Linux-on-the-desktop pioneer Munich now considering a switch back to Windows

Google Translate butchers the article badly, but <a href="https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=auto&amp;tl=en&amp;js=y&amp;prev=_t&amp;hl=en&amp;ie=UTF-8&amp;u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.heise.de%2Fnewsticker%2Fmeldung%2FLinux-in-Muenchen-Stadtrat-verteidigt-LiMux-gegen-Buergermeister-2262506.html&amp;edit-text=&amp;act=url" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;translate.google.com&#x2F;translate?sl=auto&amp;tl=en&amp;js=y&amp;pr...</a> suggests that this is more of a personal ambition of the vice-mayor and the city council is positioning itself firmly against any move back to Windows.<p>Ultimately, it is more surprising that things even managed to remain this peaceful so far. Windows holds a huge home advantage simply by being the operating system almost everyone in the bureaucracy invariably uses at home. Many of the employees probably already invested years of painstaking trial-and-error, frustrated tech support calls and offering of incentives to more computer-literate relatives and offspring to get where they are in terms of being able to navigate a Windows desktop. No amount of corporate training is going to be able to make up for the feeling of frustration that those people will feel from the realisation that much of that was moot and they will have to relearn the basics.

Doesn&#x27;t surprise me really. Despite the advances of some of the more popular distros, Linux still appeals to the power user, not to the casual user. I was reminded of that just recently when I was having to do some googling, sudo apt-get some libraries, and chmod some stuff, just to use a piece of fairly popular software, on Mint, one of the more approachable distros. I was struck by the thought &quot;...I would never, ever want to have to walk (elderly neighbor who has asked me for tech support help in the past) through this&quot;.

Funny. I work at a place with extensive MS systems and we get lots of complaints and have no shortage of issues aside from the complaints.<p>I often dream about how nice it would be to replace crufty sharepoint with some web apps on a Linux server do our own in house mail.<p>I guess the grass is often greener on the other side of the fence.<p>But for me personally.... I chose Linux. It just works better for what I do and doesn&#x27;t annoy the bejeazus out of me at every turn with push buttons and hidden stuff like MS products seem to. Maybe I am just more tolerant of open source stuff. But push buttons and hidden settings do annoy me. Text file configuration and the command line. It&#x27;s fast, it&#x27;s simple, it&#x27;s what I like.

I&#x27;m sure many will say that the failure is the exact implementation of Linux, or miscalculated expectations, or incompetent sysops, or, or...<p>They&#x27;re all right. But it&#x27;s also exactly the problem with Linux in a corporate environment. For better and worse, Microsoft have made Windows a single, predictable entity. While we developers see the myriad of Linux options out there as the result of freedom, customers see them as evidence of confusion and lack of focus.

The problem ultimately is that any Linux distribution turns what are usually normal user-level issues into sys-admin issues.

It seems like a big part of the motivation is that every other entity they have to interact with is using Windows. That&#x27;s a pretty compelling reason to switch back, and also a pretty good example of how Microsoft is excellent at causing vendor lock-in.<p>Also, there&#x27;s not really anything available in the open source world that provides precisely the features that corporate sysadmins look for in Exchange (and Sharepoint, Active Directory, etc.) in an in-house system. I didn&#x27;t enjoy switching to Exchange from Google Apps post-acquisition, but I don&#x27;t know of any self-hosted alternatives that provide vaguely integrated email and calendar that don&#x27;t suck equally as hard as Exchange.

So far, it seems that people have missed the (to my mind) crucial statement that Microsoft is relocating its German headquarters to Munich. Could that have anything to do with the switch?

I&#x27;m kind of surprised that they&#x27;re getting push-back for Microsoft after the whole NSA thing last year. I know it&#x27;s unfair to blame the company for any of it, but it&#x27;s still a US company that has to follow US law.

Better link (Ars Technica, English): arstechnica.com&#x2F;business&#x2F;2014&#x2F;08&#x2F;linux-on-the-desktop-pioneer-munich-now-considering-a-switch-back-to-windows&#x2F;

I&#x27;m sure I saw a HN link a month or two ago touting the great success of Munich&#x27;s Linux move. Can anybody find it?

It&#x27;s hard for general users to use Linux desktop.<p>&quot;Free&quot; also can has a big cost.

I&#x27;d like to see them roll out Windows 8.1 and get fewer complaints.