The city of Munich switches to Open Source Software

http://www.pcworld.com/article/2079800/switch-to-open-source-successfully-completed-city-of-munich-says.html

by Morgawr • 13 years ago

90 12 13 years ago

dave809• 13 years ago

Awesome news, I always wonder how the users react to these kind of switches. They switched everyone to open office, firefox and thunderbird while on Windows and then gradually switched to LiMux. It seems like they tried to make the DE very similar to windows NT to ease the transition[0].

[0] http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:LiMux.jpg

mkesper3• 13 years ago

That screenshot is from 2004 as you can see in the bottom right corner. KDE3.5 isn't maintained anymore so I guess the infos in the wiki are partially out of date.

neil_s• 13 years ago

WIll be interesting to see how this fares long-term. The article doesn't mention why a custom distro was needed rather than one of the standards, and the running cost of now patching their own OS every time a linux bug or vulnerability is found.

mknittig• 13 years ago

It's ISO certified and AFAIK it's just Ubuntu (previously Debian) with some bells and whistles.

drill_sarge2• 13 years ago

It's no custom distro. It's Ubuntu 10.10 LTS. Only thing which they added was WollMux: http://www.wollmux.net/wiki/Hauptseite

Also they switched from OpenOffice to LibreOffice

mkesper3• 13 years ago

English description of WollMux: http://code.google.com/p/wollmux/ In short: OpenOffice.org plugin with enhanced template, form, and autotext functionality.

skriticos2• 13 years ago

Since when was 10.10 an LTS release? 10.04 was an LTS release and 12.04 was an LTS release. All in between were intermediate releases.

10.10 is an 18 month support release, which long passed.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Ubuntu_releases#Version...

10.04 and 12.04 are the only ones with current support.

mkesper3• 13 years ago

10 years is no short timespan to survive in politically influenced arena.

wxm• 13 years ago

Great to see this project being completed after almost ten years. Several similar projects in Germany have failed (e.g. the parliament's attempt to converting to Linux) or Wienux in Vienna (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wienux). IMO, a major reason for the success of LiMux was the gradual change with extensive training and that the included developing custom templates and generators for Open Office etc.

For a timeline on the project: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LiMux

pary• 13 years ago

some more detailed info, and lot of comments http://www.techrepublic.com/article/how-munich-rejected-stev...

MichaelApproved• 13 years ago

A lot of comments but they done seem to be of high quality.

The city of Munich switches to Open Source Software

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