It is funny to notice how some news are reported, they of course depend of the news content and the purpose of the news, anyway it seems like it. We all remember how the Linux community celebrated the victory when the City of Munich decided to go open-source (read here). I could give couple of dozens of links to the same news story. It was big news that Linux won the big "bad" Microsoft.
What is the reality? That is not so much and widely reported as the original news. Linux is in trouble in Munich! What you haven't heard? Well read here or here. Paul Thurrott wrote about it already in July 2003.
"And speaking about Linux stories you don't hear much from the Linux-loving mainstream press, consider the following. Remember that story about the city of Munich choosing Linux to power 14,000 desktop computers? One aspect of this story that most people don't know about is that up to 80 percent of those Linux desktops will be equipped with VMWare, a virtual machine emulator, under which they will run Windows and Windows applications. That's right, folks: The majority of those "Linux desktops" will be used to run … Windows. I'm not a big fan of Gartner, but they've issued a report, correctly titled, "Munich's Choice Doesn't Prove Linux OK for General Desktop Use," that raises some interesting issues. First, many of the Windows desktops they're migrated are very old Windows versions like Windows 3.1, making the switch to Linux less painful (it would be equally painful to switch to XP). Gartner says the cost of switching to Linux will cost 30 million Euros, or 3 million Euros more than it would cost to switch to XP, not including any steep discounts Microsoft would have no doubt provided. And finally, because most of the Linux machines will use VMWare to run Windows anyway, Linux is really being used as a hosting environment, and not as a replacement. In other words, this isn't exactly a good business case on which other companies can base a decision to migrate to Windows desktops. And, not coincidentally, that's why we're not reading about a lot of other high-profile Linux switchers".
I will keep my eye on Munich and report when something is to be reported.