The costs seem to mention training and support, but not comparing productivity makes it useless. It's like arguing that you can use the Gimp rather than photoshop, which is only true until you try.

The whole point of software is that it increases productivity (word processor rather than typewriter). While it may be the case that Linux and open source alternatives saves a bunch on licenses, I don't buy the argument that it is an amount "saved" until thurough research is made in the productivity of the users.

I am not at all surprised that this worked. The biggest problem for mainstream linux is poor advertising. People with limited computer knowledge are just scared of change, and honestly, if no one knows how to pronounce Ubuntu then they are probably not going to pick a computer based on it.

I mostly use Windows 7 and OS X, but I have worked with Debian/Ubuntu as a casual user. Linux was much easier to work with than Windows 8.1, but 90% of the population doesn't know that. Most people would be as happy, or happier with Linux if there was just one big advertising campaign.

What about long-term compatibility of Microsoft (or Apple) products? How can proprietary, maybe even binary file-formats be accessed in 100 years from now? Cities usually keep their books forever. I have so many files from the nineties that are already very difficult to restore. I could imagine that open source formats have a huge advantage here?! #LongtermCosts

It reminds me http://xkcd.com/934/ for most simple users. What a government officer do at his/her workstation? They probably have every service through web pages, almost nobody builds native programs anymore. And for the most cases LibreOffice is not perfect, but adequate to do simple jobs. So it is very logical to use something free for these tasks, to replace Windows+Office and save money.

Is 2014 the year of Linux on desktop?

Joke aside, it makes me happy to see the transition from Microsoft to Linux has been a success. I remember reading the news headline when they first announced it. I wonder how many of the 22,000 government officers that use Ubuntu at work are now also using Ubuntu at home?

The numbers don't make sense to me. €34 million across 14,000 computers is about €2500 per computer. That seems a bit on the high side for the sort of computers a municipality requires. Particularly when an older computer provides suitable performance (otherwise the Linux boxes would need comparable upgrading).

I'll add that a better comparison might be to the cost of Windows machines running open source productivity software since the comparison is closer in terms of specification.

I'm very impressed with the scale of the project. I can definitely see both the short term and long term ramifications and huge huge huge potential savings.

I'm a bit curious to know what the shelf life on the OS choice is and how well it works. I believe redhat ran into this issue and adopted the "extended support" versions in order to address the concerns (the linux space tends to move _very_ quickly in directions and you can definitely be left out in the cold if you don't stay relatively current).

All in all I doubt it's worse than the microsoft "you need to upgrade _now_" philosphy and the lack of "we don't break compatability" that used to be enjoyed in the heyday of the "Full M$ Stack".

I hope Munich somehow paid Canonical for its professional support or whatever to sustain a nice product in the long run.

Discussion two months ago:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7720219#up_7720418

I'd love to see some detailed architecture docs for this or similar high-level Linux based rollout.

I want to know a bit more about how they solved the MS-specific problems like VB macros that are often quite vital to a company's infrastructure.

This uses Kubuntu rather than Ubuntu Unity

They should totally have called it Munix.

A+ would read again!!