German city Munich has apparently had enough of Linux, as it has decided to move away from the open source operating system after 14 years, and now plans to get back to the Windows platform.
But not before their adventure will end up costing them some €50 million.
And that’s because they have to install Windows on their computers across 6,000 offices, which are currently running LiMux — a Linux based variant. This distribution is currently estimated to be deployed on more than 29,000 computers in the city.
The city council has already approved the plan, and Munich will now have to migrate all these PCs back to Windows 10 after they scale back on their ambitious open source program that went into action in the year 2004.
Of course, the idea back then was saving €10 million in licensing costs.
In any case, it seems that the city’s employees did not manage to completely embrace the open OS and software like LibreOffice, even after all these years. Munich mayor Dieter Reiter has said that he is finally listening to the voices of 6,000 coworkers:
“We always had mixed systems and what we have here is the possibility of going over to a single system. Having two operating systems is completely uneconomic. I’ve never said I’m an expert in IT procurement. But I’m backed by 6,000 co-workers who also aren’t satisfied with the performance of the existing systems.”
So, that’s that.
Just in case you’re wondering, the Linux to Windows migrations will only begin in 2020, even though preparations are set to get underway early next year.
The Windows 10 rollout will cost the city about €49.3 million, and the move is part of a wider €89 million IT overhaul that the German city is planning to be completed by 2023, which also includes migrating from LibreOffice instances to Microsoft Office.
Though that final part is still undecided at the moment.
