Windows is a more user friendly operating system than Linux. Obviously they should have stuck with Windows all along.
As a Linux advocate, I hate admitting that this is correct. One reason is that the Linux desktop experience is too fragmented and has too many competing players. Windows avoids this by being one company with one goal.
> Obviously they should have stuck with Windows all along.
This may be true in hindsight, but it wasn't obvious at the planning stage. In principle, Linux is a less expensive way to run a large enterprise. But only in principle, it seems.
Linux will succeed as a desktop environment only when (and if) its various factions agree on a single model and a single goal.
Many Linux users probably don't want to see a single model. They like the choice of being able to choose from different distributions and their own desktop model.
Ubuntu is probably the closest to being a consistent desktop environment and look how much grief they get from some Linux users over their UX choices. The open source model works for software, but it can't work for UX or design (at least I'm not convinced it can) because you can't design by commitee - any yet everyone wants a say in the UX.
Would it have been better for Munich to have specified open document or data formats rather than the choice of software? This is what the UK government has recently done [1]. The choice of software is up to the individual departments as long as the software can read or create the open formats etc. At least this gives you the choice of switching to dfferent software without being tied to a single vendor's closed-sorce document format.
[1] http://blogs.computerworlduk.com/open-enterprise/2014/07/hug...
Yes, true, but it would be nice to see more consensus for a single default desktop for new users. I guess that's Gnome as things stand, but Gnome has some serious usability issues and would seem very strange to someone coming over from Windows. On that topic, Windows 8 seems strange from someone coming over from Windows too. :)
> Ubuntu is probably the closest to being a consistent desktop environment ...
Well, sort of, by their advocacy of Gnome, but I was thinking of KDE versus Gnome and a handful of other desktop environment choices.
> Would it have been better for Munich to have specified open document or data formats rather than the choice of software?
That might have been a smarter course to take. It leaves the implementation up to individual departments and makes the Linux versus Windows issue less important than the end result, which is portable documents.
Naturally, once the open document format issue heated up, Microsoft tried to create their own "open" document, but one that was actually proprietary, in a time-tested Microsoft strategy.
It's going to be pretty hard. I think something great about Linux is the freedom you get to choose the software that fits your needs the best, and that might be one of its weaknesses at the same time. I'm more than happy with how Linux is right now (but I agree that for someone with little or no experience it can be hard to get up and running, or using it). Oh, well, nothing can't be perfect.
Good point. I know a number of Windows end users, and they don't want so many choices, they just want things to work and be stable and reliable. To these end users, the idea of choosing between email clients or word processors seems to be just asking for trouble, in particular when they realize the file formats are incompatible.
Linux is great for some things, Windows for others. I'm currently using desktop versions of both (Windows 7 / Ubuntu) and Windows beats Ubuntu hands down for user friendliness. I'm using Ubuntu only when absolutely must to (mainly dev).
In fact, I'd venture to say that if you put someone with zero computer experience in front of a Linux box and a windows box, they'd figure out the relatively straightforward and intuitive Linux UI before figuring out the dozens-of-inconsistent-layers-deep windows UI.