Linux in city government
Newforge has a good article about the city of Kenosha Wisconsin and their experience to linux. They started their “test” about 10 years ago starting with a DNS server and or a mailserver. They’ve moved now to a complete server/thin-client setup. They initially saved $100,000 a year with Linux, now that number is higher from reduced staffing costs. They have an IT staff of 1 and 1/2 people (I’ve GOT to see that.) They claim if they had PC’s (Windows I assume), they would have to have twice as many on staff.
It looks like Red Hat has been their vendor of choice and they’ve had no problems with support issues, which I’ve seen as one of the greatest fears of those thinking about making the switch. Additionally, they met some resistance to migrating to OpenOffice from Wordperfect, but needed to in 2003 for cost reasons and to have more up-to-date software.