The German town of Gummersbach announced that this summer it has completed its switch to Linux PCs, retiring a decade-old proprietary operating system no longer supported by the IT vendor. The migration has saved the town a five-figure sum, and Gummersbach expects a further reduction of IT costs, a combination of savings on proprietary licences and lower hardware costs.
Using Linux has reduced the need for PC maintenance, freeing 1 full-time equivalent employee (FTE). The IT department now employs three persons.
In August, the city sent a statement to Pro Linux, a German Linux news site, announcing the completion of the migration project and detailing its current desktop PC policy. Earlier today, the city made the same statement available to the Open Source Observatory and Repository (OSOR).
Desktop experience
The administration now uses 300 thin client PCs, with desktop and applications retreived a SuSE Linux Terminal Server cluster of six servers. The desktop environment is Mate. The city staffers use the LibreOffice suite of office productivity tools and the Open-Xchange suite of email, instant messaging, calendaring and online collaboration tools…MORE (Open Source Observatory)
Related: Did Munich dump Linux and return to Windows?
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