Linux adoption

Open source software (abbreviated OSS) and free software, often with Linux as a core component, is increasingly used as an alternative for proprietary software on computers in public facilities. Is pioneering these developments in Europe, the city of Munich, the umrüstet since 2003 significant areas of their computer to Linux and other OSS. Even smaller communities (such as Schwäbisch Hall or Mülheim an der Ruhr) or government agencies such as courts and the U.S. Army presented more of their IT infrastructure to OSS. According to a survey conducted by the University of Maastricht in 2005 49 % of all public administrations worked in Europe with free software. However, usually on a smaller scale and in part, without also to be aware of.

  • 2.1 Lack of availability of applications
  • 2.2 Cost shifts
  • 2.3 complexity
  • 2.4 Operating costs of individualized solutions
  • 2.5 User Acceptance
  • 4.1 Africa 4.1.1 Kenya
  • 4.1.2 South Africa
  • 4.2.1 Philippines
  • 4.2.2 Pakistan
  • 4.2.3 China, South Korea and Japan
  • 4.2.4 South Korea
  • 4.2.5 Taiwan
  • 4.4.1 Germany 4.4.1.1 Regional Media Centre of Baden -Württemberg
  • 4.4.1.2 Bavarian Administration for Surveying
  • 4.4.1.3 authorities Desktop
  • 4.4.1.4 Federal Office for Radiation Protection
  • 4.4.1.5 German Bundestag
  • 4.4.1.6 German Federal Employment Agency
  • 4.4.1.7 German Federal Foreign Office
  • 4.4.1.8 Freiburg
  • 4.4.1.9 Isernhagen
  • 4.4.1.10 Leipzig
  • 4.4.1.11 Leonberg
  • 4.4.1.12 Mannheim
  • 4.4.1.13 Munich
  • 4.4.1.14 Lower Saxony police
  • 4.4.1.15 Low Saxon financial management
  • 4.4.1.16 State Education Department of Schleswig -Holstein
  • 4.4.1.17 Schwäbisch Hall
  • 4.4.1.18 Rhineland- pfälzsche primary schools
  • 4.4.1.19 Treuchtlingen
  • 4.4.2.1 French Gendarmerie
  • 4.4.2.2 French Ministry of Culture
  • 4.4.2.3 French Ministry of Agriculture
  • 4.4.2.4 French National Assembly
  • 4.4.2.5 Paris
  • 4.4.3.1 British government
  • 4.4.3.2 Birmingham
  • 4.4.5.1 South Tyrol
  • 4.4.8.1 Vienna
  • 4.4.9.1 Jaworzno
  • 4.4.9.2 Lubawka
  • 4.4.11.1 The Swiss Federal Court
  • 4.4.11.2 Canton of Solothurn
  • 4.4.11.3 Canton of Vaud
  • 4.4.11.4 Zurich
  • 4.4.12.1 Andalusia
  • 4.4.12.2 Extremadura
  • 4.4.12.3 Zaragoza
  • 4.5.1 USA 4.5.1.1 NASA
  • 4.5.1.2 U.S. Aviation Authority
  • 4.5.1.3 U.S. Department of Nuclear Safety
  • 4.5.1.4 U.S. Navy
  • 4.5.1.5 U.S. Department of Defense
  • 4.6.1 Brazil
  • 4.6.2 Cuba
  • 4.6.3 Peru

Reasons for the change

The reasons which list the public institutions themselves for a migration to OSS, can be varied in nature: Mostly old, existing applications and operating systems need to be replaced. The motives why free software and Linux is selected, can be the following - summarized points - in each individual case to be weighted differently:

Vendor independency

The dependence on a single manufacturer, and in effect lock- called, is often called as a major reason to switch to free software. In addition to the difficult price negotiations these dependencies prevent often a desired interoperability and standards conformance of software products. Also a Planned obsolescence of a software product at the expense of the user, as is usual with proprietary software is excluded with Free Software.

Cost savings

Another reason for the choice of free software, the desire for cost savings in software licenses be, these typically make up 5-20 % of the total expenditure on IT from. With proprietary software licenses for regular (security) updates, the migration to these new versions and user training are a recurrent cost factor. It is manufacturers of proprietary software possible to ask almost any price if a market-dominant position has been reached and were thus set de facto standards ( lock-in effect). Here provide IT solutions in the field of Free Software, a market economy desirable broadening of the range. The change to a different provider also opens up the possibility for the next migration or additional software products to negotiate lower prices. Since more and more public facilities using free software, including providers of proprietary software are under greater pressure on prices. However, cost savings may not be the sole motivation for switching to free software, because this advantage can be quickly eaten up by Migrationsunwägbarkeiten or according to the "Total Cost of Ownership" little or viewing does not exist.

Maximum flexibility

One advantage is the free availability of the source code. This allows a software product adapted to the respective requirements, eg even if the original product providers is no longer available or the product line has been discontinued. A common approach to migrations of public institutions is to take an existing Linux distribution as a basis and adapted to ensure that it satisfies a given specification. However, the spin-off will ( called Fork ) a separate distribution from an existing the disadvantage that one loses the simple and direct upgrade support of the original distribution ( compatibility loss). Taking care of your own distribution is associated with significant expenditure, the long term may prove to be too large to. Other methods are, the adapted software components to be integrated either into the original distribution, which is not always practical or possible, or develop as additional packages from the actual operating system distribution separately on.

Hardware platform independence

Free software also facilitates the operation of an inhomogeneous IT hardware infrastructure, as often written platform independent. For example, the Linux operating system supports many different hardware platforms, which can be a big advantage after the merger of bodies with different architectures had previously used. Linux can be ported to virtually any computer architecture.

Security

Although the manufacturers of proprietary software make efforts to make their products safe, the real weaknesses often knows the customer, but also potential malware creators, not (security through obscurity ). Also arise with the termination of the support provided by the manufacturer of proprietary software products with time not closable vulnerabilities, the customer is forced to perform a best- paid upgrade to a newer version. With free software, anyone can see the source code, check for errors and correct them if necessary. This security holes in Linux and most of the developed software can be recognized by the world programmers and users Creates common and often quickly closed. Also, Linux by its origin as a UNIX -like multi-user operating system, a comprehensive and deeply integrated safety concept. For this reason it is hardly viruses for Linux, although it certainly interesting and profitable would be for cyber criminals to infect the numerous Linux - based server.

Another safety aspect, especially relevant for state intelligence or military authorities, who speaks on open source free software is verifiability on backdoors and other deliberately introduced mechanisms that could be used for political or economic espionage purposes. For example, Microsoft as a provider of non- open source software problems to refute recurring rumors of NSA backdoors in their operating systems, as a disclosure of the source code is not an option for Microsoft.

Economic Development

In many Free Software projects local programmers or companies are involved. The majority of proprietary software products will continue to be developed in North America. Therefore, European, South American or Asian authorities like to promote the local software industry by using free software, and support their further development. If an external service provider consulted for migration, attending a local company can be considered.

Risks and challenges of migrating

Lack of availability of applications

Specific specialized applications and also some standard office software applications (eg Microsoft Office or Photoshop ) are only for a few platforms (notably Windows) available ( lack of interoperability / lock-in effect). This can significantly complicate a change to an OSS solution, which includes an alternative operating system platform. While larger administrations, such as the City of Munich and the Swiss Federal Supreme Court have the critical size to specialist applications from the ground up to be redeveloped or switch to alternative software ( eg Thunderbird instead of Outlook, GIMP instead of Photoshop ), this smaller facilities is not always in a commercially reasonable frame possible. This problem has also affected facilities that set on commercial Unix systems such as OS X, Solaris or other commercial operating systems such as OpenVMS, or OS / 2 ( eComStation ). There was, therefore, migration projects, where after a short time a return migration to the usual Microsoft products, it was decided even if it means increased costs.

Cost shifts

Also, because open source is equated in the public perception with free financial complexity and cost of migration is often underestimated. For a savings in license costs are misjudged, which account for only a portion of IT costs. Secondly, the cost of adjustments or the often necessary rebuilding of specialist applications is misjudged. The support costs of such an individual, own solution are potentially far higher than the use of a widely used proprietary solutions where the cost of support and development taken over by a commercial software vendor and are then distributed to many customers. Especially those misperceptions regarding the cost shifts can complicate proper budgeting of migration projects. Occur in the follow-up costs overruns, it is not uncommon to shortened considerations of policy-makers, to the question: ". OSS against commercial software " This has in some cases been a complete change of OSS result.

Complexity

The migration effort (time, infrastructure modifications, etc.) is assessed partly wrong: Few software packages - neither commercially nor open source - are fully compatible with other applications, and so completely and interchangeable. (eg Microsoft Office macros and OpenOffice macros) complexes specialized applications must be frequently adapted to business processes and user habits, which is why, despite the availability of alternative, functionally equivalent open source products - as with commercial software also a complex and costly migration process may be necessary. In the city administration of Munich, the migration process for these reasons lasted about ten years. Although commercial migration projects often fail in the challenge of the most underrated complexity, is in the public and political problems of migration to OSS, this problem often overlooked and alone searched for the error with the OSS approach.

Operating costs of individualized solutions

One of the strengths of OSS, the possible adaptability to specific needs (eg, a public body ), but it can become a financial risk compared to a proprietary - commercial ' by - the - shelf " solution. The maintenance and development of their own, individualized open source software solutions can cause high costs. In the usual model of development for proprietary commercial software, this expense is taken by the manufacturer, which swing the cost on several customers and can be cost effective. Therefore, the operating costs of a customized OSS solution can be high, even if the migration costs were low. The less one available on the market OSS solution is individualized, the lower your subsequent operating costs. Some migration projects changed for these reasons, after some time, from an initial self- manicured Linux distribution, one of the already established on the market distribution or a widespread commercial solution.

User acceptance

Although migrations may be accompanied by and for commercial software products of poor user acceptance, this may be particularly the case when migrating to OSS for several reasons: on the one hand, OSS products in public sometimes an image problem. It is believed, "free" products could not compete with commercial solutions per se. Lack of public presence of OSS products, including due to lower marketing budgets, leads to the perception that it was less mature than commercial software. Paired with a basically critical attitude of the users towards each change, this can lead to a strong rejection of OSS solutions. If, during the transitional period, the existing software still used in parallel with the OSS, the migration in practice is often never really completed. Users feel left out if they had built in an existing large software know- how and this can no longer use, for which the open-source orientation is held responsible in the sequence alone. The earliest possible involvement of users, intensive training, a good support during the transition and, above all, this problem -conscious project planning can increase user acceptance significantly.

Implementation and migration

In the normal case is not the technical migration of the software infrastructure of the largest expense items. To achieve acceptance ( acceptance test ) of the user, a detection and display of all processes and structures an operation is important in order to view them in the new technical structures. This also serves the purpose of allowing the accumulated know -how of the user with respect to their area of ​​work of the processes and structures can be used. The groundwork of the structure and process mapping, which can take several years to complete, must be made to another proprietary system even with a change of the proprietary system. Whether an external service provider or internal IT department perform the migration, does not make much difference. Before you can replace an existing software, it must be known what processes were implemented in it. Have been established due to lack of functionality for years to bypass processes, then they must be tracked and understood. If information islands discovered, additional interfaces must be defined or an integration can be planned. There is usually to clarify in public institutions numerous questions regarding the data security and data protection. So should not, for example, each department can read the data of another; other data, in turn, may be stored only limited.

An existing Linux distribution is usually used as a basis for the development of new software environment. This is supplemented with the necessary application software and changed so that it covers all the defined needs. Are the programming and configuration work (mostly) completed, a test phase with a small number of users. If no major problems, followed by the rollout to the users. This can happen for thousands of jobs on a weekend or spread over several years, graduated according to functions or departments. Beforehand, or shortly after the change of jobs, end users need to be trained and to cope with new desktop surfaces such as KDE or Gnome. Another focus of education usually is on the - necessary for the operational processes - applications. From the date of application of the new Linux environment in daily operations additional support is important. From the thus obtained feedback from the users, further optimizations can result.

When the migration is complete, there is often a new distribution. These may be published or integrated into an existing distribution. In this way, the distribution that served as the foundation gets new features and can be qualitatively improved. Not infrequently used a technology developed by a public body distribution as the basis for migration to another public body. Sometimes such a developed distribution can be accepted without change, as for example, many offices provide very similar demands on their computer.

Examples of migration projects

Worldwide, there are numerous examples of public institutions that are migrated to OSS and Linux. Many such projects remain secret because it governmental organizations often prefer not to inform the sake of safety the public of their computer science systems. In the following, ongoing or completed migration projects are listed alphabetically:

Africa

Kenya

Wanting In September 2012, the Kenyan government announced to the Software Freedom Day, proprietary software in public institutions to free and open source software switch. This is on the one hand save on licensing costs as well as help IT in rural areas to make available.

South Africa

The South African social security system ( SASSA ) is since 2007 one of his computers SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop ( SLED ). It is used a thin-client system. Thanks to Linux, the SASSA could increase efficiency and reduce costs.

Asia

Philippines

Pakistan

Since 2002, the Pakistani government promotes Linux in government and private projects. This is part of the tremu program ( Technology Resource Mobilization Unit). It is generally a matter that Pakistan does not lose the connection to the digital age. In the education sector, there are also some success with Linux to report.

China, South Korea and Japan

To the North American supremacy in the software industry to face a counterweight, the governments of China, South Korea and Japan jointly drive since 1999 the development of the Linux distribution, Red Flag Linux. Based on Red Hat Linux 9.0 is the distribution adapted to use with Asian characters. KDE and Opera are standard applications in Red Flag. The development takes place in China mainly. The Company Hewlett -Packard, Oracle, IBM, Dell, Intel, BEA Systems, Inc., SGI, Sybase, Haier, Great Wall, TCL and others are project partners. On February 17, 2014 reported the South China Morning Post that Red Flag Linux stand before the corner. This was due to mismanagement and the low level of awareness achieved, as well as Red Flag Linux over other Linux distributions could not prevail. The contracts will be terminated and adjusted the project.

South Korea

The South Korean Ministry of Information and Communication tries to make the switch to Linux flavored with financial incentives since 2006, government agencies and universities. The aim is to strengthen the local software industry. The Ministry for Planning and Budget has started 37 projects, which include Linux.

Taiwan

The responsible in Taiwan for the purchase of computers state-owned Central Trust of China ( CTOC ) in 2006 for the first time arranged so that the neubeschafften 120,000 computers must be linux -compatible.

Australasia

New Zealand Ministry of Education

The Ministry of Education of the South Pacific island nation of New Zealand signed in 2005 with Novell, a contract that allows all schools to replace their use then NetWare infrastructure nationwide by Suse Linux. The aim was to not only operate the server with Linux, but to also change the student, teacher and administrative workstations from Windows to Linux. Thanks to Linux, the New Zealand schools can reduce IT costs, increase the stability of IT systems and security.

Europe

Germany

Landesmedienzentrum Baden- Württemberg

The country's media center Baden -Württemberg has published a so-called Linux Solution for server-side use in schools. In the years 2006, 2008 and 2010 this project was awarded the Comenius Seal of the Society for Pedagogy and computer science (Berlin) excellent. The distribution with the name paedML Linux to the public was ready for download. The country's media center announced in July 2012 to try to forgive the previous development of paedML Linux to a company. The order for the development to go to Bremer Univention GmbH, which created the future on the basis of Univention Corporate Server @ School is adapted to the needs of the country media center paedML Linux.

The developer community of the free model solution sets under the name Linuxmuster.net to the sample solution after the initial roadmap.

Bavarian Administration for Surveying

The Bavarian Administration for Surveying uses in the State Bureau of Surveying and Geoinformation, at all 51 survey offices Linux. Since 2003 run to the 2800 survey offices workstations running OpenSUSE. The survey crews in the field, the same distribution is used since 2007 to 650 Ruggedized notebooks. By boat and installation mechanisms of Linux, all systems can be remotely installed and updated uniformly to the survey offices. All of these systems are operated with open source software or proprietary developments. Based on the success reached in terms of stability and long service life of the hardware of this path is pursued.

Authorities desktop

The German Federal Office for Security in Information Technology (BSI ) developed a Linux distribution named authorities desktop. The idea is to offer public administrations economical and reliable software solutions. As a base Debian, KDE and OpenOffice.org served. The authorities desktop is ready for the public to download, but is no longer being developed and supported by BSI.

Federal Office for Radiation Protection

The Federal Office for Radiation Protection is for the operation of the ODL monitoring network server side open source products such as Linux (openSUSE ) and MySQL. The specially developed by the Federal Office data logger MWS3 measured value transmitter, which has a AXIS ETRAX CRIS CPU at 100 MHz, has also Linux as operating system. Publication and update of the measured values ​​on the internet open-source products are used exclusively.

German Bundestag

In March 2002, the Council of Elders of the Bundestag to make the approximately 5,000 jobs and 100 servers the federal government on a new operating system platform decided. The project was named Migo. During the year 2003, all the jobs of the Bundestag Administration of Windows NT 4.0 have been migrated to Windows XP. Confirmed by a parliamentary decision, the servers were migrated to Linux in July 2005. It is mostly used Suse Professional 9.2.

German Federal Employment Agency

The Federal Employment Agency has converted a total of 13,000 self-service places on OpenSUSE in 2008. The migration took place without the involvement of an external service. It replaced Windows NT 4.0 with Linux and not with a current version of Windows, because the automatic maintenance can easily realize that licensing costs are significantly lower and easier to get security problems under control. On the safety of these self-information places very high demands were made because they are partially open to the public. The Federal Employment Agency also uses servers running the Linux operating system.

German Federal Foreign Office

Since 2002, it is the strategy of the Foreign Office to use free software. Until 2007 230 missions abroad were migrated with a total of 11,000 jobs around the world on Linux. The IT structures of the Foreign Office are very complex, since 80 % of the computers are located abroad. About 400 notebooks of diplomats must at all times ensure dial into the network of the Foreign Office from anywhere in the world and with all possible technologies (UMTS, WiFi, analog modem, ...). It is used a Debian-based distribution. Security is provided by SINA adequate encryption of all connections provides. The cost per computer work could be reduced thanks to Linux on Euro 1190, previously it was more than twice as much.

However, a reverse migration was announced to cut costs in 2011.

Freiburg

The local council of Freiburg had decided in June 2007 to use open standards and ODF. It followed the use of OpenOffice.org as office suite. The migration was never fully completed, which resulted in the administration to a parallel use of OpenOffice.org 3.2.1 and Microsoft Office 2000. A program created in 2012 reports, doubted the for the administration necessary in Freiburg development of Apache OpenOffice in terms of the exchange of documents and the interfaces to other applications. Therefore, the migration of all jobs to Microsoft Office 2010, it was decided on 20 November 2012 from the local council.

Isernhagen

The town in Lower Saxony Isernhagen presented in 2004 by its management on thin clients that use the Linux operating system. The servers have not been migrated to Linux. You continue to run on Novell NetWare. The migration to Linux was performed without problems. The migration to OpenOffice.org, however, was marked by greater problems because of incompatibility of VBA macros.

Leipzig

Until October 2012, the city of Leipzig has been migrated to OpenOffice.org 3900 jobs in the administration. After the migration is to be fitted to the free office suite a total of 4,200 jobs. During migration, recourse was had to the experience of the city of Munich. The motivation for migration is less dependent on proprietary software products.

Leonberg

The city government of Baden- Württemberg town of Leonberg migrated since 2004 in a " smooth transition " to Linux. The reasons for the choice of Linux are: savings in the six figures, improved functionality, increased security and independence from manufacturers.

Mannheim

The German city of Mannheim presented its administration in a " soft " migration to Linux. A total of 110 servers and 3,700 desktop computers are concerned. The philosophy of LiMAx the project is to: " open source where possible and commercial software where necessary. " This project began in 2004, the core of the conversion included the file storage and office communication.. Then had to be found for more than 150 specialty applications new solution. The Linux platform provides the flexibility and guarantees the freedom of choice of technical bids. As an external consultant IBM accompanies the LiMAx project. According to an information template for the Heidelberg city council migration of Mannheim has already been set in late 2007. Since then, a reversal of the transition to market leading products has been completed. The rejection is indicated by the following reasons: "Massive technical problems, instability and significant disturbance in the daily workflow, which is also due to high internal and external personnel expenses (IBM, Oracle ) could not be resolved. "

Munich

Munich started with the implementation of the plan for LiMux after a renewal of the Windows NT 4.0 system would be understood. The company Microsoft was on the support for Windows NT 4.0. The further use would have significant security risks and problems in the area of ​​hardware support due to missing device drivers result. After a long decision process, including comparison of migration scenarios based on Windows XP and Linux, the Munich City Council in 2003 finally decided to convert large parts of the local computer to Linux. The LiMux project is following with close attention worldwide because Munich is considered a pioneer of the free software in the administration.

The aim is to convert about 80 % of the 15,000 jobs on Linux and all PC workstations with an open office communication (including OpenOffice.org ). Equip. 2003-2004 planning work has been done. From Debian own specially adapted to the needs of the Munich-based management Linux distribution has been derived, which bears the name LiMux. Since late 2009, distribution was changed to Ubuntu. In July 2011, the LiMux Release 4 was launched. This is based on Ubuntu 10.4 and KDE 3.5. As the most complex tasks, the development of a letter and form, submission management and text module system turned out. The resulting therefrom document template system WollMux was registered in 2007 in the OSOR copyrighted by the City of Munich and has been freely available ( www.WollMux.org ). Because of uncertainties about software patents was interrupted the project brief time in the summer of 2004. Overall, an evolutionary and stage-oriented approach was chosen: First, by the end of 2009, all PC workstations were equipped with the open office communication, then began to focus on the surfaces roll-out of Linux operating systems ( LiMux client). In September 2006, the test phase was completed in November 2006 and began the actual migration. Since late 2009, all employees of the office communication work with free software, the end of November 2012, the project goal of 12,000 migrated PC workstations has been reached. A total of 15,000 jobs use free software like Firefox, Thunderbird, OpenOffice.org and the WollMux. In October 2013, the project ends.

The city of Munich was able to achieve cost savings compared to a hypothetical, extrapolated Windows-based IT solution by about 25% in the IT structure with Limux by his own admission.

Lower Saxony Police

Police of Lower Saxony migrated from mid- 2003 to mid-2004, 11,620 jobs to Linux. The police cited as reasons for switching to Linux lower license costs, independence from the product cycles of individual software manufacturers and an increased level of safety. In addition, computers could remain in use longer, because the hardware requirements for Linux are lower and there was a noticeable gain in comfort.

Lower Saxony financial management

The Lower Saxon financial management migrated in the summer of 2006, about 12,000 jobs from Solaris x86 on Linux. Reasons for the change were a larger supply of available desktop applications and better support for common hardware.

State Education Department Schleswig- Holstein

The State Education Department of Schleswig -Holstein was developed in 1999, a Linux - based terminal server for use in schools. As a basis SuSE Linux 9.1 was used. The last update to version 5.1 took place in 2004, the development has stagnated since then.

Schwäbisch Hall

As one of the first German communities took advantage of the southern German town of Schwäbisch Hall Free Software. As early as 1997 individual applications were deliberately changed to Free Software in the administration. In 2001 had to be updated due to the outlet of the license the proprietary office suite used. This was a financial problem for the small town, as the time used hardware for the new version of Office package was too old. Through positive experiences with the free software was already used authorize the Mayor to seek the IT department, free software alternatives. Fündig Schwäbisch Hall was in SuSE (now Novell) and OpenOffice.org. Today, the administration and the city-owned businesses operate almost entirely covered with Linux and other open source applications. The experiences are very positive.

Rhineland- pfälzsche primary schools

At eleven primary schools in the state of Rhineland- Palatinate, a pilot project for migrating to skolelinux was launched in 2009. The aim is that the schools can choose later between a Linux environment and MNS , a networked Windows-based solution.

Treuchtlingen

The community migrated Treuchtlingen 2002 their overall management in open source software. The focus was on lower hardware costs with thin clients and terminal servers. For this hardware platform, the available software products were not available, which is why since worked as a consequence in the administration successfully with Linux, KDE, GIMP, Scribus or Inkscape. The telephone system is running on a Asterisk server and Web -based applications is effectively built on the LAMP server.

France

In September 2012, the French Prime Minister Jean -Marc Ayrault called on the authorities of the whole country, wherever possible, use open source software. In the evaluation of a new or replacement of an existing software had to be considered open source products. The authorities should build open source expertise and revitalize the software market through participation in open source projects. Already in April 2012 it was announced that France invests 15 percent of IT spending for open source; and rising.

French public institutions and companies have worked out self-published software under a free license, eg Code_Aster and Salome. The VideoLAN project was also launched in France, at the École Centrale Paris, even if it is now further developed by developers from 20 countries.

French gendarmerie

France's national gendarmerie migrated gradually 72,000 jobs from Windows XP to a custom Ubuntu variant called GendBuntu.

The project started in 2004 with the authorities wide migration from MS Office to OpenOffice.org and the conversion of internal administrative file exchange on the OpenDocument file format. This was followed by the migration to the programs Firefox, Mozilla Thunderbird, GIMP and VideoLAN. Subsequently, the migration of the entire operating system has been tested on 5000 first computers in 2008. In 2011, the transition was made to 20,000 and 2012 to 30,000 computers. By the summer of 2014 to be installed on the remaining computers also GendBuntu.

IT costs were reduced by migration by 70%. This corresponds to 7 million euro annually.

French Ministry of Culture

In order not to be longer depending on proprietary software, 2500 server of the French Ministry of Culture will be migrated to RHEL. In some cases, these were to AIX systems. The reason for the choice of Linux were only the license cost and service offerings.

French Ministry of Agriculture

The server 400 of the French Agriculture and Fishing Ministry were converted to Mandriva Corporate Server 2007. The desktop computers were equipped with OpenOffice.org and Windows.

French National Assembly

Beginning of 2007, the French National Assembly all of their approximately 1000 desktop computers over to Ubuntu. The parliamentarians are mostly very satisfied with the free software environment. Parliament wanted to thereby achieve more control and self-determination about the software. In addition, the aim was to provide the same functionality at a lower cost. Since September 2012, deputies will be Windows 7 or Ubuntu or Office 2010 and / or OpenOffice offered on the work computers available to them ..

Paris

The city of Paris is pursuing a strategy more use of Linux and free software. So she wants to free himself from the dependency on individual producers. Proprietary systems are not excluded. More than half of the approximately 400 municipal Server 2005 already running on Linux, numerous schools were converted to Linux. The staff was recommended to switch to Free Software saddle as OpenOffice.org.

Great Britain

British Government

The British government is a change from Microsoft Office to OpenOffice or Google Docs into consideration in order to improve the efficiency and cooperation work of the administration. The open OpenDocument standard to be used in the future to " the oligopoly of IT supplier to break ."

Birmingham

In May 2005, the city of Birmingham was a study on the use of open source software for public administration in order. After a successful case study result for the libraries a reaction, however, was canceled in November 2006, after it became clear that a Windows XP-based solution would have been cheaper.

Iceland

Iceland decided in 2012 for cost reasons in schools Microsoft Windows with Linux (Ubuntu) to replace. Five out of 32 secondary schools were up in March 2012 already migrated. The background is a one year project that the basis for the migration of all Icelandic authorities to create open- source software. The City of Reykjavík and the National Hospital 've converted them independently to a greater extent on open source software.

Italy

On August 7, 2012, a law was passed in Italy that the authorities verpflichtetet for the use of open source software. It may be used after the effective date of the Act only by the authorities already developed software or open - source products. Exceptions are only possible if there is proof that with open- source products not an economic solution is possible.

The Piedmont region had adopted already in 2010 a similar law. This was challenged before the Italian Constitutional Court, for fear of distortion of competition, but declared by the court to be legal. The Apulia region adopted similar rules in July 2012.

South Tyrol

Public administrations of South Tyrol gradually migrated within three years of MS Office to LibreOffice, as announced on 20 June 2013. In the state administration itself about 7000 computers are upgraded and in the communities and in the health sector are also several more thousands of jobs affected. The objective of migration is a cost saving of 600,000 euros in the first three years and a more flexible computer science infrastructure.

Macedonia

All students in Macedonia received by a project called Computer for Every Child a computer access. 2007 were delivered with an Edubuntu operating system nationwide to schools 20,000 computer. With a software NComputing, which is a mixture between virtualization and Terminal Server system can work simultaneously on one of the 20,000 computers a total of 180,000 students. Thanks to this system cost a workplace only 70 U.S. dollars.

Netherlands

Amsterdam

Open.Amsterdam the attempt by the municipality of Amsterdam was to develop an open workstation system, which was abandoned after a few years of development.

Austria

Vienna

The city of Vienna has developed its own Linux distribution named Wienux for use in the administration and urban farms. Since the year 2006 4800 employees in the administration of the choice between Wienux and Windows 2000. In December 2008, there were rumors that the future migration plans of the City of Vienna could move away from Linux, confirmed by the return migration of some departments to Windows. But in June 2009 the Vienna City Council decided to promote more free software in the administration. However, a clear political confirmation of Linux strategy is still lacking.

Wienux based on Debian and KDE, but also uses parts of the system from Knoppix. The distribution has been released under the GPL license, but has not been updated since 2005 and the official download page was taken November 2008 from the mains.

Poland

Jaworzno

In urban schools the Polish city of Jaworzno 2009-2010 all computers have been migrated to Linux ( Ubuntu). Thus, the expenditure on the computer pools were reduced by savings from license fees to a quarter. In addition, older computers could remain in service since Ubuntu can also run on less powerful systems. Had the schools switched to Windows 7, high spending on new hardware would be required. It is noteworthy that the city the Microsoft monopoly escapes the base in which children and young people - the future of this city - are introduced from an early age to Linux, will so come in the aftermath of this operating system on fewer obstacles and prejudices. In this respect, serves the city of the tactics of the market leader Microsoft using an open source operating system.

Lubawka

The public middle school " Gimnazjum Zolnierzy Sybiru " ( ger. "Soldiers of Siberia" ) in Lubawka presented in September 2013 to its roughly 11 computers to Linux (Ubuntu 13:04 ). So the school has to bear no additional cost, as all the software is free. With the use of Ubuntu lessons can be drawn as to the applications GIMP or scratch and through the already integrated in Ubuntu File hosting service Ubuntu One set up your own school network to the structured cabling is not necessary in computer science. Also run the acquired in 2005 computer, which funded the Polish Ministry of Education, more reliable and faster than with the previously used Windows XP. Another advantage is that no antivirus program is necessary. The initiative for the change took a teacher at the school without the help of the Polish Ministry of Education.

Russia

In spring 2009, the Russian Ministry of computer science presented a plan to increase the safety and independence of the State IT infrastructure. The central point of this plan is to migrate the IT authorities and schools to open source software. Cost savings will only be considered as a positive side effect. The Russian government invested 150 million rubles ( 3.5 million euros ) to develop a Linux desktop system for the country's authorities. By 2015, the migration should be completed.

Switzerland

Swiss Federal Court

The highest court of Switzerland, the Federal Supreme Court in Lausanne, presents his computer completely by 2011 in order to Linux. Since 2001, working with StarOffice, Evolution and Firefox. The cost of the migration project was demonstrated in 2008 by an audit by KPMG. 18% of the cost of computing could be saved. This corresponds to 1.8 million Swiss francs per year.

Canton of Solothurn

2001, the government decided in the canton of Solothurn, switch the computer science of administration on Linux. The aim was to reduce the cost of computer science. There is a Debian-derived distribution with KDE uses. The project was accompanied by ambient noise: Some offices refused to switch to Linux. Even in 2010, the parallel operation of Windows and Linux was necessary because central specialized applications were not yet ported. The computer science department spoke of user-related problems. The economics of the project was put again and again into question. Although the successful completion of migration for the end of 2010 was within reach, and the canton decided on 16 September 2010, all jobs in 2011, according to migrate Windows 7 and Microsoft Office. Despite 1 to 1.5 CHF millions of lower costs per year since 2002, the migration to Microsoft products, it was decided. The Swiss club Wilhelm Tux of an analysis to the conclusion that " it hardly comes to Linux or Windows, but only a moderate project organization, pent-up anger, delays, and to an unhappy mail products choice."

Canton of Vaud

Since 2006 the administration of the Canton of Vaud partly works with OpenOffice and other open source applications. On server systems is also often set to open source software. Since 2007, the State pursues a long-term open- source strategy, which pursues the motivations: open standards for data exchange to promote to gain more independence from individual manufacturers, and reduce IT costs. Under this strategy, which provides a smooth transition to open source software, began at the end of the year 2013, the evaluation of a Linux desktop system in the administration of the city of Lausanne.

Zurich

In 2005, the City Council of the City of Zurich, an open- source strategy decided. While BOSS vorweidend on Microsoft Windows in the client environment, the urban data center Hagenholz RHEL is one of the standard platforms. For web server, communication platforms, gateways, voice over IP and other network services end of 2011 a total of 174 Linux servers were operated. Open source applications such as Apache, MySQL or PHP are preferred.

Spain

Andalusia

The regional government of Andalusia since 2004 can develop their own Linux distribution named Guadalinex, based on Ubuntu and is used in schools, public libraries, retirement homes and so-called Guadalinfo centers. It run more than 200,000 computers in Andalusia with Guadalinex.

Extremadura

A local Debian Derivative named LinEx is developed in southwestern Spain. The regional government of Extremadura migrated with IBM support all authorities to Linux. The goal is to become less dependent determine computing platforms to enhance the security and not lose the connection to the digital age. Schools, offices and hospitals use LinEx, also 200,000 LinEx CD -ROMs were distributed to the population. However, your distribution was abandoned in the spring of 2012, in health and education, although this had a large, but reaches only 1% spread in the administration. Nevertheless, approximately one month later, the plan was announced convert all administrative workstations to Linux by the end of the year.

Zaragoza

In Zaragoza, Spain, the administration will be fully converted to a Linux desktop. The city wants to reduce the licensing and IT costs with the migration to open source software. Despite some solid resistance of the user, the project is not provided by the managers in question, since the technological independence and flexibility is considered important.

The migration project was launched in 2007. Until June 2010 700 jobs to Novell's SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop had migrated. By November 2013, some 800 of the 3,200 jobs had been converted to Linux. Meanwhile, on all PCs free software such as Firefox, Thunderbird, VLC and LibreOffice installed. Not for all applications, there is a replacement on Linux. For example, a CAD and used in the future an OCR application in VirtualBox or Wine on the Linux desktop. Currently, the migration of AZ- 2 Linux, based on OpenSUSE 11.2 to AZ- 12 Linux, based on Ubuntu 12:04 is running.

Turkey

The Turkish government decided in 2003 to develop its own Linux distribution. Pardus is created and maintained by the National Research Institute of Electronics and Cryptology ( UEKAE ). The aim of the Pardus project is to increase the security of military and intelligence applications. The reduction of computer science costs through the use of Linux in the management was a target. The Ministry of Defence and the Ministry of Education set a Pardus already. More migrations are planned in the Ministry of Health. 13,000 Pardus CD -ROMs were distributed to the population. On the homepage of the project over 12,000 downloads were recorded until February 2007.

North America

USA

NASA

On July 21, 2012, NASA launched a satellite called TechEdSat whose board computer is equipped with a Linux system. In addition to open-source software is also free hardware, in the form of OpenRISC processors used.

U.S. aviation authority

The National Aviation Authority (FAA ) of the USA in the spring of 2006 migrated completely to RHEL. This allowed public funds to the tune of 15 million U.S. dollars will be saved. Since the conversion could be converted in half the allotted time, an additional 25 million U.S. dollars were saved. The FAA previously used Windows, but a very expensive proprietary UNIX platform. With RHEL, problems could be solved with the scalability, improve efficiency, and ensure the required high availability of the systems. The security of up to 8,000 aircraft that can be on the road simultaneously monitored by the FAA airspace depends largely on the availability of the IT infrastructure of the FFA, the authority can not allow errors or failures.

U.S. Department of Nuclear Safety

The Department of Nuclear Safety ( NNSA ) of the U.S. operates in 2008 in Los Alamos a supercomputer named Roadrunner. It reaches an output of 1.026 Peta - FLOPS and operated with RHEL and Fedora. The total of 19,440 processors calculate the composite aging radioactive substances.

U.S. Navy

On June 8, 2012, the U.S. Navy awarded a contract to Raytheon Intelligence and Information System which includes the migration from the drone control systems to Linux. Previously, a computer virus infection of the systems had led to problems. Through the change of system will attempt to reduce maintenance time and to increase the security of the affected Northrop Grumman MQ -8B UAV systems. The U.S. Navy is investing over several years distributed 28 million U.S. dollars in a conversion to Linux. Alone in 2012, 5 million were provided for.

U.S. Department of Defense

Red Hat Enterprise Linux has been selected at the Ministry of Defense of the United States as the standard platform for server-based applications, Web services, databases, network security, and the like. RHEL is used in the U.S. Army in numerous places. The Ministry of Defence was 2005, the largest customer of the company Red Hat.

South and Central America

Brazil

The Brazilian government has in 2005 a program called PC Conectado decided, with the aim of poorer households to connect to the Internet. Another objective was the strengthening of local hardware and software industry. The central part of PC Conectado is a very cheap PC hardware, equipped with a Linux operating system, which originated from the Brazilian project Associação Software Livre (ASL ).

Cuba

The socialist regime of Cuba sees U.S. software products as a threat to national security because U.S. intelligence had access to Microsoft operating systems. Why does the Cuban government a Linux distribution named Nova develop, which was introduced in 2006. You should not only be used on government computers, but on all computers as possible in the island republic. In 2012, NOVA has been set, the website has been taken offline to http://www.nova.cu (see Nova article).

Peru

Peru In 2005, a law enacted which prohibits state institutions to create hardware that runs the only proprietary software to prevent a unilateral determination is made. Commercial products may continue to be bought, but only after thorough examination, including a cost analysis. More and more schools in Peru switch to Linux.

Internationally

The United Space Alliance Announces 2013 announced that they will put on the notebooks in the ISS more on Linux.

Technical standard Functional specification Fork (software development) Intelligence agency Backdoor (computing) SUSE Linux Enterprise Server Hewlett-Packard Oracle Corporation Silicon Graphics Great Wall Motors Bremen Universal Mobile Telecommunications System Visual Basic for Applications LAMP (software bundle) Jean-Marc Ayrault Salome (Software) IBM AIX Google Drive Computer-aided design Pardus (operating system) Open source hardware Los Alamos (New Mexico) IBM Roadrunner Nova (operating system) Linux range of use Duncan Campbell (journalist) The Wall Street Journal
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