Posted on 05/09/2014 9:47:55 AM PDT by Utilizer
Hirschgarten, in the west of Munich, is one of Europe’s biggest beer gardens, with over 8,000 places to sit. It’s a spectacular sight in summer: hundreds of benches as far as the eye can see, trees providing some shelter from the heat, and a vast number of people relaxing and enjoying the city’s famous beers.
But while 8,000 is an impressive number, it’s not as impressive as 15,000. That’s how many people the Munich city council has switched from Windows to Linux over the last decade. Migrating workers of Germany’s third-largest city was no easy task and there were plenty of hurdles along the way, but by and large the project has been a storming success. ...
...“Back in 2001, a member of the Munich city council asked: are there any alternatives to using Microsoft software? And based on that question, we put out a tender for a study, which compared five platform options. One was purely Microsoft-based, one was Windows with OpenOffice, one was Linux with OpenOffice, and so forth.”
As the study progressed, two main options emerged as choices for the council: remaining with a purely Microsoft solution, which would involve upgrading existing Windows NT and 2000 systems to XP; and moving to a purely Linux and open source alternative. “If you lay more emphasis on the monetary side, the pure Microsoft alternative would have won, or if you lay the emphasis on the strategic side, the open source alternative was better.”
That was interesting enough – that staying with Microsoft would have been cheaper. Given the cost of buying licences for Windows and Office, you’d think that sticking with Microsoft would’ve cost far more than switching to Linux.
(Excerpt) Read more at linuxvoice.com ...
Maybe it's the name... -then again, there is a Linux distro out there named "Pear" I believe, so perhaps that will convince some to try it.
Looks like Mr. Gates won’t be the first trillionaire after all.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.