Schleswig-Holstein, one of Germany’s 16 states, on Wednesday confirmed plans to move tens of thousands of systems from Microsoft Windows to Linux. The announcement follows previously established plans to migrate the state government off Microsoft Office in favor of open source LibreOffice.
Good way to
extortget Microsoft to offer competitive prices. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯But yeah, it was the city of Munich that had a few goes at this. Now it’s the state of Schleswig-Holstein.
Linux has come a long way since then. And hopefully so the employees
Well, as the other person said, it was not a failing of LiMux. It was political. Munich had been ruled by one coalition throughout the lifetime of LiMux and after it went to a different coalition, they announced the switch back.
The manager of Munich’s IT department also publicly stated that they were surprised by the decision, because there are no larger technical problems and compatibility is resolved by providing virtualized MS Office, where necessary.
Coincidentally, Microsoft also moved its German headquarters from just outside of Munich’s tax region into Munich around the same time.
It’s not the competitive pricing that is the issue, it the forced upgrade cycle and invasive user policies.
(Except for system admin costs and Mail/File Hosting) a Linux-based solution is literally Free. I would assume that Mail and File hosting for Governmental Entities should be hosted in-house anyway.