Munich council: To hell with Linux, we're going full Windows in 2020 (Resistance is Futile)

The Register ^ | Nov 13, 2017 | Andrew Silver

[dayglored]

Never go full Windows

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 that 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".

She said "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" 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.

A report (PDF) by Microsoft partner Accenture commissioned by Munich found the most important issues were organisational.

Kirschner also described splitting the LibreOffice move as "strange" if the parties are concerned about interoperability. He said Microsoft Office will be "very, very expensive" so it's possible the coalition wanted to split up the costs, although he doesn't know for sure.

Next year, he said civil servants would require more training and could delay citizens receiving help – the move "is a cause for failure".

Kirschner said the Windows in Munich project will "paralyze the city administration for years" and civil servants and citizens will "suffer."

Florian Roth, of the Green Party, told The Reg: "Our Green Party are against this decision in favour of a mix of Linux and Windows. This is more secure and less expensive."

We contacted the city's press division, the mayor's office and the current head of Munich's IT department for comment on the migration vote.

An Italy-based spokesman for the Document Foundation, which is in charge of LibreOffice, attributed the decision to politics. "IT issues are normal regardless of operating system," he said. "When it's political, technology cannot do anything." ®

[dayglored]

*sigh*

[dayglored]

Windows 10 ... PING!

You can find all the Windows Ping list threads with FR search: just search on keyword "windowspinglist".

[dayglored]

Actually this is likely the right decision. If they can’t get the job done with Linux because “...half of the 800 or so total programs needed don’t run on Linux and many others need a lot of effort and workarounds...”, then they gotta do what they gotta do.

[ImJustAnotherOkie]

The move to Munix(Muslim Uniux) didn’t work out. They couldn’t turn the servers to face Mecca 5 times a day so they severed all the Windows connections.

[Mr. Jeeves]

The City of Munich is not an IT developer, but has other major concerns to deal with.

And this is still the key point. I'm no Microsoft fan, but vast numbers of time-consuming systems integration issues simply go away when an entity switches to an all-Microsoft platform. If you've got the time and talent to play with it, Linux can save you a lot of money. But corporations don't have enough time and governments don't have enough talent. :)

[Pollster1]

Windows will win. Facebook will win. The Circle will win. Resistance is futile, no matter how many ohms you have.

[T-Bird45]

I just shared the article with friend on Facebook who is a LINUX guru with SUSE-Linux which is based in Munich, IIRC. Looking forward to his response...

[Texas Fossil]

Built my first PC in 1982.

Ran every type of OS. DOS, Windows, MAC, Multiple Linux flavors, AS400.

I almost never use Windows. Have used Linux in some form since 1994.

I use what works.

The only software I used that is totally dependent on Microsoft was AutoCad. I no longer need that.

So, I will stay with Linux. Perfectly happy with the stability and huge software selection available.

[who_would_fardels_bear]

I thought that most organizations had decided on Linux for backend servers and Windows for user desktops/laptops.

That's what our organization decided and it seems to be working, however clunkily.

[butlerweave]

Most of their employees use Windows at home and probably refuse to use Linux at work

[T-Bird45]

LINUX guru paraphrased reply: Article is somewhat right. Politics = money involved. The whole thing is a soap opera of who is being bought and staying bought.

[dayglored]

> I thought that most organizations had decided on Linux for backend servers and Windows for user desktops/laptops. That's what our organization decided and it seems to be working, however clunkily.

I've worked the last two decades for software development companies. Without exception they all settled on a mix like you describe -- the server farms, network critical machines, and the dev machines, are Linux. The admin front-office folks run Windows on their desktops. The engineering workstations typically run Linux with a Windows VM inside.

But then, if the admin folks demand the big Microsoft-only applications that require Windows servers (Exchange, SharePoint, MS-Dynamics, etc.) then you end up with a hybridized server farm. It can be made to work, but interoperability issues keep the IT folks mighty busy.

[adorno]

"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."

That is the major issue with Linux, any flavor of it, LiMux included.

Linux is still doing things the old fashion way. Not a bad thing, but the world moves on, and now, just about everything is getting "cloudy", and the LiMux flavor of Linux was not getting modernized, and could not handle the cloud way of doing things. "Everything as a service" is where computing/IT is headed, and the services are being done on the cloud. Applications are bring migrated to the cloud, storage requirements are being handled on the cloud, files are being handled on the cloud, hardware no longer needs to be local, and most processing is moving to the cloud. Even OSes are becoming cloud-based. Software design is being handled via the cloud. In summary, all IT requirements are being moved to the cloud.

Limux was/is a conversion that is, like the article says above, at least 15 years behind the times. Going forward, Limux and many Linux distros, would have been left incompatible with the cloud way of doing things. The management at Munich should have stopped the conversion FROM Windows at least 10 years ago, when they first noticed the incompatibilities and the overrun in costs, and the nature of what LiMux had become, which was a moving target. Essentially, the IT management at Munich was so anti-MS around 2002-2003, that it was bound and determined to get away from MS and go with their love for Linux, come hell or high water. IOW, the decision to migrate away from MS was more emotions and anger and hate, than frugal and intelligent. Something like that eventually comes back to bite. Meanwhile 10s of millions of dollars will have been wasted on illogical decisions.

[trebb]

Makes sense to have an OS that interacts with all the defacto normal programs. Thinking about switching to LINUX but with a VM running Windows within it so I can still have the convenience of full compatibility where LINUX doesn't mesh smoothly enough.

LINUX Servers can be as useful as Solaris Servers for securely interfacing outside the local LAN but the desktops lack full compatibility as long as so many are hooked on Windows - Gates was very smart when he set about taking over the computing business and has made his products "indispensable"..

[so_real]

800 softwares! In all my years I've not run across an organization in the public or private sectors that had 800 mission critical applications. I could not name 800 Windows applications, let alone become dependent upon them. Sounds to me like they are doing something more wrong than just operating system selection ... Some groups just aren't "clever" enough to break away from Microsoft.

[Mr. K]

After 50 years of Unix/Linux it is STILL not “user-friendly” enough to where grandma can install it on her machine to see email pictures of her grandkids.

Until it is, it will never be mainstream.

Even though it is technically a superior operating system.

And I know what I am talking about. I do Windows GUI and device drivers AND ALSO Linux embedded systems FOR A LIVING.

[GingisK]

Yeah, why do the same job with 30 megabytes when 4 terabytes will do the same thing?

[ShadowAce]

Going forward, Limux and many Linux distros, would have been left incompatible with the cloud way of doing things.

Sounds like you have no clue about that which you speak.

[ShadowAce]

After 50 years of Unix/Linux it is STILL not “user-friendly” enough to where grandma can install it on her machine to see email pictures of her grandkids.

Grandma can't install Windows, either.

[adorno]

Yeah, why do the same job with 30 megabytes when 4 terabytes will do the same thing?

I hear you, and I used to think the same way.

But, time moves on, and IT, like everything else, has created new ways of doing things. BTW, the 4 terabytes of today cost less than the 30 megabytes of 15 years ago. Storage and even main memory, are less expensive nowadays, and with that, software development and applications and file storage are cheaper and "easier" to manage, even if things look a bit more complicated. Linux is the 15-years-ago way of doing things.