Munich, Germany goes Kubuntu!

[Tom_ZeCat]

How Munich switched 15,000 PCs from Windows to Linux

Munich city council has migrated 15,000 workers from Windows to Linux. It’s a great success story for Free Software, and it upset Microsoft enormously. We visited the city and talked to Peter Hofmann, the man behind the migration – so read on for all the juicy details about what went right, what went wrong, and what made Steve Ballmer sweat…

Note! This article originally appeared in issue 2 of Linux Voice. We’re making it freely available under the terms of the Creative Commons for everyone to share. (Here is the PDF from the magazine.) We’d like to start a campaign to get more city councils and local governments to switch to Linux, so please send the PDF (or a link) to your councillors, show them how Linux can save them money and make them more secure, and let us know how you get on!

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.

We’ve been following the progress of LiMux (Linux in Munich) for years, and now that the project is effectively complete, we decided to visit the city and talk to the man in charge of it. Read on to discover how it all started, how Microsoft tried to torpedo it, and whether other cities in the world can follow Munich’s lead…
Humble beginnings

Cast your mind back to 2001, and the state of Linux at the time. It was well established as a server OS and fairly well known among computing hobbyists, but still a small fish in the desktop pond. Gnome and KDE were still young whippersnappers, while hardware detection needed improvements and top-quality desktop applications were lacking in many areas.
[continued]
[full story: http://www.linuxvoice.com/the-big-switch/]

I'm surprised more cities don't do this. Get out from under Microsoft royalties, and support is still available online. Some of the comments to the story made me laugh. Some talked about compatibility of Excel spreadsheets w/ LibreOffice Calc. Any simple spreadsheets will be exactly the same. Some may have some font problems -- then the simple solution is to just install the missing fonts. And how long to you hang onto old sheets anyway? Any new sheets will start off in Calc anyway and never have an compatibility problem.

Another cool thing is Kubuntu is KDE-based, and KDE is a product of Tübingen, Germany, which is not that far from Munich. I was an exchange student in Tübingen.

[Tom_ZeCat]

You're right. Whatever money they invest into this change will come back to them. There's no more need for Munich to pay royalties or support fees to Microsoft. I would love to see the entire state of Baden-Württemberg, where KDE is developed, go for Kubuntu or some other KDE-based distro. I'd love also for this kind of thing to start happening in the US where I live, but I'm not holding my breath. Microsoft is king here.

[woodsmoke]

Jeong Buk

[Tom_ZeCat]

Jeong Buk

I'm afraid I don't follow you. I just googled Jeong Buk to learn it's a ship. Do they use Kubuntu on that ship?

[NickStone]

Possible bad news for Linux

Munich reverses course, may ditch Linux for Microsoft

[Goeroeboeroe]

Maybe, but it's a bit less bad as a lot of arcticles suggest. For example http://www.techrepublic.com/article/...ck-to-windows/
Most of the techzines just copied some kind of press release.
Next year the European headquarters of Microsoft is moving to Munich. That may be part of a possible switch back to Windows.

Hehe, that's the European headquarters of Microsoft...

[claydoh]

Sooooo..... a deputy mayor, an opponent to the current mayor, and a critic of the move to open source, puts out a press release basically announcing hearings of some sort (so-called expert panel) on this as MS announces a move to the city.......and fun will ensue.

[GreyGeek]

Possible bad news for Linux

Munich reverses course, may ditch Linux for Microsoft

I don't have time to supply a lot of links right now, but Microsoft is notorious for pulling political and $$$ tricks behind the scenes to get things "changed" to their favor. Research into the ISO Committee OOXML approval process. Or, the European Open Source Software Workgroup hijacking, revealed when an edited document was leaked, with changes marked. Or, how Microsoft torpedoed the OLPC project.

It may well be that Munich will switch back to Windows, but it will be due more to political influence than software inadequacy. Whiner's can be bought and paid to whine. Politicians are always amendable to perks. Money talks. Everything else walks. In the end, the tax payer always picks up the bill.

[Tom_ZeCat]

I read a few articles in more local (Munich) papers and my take is this deputy mayor tells whoever will listen he heard stories in several city government departments of file format incompatibilities with outsiders.
And now he wants an investigation.

So first he has to get his investigation and second in case the outcome would confirm said incompatibilities he has to find other politicians that want to do something about it.

Now from my viewpoint I know such incompatibilities do exist and I blame them squarely on the lousy odf implementation of MS Office...

I don't know about the state of Bavaria but Munich and for example Belgium and Denmark have written in law the possibility to communicate with the government using odf.
So the 'burden' is on the companies and people wanting to communicate with the city to 'invest' in a copy of LibreOffice or similar.

When I used to work for a sleazy, crooked, despicable retail company whose name I won't mention (psst, was Takin' Care of Business, Every Day), they wanted us to stress and exaggerate file incompatibilities so that we could sell Microsoft Office with every computer. We most often sold card activation ones that simply activated the trial copy that came on the PC (hint: so they would have no install disk and would likely buy it again with the next PC). They didn't like it when I was honest with customers by saying that most people would get along just fine with OpenOffice (this was before LibreOffice was prominent).

Now I work freelance. I give every client a printed copy of the work and two electronic copies, one in Libre/OpenOffice format "odt" and another in MS Word '97/00/XP/03 format "doc." I always specify that if they need another format, they only need to contact me. So far no one has. I've wondered if at some point I might need to install MS Office under VirtualBox in case of a file incompatibility and someone insisting on receiving a document in the wretched docx format, but so far that hasn't been necessary. Those using a recent version of MS Office have simply used the doc file and let it convert to docx.

If course if I ever do have to install MS Office, I'll make 100 percent for sure, guaranteed, positively certain, without any shadow of a doubt to pay for the thing since I would never ever ever ever dream of stiffing a decent, honest, and integrity-filled organization like Microsoft of any money.

At least with simple files like mine, there have been no file compatibility problems. However, you're right that more complex ones show up in docx files, thanks to Microsoft. The company had no need to get rid of doc that was working for people. Third parties had figured that one out and doc files from 3rd-party sources had because quite reliable for almost everything. That's why I use it unless someone insists on the later one.

[NickStone]

I've wondered if at some point I might need to install MS Office under VirtualBox...

You really don't need to install MS Office either in Virtualbox or run it through Wine within Linux, I know of two free (that's free to use not open source) MS Office clones that are compatible with MS Office and are built to be run under Linux. They are WPS Office (also known as kingsoft office) and Softmaker Office both should be available in the repository.

[Tom_ZeCat]

You really don't need to install MS Office either in Virtualbox or run it through Wine within Linux, I know of two free (that's free to use not open source) MS Office clones that are compatible with MS Office and are built to be run under Linux. They are WPS Office (also known as kingsoft office) and Softmaker Office both should be available in the repository.

I've got SoftMaker Office. I've wondered if their claims about outstanding docx compatibility are true. Yes, I would try that first before resorting to running MS Word. For the most part, I prefer LibreOffice to SoftMaker, but the latter does have some features I like better. If I'm writing in German, I use SoftMaker's TextMaker. Germany reformed its spelling a few years back, but I learned German before they did that. The spell as you type feature will underline normal misspelled words in red like LO Writer and MS Word do. However, if it's a word spelled correctly according to the old spelling standards, but incorrect according to the new, it underlines it in blue. That's extremely helpful. TextMaker also lets you turn on the old WordStar cursor diamond commands. I was floored when I found out they cater to ex-WordStar users like myself. The industry dumped the once-standard WordStar keystrokes, leaving lost Stars like myself frustrated. In every word processor I've used since WordStar, I've programmed as many of the WordStar cursor diamond strokes as I can via macros. SM TextMaker also has a built-in Duden German dictionary and a built-in Langenscheits (English/German, German/French, etc), which I find enormously helpful. Alas, because of copyright restrictions, these two dictionaries are only available if the user interface is set to German. Oh, well, I set it to German when I need those.

Alas, TextMaker has no macro system, but I hear one is on its way. TextMaker's pretty good. It's the only Linux-based word processor I use other than LibreOffice (not counting plain text editors like Kate and Gedit). AbiWord and Calligra Words are both pretty weak in my opinion.

In a nutshell, SM TextMaker is my preferred word processor for writing in German. For writing in English or French, LO Writer is my preferred one.

I also use the Android version of TextMaker.

[verndog]

I always thought I needed Office (MS, open, etc), when using my files. I found out Abiword and Gnumeric work just as good and a _lot_ lighter. What's that ubiquitous saying, YMMV.

[GreyGeek]

Well, just wait awhile, investigate around, and the truth about "Munich moving back to Linux" rises to the surface.

As I suspected, it's all hyperbolic propaganda, probably funded and orchestrated by Microsoft and echoed around the web by Microsoft fanbois. Munich is NOT moving back to Windows.

Munich city council says a review of its IT has not been triggered by staff dissatisfaction after moving from Windows to Linux on the desktop, in spite of reports to the contrary.
...
is the council's move to open source about to be scrapped in favour or returning to Microsoft?No says the council, in spite of numerous reports to the contrary. Suggestions the council has decided to back away from Linux are wrong, according to council spokesman Stefan Hauf.
...


The level of complaints about Limux and free software from council staff are nothing unusual, said Hauf ...

He said the council's recently elected mayor Dieter Reiter has instead simply commissioned a report into the future IT system for the council.
...

"The new mayor has asked the administration to gather the facts so we can decide and make a proposal for the city council how to proceed in future," he said. "Not only for Limux but for all of IT. It's about the organisation, the costs, performance and the useability and satisfaction of the users."

It seems that the newly elected mayor, Reiter, and his second in command, Schmidt, are the ones beating the drums to go back to proprietary software. Both are admitted Microsoft fans, and Reiter prefers Outlook for his groupware. At the same time, Microsoft released a "report" claiming that rather than saving $13 million, the move to Linux cost Munich over $100 million, which is ludicrous but not out of line with similar funded Microsoft "reports" and ad claims, like the "Highly Reliable Times" nonsense. Add to that report the fact that Microsoft announced that they are moving their German headquarters to Munich and things begin to add up. One has to ask how much influen$e MS had in Munich's politics and will have in "persuading" the city council to force a move back to Windows. It's a one sided battle as usual. MS has all the money and influence and history has proven that they aren't above using unethical and sometimes illegal methods. Again, think of the OOXML debacle, or OLPC, or the Australian charity, or the many, many one person entrepreneurs who were courted by Microsoft until MS engineers could look at the person's technology and then incorporate it into their OS. I can think of only one, a Frenchman, who won $2M in a long running court case that ruled against MS.

It could turn out that after the report is released it could trigger a more massive move to Linux and OpenSource software solutions than just the 15,000 workers in Munich.

[Tom_ZeCat]

Well, just wait awhile, investigate around, and the truth about "Munich moving back to Linux" rises to the surface.

As I suspected, it's all hyperbolic propaganda, probably funded and orchestrated by Microsoft and echoed around the web by Microsoft fanbois. Munich is NOT moving back to Windows.


It seems that the newly elected mayor, Reiter, and his second in command, Schmidt, are the ones beating the drums to go back to proprietary software. Both are admitted Microsoft fans, and Reiter prefers Outlook for his groupware. At the same time, Microsoft released a "report" claiming that rather than saving $13 million, the move to Linux cost Munich over $100 million, which is ludicrous but not out of line with similar funded Microsoft "reports" and ad claims, like the "Highly Reliable Times" nonsense. Add to that report the fact that Microsoft announced that they are moving their German headquarters to Munich and things begin to add up. One has to ask how much influen$e MS had in Munich's politics and will have in "persuading" the city council to force a move back to Windows. It's a one sided battle as usual. MS has all the money and influence and history has proven that they aren't above using unethical and sometimes illegal methods. Again, think of the OOXML debacle, or OLPC, or the Australian charity, or the many, many one person entrepreneurs who were courted by Microsoft until MS engineers could look at the person's technology and then incorporate it into their OS. I can think of only one, a Frenchman, who won $2M in a long running court case that ruled against MS.

It could turn out that after the report is released it could trigger a more massive move to Linux and OpenSource software solutions than just the 15,000 workers in Munich.

I hope so. I also hope that the City of Tübingen in Baden-Württemberg goes for Linux, preferably Kubuntu. That's where KDE was first developed. It also happens to be the city where I was an exchange student. My fondness for Tübingen was a reason behind my choosing a KDE-based distro, that plus KDE is excellent.

Btw, Stac Electronics also won their lawsuit against Microsoft. They're the company that made the disk-compression utility, Stacker. Microsoft negotiated with them about making Stacker part of MS-DOS, learned all their trade secrets, and then pulled out of negotiations, creating their own competing product.

These claims about going an organization paying more money to use Linux than Microsoft are laughable. They usually boil down to the claim that you'll have no technical support for something free that you download and then you'll end up hiring tech experts who cost more than the cost of the software that includes tech support. That's a load of BS. For every major distro and every major Linux app (like LibreOffice), there's free tech support available online.

[GreyGeek]

Besides Stac there was GoPen.

Microsoft usually lumped the cost of Windows licenses and support into the cost of the hardware, making it appear insignificant. However, when comparing Windows and Linux hardware costs wash out, making $0 for Linux and productivity software significantly less than an MS OS license plus license fees for EVERY productivity app used.