
How Munich switched 15,000 PCs from Windows to Linux - mksaunders
http://www.linuxvoice.com/the-big-switch/
======
cs702
Wow... it's taken the Munich government _a decade_ (2003-2013) to switch
desktops to Linux and Free software, and _they 're still working on it._
(There are still a small number of desktops running proprietary applications
on Wine.) It just shows how difficult it can be for a large organization to
wean itself off proprietary software lock-in.

The good news is that future similar migrations will be much easier and
faster, now that Munich has shown the way for others to follow. It's good news
because increased competition in the desktop OS market can lead only to
better, more innovative products for everyone.

~~~
danford
Well, it's a decade to migrate _15,000_ computers. The french did over double
that in the same time and plan on migrating 72,000[1].

Don't forget Munich saved 10,000,000 Euros doing this[2], and --let's be
honest -- doing the same thing with windows computers wouldn't have saved more
than maybe a couple years at most.

[1][http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2013-10/01/french-
nation...](http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2013-10/01/french-national-
police)

[2][http://linux.slashdot.org/story/12/11/23/1732222/limux-
proje...](http://linux.slashdot.org/story/12/11/23/1732222/limux-project-has-
saved-munich-10m-so-far)

~~~
josefresco
"The comparison with Windows assumes that Windows systems must be on the same
technological level; this would, for example, mean that they would have been
upgraded to Windows 7 at the end of 2011"

That's a big assumption, and one that no doubt helps push the price of the MS
solution up considerably.

~~~
drzaiusapelord
Relaly big assumption there. Lots of shops, including government, are only now
getting off XP and migrating to 7 or 8.1.

There's no case study more massaged by those who want certain outcomes than
the Munich linux migration. I also believe they were running NT4 when they
started this project, so they're definitely the type of organization that is
very behind the tech curve.

I don't have a preferred outcome and wish them the best, but there's so much
BS and massaging of data here that its all fairly useless to those of us
interested in how this really turned out for them. Pardon me if I don't
considering slashdot as a reliable and unbiased source regarding TCO of
Windows.

------
nnq
Please, the big problem of governments and administrations is not using Linux
or Windows, the operating system is irrelevant... The problem was probably
reliance on _crappy software_ written by _shitty companies_ that only try to
milk them of more and more money. The fact that it took them _a decade_ to
make the transition was most likely because of the shitty non-standard
software they were using and the time it takes to retrain people used to
working with backwards and user hostile software. If you are a gov accountant
or clerk and you accounting software had such a bad ui that it took you 3+
years to properly learn to use it, of course you will resist any kind of
change because you just can't imagine things can be any better.

And this is because governments and administration never choose any kind of
product because it is "easy to use", "simple to maintain" or "easy to extend".

Even the switch to Linux was made _for the wrong reasons_ , that is for trying
to find something _cheaper_ and _better_ ("better" seems to mean "more secure"
in this case). NEWSFLASH: As a government/administration, you should never
look for _cheaper_ and/or _better_ things, you should look for something that
is "barely good enough" (even when it's a bit worse than what you already
have), but _easiest to use without training_ , _easiest to teach people how to
use it_ , _easiest to replace / throw away_ and _cheapest to extend_ , even if
it happens to be both worse an more expensive.

The fact that they happened to choose Linux, which is probably a pretty good
fit for them, was an accident, as they did the same old stupid thing of going
to look for something _cheaper_ and _better._

~~~
emsy
Afaik, in the EU it's even regulated that the lowest contester wins the bid.
(Or it was, until January 2014)

~~~
claudius
Of course the lowest bidder is supposed to win, as all bids are supposed to
fulfil the requirements laid out in the contest and these requirements are
assumed to be fully sufficient for the task at hand. Theoretically speaking,
of course.

~~~
makomk
Practically speaking, what requirements would you put in a contract to ensure
that a company delivered maintainable software?

~~~
claudius
Hm. I’m obviously not a lawyer and also not a software engineer in an
enterprisey setting. But some ideas might be:

\- all internal data storage formats have to be completely specified \- an
open data format (RTF, PDF, txt?) has to be supported for import/export \- the
source code has to be licensed suitably, e.g. GPL \- open/platform-independent
toolkits (say Qt, GTK) have to be used

As I said, I’m not a lawyer and not a software engineer, so these are likely
entirely unsuitable. And while they not ensure maintainable software, I think
they certainly would not be detrimental.

~~~
dredmorbius
I'd make damned sure that a format _in the preferred form of the work for
making modifications to it_ be specified.

PDFs _can_ be modified, but you really don't want to do that. Far better to
get source in LaTeX, DocBook, RTF, Markdown, or some similar format.

Better: insist that the tool not only be _capable_ of outputting the chosen
format, but _that it do so by default, as a matter of course, and without any
error, warning, or other dissuasive dialog (e.g., "some formatting changes may
be lost") in the process._

While it's not the only company to do so, Microsoft's gaming of file formats
for lock-in advantage is legendary (and yet another reason I avoid the
company's products where at all possible).

------
dewey
Interesting, just yesterday I visited the "Landeskriminalamt" (State Office of
Criminal Investigations) in Munich and they are just migrating all of their
Windows XP desktops (They were criticized after paying a lot of money to keep
getting security updates from Microsoft) to Windows 8.1. They mentioned that
they are paying a lot of licence fees every year and that making sure
everything is licenced correctly is a big task in itself. We asked them why
they are not switching to open source software and Linux for their desktops
and they basically said it's too big of a switch and even the city of Munich
is struggling to migrate all their computers and that they are even thinking
about switching back to Windows. This doesn't really seem that accurate after
reading that article.

Edit:

Another anecdote from the visit: They said that even the switch from XP to 8.1
will confuse a lot of users (The guy giving the talk said that their average
employee is already confused if some icons on the desktop change and they are
very reluctant to accept changes). They printed flyers and recorded elearning
courses on how to open a program or use the new system. They also added a
simple way to migrate to some kind of legacy interface emulating the Windows
XP look & feel for users who just won't accept the new system.

~~~
3pt14159
It is 2014, not being able to switch between operating system versions should
be looked on as illiteracy. Fine, they can't use Ubuntu, whatever. But if our
bureaucrats can't have a basic level of technical literacy, then they
shouldn't be trusted with our government's data.

~~~
JabavuAdams
So, how exactly are you going to fire all of those people at the height of
their power?

Even if 50 year olds don't "get it", they have something that 20-35 year olds
don't -- power and influence within their organizations.

~~~
3pt14159
We should never have let it get this far. Computers have been around for 50
years, nobody in the work force today should have thought that they could
avoid them.

So yes, after getting 50 year olds to sit down and mess around with a computer
for a couple months to see if they can "get" it, they should be let go. We
fundamentally hire people to do a job. When they can't effectively utilize
technology they are holding back society. It would be better to put them on
welfare or to have them transition to a lower tech position. I don't want the
local police chief installing some browser spamware and having all the juvie
records leaked.

~~~
skriticos2
Personal computers came later. I remember in the mid nineties when I was in my
teens and bought my first PC. I was one of the few people in the village to
have a PC.

I imagine that people in their 40's and above got acquainted with computers in
office settings when they were already adult. Adult non-geeks can be very
resistant to change, especially repeated one.

------
orkoden
So the result after more than 10 years is: \- not all desktops can be
transitionend to Linux because of the required Windows only software. \- some
of the Linux desktops run Wine to support Windows applications. Which is a
huge hacky configuration nightmare.

The project has seen huge delays and missed deadlines over its duration.

See
[http://web.archive.org/web/20120214072347/http://limuxwatch....](http://web.archive.org/web/20120214072347/http://limuxwatch.blogspot.com/)
to get an idea of how long it took them to get anywhere and how often the
goalposts were moved.

Many other city administrations canceled plans of switching to Linux because
Munich had such a hard time making it happen.

~~~
biehl
Wine is pretty good, and supports a surprising amount of windows applications.
I am not sure why you call it a configuration nightmare. Have you tried Wine
lately?

~~~
adwn
I have. I'm using it for a German tax reporting software (ElsterFormular), and
I couldn't get it to run at all with the current Wine version (1.7.17), so I
had to downgrade Wine to 1.6.1 so it would work (but not without prepending
"taskset -c 0").

So yeah, when Wine works flawlessly, it's great. When it doesn't: good luck.

~~~
pritambaral
1.7 is not stable, I think. The last time I had issues with wine, I learned
that 1.odd is unstable and 1.even is stable.

~~~
adwn
Ah, thanks, that's good to know. Still, the 1.6.1 version crashes if started
without "taskset -c 0", so either it's a concurrency bug in Wine, or Wine
exposes a concurrency bug in the software. In any case, this is one more data
point showing that using Wine in a production environment is not necessarily a
good idea.

------
dan_bk
_A similar project, Wienux, aimed to move the city of Vienna in Austria over
to Linux, but hit stumbling blocks in 2008.

Peter’s reasoning for this: Wienux didn’t have the proper political backing
required. You need more than just a couple of technically minded councillors
to make such a big project a success – you need to know that you have the
support of the majority._

I'm definitely _not_ surprised - Austria is a notoriously conservative and
very bureaucratic country, which is deeply reflected by the political
landscape. Pioneers and out-of-the-box thinkers don't flourish in this country
(although migrating to Linux nowadays is not even pioneering anything
anymore).

~~~
schrototo
> Austria is a notoriously conservative and very bureaucratic country

I would generally agree with this, but just for the record: the city of Vienna
has been governed by the center-left Social Democratic Party since 1946. And
for the last four years they have been in a coalition with the Green Party.

~~~
atmosx
Not to mention that it's been voted as No-1 in _living standards_ in the
world, the last 5 years in a row.

Not that you can't _always get better_ but saying that _Vienna_ is not
_properly managed_ , as Greek, makes wanna commit suicide.

------
josefresco
So what I gather from reading the article, they switched to Linux because of
"security" as MS wouldn't tell them what software was "calling home" and to
foster the local IT economy as opposed to sending money overseas.

I may be alone in this, but those don't seem like compelling, or even
believable justifications for switching an entire region to Linux.

Are we to believe that MS flew Balmer all the way there to try to convince
them to stay, but wouldn't disclose to them what aspects of Windows called
home?

Also, where is the data that shows how the switch to Linux has helped the
local IT economy?

Love Linux as much as the next guy, but it seems many of these decisions are
driven by staff IT geeks who have it out for MS irregardless of the actual
issues at hand.

~~~
brudgers
You're not alone. Munich doesn't represent some unique enlightenment on the
part of local government. It is just an ordinary political decision where the
calculus was informed by conditions which just happened to be statistical
outliers and thus the result is also a statistical outlier.

About the time this decision was rolling out, I worked in Municipal
government. They had standardized on WordPerfect Office Suite. As part of my
job, I attended a few council workshops and can unequivocally assert that
these were neither visionaries nor geniuses. Just people making decisions that
balanced their personal aspirations and the public good while answering their
constiuancy.

This story gets rolled out every few months and draws the expected upvotes.
One day I hope to read an inside technical account rather than 'Linux has
Risen, Risen Indeed.' Today alas is not that day.

~~~
josefresco
"One day I hope to read an inside technical account"

Me too! Most of these feel-good Linux switch stories either fail to look at
the long term picture (I switched to Linux last week and so far no problems!)
or fail to address the specific reasons why Linux was chosen, or is superior
to the MS products.

When I read that in this case they weren't saving any money, I was intrigued
and eager to read about the real reason. Yet, after reading the entire account
I still don't feel like there is/was any compelling data to back up or justify
the decision.

~~~
Moru
There is a certain difference between:

A: We pay lots of money to a company based out of country and get nothing back
in taxes.

B: We pay lots of money to several companies inside our own town and get a
portion of that back in taxes.

~~~
brudgers
_B:_

In a global economy, how likely is it that a local company provides the best
net value in regard to something like IT?

~~~
fuck_google
It's pretty much certain, if you take taxation, need for continuos
development, and long-term competence/competitiveness etc. into account.
Especially with the public sector one should look at the big picture, which
bean counters sadly seem to be incapable of doing.

------
danso
This was a surprisingly interesting and fun read. Contrary to what my
assumption is, the switch to Linux was _not_ chosen for being cheaper, as they
projected the cost of migration to be more expensive than upgrading the
Microsoft machines from NT/2000 to XP. The fact that a "conservative" city
council went with Linux based on the strategic long-term is pretty
impressive...Assuming that they aren't all tech engineers, it would be natural
to stick with a computing platform that you yourself have been using your
whole life, rather than impose an entirely new (and more expensive) one on
your constituents.

Also, at least in the American market, the money poured into sales people to
wine-and-dine for government contracts provides even more compelling reasons
for politicians and bureaucrats to not rock the boat. And in Munich's case,
_Steve Ballmer_ himself flew out, in person, to try to convince them not to
quit Windows (and, in the OP's assessment, that apparently was an unwise
tactic for Microsoft).

OT: The body font of this article, Roboto
([http://www.google.com/fonts/specimen/Roboto](http://www.google.com/fonts/specimen/Roboto)),
stuck out to me as being both legible and distinctly different than
Helvetica...I was reading the article on a tablet but went to my desktop just
to see what it was...I think I've seen Roboto before on Google Fonts but not
used as body text...I kind of like it, more than some of the common Helvetica
replacements (Open/Ubuntu/PT Sans)...even before I started reading the
article, I thought, "this is a really nice sans-serif font"

edit: Apparently typography aficionados do not like Roboto, calling it a
"frightening cross-breed creature" and a "hodgepodge brute"
[http://typographica.org/on-typography/roboto-typeface-is-
a-f...](http://typographica.org/on-typography/roboto-typeface-is-a-four-
headed-frankenstein/)

~~~
orkoden
It was a huge opportunity to give lots of money to the local software
industry.

~~~
xiaq
IMO the seemingly minor detail that there are local software companies
providing support for Linux desktops is actually the key to their success...

------
pbhjpbhj
This stood out, a quote within the article:

>“In 2008 we saw that Debian was clearly stable, a good thing, but not the
best if you want to use new hardware. They are always a few years behind. //

Surely they could get a manufacturer to spec them out a new machine that would
run on Debian based on an offer to buy ~10k of them and with the potential -
should it go well - of selling similar numbers to other major cities.

~~~
JoeAltmaier
Probably not? 10k units is peanuts for building a model of computer. And by
the time it got made, its already old and costly.

~~~
pbhjpbhj
But it's not like Linux needs completely different architecture or anything,
you just need to test the drivers that are already in place, no? Didn't Dell
and IBM both do lines that came optionally pre-installed with different
distros. Can you really not make enough profit off selling 10k computers
(about $20M USD revenue for business machines at EU rates; remember we're back
in 2005 here) to cover wages for updating your drivers?

It's all very chicken and egg, I understand.

I guess the TL;DR question is - is it really not economic for a single
mainstream computer seller/manufacturer to sell business spec linux boxes.

------
usablebytes
The whole story is enjoyable; especially the Ballmer Visit part. It's
surprising to see the city council reacting that way to his visit. Something
that is hard to understand in many parts of the world.

~~~
Vespasian
Maybe Ballmer was overkill in this situation. While I could see a local
(German or even Bavarian since their German Headquarter is just out of Munich)
manager with connections to members of the council being able to influence
their decision, an American coming over and basically demanding from them to
change their mind is probably the best way to enforce the idea even more.

The article mentions that the mayor had difficulties communicating in English
good enough to feel comfortable. Add to that the slight dislike of American
culture common with many people here, the high degree of local identification
in southern germany and you get that result.

That said, there CEO flying over was probably the last straw they reverted to
when everything else had failed ;)

------
Zigurd
When people say "Linux" they mean a desktop-metaphor UI, a userland that
accommodates multiple runtime environments, and a set of apps modeled after
what was available on Windows 15 years ago.

There is a place for this, like on my desk, because I need a big fast machine
and a large monitor and, in my case, I use Eclipse and the Android SDK, but it
could be Blender or LMMS or science applications.

For the other 99%, there are two instances where Linux is a hit. But making
Linux a hit required jettisoning the desktop metaphor and making a modern
managed userland with a single runtime environment. Of course I mean Android
and ChromeOS.

The future of open software distributions is going to look more like
CyanogenMod and less like Ubuntu.

------
ericcumbee
The article glosses over key metrics for IT support # of helpdesk tickets, man
hours per asset. an IDC survey showed that WinXP took on average around 4 man
hours a year of support per asset, where win7 took just over 1.5. I'd be
interested in seeing those numbers. I dont know what the state of admin tools
for large linux desktop deployments is, but having seen the power of SCCM and
ActiveDirectory even with WinXP. That leads me to belive that they are not as
powerful so say if Win7 was at 1.5 Linux would be at maybe 2.5? That
difference alone at a large scale, would eat into the cost savings of the
deployment right there.

------
hippich
I guess it is coincidence, but I spent explaining my point of view why open
source should be a base platform for any public organization funding with tax
money to a few of my friends last week, where each was complaining about
office suite/mail/desktop/etc differences from windows-based analogs.

My major practical benefit from switch to open source by as large organization
as city government is the fact that these money will go to local support
organizations and results of their work will be owned by whole city. I.e. if
taxpayers paid for this software patches, updates, etc it make sense to own
this work at very least.

~~~
jenscow
I completely agree. And why should my taxes go to a foreign company, who are
trying their best to dodge paying taxes in my country. I'd rather it was spend
on employing local people.

Not only that, how can a government feel confident in depending so much on a
single overseas entity?

This isn't even a technical issue.

------
gall
What astounds me is that this project is called LiMux and not Munix.

------
lispm
I would have been great, if more cities here in Germany followed and supported
Munich...

~~~
orkoden
Munich took a decade to do a partial transition with doubtful benefits.
Getting that kind of commitment in time and money is not an easy feat.

~~~
lispm
Niedersachsen had just bought more support for Windows XP.

I'd like seeing all this money going into local software development and open
standards.

------
someone4223
limux developer here: the migration is complete in 2012. BUT the development
and maintenance of a new distribution version for the city is never complete.
or are you going to use the same ubuntu version forever?

and no one in the city of munich is really thinking about going back to
windows. but there are some people who just like windows more and try to shift
that political stance back. but that won't happen.. too expensive.

~~~
orkoden
Why is your upcoming version then based the last LTS version, not the current
one.

------
Paul_S
Can you ever imagine a government enforcing a country-wide switch? I think it
would make sense from a purely strategic point of view (even if not just
financial) but I can't help but cynically suspect the lobbyists would not stop
at anything to prevent it. I've no idea why MS dropped the ball with China.

~~~
elinchrome
MS lobbyists probably don't hold as much sway in China.

~~~
CmonDev
Maybe they have an anti-bribery policy, so it makes more sense to spend money
on Linux consultants and get kick-backs.

------
wil421
Its amazing they actually made the switch. I would not want to working at the
helpdesk if my company switched to Linux!

Too bad I hate open office because that is my last dependency on Microsoft.
I'll still take OS X for my daily computer over Linux any day.

~~~
mcb3k
Have you taken a look at LibreOffice[1]? It forked from OpenOffice a few
years, and my understanding is that it is much more actively developed than
OpenOffice.

[1]: [http://www.libreoffice.org/](http://www.libreoffice.org/)

------
pbhjpbhj
Initially such a project should cost more, surely. It's a long term saving and
the fact that, once established, the software being used can be freely
replicated across other cities - they all need the same tools in most
situations I'd expect.

How many projects has Limux fronted and donated to the FOSS community that can
now be used in other cities - venue booking tools, or street maintenance apps,
or payroll systems, or CRM, or ...

How many local developers are currently working in their LiMux eco-system?

------
sdfjkl
The most surprising thing about all this is that a city council needed 15'000
PCs in the first place, implying a roughly equal number of users.

~~~
sgift
15.000 for the administration of Munich, a city with nearly 1.4 million
inhabitants. I don't see anything surprising here?

~~~
sdfjkl
1 employee per 93 citizens? I don't have anything to compare it to, but it
seems high.

~~~
oblio
"From June 30, 2002 through June 30, 2013, city staffing decreased by 9,028
positions and totaled __295,894 __by the end of fiscal year 2013, a 3.0
percent decline. "

[http://ibo.nyc.ny.us/cgi-park2/?p=590](http://ibo.nyc.ny.us/cgi-park2/?p=590)

Apparently you need a lot of people to keep a city running.

~~~
xyzzy123
This includes firefighters, police, education, and probably things like
sanitation.

I wonder if the Munich figures include these staff.

~~~
arrrg
For the most part, yes. Here’s a list (German):
[http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stadtverwaltung_München](http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stadtverwaltung_München)

Police are employed by the state (Bavaria in Munich) in Germany, but the rest
should be included. Teachers and all kinds of other child care workers
definitely are. If it isn’t done by the church child care is usually organised
by the city. Public schools are the norm (only about six percent of students
in Germany go to private schools). Munich has 4500 full time teachers for
72000 students.

Municipal utilities, public transport and the hospital were all privatised in
the 90s, so those aren’t included (about 20,000 employees).

Really, to compare the numbers you have to go through them item by item.
However, Munich’s number doesn’t seem high compared to US numbers for local
government.

------
oakwhiz
___One person came with a floppy disk and said ‘My most important documents
are on this. Is it still possible to work with them?’_ __

A better question might be "Why are you storing important documents on a
medium with such a high failure rate?"

------
stannol
Interesting article, but saying Munich is conservative is just plain wrong.
Munich is to Bavaria what Austin is to Texas, it's as liberal as it gets.

------
lawl
Now that they saved 10M Euros by using open source, can they donate 5 of them
to vital open source projects please? _cough_ OpenSSL _cough_

~~~
josefresco
Only problem is the 10M they "saved" was based on the assumption that if they
had chosen Windows, they would have had to keep upgrading/paying for new
versions.

This assertion is dubious at best. I would imagine most computers/departments
would not have been required to buy each and every new Windows/Office release.

A great counter argument to mine (not that any of you need help) would be to
point out a specific Linux feature needed in the last decade that was "free"
whereas a comparable Windows/Office feature would have forced an upgrade.

~~~
makomk
They would have to upgrade to new versions every so often, because older
versions of Windows and Office stop being supported and stop getting security
updates after a while.

~~~
byte1918
> after a while. Yeah like... 12 years or so.

------
gbog
That's great! I think all the people changing their minds on Microsoft (cool
again) and Bill gates (good guy) should put this elephant in the balance:
almost all companies and institutions depend on ONE software provider for
their most vital work, and this provider is private for-money company subject
to all the misbehaviors without any control.

For me Microsoft is still the worst that happened to our industry (Facebook
and Google are angels in comparison) and it should stay as a big red dot in
the center of our radars.

------
davidf18
What they have managed to do is to make life more difficult for their
employees. Most of those employees have a computer at home that runs Windows
and uses Word, Excel, Powerpoint, ....

Now they have to learn a second operating system and set of applications
software.

Assuming a five year life for a computer (in government that is) or about 2000
days of use, then the cost of licensing on a daily basis is going to be
pennies a day for all of this hardship. Crazy!

~~~
pbhjpbhj
> _Now they have to learn a second operating system and set of applications
> software._ //

Well updating to ribbon based UI is as hard, probably more so, than switching
to LibreOffice.

Also, they can install Limux at home for free and so use a consistent system
across work and home. That way they can save money on future upgrades at home
too.

------
darksim905
Yay! Maybe it's finally the year of the Linux Desktop!

Give me a break. For how scalable Linux is & how fast you can automate
installations, move data around, script work to be done, it took them 10 years
to do this? (Judging by the comments)

It would take a typical Linux Sysadmin 3 years tops, depending on if they have
everything they need, planning & getting people trained. This is a joke.

------
vfclists
What do they use for printing, and scanning, printing being the most
important?

I'd really love to know that

~~~
hippich
there is plenty of hardware which "just work" with existing drivers for linux.
with large organization like that they can find right configuration which will
just work. this is how apple does it too - they spec their hardware to
perfectly match their software. same can be done with that kind of transiton.

~~~
vfclists
Do you know of any home or small business printers that work with Linux out of
the box?

~~~
omegaham
Immediately of the box? No. A single driver installation? Yes, for both HP and
Brother.

Canon's stuff is a little weirder, but it's not terrible.

------
guidopallemans
> A new version of the LiMux Client is due this year; it will be based on
> Kubuntu 12.04, an LTS (Long-Term Support) release.

> May 9th, 2014

They are an entire LTS release behind?

~~~
higherpurpose
An "entire LTS"? It was only released 2 years ago, and 14.04 _just came out_.
And it's not like they could use 13.10 or whatever. They _need_ to use LTS.

