German Linux Migration White Paper Updated

TheRealDamion writes to let us know that the German Federal Government Co-Ordination and Advisory Agency (KBSt) has released an updated version of their Linux Migration guide whitepaper. This guide, originally released in 2003, is incredibly detailed offering assistance on a wide range of issues that could be faced in a migration from Windows to Linux.

Austrian Linux for download

[MadMoses]

Meanwhile, Vienna has made their own Linux version Wienux [wien.gv.at], which is based on Debian GNU/Linux 3.1 with kernel 2.6.11 and intended to be used in small and middle businesses and muncipalities, available for download [wien.gv.at].

European Greens Linux "Linux für alle"

[bernfast]

The european green party is also releasing a linux CD: Linux for all [gruene-mue...tadtrat.de] and www.gruene-opensource.net [gruene-opensource.net]

Chinese translation of the 1st edition available

[zero0w]

The Chinese translation of the 1st edition of Migration Guide can be found here:

http://www.fect.com.tw/Docs/Migration.pdf [fect.com.tw]

The translation effort is sponsored by the FSOSS dEveloper Center @ Taiwan, aka FECT.

More Migration Tools and Whitepapers

[wehe]

Here are some more tools and whitepapers for migrations to the Linux operating system [dataconv.org], for example about Solaris to Linux migration, filename conversion and more.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:No mention of GNU

[Vanders]

A GNU userland already does boot on two BSD kernels and one GNU kernel

And one non-GNU, non-BSD kernel [syllable.org].

Political developments since 1st edition

[FlorianMueller]

The first edition of the Migration Guide took a strong pro-OSS position. The basic message, supported by endless columns of numbers, was that a full OSS migration would yield the greatest cost-savings to public administrations, but a partial OSS migration would yet be far better than none at all. Subsequently, that government department came under major lobbying pressure from the usual suspects.

German politics is in a period of major uncertainty now after elections in September had an outcome that gives neither of the two camps (Conservatives plus Liberals or Social Democrats plus Greens) a majority. The good news from an OSS perspective is that at least one of the two parties in the current coalition government (Social Democrats and/or Greens) will be part of the next government, and those parties are quite committed to open source even though the Social Democrats supported software patents in the EU Council (and some of them were relatively swpat-friendly in the European Parliament). There are a few German conservative politicians who also have a favorable perspective on OSS, but most of them don't care and some are downright negative about it. The liberals are ideologically pro-OSS, but of all German parties they're most susceptible to the influence of big-industry lobbying.

Re:No mention of GNU

[Anonymous Coward]

and actually they _do_ mention FSF in it.