Ubuntu and open source help the City of Munich save millions

Post by macco » Tue, Jul 08, 2014, 6:36 AM UTC

zanny wrote: post #10

yoran wrote: post #3

Is 2014 the year of Linux on desktop? Joke aside, it makes me happy to see the transition from Microsoft to Linux has been a success. I remember reading the news headline when they first announced it. I wonder how many of the 22,000 government officers that use Ubuntu at work are now also using Ubuntu at home?

They are not, unless there are Ubuntu computers available in stores. I actually know there are some German laws requiring computers be made available with varying or no OS, so it is much more likely than it is stateside to find an Ubuntu machine in store.

Post by wirrbel » Tue, Jul 08, 2014, 6:48 AM UTC

brusch64 wrote: post #19

CSDude wrote: post #4

It reminds me http://xkcd.com/934/ for most simple users. What a government officer do at his/her workstation? They probably have every service through web pages, almost nobody builds native programs anymore. And for the most cases LibreOffice is not perfect, but adequate to do simple jobs. So it is very logical to use something free for these tasks, to replace Windows+Office and save money.

I really wonder if LibreOffice is not totally adequate for the users in the city of Munich. I know that it has its problems if you want to use it with Word generated documents, and it obviously has problems with add-ons developed for Word. But I could really think that it works quite nice, if all your documents are generated for LibreOffice. I am using Open / LibreOffice since nearly 10 years exclusively at home and…

Post by eru » Tue, Jul 08, 2014, 7:09 AM UTC

nmrm wrote: post #22

velodrome wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is there an opensource alternative for Sharepoint?

Some things claim to be, but not really. You can write down the list of sharepoint features you need, and then find individual OSS projects that fill the gap. It's not a one-stop thing, but it doesn't have to be a deal breaker either.

Post by xorcist » Tue, Jul 08, 2014, 7:13 AM UTC

CSDude wrote: post #4

It reminds me http://xkcd.com/934/ for most simple users. What a government officer do at his/her workstation? They probably have every service through web pages, almost nobody builds native programs anymore. And for the most cases LibreOffice is not perfect, but adequate to do simple jobs. So it is very logical to use something free for these tasks, to replace Windows+Office and save money.

Post by mkesper » Tue, Jul 08, 2014, 7:17 AM UTC

brudgers wrote: post #15

zanny wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except it isn't - you need to consider the costs of not just Windows, but all the software surrounding it. Photoshop licenses, Visual Studio licenses, Office licenses, etc. Even at business rates. Per workstation, $3000 can be an underestimate. Meanwhile, using Gimp / Krita / LibreOffice / kdev etc and, at the scale of a city like Munich, just having a dev team to fix the localized problems the city has in the softwa…

As I mentioned common open source productivity software runs on Windows. That includes Gimp, Emacs etc. - not that I believe that Munich is rolling out 14000 development/graphics boxes. The comparison does not appear to be between equivalent specifications. It's assuming that Windows requires Office. That's simply false.