Munich city planning to move back to Windows and Office from open-source software

Back in 2003, the city of Munich announced its plans to switch from Microsoft Windows to Linux on 14,000 PCs which were under usage at municipal government. Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer flew to Munich to meet the mayor to reverse their decision. But they declined Steve Ballmer’s request and completed their plan in December 2013. The sad news is that the end users were not so happy with Linux and the government was also not happy with the price savings it offered when compared to Windows.

Today, TechRepublic reported that Munich is planning to move back to Microsoft Windows and Office on its PCs. As per the report commissioned by current mayor Dieter Reiter, they have started a project to make Windows 10 and Microsoft Office available to employees as a choice when they choose their PC. If majority of the users liked Windows over Linux, they will investigate whether it makes economic sense to continue using Linux as a client operating system.

The city’s human resources department (POR) is particularly critical of LiMux, saying that since 2006 when the POR started using LiMux and OpenOffice, later switching to LibreOffice, that “the efficiency and productivity of the POR-supported workplaces has decreased noticeably” – referencing crashes, display and printing errors.

“Even 10 years after the start of the LiMuX migration, the users and users of the POR are dissatisfied,” says the letter, claiming that, even after updates, LiMux and LibreOffice are “far behind the current technical possibilities of established standard solutions”.

Read more about this story here. Recently, we reported that Microsoft has reached an agreement with the Italian Ministry of Defence to deploy Windows 10 on all the PCs of ministry’s civil and military employees. Looks like Windows on the desktop is becoming stronger than ever. What do you think?