What drives a mass Linux migration?

Sam Varghese
Thursday, 05 June 2008 21:58

Opinion and Analysis

When it comes to similar cases in Europe, nationalism, of course, plays a part - there is the traditional Europe-US enmity. And there is always the desire to prove that European technology is as good as, if not better than, what America has to offer.

In the case of a corporation, a migration of this sort is always driven by an individual or two. It is rarely, if ever, a company policy - if it were, then the company in question would already be using FOSS.

Take the example of Novell - it had grandiose plans to migrate a large number of its workforce to its own Linux distribution, the Novell Linux Desktop, which was based on SuSE Linux. Today, the only NLD CDs that one can find would be museum pieces - the whole plan collapsed very rapidly after the initial enthusiasm within the company, fed by a few individuals, died a quick death.

Given that corporate executives do not last very often in the job, corporate migrations are prone to change tack and go into reverse gear more often than those initiated by politicians. I know of one large corporation which was seriously considering a migration of a large number of desktops to Linux; the cost savings had been demonstrated and there was a tech wizard in place to show the pointy-haired managers exactly what Linux could do.

Alas, the IT manager and her help-desk cohorts, all of them qualified in the dark arts which they teach at Microsoft, joined together and, by the skilful use of politics, were able to kill the idea. The wizard has now left the company building.

There are cases where things go as they have in Munich; begun in 2003, the migration to Linux is proceeding slowly but steadily. On the other hand, the city of Vienna has decided (English translation; the original is here for anyone who understands German) to go back to its own vomit, or rather a new flavour of it, with Windows Vista being the option instead of Linux.

It would be interesting to know the inside story of what happened in Vienna. Microsoft often has tasty morsels to offer to those who are willing to keep the faith.

Have you, gentle reader, ever been at the forefront of driving a mass Linux migration? Or have you had the experience of convincing a friend or relative to use Linux? It would be interesting to know.