Again? I love Germany, but I honestly can't tell whether this is an old news brought back to life, or whether it's a new story at a glance. Deja vu anyone?
I believe the root issue here is that Germany has more than one city.
German city wants to ditch Microsoft for Linux
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Re: German city wants to ditch Microsoft for Linux
#42Earlier quoted context omitted.
Many countries are currently ditching Windows in favor of home grown distros due to distrust of Microsoft. Notable examples: Currently transitioning: - Astra Linux (Russia) https://www.zdnet.com/article/russian-military-moves-closer-... - Kylin Linux? (China) https://www.techradar.com/news/china-to-ditch-all-windows-pc... - South Korea https://www.zdnet.com/article/south-koreas-government-explor... Already transition…
Is there really a need for them to create their own distributions?
Why not?
If this is about trust, then it makes sense that you don't choose between trusting a corporation or a group of hobbyists, but take control and eliminate one layer of things to trust altogether. Bonus points, you get control too and don't have to fight upstream to pursue and care about your interests.
Re: German city wants to ditch Microsoft for Linux
#43Windows, Office and Win Server (AD) make a combo that is quite difficult to replace.
But if these cities are smart, they would pool their resources together to fund common tools. All the bits and pieces are already here. What is needed is a solid package that can be deployed and maintained easily, with user friendly GUI.
Re: German city wants to ditch Microsoft for Linux
#44Munich migrated already once to Linux and then had to go back to Windows[1]
They are probably doing to put pressure on Microsoft license fees..
[1] https://www.golem.de/news/von-microsoft-zu-linux-und-zurueck...
Re: German city wants to ditch Microsoft for Linux
#45Again? I love Germany, but I honestly can't tell whether this is an old news brought back to life, or whether it's a new story at a glance. Deja vu anyone?
I believe the root issue here is that Germany has more than one city.
It was a quite memorable thing in the "this will be the year of linux on the desktop" days, so it's interesting to see similar headlines again today
Re: German city wants to ditch Microsoft for Linux
#46Does Desktop OS matter anymore? So much is running in "browsers" now, even the SpaceX astronaut controls were Electron. The cloud provider is where it's at. AWS, Azure, GCloud ... and nothing from Europe.
I feel like what you're really asking is "Does personal computing matter anymore?".
Re: German city wants to ditch Microsoft for Linux
#47Windows, Office and Win Server (AD) make a combo that is quite difficult to replace. But if these cities are smart, they would pool their resources together to fund common tools. All the bits and pieces are already here. What is needed is a solid package that can be deployed and maintained easily, with user friendly GUI.
What is the big deal about AD? A directory of your employees? What's so important about that? (I don't work in corporate IT I genuinely don't know.)
Re: German city wants to ditch Microsoft for Linux
#48Earlier quoted context omitted.
No. And it's a shame everyone does.
I've been wondering about this. Competition breeds innovation and all that, but in the end, aren't we ending up with a whole lot of repeated effort for little benefit?
I guess it's a whole lot easier to repeat the effort (Even if it seems wasteful) than getting multiple countries / governments / languages and funding situations organized around one project.
Probably just easier to do it on your own and if at some point one of the distributions is gaining some momentum maybe then others will adopt it and send patches upstream.
Re: German city wants to ditch Microsoft for Linux
#49Meanwhile in Munch... "German city of Munich, famous for rejecting Windows in favour of using Linux on its PCs, will return to Windows after the move won the backing of the full council." Source: https://www.techrepublic.com/article/end-of-an-open-source-e...
According to Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LiMux the politicians decided last month to go back to Linux. Apparently Ballmer visited Munich a lot trying to persuade the politicians to stay/switch back to Windows, even moving Microsoft's German HQ to the city.
I think the timeline entry in Wikipedia is misleading. If you look at the referenced ZDNet article, it has this:
"We're very happy that they're taking on the points in the 'Public Money, Public Code' campaign we started two and a half years ago," Alex Sander, EU public policy manager at the Berlin-based Free Software Foundation Europe, tells ZDNet. But it's also important to note that this is just a statement in a coalition agreement outlining future plans, he says.
"Nothing will change from one day to the next, and we wouldn't expect it to," Sander continued, noting that the city would also be waiting for ongoing software contracts to expire. "But the next time there is a new contract, we believe it should involve free software."
Any such step-by-step transition can be expected to take years. But it is also possible that Munich will be able to move faster than most because they are not starting from zero, Sander noted.
Re: German city wants to ditch Microsoft for Linux
#50I can't believe that Microsoft is still charging for Windows licenses... convoluted licensing is in fact is one of the primary reasons that I've moved away from Microsoft products and services.
For individual users who don't mind a small watermark on the screen ,the inability to change their desktop background, or the inability to join the windows insider program, it effectively is free. Granted, this doesn't apply to orgs.
But yeah I don't see why they still charge for Home Edition licences. Surely the focus should be on keeping people using Windows. It probably makes sense in the short term to charge but more and more people are either moving away from Windows or using unlicensed installs.