
Linux-on-the-desktop pioneer Munich now considering a switch back to Windows - vilgax
http://arstechnica.com/business/2014/08/linux-on-the-desktop-pioneer-munich-now-considering-a-switch-back-to-windows/
======
4bpp
Google Translate butchers the article badly, but
[https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&js=y&pr...](https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&js=y&prev=_t&hl=en&ie=UTF-8&u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.heise.de%2Fnewsticker%2Fmeldung%2FLinux-
in-Muenchen-Stadtrat-verteidigt-LiMux-gegen-Buergermeister-2262506.html&edit-
text=&act=url) suggests that this is more of a personal ambition of the vice-
mayor and the city council is positioning itself firmly against any move back
to Windows.

Ultimately, it is more surprising that things even managed to remain this
peaceful so far. Windows holds a huge home advantage simply by being the
operating system almost everyone in the bureaucracy invariably uses at home.
Many of the employees probably already invested years of painstaking trial-
and-error, frustrated tech support calls and offering of incentives to more
computer-literate relatives and offspring to get where they are in terms of
being able to navigate a Windows desktop. No amount of corporate training is
going to be able to make up for the feeling of frustration that those people
will feel from the realisation that much of that was moot and they will have
to relearn the basics.

~~~
egor83
Makes me wonder - why hasn't anyone made a Linux desktop environments that
tries to mimic Windows look and behaviour as much as possible? IP/patent
issues maybe?

There would be a huge market for something like that, as this situation shows.

~~~
ronwl
Linux Mint with Cinnamon?

I think its good enough since I've managed to convert at least 42 user from
Windows to that. Its been almost 2years and they still stick with that.

~~~
fiatjaf
42? You're a hero. I've succeeded with 1, failed with 2, and still trying with
3 more.

------
lostcolony
Doesn't surprise me really. Despite the advances of some of the more popular
distros, Linux still appeals to the power user, not to the casual user. I was
reminded of that just recently when I was having to do some googling, sudo
apt-get some libraries, and chmod some stuff, just to use a piece of fairly
popular software, on Mint, one of the more approachable distros. I was struck
by the thought "...I would never, ever want to have to walk (elderly neighbor
who has asked me for tech support help in the past) through this".

~~~
_delirium
Have you tried Windows recently? I haven't taken the plunge to move my
relatives to Linux yet, but my experiences supporting relatives trying to use
some mixture of Vista, Win7, and Win8 are extremely bad. I feel there was a
period when many "normal" people did figure out Windows 95/98/XP and it could
be taken as a default graphical computer interface. But the experience they
gained has bitrotted as Microsoft has changed things around, and the current
situation is a mess.

~~~
pistle
All my relatives use Win7 or Win8 and the Win8 ones are the happiest, love
OneDrive, etc. etc. My sister then switched their phones over to Lumia 1020s
because of Win8 and bought a Yoga 2 Pro. Her comment: "Wait. So what's all the
fuss about? I love how this stuff all just works together and it's pretty much
exactly like Win7."

I guess I should just be proud of the genius that is my sister who figured it
all out on her own. I think I've answered 2-3 questions about Win Phone and
one, my favorite, about their old printer.

Her: "What do we have to do to get it to work?" Me: "Have you plugged it in
yet?" Her: "Daaaamn. It just worked."

~~~
sanderjd
Interesting. My anecdotes are different. Windows 7 and Win Phone made sense,
while Windows 8 was a nightmare. I guess YMMV.

------
jqm
Funny. I work at a place with extensive MS systems and we get lots of
complaints and have no shortage of issues aside from the complaints.

I often dream about how nice it would be to replace crufty sharepoint with
some web apps on a Linux server do our own in house mail.

I guess the grass is often greener on the other side of the fence.

But for me personally.... I chose Linux. It just works better for what I do
and doesn't annoy the bejeazus out of me at every turn with push buttons and
hidden stuff like MS products seem to. Maybe I am just more tolerant of open
source stuff. But push buttons and hidden settings do annoy me. Text file
configuration and the command line. It's fast, it's simple, it's what I like.

~~~
aeturnum
It feels very dependant on your company's individual use cases. Sysadmin work
is probably going to be easier on Linux, but each time a user has a problem
adjusting something it makes more work for a sysadmin.

The best of both worlds would be Windows running on a *nix system I suppose,
but that seems really unlikely.

~~~
jqm
....and don't even get me started on that push button infected bloated
monstrosity called IIS......

------
untog
I'm sure many will say that the failure is the exact implementation of Linux,
or miscalculated expectations, or incompetent sysops, or, or...

They're all right. But it's also exactly the problem with Linux in a corporate
environment. For better and worse, Microsoft have made Windows a single,
predictable entity. While we developers see the myriad of Linux options out
there as the result of freedom, customers see them as evidence of confusion
and lack of focus.

~~~
taftster
I don't entirely disagree with you, I get what you're saying.

But I definitely don't see Windows as being tightly focussed nor a single
predictable entity. The differences, nuances, and upgrade paths between 95,
98, ME, XP, Vista, 7, 8 are as fragmented and confusing as possible.

Linux isn't any better, this is true. But I don't buy that it's because of
singular vision that Microsoft continues to dominate. Today Apple has the
strongest composed experience, in my opinion. Too bad they have basically zero
corporate presence.

~~~
untog
Apple has zero corporate presence because as far as I can tell, they don't
really try. We tried setting up some Apple TVs at my work to use as an AirPlay
target during presentations. But Bonjour can't cross subnets (or something
similar), so we couldn't do it. And Apple were absolutely uninterested in
providing support.

~~~
chubs
With the latest firmware + ios7, Airplay now works in such environments
because it uses bluetooth for handshaking. Might be worth re-trying?

------
bane
The problem ultimately is that any Linux distribution turns what are usually
normal user-level issues into sys-admin issues.

~~~
vacri
The problem really is that for those of us who grew up with windows, we
encountered all the oddities and breakages gradually over time. Then when we
switch to linux, we encounter all the new oddities all at once, and have a
preconceived idea of how an operating system should work and even look like.

~~~
bane
No, it's much more complicated on Linux.

 _Very_ few normal user "I don't know how to do this" problems on Windows or
OS X require sys admin level skills. These days most things you want to do
either just work, or are discoverable just by poking around in menus and
trying a few things. When something doesn't just work in Windows or OS X
there's usually a GUI somewhere that solves it.

As soon as you hit a problem in Linux, it almost inevitably requires you to
fire up a terminal and start editing config files, dealing with permissions,
building from source. And half the time if you screw it up, you're left with
an unusable system.

If you don't believe me, pick a distro, and start reading through the help
forums for that distro, questions that involve normal user type problems like
"I don't know how to share this folder on my network" or "audio doesn't work".
As soon as a user has to open a terminal to do something, they've become a
system admin.

For example, here's the instructions for backing up and restoring a hard drive
(Keep in mind, this is 2014)
[http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=2234758](http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=2234758)

Again, in 2014, here's the "fix" to keep your windows on the correct monitors.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LwJl3ohmmqc&feature=youtu.be](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LwJl3ohmmqc&feature=youtu.be)

Or, "I can't browse a windows share on my home network"
[http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1169149](http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1169149)

Here's the instructions for "getting a list of software that's installed on my
computer"
[http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=261366](http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=261366)

How to install a scanner
[http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=2166420](http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=2166420)

A fun drinking game you can play with Linux tutorials intended to solve normal
user-level issues:

\- count the steps until a terminal is open, drink that number of shots.

\- for every sudo command, drink a shot

\- every time a file has to be edited or redirected, drink a shot, pipes are
two shots

\- every time a permission has to be changed, drink a shot

\- if the user has to run a script, drink a shot

\- if the user has to apt-get (or equivalent) something that has a completely
non-discoverable name that you just have to "know", drink two shots. If it's
an apt-get for something with a guessable name, 1 shot.

\- if the user has to concern themselves with overwriting files or making
backups of something, drink a shot

\- if the user has to compile something, drink a shot

\- every time the user has to 'ps' or 'kill' a process, drink a shot

\- if the problem is the result of the distro updating a library, drink two
shots

\- if the problem is the result of an arbitrary compatibility issue with
something that has an incompehensible name (like pcmanfm), drink a shot, if
the problem is because of a minor version difference, drink two shots

\- if it's a problem that only exists on Linux because the rest of the world
is ignoring it (like access to streaming media sites), drink 2 shots, if the
solutions are complex and require multiple shots to get through (see all of
the above), then don't work, drink 2 more shots

\- for every page of follow up in the forum that's proposing the solution,
drink a shot.

Here's an example of a simple game. An answer to the question of "how do I
watch netflix in Ubuntu"

> why don't you just inst all netflix

> To install on Ubuntu / Mint -

> Start terminal _1 shot_

> $ sudo apt-add-repository ppa:ehoover/compholio _1 shot for sudo, 2 shots
> for nondiscoverability_

> $ sudo apt-get update _1 shot for sudo_

> $ sudo apt-get install netflix-desktop _1 shot for sudo_ _1 shot for apt-
> get_

> and then find the NetFlix Icon under Video click to install and you are
> done. _no shots, but why couldn 't this just be done via a gui?_

 _Total Damage: 7 shots of hard liquor. Congratulations, installing netflix
has just made you an alcoholic._

Here's a 33 page discussion on installing the ePSXe playstation emulator.
[http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=612021](http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=612021)
Congratulations you've now died of alcohol poisoning.

The Windows version of this is

1) download the install file 2) unzip it 3) run the epsxe.exe file

~~~
vacri
_As soon as a user has to open a terminal to do something, they 've become a
system admin._

As soon as a user has to open a Windows management console, they've become a
system admin, too. Device Manager? That's sysadmin. You seem to have missed my
point about 'preconceived notion of what an operating system looks like'.

Half the stuff you're complaining about is equally stupid in windows. Have to
download a tool from some slightly dodgy site to fix your problem? Two shots.
Windows config file edited? A shot. Install a .reg file? have another shot.
Run something in an cmd window that's been raised to Administrator (not easily
discoverable)? have a shot. Have to kill something in Task Manager? Another
shot. Ignore the log, "just reboot to clear the error"? Another shot. Random
new icon on your desktop from your mystery tool? Another shot. A brand new
phone-home tool-specific updater and possible spyware? Two shots. Windows
auto-update does an autoreboot overnight and kills open documents? Have
another shot. Never suggesting looking in the logs for an insight to the
error? Another shot. If the installer is actually a preloader, and it loads an
unknown-size payload? Have a shot. Download "mouse drivers" or "network
drivers" from your motherboard provider and they're somehow bigger than 100MB?
(even bigger than 1MB?) Have a shot. The tool you're looking for is described
on a shitty page full of ads for crapware? A shot. The tool you're installing
has a drive-by download of some shitty toolbar, with a pre-checked tickbox?
Have another shot (hello Adobe Flash!). You need some special media library
just to view support resources from your vendor? Take a shot (hello,
Silverlight!).

What about the glorious nature of the AMD GPU Catalyst drivers? On a new
Windows install using inbuilt drivers, the display is understandable low res,
640x480. You can open the Catalyst drivers to start setting them up, but you
can't see the OK/Apply button, and you can't move the top of the window off
the screen, because it's taller than 480 pixels. If you don't know how that
screen should work, it's just not discoverable. It's been a problem for years.

You're picking and choosing pretty damn hard there, my friend. OSX has largely
solved a lot of these problems (mostly by locking things down hard,
particularly on the hardware side of things), but Windows sure hasn't.

~~~
bane
Except almost none of the things you've described are things that normal users
have to do to solve normal user problems. For example, nobody edits windows
config files anymore, that hasn't existed as a Windows thing for a long time.
And I can't even remember the last time I had to mess with a .reg file. Maybe
8 years ago? And it wasn't required, I was fooling around with something, or
trying to hack around a broken software key or something. Most of the things
you've listed _are_ sys admin tasks, but they aren't normal user tasks. Normal
users don't even know what a log file is. Why would you list something like
that?

And that's the point, the things you point out might be things that at some
point somebody _might_ optionally need to do to solve some obscure, once in a
lifetime problem.

But on Linux systems, that's pretty much _all_ you do. Pretty much anytime you
need to do anything, you're in terminal, fucking around with permissions or
sudoing or editing some unguessable .conf file somewhere or restarting a
daemon. None of the examples I gave were for sysadmin activities. There are no
servers that need to be monitored, no hardware performance that needs to be
profiled, no network things that need to be configured and securely locked
down. I gave you _61 page_ discussion on how to browse a network share,
something that's been trivially solved in everything from OS X to my
Smartphone for years -- and up to the last page people are saying that the
suggestions in the how-to don't work. The collective wisdom of the crowds
spent 61 pages of fixes, conf file tweaks, scripts and discussion to not be
able to produce a universally working answer. This isn't an unusual "something
broke and I can't access my network shares" this is the introduction how-to
set it up!

That's absurd!

Or how about the 33 page discussion on how to install a piece of user-facing
software? _33 pages_! And it doesn't work universally for everybody. These are
people who are all on the same distro! You have to be kidding me. That's
completely, 100% unsatisfactory for something that's being put in front of
users. The install instructions for any user-facing software should be at best
a 5 line, GUI driven exercise for n00bs followed by a half dozen "thanks it
worked!" posts.

I'm not trying to cherry pick here. I simply went through the ubuntu forums
and picked the top-n items that looked like things a normal user would want to
do. I didn't pick "Howto setup a Juniper Network Connect VPN" or "How to
identify PCI Driver in use" or "Practical examples of the linux Find command"
or "how to setup a secure ftp server" because that's _not things users want to
do_.

It's not lack of familiarity. Even seasoned, decades long Linux users have to
consult and decode poorly written man pages and decipher unguessable
commandline options, spend hours hunting through forums to see if somebody
happened to post a solution that works for the minor revision of whatever
distro and software version of whatever thing it is they want to try to fix.
You can't work your way through and "discover" how to do that stuff. Nobody's
going to sit down to solve their monitor layout problem and just by poking
through a few menus arrive at something like this 9 minute solution
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LwJl3ohmmqc&feature=youtu.be](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LwJl3ohmmqc&feature=youtu.be)

You can get comfortable with apt-get or yum or whatever all you want. But if
the one critical component you need to do some typical user-level task is
entirely undiscoverable (so apt-get is useless), and configuring it requires
60+ pages of solution guesses, the OS has failed.

It's madness. And it's why you'll never see a city or state-wide Linux
initiative work. Linux _is_ a sysadmin OS, not a user OS. The moment a user
needs to do something, they simply can't be doing this shit. Sysadmins don't
mind spending two or three days figuring out the script to make the service
daemons shutdown in the right order. Users don't give a shit.

Linux users don't become comfortable with their systems in the way Windows or
OS X users do. They become comfortable with the brokenness of the system.
Their expectations are light years apart. On Linux you become comfortable with
the fact that, even if something isn't broken, any trivial task you want to do
is going to require you to set the better part of a couple days aside to
resolve.

For sysadmins, that's their job. For users, it isn't, and that's why these
initiatives fail.

------
djur
It seems like a big part of the motivation is that every other entity they
have to interact with is using Windows. That's a pretty compelling reason to
switch back, and also a pretty good example of how Microsoft is excellent at
causing vendor lock-in.

Also, there's not really anything available in the open source world that
provides precisely the features that corporate sysadmins look for in Exchange
(and Sharepoint, Active Directory, etc.) in an in-house system. I didn't enjoy
switching to Exchange from Google Apps post-acquisition, but I don't know of
any self-hosted alternatives that provide vaguely integrated email and
calendar that don't suck equally as hard as Exchange.

------
bwanab
So far, it seems that people have missed the (to my mind) crucial statement
that Microsoft is relocating its German headquarters to Munich. Could that
have anything to do with the switch?

~~~
Vik1ng
Well, it's not like it was far away before.

Old location: [http://osm.org/go/0JBO8dB-?m=](http://osm.org/go/0JBO8dB-?m=)

New location: [http://osm.org/go/0JBKuNE-?m=](http://osm.org/go/0JBKuNE-?m=)

------
cm127
I'm kind of surprised that they're getting push-back for Microsoft after the
whole NSA thing last year. I know it's unfair to blame the company for any of
it, but it's still a US company that has to follow US law.

------
TazeTSchnitzel
Better link (Ars Technica, English): arstechnica.com/business/2014/08/linux-
on-the-desktop-pioneer-munich-now-considering-a-switch-back-to-windows/

~~~
dang
Thanks. We changed to that from
[https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&js=y&pr...](https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&js=y&prev=_t&hl=en&ie=UTF-8&u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.sueddeutsche.de%2Fmuenchen%2Fmuenchner-
stadtverwaltung-von-microsoft-zu-linux-und-zurueck-1.2090611).

------
truantbuick
I'm sure I saw a HN link a month or two ago touting the great success of
Munich's Linux move. Can anybody find it?

~~~
adamfeldman
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7720219](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7720219)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8002194](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8002194)

[http://hn.algolia.com/#!/story/forever/prefix/0/munich](http://hn.algolia.com/#!/story/forever/prefix/0/munich)

------
tuhaihe
It's hard for general users to use Linux desktop.

"Free" also can has a big cost.

------
pippy
I'd like to see them roll out Windows 8.1 and get fewer complaints.

