Munich council: To hell with Linux, we're going full Windows in 2020

I do support the cloud productivity idea though, I refuse to install any office software on my PC or workstation. I can use google on the PC and Office 365 online on the workstation. I can't stand the idea of having an executable to read my email. Gmail and Outlook.office.com works fine.

But I only run the best OS known to man.
 
Rouxenator said:
I do support the cloud productivity idea though, I refuse to install any office software on my PC or workstation. I can use google on the PC and Office 365 online on the workstation. I can't stand the idea of having an executable to read my email. Gmail and Outlook.office.com works fine.

But I only run the best OS known to man.
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OS/2?
 
Rouxenator said:
https://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/11/13/munich_committee_says_all_windows_2020/

Munich city council's administrative and personnel committee has decided to move any remaining Linux systems to Windows 10 in 2020.

A coalition of Social Democrats and Conservatives on the committee voted (PDF, in Deutsche, natürlich) for the Windows migration on Wednesday, Social Democrat councillor Anne Hübner told The Register.

Munich rose to fame in the open-source world for deciding to use Linux and LibreOffice to make the city independent from the claws of Microsoft. But the plan was never fully realised – mail servers, for instance, eventually wound up migrating to Microsoft Exchange – and in February the city council formally voted to end Linux migration and go back to Microsoft.

Hübner said the city has struggled with LiMux adoption. "Users were unhappy and software essential for the public sector is mostly only available for Windows," she said.

She estimated about half of the 800 or so total programs needed don't run on Linux and "many others need a lot of effort and workarounds".

Hübner added, "in the past 15 years, much of our efforts were put into becoming independent from Microsoft," including spending "a lot of money looking for workarounds" but "those efforts eventually failed."

A full council vote on Windows 10 2020 migration is set for November 23, Hübner said. However, the Social Democrats and Conservatives have a majority in the council, and the outcome is expected to be the same as in committee.

She said the cost of the migration will not be made public until November 23, but today about 40 per cent of 30,000 users already have Windows machines.

CSU party council member Kristina Frank told The Reg: "Munich had huge difficulties in communicating with other authorities, communities and other externals.

"As everything needed to be developed by ourselves, the city's IT was 10 to 15 years behind market standard. The City of Munich is not an IT developer, but has other major concerns to deal with."

Hübner said "no final decision has yet been made" on whether LibreOffice will be swapped out for Microsoft Office. "That will be decided at the end of next year when the full cost of such a move will be known."

Peter Ganten, CEO of Univention in Bremen and a member of the Open Source Business Alliance, told El Reg: "The council of the city of Munich has just executed a decision which they have made long before."

Not all agree that it is a good decision.

Ganten said "of course nobody in the open-source community is happy that this decision has been made" and the city will spend "decades of man power" and "millions of euros" on migration (as it did with the LiMux project), while client OSes "becomes more and more unimportant and other organisations are wisely spending their money for platform neutral applications."

Matthias Kirschner, president of Free Software Foundation Europe in Berlin, said "there were never any studies published" pinpointing what people were "unhappy" about. It might have been the LiMux client itself, or perhaps the migration process or lack of support.

He said he was also not aware of a comparison of the unhappiness of staffers in cities using Windows.
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I'd just like to interject for a moment. What you’re referring to as Linux, is in fact, GNU/Linux, or as I’ve recently taken to calling it, GNU plus Linux. Linux is not an operating system unto itself, but rather another free component of a fully functioning GNU system made useful by the GNU corelibs, shell utilities and vital system components comprising a full OS as defined by POSIX.
Many computer users run a modified version of the GNU system every day, without realizing it. Through a peculiar turn of events, the version of GNU which is widely used today is often called “Linux”, and many of its users are not aware that it is basically the GNU system, developed by the GNU Project. There really is a Linux, and these people are using it, but it is just a part of the system they use.
Linux is the kernel: the program in the system that allocates the machine’s resources to the other programs that you run. The kernel is an essential part of an operating system, but useless by itself; it can only function in the context of a complete operating system. Linux is normally used in combination with the GNU operating system: the whole system is basically GNU with Linux added, or GNU/Linux. All the so-called “Linux” distributions are really distributions of GNU/Linux.

:p
 
konfab said:
I'd just like to interject for a moment. What you’re referring to as Linux, is in fact, GNU/Linux, or as I’ve recently taken to calling it, GNU plus Linux. Linux is not an operating system unto itself, but rather another free component of a fully functioning GNU system made useful by the GNU corelibs, shell utilities and vital system components comprising a full OS as defined by POSIX.
Many computer users run a modified version of the GNU system every day, without realizing it. Through a peculiar turn of events, the version of GNU which is widely used today is often called “Linux”, and many of its users are not aware that it is basically the GNU system, developed by the GNU Project. There really is a Linux, and these people are using it, but it is just a part of the system they use.
Linux is the kernel: the program in the system that allocates the machine’s resources to the other programs that you run. The kernel is an essential part of an operating system, but useless by itself; it can only function in the context of a complete operating system. Linux is normally used in combination with the GNU operating system: the whole system is basically GNU with Linux added, or GNU/Linux. All the so-called “Linux” distributions are really distributions of GNU/Linux.

:p
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Nice copy and paste job. What's the point?
 
konfab said:
I'd just like to interject for a moment. What you’re referring to as Linux, is in fact, GNU/Linux, or as I’ve recently taken to calling it, GNU plus Linux. Linux is not an operating system unto itself, but rather another free component of a fully functioning GNU system made useful by the GNU corelibs, shell utilities and vital system components comprising a full OS as defined by POSIX.
Many computer users run a modified version of the GNU system every day, without realizing it. Through a peculiar turn of events, the version of GNU which is widely used today is often called “Linux”, and many of its users are not aware that it is basically the GNU system, developed by the GNU Project. There really is a Linux, and these people are using it, but it is just a part of the system they use.
Linux is the kernel: the program in the system that allocates the machine’s resources to the other programs that you run. The kernel is an essential part of an operating system, but useless by itself; it can only function in the context of a complete operating system. Linux is normally used in combination with the GNU operating system: the whole system is basically GNU with Linux added, or GNU/Linux. All the so-called “Linux” distributions are really distributions of GNU/Linux.

:p
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Yes, well... whatever. This is the second thread I've seen with this clarification.

While I'm sure this is technically correct, it doesn't really contribute anything to the discussion, nor change the gist of the story. I think everyone understands broadly what is meant without technical hair-splitting about precise terminology and the repeated reminder of the GNU/Linux distinction is starting to sound like it has some kind of agenda.

Kind of reminds me of the endless debate about whether the coup in Zimbabwe is really a coup. Don't know why so many threads are being derailed these days with irrelevant bickering about semantics or definitions that have no material relevance to the actual news discussed.
 
garp said:
Yes, well... whatever. This is the second thread I've seen with this clarification.

While I'm sure this is technically correct, it doesn't really contribute anything to the discussion, nor change the gist of the story. I think everyone understands broadly what is meant without technical hair-splitting about precise terminology and the repeated reminder of the GNU/Linux distinction is starting to sound like it has some kind of agenda.

Kind of reminds me of the endless debate about whether the coup in Zimbabwe is really a coup. Don't know why so many threads are being derailed these days with irrelevant bickering about semantics or definitions that have no material relevance to the actual news discussed.
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Yup, I think he's trying to sound clever, although this is has been going around in the Linux community for years and years.

Here's the original (1999) : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QlD9UBTcSW4

Just in case the "other" response comes: https://wiki.installgentoo.com/index.php/Interjection
 
This has been going on for years. The different political parties in the City Council have been using the software issue as means to attack each other. This is mainly to do with politicians being politicians, rather than examining technical merit.

The Social Democrat mayor who is now in power is part of the camp that wants to reverse the software decisions since they were in the opposition when this originally went through. Now that the matter is in a broader spotlight than the city itself they have backed off a bit. They now claim that they did not agree to scrap the current Linux system but rather to come up with a draft migration plan that can later be used to inform a vote on the issue.
 
konfab said:
I'd just like to interject for a moment. What you’re referring to as Linux, is in fact, GNU/Linux, or as I’ve recently taken to calling it, GNU plus Linux. Linux is not an operating system unto itself, but rather another free component of a fully functioning GNU system made useful by the GNU corelibs, shell utilities and vital system components comprising a full OS as defined by POSIX.
Many computer users run a modified version of the GNU system every day, without realizing it. Through a peculiar turn of events, the version of GNU which is widely used today is often called “Linux”, and many of its users are not aware that it is basically the GNU system, developed by the GNU Project. There really is a Linux, and these people are using it, but it is just a part of the system they use.
Linux is the kernel: the program in the system that allocates the machine’s resources to the other programs that you run. The kernel is an essential part of an operating system, but useless by itself; it can only function in the context of a complete operating system. Linux is normally used in combination with the GNU operating system: the whole system is basically GNU with Linux added, or GNU/Linux. All the so-called “Linux” distributions are really distributions of GNU/Linux.

:p
Click to expand...

Torvalds commented on the GNU/Linux name in his usual fashion:

Well, I think it's justified, but it's justified if you actually make a GNU distribution of Linux ... the same way that I think that "Red Hat Linux" is fine, or "SuSE Linux" or "Debian Linux", because if you actually make your own distribution of Linux, you get to name the thing, but calling Linux in general "GNU Linux" I think is just ridiculous.
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Linux - Infrastructure
Windows - Staff
macOS - Hopefully no one
 
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