German Foreign Office drops Linux (The H)

The H provides some background on the German Foreign Office decision to migrate its desktop and notebook computers back to Windows. "How did Linux get into the German Foreign Office in the first place? In 2001, the authority began to set up a secure intranet to connect the more than 200 German embassies with their headquarters in Germany. At the time, the decision to build a VPN using free software was based on financial considerations. In 2004, the government authority began to introduce open source solutions on desktop computers, at first with OpenOffice, Firefox and Thunderbird under Windows. In 2005, Linux was introduced as the only operating system on mobile computers, and in a dual-boot configuration with Windows on desktop PCs. This decision was made for security reasons."

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