According to a new report from the Spanish newspaper, El País, the City Council of Barcelona is replacing all the Microsoft products with Linux alternatives. They have already started the pilot test for Linux based operating system, Ubuntu replacing Microsoft’s Windows on over 1000 computers in Barcelona Consistory.
The users of the City of Barcelona will have to use alternatives to Microsoft products like Open-Xchange instead of Microsoft Exchange Server, LibreOffice or OpenOffice instead of Microsoft Office, etc. which is a bummer. Microsoft Edge and Internet Explorer would also be replaced by other alternative browsers like Mozilla Firefox, etc.
As reported by the newspaper, the City Council wants to avoid paying or spending money on services with licensing cost. That’s where open source software come where anyone can modify the source provided and there is no need to pay anything for the license. The City Council is also committed to investing 70% of the budget in software for open source software.
Open source software is not perfect and is far from being a mainstream OS like Windows. Mainly the users migrating from Windows would have trouble in finding their necessary programs and that can only be achieved with some complications like emulators, again the experience would be far from being perfect.
In comparison to Linux, Windows have a better hardware and software support from both manufacturers and Microsoft. Also, Linux operating system is not as user-friendly as Microsoft Windows, new users who are migrating to Linux would find it difficult to use. With Windows 10, Microsoft is constantly improving the security of the platform and Windows 10 is also the most secure version of Windows ever created by Microsoft.
Switching to an open source platform doesn’t seem like a good idea. What do you think about City Council of Barcelona decision? Let us know in the comments below.
