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Munich Migrating To Linux

Posted by kdawson on Sat Oct 28, 2006 11:10 PM
from the penguins-overrun-Bavaria dept.
Linux Business
Rockgod writes with a progress report on the open sourcing of the city of Munich's administration. From the article: "The capital of Bavaria plans to complete its current migration of more than 80 percent of its desktop systems by 2008 and says that the first users of open software in the city's administration are pleased with the initial results. On Tuesday, Munich's mayor Christine Strobel said at the Systems trade fair that 'up to now, we are very happy about the results' of the migration currently underway. 'I am not a computer geek, but I must admit that it was easy to switch to the new software,' she reported. By the end of the year, some 200 workstations... will be running on a special LiMux client. If everything runs according to schedule, most of the approximately 14,000 PCs will be migrated to open source in the next two years."
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  • You are going to regret it. (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 28 2006, @11:15PM (#16628650)
    now the poor souls miss out on all that upcoming Vista goodness.

      • So what is Vista offering that Linux is not offering better. Old windows application compatibly that is it.

        That might also change in the future. I'm about exclusively using Linux. About one week ago, my father asked me if I wanted to see a video about the Huygens probe on Titan. When I put the CD, I realised it wasn't a plain video but a (Windows) program. I did not want to reboot so I gave Wine a chance. I was astonished actually, the program launched and the video played flawlessly.

        So, as the Windows

  • How long until some of our more major cities follow this approach?

  • is Chicago next? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by uncadonna (85026) <mtobisNO@SPAMgmail.com> on Saturday October 28 2006, @11:18PM (#16628678) Homepage Journal
    Is it? [dailytech.com]

    • Chicago's migration is from Solaris (Score:5, Informative)

      by jesterzog (189797) on Saturday October 28 2006, @11:50PM (#16628874) Homepage Journal

      From here [principal.com], regarding Chicago:

      The city's infrastructure had historically been a multi-platform environment that included about 100 Solaris servers used to run a large number of Oracle databases and applications. As these servers neared the end of their life cycles the City of Chicago began the migration to cost-effective Red Hat solutions.

      Given that they're migrating their Solaris server boxes rather than Windows desktop workstations (as seems to be happening in Munich), I'm not sure if it's quite the same thing.

  • Does it have solitare? (Score:5, Funny)

    by daeg (828071) on Saturday October 28 2006, @11:20PM (#16628690)
    Officer workers don't care what their system has as long as it can run (a) solitare and (b) popcap games.

    Particularly government workers.

    • A customer is migrating to Linux at full scale. They have 100+ desktops over three branches and right now there's only a few Windows installed - mostly for running a couple Windows-only applications. For most office use, like spreadsheets and word processing, there's no rational reason to keep using Windows. The vast majority of users actually use a tiny fraction of office applications' features.

      There are a few GUI differences between Microsoft Office and Open Office, of course. Some users complain about

    • Of course, being Linux it has three Solitaire programs, all of which have 30 different types of Solitaire to choose for. And who said choice was a bad thing! ;-)
    • It comes with all these [gnome.org]. :)

  • But the Office suites are lacking... (Score:3, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 28 2006, @11:23PM (#16628714)
    They'll never be able to read MSFT Word documents with embedded VOIP!

    Sincerely,
    Some MSFT spokesperson's reason why ODF is bad. (I can't find the reference)

  • Munich? Open Source? Free? (Score:5, Funny)

    by Kanaka Kid (829457) on Saturday October 28 2006, @11:25PM (#16628726)
    Oktoberfest will never be the same!

    Free Beer!

  • Increase home adoptance of linux? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Salvance (1014001) * on Saturday October 28 2006, @11:37PM (#16628808) Homepage Journal
    Over the next few years as we see more governments organizations (and some schools) moving to desktop Linux solutions, I think we'll see a corresponding upswing in home use. Maybe massive citywide conversions like Munich's will be the catalyst that the desktop Linux market needs to gain traction. For the everyday user, if they use Linux at work, they'll probably want to use Linux at home ... assuming they can get a distro that's easy enough to install and maintain.

    I'm sure it's been discussed, but I think the risk of losing home users is the real impetus behind Microsoft basically giving away software to schools, and offering STEEP discounts to governments.

    • Eventually. (Score:5, Informative)

      by khasim (1285) <brandioch.conner@gmail.com> on Saturday October 28 2006, @11:47PM (#16628864)
      For the everyday user, if they use Linux at work, they'll probably want to use Linux at home ... assuming they can get a distro that's easy enough to install and maintain.

      But the problem with home use is NOT about being easy to "install and maintain".

      Home users tend to stick with whatever was pre-installed. Once you have a city using Linux, there is a financial incentive for OEM's to build boxes with 100% Linux friendly hardware and a nice recovery CD with all the Linux drivers on it. After all, a city buys a lot of computers and parts over the years.

      But that's just the base platform. That still doesn't address the apps (games) that the home users will want to run. So the market will ... slowly ... be changing. As grandma gets her Linux computer with Internet access, email, web browsing and basic photo editing (look at my lovely grandchildren), more ISV's will attempt to sell software to her.

      I'm on 100% Ubuntu Edgy Eft and it handles everything that the average home user would do with the exception of games and certain IE-only websites.
    • The problem with that theory is that it assumes that "the everyday user" is at all comfortable with the idea of installing an OS. I've recently helped two friends set up/sort out their laptops as they weren't even particularly comfortable with installing applications, or pinning things to the XP Start menu.

      What you may well see happen is an increase in consumer demand for PCs with Linux pre-installed; that's part of the reason Windows became so popular at home. Not because people were installing it (althoug
      • The problem with that theory is that it assumes that "the everyday user" is at all comfortable with the idea of installing an OS. I've recently helped two friends set up/sort out their laptops as they weren't even particularly comfortable with installing applications,
        If Windows users aren't comfortable with installing applications, what the hell is it that they do with their machines besides playing solitaire and minesweeper all day ??

    • I'm sure it's been discussed, but I think the risk of losing home users is the real impetus behind Microsoft basically giving away software to schools, and offering STEEP discounts to governments.

      Precisely. Microsofts main advantage over Office competitors is basically "everyone is "trained" in MS Office". And the fact that Computer classes in schools are mainly just about using Microsoft Software is despicable.
      Apart from the ludicrous Idea that using Powerpoint qualifies as a professional skill, that shoul

    • Over the next few years as we see more governments organizations (and some schools) moving to desktop Linux solutions

      Actually, there are quite a few schools that have been using desktop Linux. The last two I've attended - UL Lafayette and MIT - have been using some *nix or another on the desktop for years, most recently Solaris. Now that Linux is the most popular* desktop *nix, they're starting to use it instead.

      *Mac OS X might be more popular, and yes, it's real UNIX, but it's quite non-trivial to keep th

  • My favorite line of this article (Score:5, Interesting)

    by MassEnergySpaceTime (957330) on Saturday October 28 2006, @11:42PM (#16628830)
    "I am not a computer geek, but I must admit that it was easy to switch to the new software."

    It's lines like these that give Linux more promise and hopefully brings out the "If they can switch, so can we" line of thinking among others.

    Conversely, I'm sure Microsoft HATES lines like these.

      • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

        by PlusFiveTroll (754249)

        As this same topic has been on slashdot [slashdot.org] many times before, it should be noted that the 'Microsoft solution' is less expensive because of discounting by Microsoft to avoid the switch over. I do not know how deep the discounts where, but I suspect a standard contract would have been considerably more expensive.

        I do not expect that I would get the same treatment from Microsoft and told them that I was moving 25 desktops and 3 servers to linux.

  • I can't believe... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by xor.pt (882444) on Saturday October 28 2006, @11:53PM (#16628890)
    I can't believe how wrong they got the client name! ...LiMux?!

    How about Munix? Doesn't it sound a lot better?

  • Why is it taking too long? Isn't this information about 2 or 3 years old? I thought they had completed the migration.

    • Re:Too long...!! (Score:5, Funny)

      by vivek7006 (585218) on Sunday October 29 2006, @12:07AM (#16628970) Homepage
      Why is it taking too long? Isn't this information about 2 or 3 years old? I thought they had completed the migration.

      They decided to go with Gentoo Linux couple of years back. They are still waiting for the damn thing to finish compiling

    • Why is it taking too long? Isn't this information about 2 or 3 years old? I thought they had completed the migration.

      Please, please tell me you're joking. I guess I've been around Americans too long or something, but I honestly can't tell whether you're aware that there are, in fact, more than one city in Germany. There are several, actually. And now another city in Germany has decided to move to Linux. That makes two cities. Because, as we learned in the first sentence (you remember the first sentence, d

        • The first was Schwäbisch Hall [wikipedia.org] (sorry, the english Wikipedia article doesn't mention the Linux migration). They decided to migrate back in 2002.

          It's a small city (about 36.000 people) but an important one as it's the home of a big german building society.

            • I had to laugh when I read your addition... the way the article reads now, the move to Linux is the only significant event in the town's history since the allied invasion in 1945!
    • >Why is it taking too long? Isn't this information about 2 or 3 years old? I thought they had completed the migration.
      --
      Everything had to be translated, in Freestate Bavaria, Munich, they speak Bavarian, not German. ;-)
      Also getting a Penguin to wear Lederhosen was no small feat.

  • Relatively few technical issues, it seems (Score:4, Informative)

    by Mostly a lurker (634878) on Sunday October 29 2006, @12:02AM (#16628936)
    The thrust of this rather positive FA seems to be that user acceptance has been good, and the delays were caused by such things as legal concerns and complex negotiations with project partners. The indications are that a massive migration to desktop Linux is perfectly feasible. I think Wilhelm Hoegner's view that this project, by itself, will not cause an avalanche of further conversions will prove correct. That said, a few projects like this can dramatically change perceptions leading to major change over time.

  • Open source administration (Score:4, Funny)

    by jmv (93421) on Sunday October 29 2006, @12:08AM (#16628976) Homepage
    Rockgod writes with a progress report on the open sourcing of the city of Munich's administration.

    Cool, I always wanted to change the city of Munich's administration. Does the mayor come with full source code?

    • Cool, I always wanted to change the city of Munich's administration. Does the mayor come with full source code?

      Yeah, but you have to build the Makefile.

  • ffs (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Timesprout (579035) on Sunday October 29 2006, @12:15AM (#16629006)
    They have migrated less than 200 work stations. Can we wait till the project actually approaches completion before deciding upon its success
    • At my workplace they did a pilot for Windows SP2 of about that size. It's still being rolled out and I'm still on SP1. There have been a lot of problems due to software compatibility issues.

    • "They have migrated less than 200 work stations. Can we wait till the project actually approaches completion before deciding upon its success", ffs

      "By the end of the year, some 200 workstations close to Lord Mayor Christian Ude and a number of nearby organizational units will be running on a special LiMux client."

      "The base client mainly runs on the Debian GNU/Linux 3.1 distribution and uses Desktop KDE 3.5 and OpenOffice 2."

      'Furthermore, the City Council aims to use Linux to become politically "
  • It is better for Munich to move to Linux than
    Linux to move to Munich.

  • the biggest success so far (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Andreas Schaefer (513034) on Sunday October 29 2006, @02:02AM (#16629462) Homepage
    ..is how well they managed to port some of the custom built applications. switching from word/excel to openoffice is not a big step, but some of these specialized pieces of software for government purposes (so far with a Win95 look and feel) were the tipping point in the success of a migration like that.
    congrats to the munich mayor!

  • Munich [muenchen.de] is the Capitol of Bavaria, Germany. Bavaria is the high tech capitol of Germany and the richest state in Germany. They have always been ahead of the curve. It is no wonder that they are migrating to Linux and adopting open source software where it makes sense. With Munich being home of some of the largest high tech companies in the world, it would make sense for the government of Munich to adopt similar policies. I for one, praise Munich and it's government for thinking out of the box. The lice

  • The typical small - medium business (Score:3, Interesting)

    by vogon jeltz (257131) on Sunday October 29 2006, @04:58AM (#16630284)
    In my brother's surgery we've been on Linux ever since and the system runs smoothly with 16 diskless fat clients (http://132.230.4.73/trac/dxs). That being said, I'm kind of clueless when it comes to Windows administration. At my workplace however, I had to "take over" system administration of a seriously broken W2K setup. One W2K pro license and one Office 2003 license for 10 PCs. No server license although the "server" (no PDC, just a workgroup config) runs W2K server. I told my boss over and over again, that if someone digruntled about the company would run to the police or the BSA, he'd be in big trouble. This is simply being ignored. They'll tell me that it'd be too hard to switch to Openoffice because it's "too different". They won't let me buy a couple of Office and W2K licenses on ebay for maybe 1500 in order to save their arse. A Linux setup is completely out of question.
    The fact is, people don't have a clue, and never will - if I'd setup a system with a properly configured Samba-server, LDAP, Kerberos and imap, they'd still complain and blame me if the slightest thing broke (i.e. they had to learn a couple of new things). So I basically gave up and don't care any more if they lose data or get fucked by the prosecutor.

    If people are willing to listen to you, or respect your technical expertise (our Linux system) it's relatively easy going. If they don't, don't waste your time. Let them have a very bad awakening one day (after all, you tried to explain ...)

    • Re:The typical small - medium business (Score:4, Insightful)

      by johnjaydk (584895) on Sunday October 29 2006, @07:37AM (#16631124)
      Get yourself a new job ASAP.

      So I basically gave up and don't care any more if they lose data or get fucked by the prosecutor.

      This works for the short term but in the end it eats you up. You'll be labeled a constant complainer, become bitter, isolated and stuck in a dead end job. Just get out of there.

      If people are willing to listen to you, or respect your technical expertise (our Linux system) it's relatively easy going. If they don't, don't waste your time. Let them have a very bad awakening one day (after all, you tried to explain ...)

      This goes for more than just Linux expertise. It's a fundamental requirement for a decent job. I just ditched a comfy telco developer job for a senior consultant position. I'm going to be working more than twice as hard but it won't be for a bunch of retards.

      Wake up and smell the coffee. The grass is greener elsewhere.

    • With so many distributions out there, how does a government decide upon which one to deploy?

      First off, they have to state what their requirements are. Just as with any other project.

      Then they look at what is out there and how closely it matches those requirements and how much time/money would be needed to fill in the gaps. Munich decided to go with a Debian base with KDE and OpenOffice.org.

      One of Munich's requirements seems to have been to become "independent of monopolists like Microsoft." In this, Debian's social contract would have been a major plus.

      • One of Munich's requirements seems to have been to become "independent of monopolists like Microsoft."

        The actual requirement was to avoid vendor lock-in, for which the free distribution of Linux is very useful. Red Hat and Novell don't have to be monopolists to present the same danger of exorbitant support fees and lack of choice.

    • Re:common place (Score:5, Insightful)

      by donaldm (919619) on Sunday October 29 2006, @01:45AM (#16629402)
      Actually you have hit on the major reason why Linux is not popular in many Business because "it is not like Windows". The real problem with Linux is while it can happily inter-operate with nearly all distributions of Linux and Unix, *nix OS's don't inter-operate well with MS Windows, due to fact that MS Windows does not have open formats while Linux not only has open formats it also has its source open for all to see. Unfortuantely the desktop will always be the hardest to migrate since many Business are very conservative, the lead to the acceptance of the Linux desktop will come first from Government.

      The slow but steady adoption of Linux by Governments in Europe and Asia is not due to them being altruistic but pragmatic since the openness of the Linux (or all *nix) formats makes a great deal of sense and they are under scrutiny by their electorates and opposition (unless it is a dictatorship and then anything anti US business is acceptable) to cut costs. Once enough Government groups move to Linux, business and eventually the home user will follow.
      • ...than cost-cutting is, in my opinion, cost retaining. Even if it costs were the same overall, F/OSS would be attractive to municipalities because they could find a local company(ies) to customize an operating system based on their chosen distro of Linux. Having your Software budget go off to America is kinda like if your entire police force were foreigners, and took their salaries home to spend them. And I agree with GP that home users would think Macintosh system 6 was the best operating system in the
    • "My school, for example, uses Gentoo for its servers (Although it is maintained by some wannabe-geeks that mostly have no real clue about this stuff)"

      It must be true: who but a wannabe-geek with no real clue would choose Gentoo in such an environment? It has to be a maintenance nightmare!

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