Originally shared by Aaron SeigoFor those who weren't aware of this great success story, Munich's adoption of Linux on the desktop has saved them millions of Euros and, even more importantly to people like myself, given them freedoms (and privacy) they would not have without it.
They were not the first city or government agency to go down this path, but they are one of the largest that has done so successfully and the plans created and executed were both far reaching and highly coordinated. They learned a lot in the process that other municipalities and regions could leverage that knowledge to do the same with fewer hiccups along the way.
(Yes, I'm looking at you, Solothurn. ;)
Note: while most headlines are screaming "Munich switched to Ubuntu, saved millions", the story below is a rather more accurate look at it. Munich originally used a plain Debian base, later moved to an Ubuntu derivative (Kubuntu) to streamline things. In all iterations they have seen savings both from the OS but also thanks to using OpenOffice, Kontact and KDE's dekstop (3.5 and Plasma 4.x). Most recently they added to this strategic direction by starting the roll-out of free software powered groupware services (Kolab). Thus they have gotten out from the licensing (and security, privacy and freedom) weight of Microsoft's Windows, Office, Outlook and Exchange (among other) products. Fantastic!
They were not the first city or government agency to go down this path, but they are one of the largest that has done so successfully and the plans created and executed were both far reaching and highly coordinated. They learned a lot in the process that other municipalities and regions could leverage that knowledge to do the same with fewer hiccups along the way.
(Yes, I'm looking at you, Solothurn. ;)
Note: while most headlines are screaming "Munich switched to Ubuntu, saved millions", the story below is a rather more accurate look at it. Munich originally used a plain Debian base, later moved to an Ubuntu derivative (Kubuntu) to streamline things. In all iterations they have seen savings both from the OS but also thanks to using OpenOffice, Kontact and KDE's dekstop (3.5 and Plasma 4.x). Most recently they added to this strategic direction by starting the roll-out of free software powered groupware services (Kolab). Thus they have gotten out from the licensing (and security, privacy and freedom) weight of Microsoft's Windows, Office, Outlook and Exchange (among other) products. Fantastic!
Switching to Linux Saved Munich City Tens of Millions