Munich Decides On Debian

RichiH writes "Notwithstanding the recent craze about Ubuntu and the negative effects this might have, the german city of Munich chose Debian as the base for its LiMux project. Gonicus and SoftCon are the companies who were chosen to achieve this feat. With 14,000 desktops, this is one of the largest Linux transistions ever, even prompting Microsoft's Steve Balmer to offer a rebate of 90%. Other /. coverage here here and here."

Long time planning.

[Short Circuit]

This has been in the planning stage for a long time. Much as I love the almighty Penguin, I'll believe this when I see it.

Ballmer can kiss my !@#

[KingBahamut]

with his rebates. I think M$ is so vicious in their borg like behavior that giving an entire group of 14,000 users a 90% rebate is just a sign of what theyll do to keep their userbase in Europe. Something I fear that they have clearly lost already. Why doesnt Ballmer just give them Windows for free and see if that will denth their $800,000,000+ settlement by the EU?

Questions to be answered.

Why be surprised?

[bestadvocate]

Debian still has a larger package base, more archs supported and a bit less complecated costomazations. Ubuntu is better for end users looking for an easy install. The only "distrobution" we have seen derive from Ubuntu is Kubuntu, and thats just an alternative set of packages for default installation, and I would not be surprised if this mostly remains the same. Debian as a distro base is tried and true.
I feel this is like comparing ROCK with Gentoo, if less extreem

Re:Long time planning.

[xoboots]

Who says this is a "Take that, Ubuntu!" ?? Just because the submitter suggested as much with his link to that retarded "controversy" the other day? Its all just meaningless flak. No doubt Munich chose the Debian distros they did (German) for the same reason that Suse was originally conisdered. No doubt SUse is not considered now just because it is now a foreign corporate entitity -- just like MS. Of course governments are going to want to support local ventures -- and why not? With Linux, they can. Everyone doesn't have to run distro "x" and it is possible to have many winners.

Re:Not cheap enough

[Anonymous Coward]

Therein lies the flaw in Microsoft's business model. Sun and IBM can pay you $20 to give up Windows, because they live off of hardware and services.

Re:Looking forward to the know-how...

[mhesseltine]

I'm looking forward to see how they are going to plan a uniform distribution of packages across such a large quantity of workstations... rpm/apt/yum/redcarpet2/zenworks/altiris ?

Well, since they are using Debian, I would assume the use of apt/dpkg since that's Debian's package management software.

I am curious as to what you mean by "a uniform distribution of packages"? Are you discussing the bandwidth of updating 14,000 desktops from a Debian mirror, and thus want to setup your own mirror/repository? Or, are you asking about how someone would administer/roll out 14,000 workstations?

Re:Long time planning.

[4of12]

Just like with computer hardware, the longer you wait for Linux the better the version you get.

By the time deployment comes it will probably have OpenOffice 2.2, Evolution 2.4, etc.

Success of the project will be measured by office workers shrugging as they get to work on the new systems and finding expected functionality has continued wondering what the big deal was all about.

Kind of like the Y2K non-event.

Re:Not cheap enough

[SunFan]

What you are suggesting is that we go back back to 1970s IBM-style buttreaming.

I don't think this is the result, but what is happening is that software-only systems companies (Microsoft) are being undercut on their entire product lineup. That ain't good for business.

Look what Sun and IBM can do that Microsoft can't:

- give away the OS (OpenSolaris and Linux)
- give away the dev platform (Java & J2EE--rumors of open source JES from Sun, too)
- give away productivity apps (OpenOffice.org, GIMP, etc.)

What does that leave Microsoft with, the XBox? All the while, Sun and IBM are selling SPARC, POWER, and Opteron servers and selling support and services surrounding those servers.

IMO, in the long term, Microsoft will either have to be bought by a real systems company (HP? Dell?) and become a small figment of what they now are or inevitably become a teeny-tiny figment of what they now are.

90%?

[booch]

A 90% price cut? That's pretty incredible. To me it says one of 2 things:

• The company makes more than 90% profit on every copy of Windows they sell.
• Microsoft was attempting to "dump" the software for less than their cost, and should be prosecuted for that crime.

If it's the first one, then people and companies need to start paying attention. If it's the second one, then the government(s) need to start paying attention.

marginal costs

[Anonymous Coward]

The marginal cost of any copy of windows is the cost of distributing the software.

you see, with a standard product, like a car, a large hunk of the cost comes from paying for the raw materials, paying to make them into the parts and paying for the assembly and testing.

Since microsoft has already written windows the cost per additional sale is mostly in actual cd production. We are looking a cents/copy. But if they were to sell these in a microeconomic free market (one without monopolies) they would only be able to charge slightly more than marginal costs. If microsoft only got cents/copy they would lose money and all incentive to produce a product.

This has the side effect that they can increase revenue by decreasing the prices of a FEW copies that they otherwise would not have sold almost without limit.