Munich Council votes to ditch Linux by 2020
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Earlier in the year, we reported that Munich City Council was set to vote on a proposal to move all of their desktop Linux seats over to Windows by 2020.
The council has been running a 10 year Linux-on-desktop experiment and found the free software was actually costing them more money, with Councillor Anne Hübner, IT spokeswoman for the SPD parliamentary group, saying:
“At the moment in many cases it just takes far too long and costs far too much for the city to implement software that’s available as standard on the market. This must change, so that the city remains competitive in an increasingly digital service society.”
On the 8th November Munich’s administrative and personnel committee voted to do just that, and switch all their PCs back to Windows by 2020.
Work will however start sooner, with preparatory work expected to start next year. In total 29,000 machines will receive Microsoft’s latest operating system at an estimated cost of 100 million Euro.
Interestingly an external expert is still to assess whether Windows 10 is good value for money, which somewhat supports allegations that the move is politically motivated, after Microsoft moved their headquarters there in 2016.
Along with LiMux the council is also looking to ditch Libreoffice and move back to Microsoft Office, with an Office trial for 6,000 seats being planned.
Source: TechRepublic
