That presents me with exactly two choices - either you have figured out something that has eluded every major IT organization around the world for the last 20 years OR you are wrong.

I suspect the latter to be the case.

I work in K-12 education, and we pay MS about $35/desk for all their latest software per year. With that, along with all the server software we use (it's factored into the above per desktop cost), we get Active Directory, System Center, etc. to help us manage our environment.

Please price out an alternative deployment for 1,000 desktops and laptops that provides a level of desktop management equal to the one provided with the MS solution... I'll wait. When we made a cursory look into management suites for Large Linux deployments we found their cost to be a multiple of what we were paying MS ($100/desk per year for management suite v. $34/desk per year for the MS solution suite)...

They really, REALLY wanted to stay on Windows NT?

I doubt it.

And it only took Munich ten years to upgrade - at that rate Linux will bury Microsoft in just a few years...

This is an interesting "glass is half-empty or half-full" issue:

Linux "advocates" will focus on the "switch completed" part of the story, MS advocates will focus on the TEN YEARS and their "need" to create their own distribution.

No CIO in any organization of any serious size will look at this ten year effort as anything other than justification for their decision to remain on MS software.

This is declaring our dependence on gasoline is almost upon us because one fellow in town just converted his diesel VW Rabbit to run on used cooking oil.

Linux is 20 years old and has less than half the market share of Microsoft Vista... (3.57% v. 1.56%)

And being able to easily hire low-cost admins to run the environment...

How many good ones were there TEN YEARS AGO when they started this adventure?

This project started a year before Ubuntu Linux's first public release in 2004...

And there's always hosted mail / hosted Exchange.

"hosted Exchange" isn't an alternative TO Microsoft, it's an alternate way to STICK WITH Microsoft...

The last users to be converted (upgraded?) to LiMux spent the last TEN YEARS on WinNT? Whoa!

Munich proved it took TEN YEARS to migrate off Microsoft to Linux, and in the process they had to roll-their-own distribution.

This won't convince major corporate installations to cutover to Linux, it will scare them off! I mean seriously, a ten year process?

How on earth can a properly skeptical person ever believe that letting the people who profit the most from a thing tell us what's best?

So wait, Steve Jobs was wrong? He said Apple stuff was the best, but he also profited off it greatly...

And what about all those politicians telling the kids they "have to go to college"? Last year the Federal Government made over $40 Billion in PROFITS off the Student Loan program - slightly less profit than (good) Apple and (evil) ExxonMobil...

"In one of the premier open source software deployments in Europe, the city migrated from Windows NT to LiMux, its own Linux distribution ... Ten years after the decision to switch, the LiMux project will now go into regular operation, the Munich City council said."

It only took ten years and the development of their own distribution of Linux to migrate from WinNT to LiMux (their own Linux distro) - wow.

I guess if Munich can do it, anyone can!

Question - were the last few users to convert (upgrade?) to LiMux still running WinNT for the last ten years or did they upgrade from WinNT to one of Microsoft's other interim offerings before finally landing on LiMux?

As I remember, one thing a leader of this effort pointed out was that this was not about "saving money," and if that was your primary goal you should reconsider any plans to migrate to a Linux distribution - there are many valid reason for the cutover to Linux, but cost savings alone won't justify the change.

Imagine what a company like Tesla could have done with GM Assets it picked up at pennies on the dollar...

Instead, we got the Chevy Volt...

Although the GM bailout ended with a $10.5-billion loss for taxpayers, Treasury officials say the goal never was to turn a profit.

Well done - maybe next time you could try and break even? (Depending on how you look at it, AIG was a profitable bailout, for example.)

You bought a Chinese computer with a Chinese version of Windows in China and you were upset because there was no easy/free way to change it to English?

Were you also mad at Samsung for not including an English keyboard?

And your heading is 100% incorrect - you say "If you can read Chinese you pay twice in China" - how so? By your own example you only "pay twice" if you can't read Chinese and instead require another language on your Chinese computer bought in China with a Chinese edition of Windows. If you COULD read Chinese, why would you need the English version of Windows?

Windows 7 had the option of changing the install language via language interface packs for free, if you had the Ultimate or Enterprise versions - low-end, "Home" editions didn't have this ability.

Microsoft is on it's third attempt to get people off WinXP - first came Windows Vista, then Windows 7 and now Windows 8 - I really don't think Microsoft is as concerned about supporting folks in China that insist on using 15 year-old technology. How many of those WinXP licenses did MS actually get paid for?

I suspect India runs more current OSes because of their close ties with US industries through their outsourcing industry.

Well, if you put a touchscreen on your server console it starts to make more sense... Just sayin'