1. MuniFOSS: could our BMC learn to do more with less?

"The Munich decision to move its 14,000 desktops to Free Open Source Software created a big splash back in 2003 as news circulated of the third-largest German city's defection from Microsoft. When it was announced in 2003, the story garnered coverage even in the US, such as an extensive article in USA Today on-line. Currently, about 60% of desktops are using OpenOffice, with the remaining 40% to be completed by the end of 2009. Firefox and Thunderbird are being used in all of the city's desktop machines. Ten percent of desktops are running the LiMux Debian-based distro, and 80% will be running LiMux by 2012 at the latest. Autonomy was generally considered more important than cost savings, although the LiMux initiative is increasing competition in the IT industry in Munich already. The program has succeeded because the city administration has been careful to reach out to all stakeholders, from managers down to simple end users."

http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~3/_X1l9CcI0IM/The-State-of-Mun...

Note that the move has taken six years to date: retraining and rejigging processes and applications is not done overnight. In fact, part of the true total cost of proprietary is the expensive conversion effort.

2. Bootless updating: a technology first, with Ubuntu Jaunty

"Ksplice has started offering Ksplice Uptrack for Ubuntu Jaunty, a free service that delivers rebootless versions of all the latest Ubuntu kernel security updates. It's currently available for both the 32 and 64-bit generic kernel, and they plan to add support for the virtual and server kernels by the end of the month, according to their FAQ. This makes Ubuntu the first OS that doesn't need to be rebooted for security updates."

http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~3/BcMfez1tpkc/Ksplice-Offers-R...

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