play with Linux tutorials intended to solve normal user-level issues: - count the steps until a terminal is open, drink that number of shots. - for every sudo command, drink a shot - every time a file has to be edited or redirected, drink a shot, pipes are two shots - every time a permission has to be changed, drink a shot - if the user has to run a script, drink a shot - if the user has to apt-get (or equivalent) something that has a completely non-discoverable name that you just have to "know", drink two shots. If it's an apt-get for something with a guessable name, 1 shot. - if the user has to concern themselves with overwriting files or making backups of something, drink a shot - if the user has to compile something, drink a shot - every time the user has to 'ps' or 'kill' a process, drink a shot - if the problem is the result of the distro updating a library, drink two shots - if the problem is the result of an arbitrary compatibility issue with something that has an incompehensible name (like pcmanfm), drink a shot, if the problem is because of a minor version difference, drink two shots - if it's a problem that only exists on Linux because the rest of the world is ignoring it (like access to streaming media sites), drink 2 shots, if the solutions are complex and require multiple shots to get through (see all of the above), then don't work, drink 2 more shots - for every page of follow up in the forum that's proposing the solution, drink a shot. Here's an example of a simple game. An answer to the question of "how do I watch netflix in Ubuntu" > why don't you just inst all netflix > To install on Ubuntu / Mint - > Start terminal 1 shot > $ sudo apt-add-repository ppa:ehoover/compholio 1 shot for sudo, 2 shots for nondiscoverability > $ sudo apt-get update 1 shot for sudo > $ sudo apt-get install netflix-desktop 1 shot for sudo 1 shot for apt-get > and then find the NetFlix Icon under Video click to install and you are done. no shots, but why couldn't this just be done via a gui? Total Damage: 7 shots of hard liquor. Congratulations, installing netflix has just made you an alcoholic. Here's a 33 page discussion on installing the ePSXe playstation emulator. http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=612021 http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=612021 Congratulations you've now died of alcohol poisoning. The Windows version of this is 1) download the install file 2) unzip it 3) run the epsxe.exe file
TazeTSchnitzel 12y ago
Better link (Ars Technica, English): arstechnica.com/business/2014/08/linux-on-the-desktop-pioneer-munich-now-considering-a-switch-back-to-windows/
- dang 12y ago
  Thanks. We changed to that from https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&js=y&prev=_t&hl=en&ie=UTF-8&u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.sueddeutsche.de%2Fmuenchen%2Fmuenchner-stadtverwaltung-von-microsoft-zu-linux-und-zurueck-1.2090611 https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&js=y&pr....
truantbuick 12y ago
I'm sure I saw a HN link a month or two ago touting the great success of Munich's Linux move. Can anybody find it?
- MichaelApproved 12y ago
  At the bottom of HN is a search box you could use to find old articles. I searched for "Munich" and found the article as the top post. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7720219 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7720219
- adamfeldman 12y ago
  https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7720219 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7720219 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8002194 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8002194 http://hn.algolia.com/#!/story/forever/prefix/0/munich http://hn.algolia.com/#!/story/forever/prefix/0/munich
pippy 12y ago
I'd like to see them roll out Windows 8.1 and get fewer complaints.
tuhaihe 12y ago
It's hard for general users to use Linux desktop. "Free" also can has a big cost.

48 points by vilgax 12y ago

untog 12y ago

I'm sure many will say that the failure is the exact implementation of Linux, or miscalculated expectations, or incompetent sysops, or, or... They're all right. But it's also exactly the problem with Linux in a corporate environment. For better and worse, Microsoft have made Windows a single, predictable entity. While we developers see the myriad of Linux options out there as the result of freedom, customers see them as evidence of confusion and lack of focus.

taftster 12y ago
I don't entirely disagree with you, I get what you're saying. But I definitely don't see Windows as being tightly focussed nor a single predictable entity. The differences, nuances, and upgrade paths between 95, 98, ME, XP, Vista, 7, 8 are as fragmented and confusing as possible. Linux isn't any better, this is true. But I don't buy that it's because of singular vision that Microsoft continues to dominate. Today Apple has the strongest composed experience, in my opinion. Too bad they have basically zero corporate presence.
- dmishe 12y ago
  >Too bad they have basically zero corporate presence. perhaps this is exactly why :)
- untog 12y ago
  Apple has zero corporate presence because as far as I can tell, they don't really try. We tried setting up some Apple TVs at my work to use as an AirPlay target during presentations. But Bonjour can't cross subnets (or something similar), so we couldn't do it. And Apple were absolutely uninterested in providing support.
  - chubs 12y ago
    With the latest firmware + ios7, Airplay now works in such environments because it uses bluetooth for handshaking. Might be worth re-trying?
- indlebe 12y ago
  >But I definitely don't see Windows as being tightly focussed nor a single predictable entity. This is perhaps because you know about the topic. The average user, because MS dominated most computer interactions that they've had, psychologically feels quite comfortable with it. But I don't know if Linux is ready for the desktop yet. IMHO it's place is in the back-end. Because Linux has more freedom it attracts developers/coders/programmers that also value freedom over vendor support. Any *nix flavor offers more hackability than MS. And I think you'll find that the folks who use it think more freely when designing solutions as well.

jqm 12y ago

Funny. I work at a place with extensive MS systems and we get lots of complaints and have no shortage of issues aside from the complaints. I often dream about how nice it would be to replace crufty sharepoint with some web apps on a Linux server do our own in house mail. I guess the grass is often greener on the other side of the fence. But for me personally.... I chose Linux. It just works better for what I do and doesn't annoy the bejeazus out of me at every turn with push buttons and hidden stuff like MS products seem to. Maybe I am just more tolerant of open source stuff. But push buttons and hidden settings do annoy me. Text file configuration and the command line. It's fast, it's simple, it's what I like.

aeturnum 12y ago
It feels very dependant on your company's individual use cases. Sysadmin work is probably going to be easier on Linux, but each time a user has a problem adjusting something it makes more work for a sysadmin. The best of both worlds would be Windows running on a *nix system I suppose, but that seems really unlikely.
- jqm 12y ago
  ....and don't even get me started on that push button infected bloated monstrosity called IIS......

lostcolony 12y ago

Doesn't surprise me really. Despite the advances of some of the more popular distros, Linux still appeals to the power user, not to the casual user. I was reminded of that just recently when I was having to do some googling, sudo apt-get some libraries, and chmod some stuff, just to use a piece of fairly popular software, on Mint, one of the more approachable distros. I was struck by the thought "...I would never, ever want to have to walk (elderly neighbor who has asked me for tech support help in the past) through this".

jqm 12y ago
I actually installed Mint on a few PC's back when windows8 first came out. One was for a grandma in her 70's. It just worked. Of course... she basically uses it for facebook so there was no chmoding to be done. This was nearly 2 years ago and she hasn't complained once.
_delirium 12y ago
Have you tried Windows recently? I haven't taken the plunge to move my relatives to Linux yet, but my experiences supporting relatives trying to use some mixture of Vista, Win7, and Win8 are extremely bad. I feel there was a period when many "normal" people did figure out Windows 95/98/XP and it could be taken as a default graphical computer interface. But the experience they gained has bitrotted as Microsoft has changed things around, and the current situation is a mess.
- m_mueller 12y ago
  It's not even just users I support, I have difficulties with win8 myself. As an example every time I open up a metro windows, there is a big dialog at the right side saying 'swipe left to start (begin swiping from outside the screen) - I can't get rid of it with my touchpad or keyboard or anything. Could be because the VM doesn't send in these gestures, but heck, how could they just assume that everyone is able to do these kinds of gestures? - even for accessibility reasons this is terrible, an area where MS has been pretty good in the past.
- pistle 12y ago
  All my relatives use Win7 or Win8 and the Win8 ones are the happiest, love OneDrive, etc. etc. My sister then switched their phones over to Lumia 1020s because of Win8 and bought a Yoga 2 Pro. Her comment: "Wait. So what's all the fuss about? I love how this stuff all just works together and it's pretty much exactly like Win7." I guess I should just be proud of the genius that is my sister who figured it all out on her own. I think I've answered 2-3 questions about Win Phone and one, my favorite, about their old printer. Her: "What do we have to do to get it to work?" Me: "Have you plugged it in yet?" Her: "Daaaamn. It just worked."

djur 12y ago

It seems like a big part of the motivation is that every other entity they have to interact with is using Windows. That's a pretty compelling reason to switch back, and also a pretty good example of how Microsoft is excellent at causing vendor lock-in. Also, there's not really anything available in the open source world that provides precisely the features that corporate sysadmins look for in Exchange (and Sharepoint, Active Directory, etc.) in an in-house system. I didn't enjoy switching to Exchange from Google Apps post-acquisition, but I don't know of any self-hosted alternatives that provide vaguely integrated email and calendar that don't suck equally as hard as Exchange.

4bpp 12y ago

Google Translate butchers the article badly, but https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&js=y&prev=_t&hl=en&ie=UTF-8&u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.heise.de%2Fnewsticker%2Fmeldung%2FLinux-in-Muenchen-Stadtrat-verteidigt-LiMux-gegen-Buergermeister-2262506.html&edit-text=&act=url https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&js=y&pr... suggests that this is more of a personal ambition of the vice-mayor and the city council is positioning itself firmly against any move back to Windows. Ultimately, it is more surprising that things even managed to remain this peaceful so far. Windows holds a huge home advantage simply by being the operating system almost everyone in the bureaucracy invariably uses at home. Many of the employees probably already invested years of painstaking trial-and-error, frustrated tech support calls and offering of incentives to more computer-literate relatives and offspring to get where they are in terms of being able to navigate a Windows desktop. No amount of corporate training is going to be able to make up for the feeling of frustration that those people will feel from the realisation that much of that was moot and they will have to relearn the basics.

click170 12y ago
As one of those computer-literate relatives / offspring, I can't help but feel like I'm contributing to the problem by helping them "fix" their windows computers. So I've stopped doing it. I've explained politely but firmly that I'll be happy to help them transition to a Linux or Mac desktop because I use those in my daily life and am familiar with them, but I'm not helping them with their Windows 8 PC. I do not use it, don't plan to, and have no interest in it. Anecdotally, the relative who is the most cautious seems to be the one who causes most of the problems by trying to click on all of the "helpful" messages that pop up. This came to light after they got a new laptop that only one of them had been using exclusively.
- graeme 12y ago
  >As one of those computer-literate relatives / offspring, I can't help but feel like I'm contributing to the problem by helping them "fix" their windows computers. So I've stopped doing it. This happened to me after I switched to mac. Not on purpose, I just stopped knowing how to troubleshoot. Recently, my parents had to upgrade their old XP computer. They bought a mac. They were worried about learning Windows 8 without support.

cm127 12y ago

I'm kind of surprised that they're getting push-back for Microsoft after the whole NSA thing last year. I know it's unfair to blame the company for any of it, but it's still a US company that has to follow US law.

bwanab 12y ago

So far, it seems that people have missed the (to my mind) crucial statement that Microsoft is relocating its German headquarters to Munich. Could that have anything to do with the switch?

Vik1ng 12y ago
Well, it's not like it was far away before. Old location: http://osm.org/go/0JBO8dB-?m= http://osm.org/go/0JBO8dB-?m= New location: http://osm.org/go/0JBKuNE-?m= http://osm.org/go/0JBKuNE-?m=

bane 12y ago

The problem ultimately is that any Linux distribution turns what are usually normal user-level issues into sys-admin issues.

vacri 12y ago
The problem really is that for those of us who grew up with windows, we encountered all the oddities and breakages gradually over time. Then when we switch to linux, we encounter all the new oddities all at once, and have a preconceived idea of how an operating system should work and even look like.
- bane 12y ago
  No, it's much more complicated on Linux. Very few normal user "I don't know how to do this" problems on Windows or OS X require sys admin level skills. These days most things you want to do either just work, or are discoverable just by poking around in menus and trying a few things. When something doesn't just work in Windows or OS X there's usually a GUI somewhere that solves it. As soon as you hit a problem in Linux, it almost inevitably requires you to fire up a terminal and start editing config files, dealing with permissions, building from source. And half the time if you screw it up, you're left with an unusable system. If you don't believe me, pick a distro, and start reading through the help forums for that distro, questions that involve normal user type problems like "I don't know how to share this folder on my network" or "audio doesn't work". As soon as a user has to open a terminal to do something, they've become a system admin. For example, here's the instructions for backing up and restoring a hard drive (Keep in mind, this is 2014) http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=2234758 http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=2234758 Again, in 2014, here's the "fix" to keep your windows on the correct monitors. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LwJl3ohmmqc&feature=youtu.be https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LwJl3ohmmqc&feature=youtu.be Or, "I can't browse a windows share on my home network" http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1169149 http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1169149 Here's the instructions for "getting a list of software that's installed on my computer" http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=261366 http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=261366 How to install a scanner http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=2166420 http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=2166420 A fun drinking game you can play with Linux tutorials intended to solve normal user-level issues: - count the steps until a terminal is open, drink that number of shots. - for every sudo command, drink a shot - every time a file has to be edited or redirected, drink a shot, pipes are two shots - every time a permission has to be changed, drink a shot - if the user has to run a script, drink a shot - if the user has to apt-get (or equivalent) something that has a completely non-discoverable name that you just have to "know", drink two shots. If it's an apt-get for something with a guessable name, 1 shot. - if the user has to concern themselves with overwriting files or making backups of something, drink a shot - if the user has to compile something, drink a shot - every time the user has to 'ps' or 'kill' a process, drink a shot - if the problem is the result of the distro updating a library, drink two shots - if the problem is the result of an arbitrary compatibility issue with something that has an incompehensible name (like pcmanfm), drink a shot, if the problem is because of a minor version difference, drink two shots - if it's a problem that only exists on Linux because the rest of the world is ignoring it (like access to streaming media sites), drink 2 shots, if the solutions are complex and require multiple shots to get through (see all of the above), then don't work, drink 2 more shots - for every page of follow up in the forum that's proposing the solution, drink a shot. Here's an example of a simple game. An answer to the question of "how do I watch netflix in Ubuntu" > why don't you just inst all netflix > To install on Ubuntu / Mint - > Start terminal 1 shot > $ sudo apt-add-repository ppa:ehoover/compholio 1 shot for sudo, 2 shots for nondiscoverability > $ sudo apt-get update 1 shot for sudo > $ sudo apt-get install netflix-desktop 1 shot for sudo 1 shot for apt-get > and then find the NetFlix Icon under Video click to install and you are done. no shots, but why couldn't this just be done via a gui? Total Damage: 7 shots of hard liquor. Congratulations, installing netflix has just made you an alcoholic. Here's a 33 page discussion on installing the ePSXe playstation emulator. http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=612021 http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=612021 Congratulations you've now died of alcohol poisoning. The Windows version of this is 1) download the install file 2) unzip it 3) run the epsxe.exe file

TazeTSchnitzel 12y ago

Better link (Ars Technica, English): arstechnica.com/business/2014/08/linux-on-the-desktop-pioneer-munich-now-considering-a-switch-back-to-windows/

dang 12y ago
Thanks. We changed to that from https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&js=y&prev=_t&hl=en&ie=UTF-8&u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.sueddeutsche.de%2Fmuenchen%2Fmuenchner-stadtverwaltung-von-microsoft-zu-linux-und-zurueck-1.2090611 https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&js=y&pr....

truantbuick 12y ago

I'm sure I saw a HN link a month or two ago touting the great success of Munich's Linux move. Can anybody find it?

MichaelApproved 12y ago
At the bottom of HN is a search box you could use to find old articles. I searched for "Munich" and found the article as the top post. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7720219 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7720219
adamfeldman 12y ago
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7720219 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7720219 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8002194 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8002194 http://hn.algolia.com/#!/story/forever/prefix/0/munich http://hn.algolia.com/#!/story/forever/prefix/0/munich

pippy 12y ago

I'd like to see them roll out Windows 8.1 and get fewer complaints.

tuhaihe 12y ago

It's hard for general users to use Linux desktop. "Free" also can has a big cost.