Not Munich this time, and hopefully they stick with it.
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This came through today as well:
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Yea they tried this in Munich in 2013-2014. They eventually reverted back to Windows in 2017 with huge costs for switching to and from Linux. Linux proved to be more expensive than Windows, most of the costs arising from the need to train people and pay to custom develop the necessary tools, that were missing on Linux, but were available on Windows. They declared the whole thing a big fiasco. Main reason for switching back being compatibility issues of file formats, but my guess is the old guys from accounting simply would not tolerate this nonsense. Where is my Mah-jong? Where is my Solitaire?
I wonder what’s going to be different this time…
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Hit the nail in the head. Where is my Solitaire, my Mahjong? How can I be productive on citizens money ?
I think IMHO that they forgot how important is the users preparation and schooling.
You can’t expect to have a perfectly integrated Linux ecosystem without users being familiar with.
Simple tasks like printing, sending email or using anything Microsoft office can be a hindrance for some users, some will resist to ANY change. It’s a reality.
IT department will have a tough time, they will need manpower to do this right. Wish them good luck, I hope they succeed where Munich didn’t
However, they didn’t named the Linux distribution. Did I miss it?
Nevertheless, Ansible will be a strong candidate to manage all those computers.
Or the upcoming Zorin’s Grid.
Will be something to watch and learn.
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I was rather pointing towards enmity from users. As in the unfamiliarity of linux making them insecure, and causing a common undermining effort for the whole project. If everybody hates the hurdle of having to learn a new thing they will invent lots of reasons for how the software is subpar.
The operating system is open-source after all. If they lacked anything, they could have invested in some programmers to contribute to the distro and baking their needed features right in, including support for the missing file formats for whatever software they were using.
I mean we are talking 9000 of licenses for windows and office. That’s between 2.7 million to 3.6 million a year! With that amount of cash they could have simply programmed their own features. If not within a year, then within a two year budget.
As the result of a change in the city’s government, a controversial decision was made in 2017 to leave LiMux and move back to Microsoft by 2020.
The first article linked above says:
“No Linux distribution has been chosen yet to use as a standard, although Albrecht said they’re currently looking at five distributions that suit their purposes.”
The five are not named.
Thats clear it up.
Glad to see that they will have a broader range of distros from the get go, but as above mentioned that amount of cash can be used to develop and maintain their own set of tools on top of whatever base they chose.
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