Berlin art colleges switch to Linux
Berlin's art colleges are completely switching over to Linux. Most of the productivity software on the workstations has already been swapped for free alternative products as part of a project that started over eighteen months ago. The IT team at ServiceCenter-IT, responsible for the migration at three colleges; the Hanns Eisler music college, the Ernst Busch drama college and the Berlin-Weissensee art college, is hoping for an easy migration, as users will be able to keep on working with their familiar applications. Starting in June, their workstation PCs will switch to Ubuntu Linux and their servers will use Debian.
The change is being made because the existing hardware cannot be upgraded to Windows Vista or Windows 7. The colleges would have had to spend five-figure sums to buy newer hardware and pay additional licence fees for Windows. The money that they've saved is now going to be spent on teaching.
As part of the changeover, the colleges are also developing platform-independent software to manage teaching and working contracts. The application is being licensed under the GPLv3 and, after its completion, will be available to all users.
