City of Munich Moving to Closed Source Software
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Personally, my guess is that they are in for a shock, big time. After fifteen years, they now have entrenched Linux users. Windows and MS Office normally win because of "familiarity", not because they are easier to use. But this is now 20,000 users who know Linux and LibreOffice rather than Windows and MS Office. So all of the pain you normally associate with going to Linux, is going to exist in reverse. That's going to come as a shock.
Not only that, but Windows 10 and MS Office are very, very different than they were with XP and MS Office 2000, which is what they left. There is going to likely be a huge learning curve here. For IT, for end users, for management.
Both approaches would work just fine.... if IT and the end users knew what they were doing. When IT and end users are bad, no solution is going to work well.
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To be honest, seems like MS lobbying in the works. I bet they gave the politicians a sweet deal and bam who cares about end users
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@Emad-R said in City of Munich Moving to Closed Source Software:
To be honest, seems like MS lobbying in the works. I bet they gave the politicians a sweet deal and bam who cares about end users
You'd think but the estimates on how much it will cost to go to Windows seems like no deal at all!
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The estimate is around 100m Pounds. For 20K users. That's $6,000 USD per user for the switch over. Even with a new, really nice desktop (not necessary for the move) and Windows 10 license, and MS Office... that's not even remotely that cost. The amount of "it costs so much to manage Windows" in there has to be huge. It's not just the desktop and apps that suddenly have cost, but the number of IT staff you need, the extra tools that you need, etc. all add up.
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@scottalanmiller said in City of Munich Moving to Closed Source Software:
After fifteen years, they now have entrenched Linux users. Windows and MS Office normally win because of "familiarity", not because they are easier to use.
I wonder how much of the OS is actually visible to them. I would think that they have some antiquated software that they spend all day in.
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@wrx7m said in City of Munich Moving to Closed Source Software:
@scottalanmiller said in City of Munich Moving to Closed Source Software:
After fifteen years, they now have entrenched Linux users. Windows and MS Office normally win because of "familiarity", not because they are easier to use.
I wonder how much of the OS is actually visible to them. I would think that they have some antiquated software that they spend all day in.
That would make sense.
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@wrx7m said in City of Munich Moving to Closed Source Software:
@scottalanmiller said in City of Munich Moving to Closed Source Software:
After fifteen years, they now have entrenched Linux users. Windows and MS Office normally win because of "familiarity", not because they are easier to use.
I wonder how much of the OS is actually visible to them. I would think that they have some antiquated software that they spend all day in.
Exactly - if they could deploy that crap app via remote desktop somehow - they could likely just move to Chromebooks.
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@Dashrender said in City of Munich Moving to Closed Source Software:
@wrx7m said in City of Munich Moving to Closed Source Software:
@scottalanmiller said in City of Munich Moving to Closed Source Software:
After fifteen years, they now have entrenched Linux users. Windows and MS Office normally win because of "familiarity", not because they are easier to use.
I wonder how much of the OS is actually visible to them. I would think that they have some antiquated software that they spend all day in.
Exactly - if they could deploy that crap app via remote desktop somehow - they could likely just move to Chromebooks.
If they could... of if they would. Hard to say. They could do VDI or RDS (or XenApp.) Lots of options. And maybe they are. But where does all of that cost come from!
If they were able to do RDS... they could keep the Linux desktops now, actually. No changes needed.
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@scottalanmiller said in City of Munich Moving to Closed Source Software:
@Dashrender said in City of Munich Moving to Closed Source Software:
@wrx7m said in City of Munich Moving to Closed Source Software:
@scottalanmiller said in City of Munich Moving to Closed Source Software:
After fifteen years, they now have entrenched Linux users. Windows and MS Office normally win because of "familiarity", not because they are easier to use.
I wonder how much of the OS is actually visible to them. I would think that they have some antiquated software that they spend all day in.
Exactly - if they could deploy that crap app via remote desktop somehow - they could likely just move to Chromebooks.
If they could... of if they would. Hard to say. They could do VDI or RDS (or XenApp.) Lots of options. And maybe they are. But where does all of that cost come from!
If they were able to do RDS... they could keep the Linux desktops now, actually. No changes needed.
It is the government, so, probably are overpaying by quite a large margin.
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@wrx7m said in City of Munich Moving to Closed Source Software:
@scottalanmiller said in City of Munich Moving to Closed Source Software:
@Dashrender said in City of Munich Moving to Closed Source Software:
@wrx7m said in City of Munich Moving to Closed Source Software:
@scottalanmiller said in City of Munich Moving to Closed Source Software:
After fifteen years, they now have entrenched Linux users. Windows and MS Office normally win because of "familiarity", not because they are easier to use.
I wonder how much of the OS is actually visible to them. I would think that they have some antiquated software that they spend all day in.
Exactly - if they could deploy that crap app via remote desktop somehow - they could likely just move to Chromebooks.
If they could... of if they would. Hard to say. They could do VDI or RDS (or XenApp.) Lots of options. And maybe they are. But where does all of that cost come from!
If they were able to do RDS... they could keep the Linux desktops now, actually. No changes needed.
It is the government, so, probably are overpaying by quite a large margin.
That would be my guess... I really can't believe they are including hiring dozens of additional people in that cost... but what do I know.
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@Dashrender said in City of Munich Moving to Closed Source Software:
@wrx7m said in City of Munich Moving to Closed Source Software:
@scottalanmiller said in City of Munich Moving to Closed Source Software:
@Dashrender said in City of Munich Moving to Closed Source Software:
@wrx7m said in City of Munich Moving to Closed Source Software:
@scottalanmiller said in City of Munich Moving to Closed Source Software:
After fifteen years, they now have entrenched Linux users. Windows and MS Office normally win because of "familiarity", not because they are easier to use.
I wonder how much of the OS is actually visible to them. I would think that they have some antiquated software that they spend all day in.
Exactly - if they could deploy that crap app via remote desktop somehow - they could likely just move to Chromebooks.
If they could... of if they would. Hard to say. They could do VDI or RDS (or XenApp.) Lots of options. And maybe they are. But where does all of that cost come from!
If they were able to do RDS... they could keep the Linux desktops now, actually. No changes needed.
It is the government, so, probably are overpaying by quite a large margin.
That would be my guess... I really can't believe they are including hiring dozens of additional people in that cost... but what do I know.
They likely are. They will need them most likely. And the number is so large as to cover it.
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It's like one IT guy for every eight end users!
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@scottalanmiller said in City of Munich Moving to Closed Source Software:
It's like one IT guy for every eight end users!
#ITHeaven
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It looks like the whole issue was due to their use of some weird distro years ago.
That article technically doesn't say why they need Windows now, so for all I know they have some new weird requirements I don't know about, but assuming they don't, I think the decision to go to Windows is a horrible idea. They'd be much better off going to Ubuntu instead.
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IIRC Microsoft moved their EU headquarters, or at least their German Headquarters, to Munich not too long ago. At the time they first started talking about moving back to Windows.
It wasn't that this project was a failure, although using their own Linux OS probably was, it was that there was a ton of money invested by Microsoft and they are now seeing the return.
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@Obsolesce said in City of Munich Moving to Closed Source Software:
It looks like the whole issue was due to their use of some weird distro years ago.
Definitely a HUGE factor. What crazy city would do something so dumb? Clearly they didn't do this in a serious way.
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@scottalanmiller said in City of Munich Moving to Closed Source Software:
@Obsolesce said in City of Munich Moving to Closed Source Software:
It looks like the whole issue was due to their use of some weird distro years ago.
Definitely a HUGE factor. What crazy city would do something so dumb? Clearly they didn't do this in a serious way.
ok, not city, but country - china is or was talking about it.
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@Dashrender said in City of Munich Moving to Closed Source Software:
@scottalanmiller said in City of Munich Moving to Closed Source Software:
@Obsolesce said in City of Munich Moving to Closed Source Software:
It looks like the whole issue was due to their use of some weird distro years ago.
Definitely a HUGE factor. What crazy city would do something so dumb? Clearly they didn't do this in a serious way.
ok, not city, but country - china is or was talking about it.
China does it for very different reasons. And totally makes sense.
- Over a billion users, compared to 20,000.
- Built for home use, as well as work use. A universal product.
- Made available to all people, everywhere. It's a full distro and one of the biggest.
- Done specifically to provide a "Chinese Native" language platform that renders Chinese writing first because other major distros focus on Latin which renders differently. It was needed to handle the needs of the ethnic group. German writes in Latin and all normal distros are already set up for Munich.
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@scottalanmiller said in City of Munich Moving to Closed Source Software:
@Obsolesce said in City of Munich Moving to Closed Source Software:
It looks like the whole issue was due to their use of some weird distro years ago.
Definitely a HUGE factor. What crazy city would do something so dumb? Clearly they didn't do this in a serious way.
A city can easily staff more people than any FOSS distro. As long as they build on valid upstream and dedicate the resources (developers) it is not that hard.
Look at the Korora project. They simply took the solid base Fedora distro and tweaked it to be more user friendly. All with no paid development.
LiMux is based on Ubuntu. If it has been done like Korora was, then there is absolutely no problem with "their own distro" as you put it.
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@Dashrender said in City of Munich Moving to Closed Source Software:
china is or was talking about it.
Long, long ago. It's called Deepin. Lots of us use it. It's really good and one of the biggest distros out there.
They make more than just a distro. It includes an entire language handling system, one of the best desktop environments (Deepin Desktop), and a large selection of the top desktop programs (they own terminal, media player, screen capture, image viewer, file manager, and all kinds of things.)
https://www.deepin.org/en/original/deepin-installer/
They also have their own amazingly extensive app store that you can optionally use (it's free.) With one of the broadest application lists for support anywhere.
