Silverlokk wrote: > In the short-term, no money was saved with the change-over. To the > contrary, the city had to absorb one-time upfront costs of 13 million > Euros for the Linux Munich “LiMux” project, which the city’s IT > department describes as an IT evolution, not a revolution, as some > observers thought. According to vice director Schießl, an upgrade of > the then-existing Windows NT4 operating system to Windows XP would have > been as much as two million euros cheaper. The change-over will make > financial sense only after several years, by avoiding the payment of > on-going licensing fees.
It is quite likely their mistake was switching over wholesale rather than selective adoption of Linux. What is wrong with a heterogenous setup anyway? The latter is a far more viable and realistic proposition in the vast majority of cases. The mistake lies in thinking that Linux can do everything that Windows can *equally* well. That is absolutely not the case, no matter how some of the... *ahem*... less objective advocates might like to kid themselves into believing. Linux user-friendliness has made phenomenal strides, yes, (Mint installation is actually easier than Windows!) but as I've noted before, Windows isn't exactly sitting still either, and has also improved further. While the gap in terms of desktop experience may have arguably narrowed a bit since the bad old days, I don't see it being closed any time soon and the gap might widen again once touch and voice hardware become mainstream, something Windows 7 is poised to take advantage of (assuming MS doesn't drop the ball, esp. wrt to onerous licensing). ============================ http://www.neotitans.com Web and IT Consulting _________________________________________________ Philippine Linux Users' Group (PLUG) Mailing List http://lists.linux.org.ph/mailman/listinfo/plug Searchable Archives: http://archives.free.net.ph
