Munich Council Say Talk of LiMux Demise Is Greatly Exaggerated 190
ndogg (158021) writes "The rumors of Munich's city government going back to Microsoft seem to have been greatly exaggerated. There was a review of the city's IT systems that was called for by the mayor, but it wasn't solely just to decide on whether to move back to Microsoft. And while there have been complaints about LiMux, they mostly seem to concern compatibility with OpenOffice.org, which may well be resolved by switching to LibreOffice."
Re:Old news (Score:5, Insightful)
If a site post a story and there's nobody to read it, does it cover the news?
Re:NT is best (Score:5, Insightful)
I still regularly get "need to upgrade reboots" on my Windows machine. It's atleast once a month and always seems to pop up when I'm playing a game of LoL or CS:Go.
Yes, I use my Windows as a Wintendo. Got a problem with that?
Re:LibreOffice (Score:5, Insightful)
One word: PDF
People sending resumes as editable document should not be hired in the first place.
Re:NT is best (Score:5, Insightful)
you should give it another try
Why? What compelling features does Windows offer that I don't already have? I want to know about Window's value proposition. With software as a service becoming the predominant model, the software you need to get work done is available on any platform. At home I work on Linux, when I travel I take my Android tablet and work just fine on that. I can write and post stories, with pictures and video, from anywhere.
A few years ago the Microsoft faithful used to make such a big deal about if you wanted to do "real work" you needed Windows. Doesn't seem to be the case anymore. It's great the blue screens are mainly in the past but I'm still missing a reason to get a Windows device.
Re:NT is best (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:LibreOffice (Score:4, Insightful)
Any change to the document would change these bullets.
There are still small compatibility problems.
Yes: MS-Office/Word still has compatability problems with OpenOffice.
Why do people always complain that free s/ware is incompatible with proprietary ones ? OK: in this case he saved as a .docx - mistake, only use document formats that are properly defined, eg .odf - you will still find that MS Word will not import 100% -- in that case where is the problem: MS-Word or Open/Libre-Office ?
Re:NT is best (Score:1, Insightful)
Actually, misinformed troll, most people had absolutely no problem with Vista. Yes, the new driver model caused some problems initially for some users, by overall the benefits outweighed the problems in a majority of cases. Remember, Windows is used on 90% of the world's personal computers. Linux is used on a tiny minority of desktop computers by people who generally accept having to tinker and fiddle with problems to get things working. If a particular driver or bug causes problems for just 5% of the Linux userbase, this is a tiny number of people, too small to make headlines. A problem on Windows gets widespread attention.
Over 7 years ago I switched to a Linux distro and have never looked back.
That explains your problem. You're clearly a Linux zealot. Who, like most, haven't used Windows in a long time. The desktop environments (Gnome, KDE, Xfce, ect.) on Linux are ugly, slow, buggy, and generally shitty. But, as a Linux zealot, you have no choice, thus you embrace them, warts and all.
Switching to Libreoffice? (Score:2, Insightful)
I not sure how switching from Openoffice to Libreoffice is going to solve their problems. I know that Libreoffice has better compatibility and all, and I use it, but it's still rough to use vs MS Office.
The example I use the most is Mail Merging. It's stupid proof in MS Office, but in Libreoffice it's a literal pain in the rear to do, especially if a Spreadsheet is involved.
Re:Many other municipalities switched to Linux (Score:4, Insightful)
...don't know why media keep talking only about Munich. It's not the only city that switched to Linux, several others have. The Italian city of Udine, for example:
http://www.lffl.org/2014/07/co... [lffl.org]
One reason, size...
Munich : 1,4M
Udine : 0.1M
Turin : 0.9M
source: wikipedia (because only order of magnitude matter).
Furthermore, Munich is one of the most influential city in one of the most influential country of the European Union. From the size, Turin is not that far behind, but from the impact both cities cannot be compared. All this explains quite easily the media coverage.
But its quite interesting to see more cities considering this alternative. And with large cities like Turin and Munich doing it effectively, a lot of smaller cities and communes will start to consider open source as a serious alternative.
The open consideration of such an alternative has much more to do with psychology than with technical needs or limitations. Exactly why the media keep talking about Munich. Psychology. Marketing. And failing to understand this is a large part why open source alternative are still so far beyond what they could be.
Re:NT is best (Score:5, Insightful)
It has already been pointed out that he was using Windows :-)
Seriously, you blame the operator when Windows insists on rebooting to complete an application install, requires a reboot for updates that then subsequently cause the system to fail to boot, and makes you wait at the coffee shop for an extra ten minutes after you decide to leave because you can't power down the system, plus an additional five at start time when you start Windows again? Try to be serious.
Re:Switching to Libreoffice? (Score:2, Insightful)
Also, office suite licenses are a drop in the bucket compared to all the other costs incurred by having employees. Most businesses and governments could probably save a few bucks using MS Office vs OpenOffice because that's what all their employees are used to using. I went for a week long course at a corporate training center (not for an office suite, but most courses were similarly priced), and the cost to my employer was over $2000. Just saving a single day of training would have easily paid for a copy of MS Office.
Don't get this confused with how government (and businesses too, but especially government) should publish documents for consumption by the public. Documents should be available to people in an open and easily readable format. But they can use whatever tools they want that would make them most effective at their jobs and cost a reasonable amount of money.
Re:Trying to create fire from smoke (Score:5, Insightful)
I was too busy to make comments when this story came up, but I've worked providing IT for offices for a good part of my life. You can get secretaries to bitch about anything. Moving to Windows so they can use the corporate-blessed Microsoft Office doesn't help that. You will still get bitching and moaning.
You are always going to have problems with any type of "office" app because of the people using it.
Re:NT is best (Score:3, Insightful)
For this one you have to restart your Unity session
restart your Unity session
Unity session
Well there's their problem. They are using Unity.