NL: Amsterdam begins it's final Open Source desktop test
Using sixty desktop PCs running Open Source software, the city council of the city of Amsterdam this month is running its final test to see if all 10.000 PCs in use by the central city administration can be migrated to Open Source.
It is the final test in a series of trials with Open Source applications undertaken by the city administration over the past year. The desktop trial is taking place at the city's housing service and the city district Zeeburg. The housing service has 35 so-called Open Desktops, the district Zeeburg has 25.
IT administrators organising the test are reporting that the users judge their new desktop favourably. "It is easy on the eyes", IT administrator Manou Chen quotes one user in an article he posted on the city website in early August. "The fonts and colours are very clear."
Based on the results of all of these tests, the city council will decide in October whether the Open Source desktop is to be installed on all 10.000 PCs in use by the central city administration, writes Chen. "Whatever the outcome, our Open Source trials have attracted the interests of other city councils and several ministries."
The Open Desktop is based on Suse's GNU/Linux Enterprise Desktop, offering basic Open Source applications such as OpenOffice's Writer and Calc. The web browser is Mozilla Firefox and the public administrators can turn to Gimp when they need to edit images.
The IT administrators working on the Open Source desktop have also compiled a list of all other applications currently in use at twenty city districts and city services. They are now trying to establish how much work is needed to make all of these applications accessible using the Open Soure desktop.
"All public administrators, including accountants, legal officers and managers, should be able to use the Open Source desktop", says Heike van der Krieke, Open Desktop project manager at the Zeeburg city district. He also hopes this will prove that the Open Source desktop needs not cost more than a desktop running proprietary applications. "I expect the results of this part of the project at the end of this year."
More information:
- Report on city's housing service (in Dutch)
- Report on city district Zeeburg (in Dutch)
Document Actions
