Thanks. The big driver was the EU’s European Interoperability Framework (first version 2004), which promoted: Open standards, Vendor neutrality, Long-term accessibility of public data. It was envisioned for public administration, businesses and citizens: And notably the framework was updated 2015-2017 - the period the Munich administration steered away from it. Though I see they are now saying they should reconsider their move to MS, or maybe that’s just a negotiation tactic.

There was the Munich public administration before that ran everything on Linux 2003-2017 until MS paid for a big new HQ in Munich - I don’t know if the then mayor, Dieter Rieter, had any direct incentives. The French Gendarmerie have been using their version of Linux too (Gendbuntu) since 2005. Regions of the PA in Spain use it too. It’s also fairly common in European militaries.

Thanks for the update fix! - I didn’t sign in to MS - as I only use it very occasionally - a program on an old usb drive only reliably works on Windows 10 (and not 11)

I put Linux Mint on a laptop last year that was running Windows 10 (dual boot) as MS said they were no longer supporting or providing security updates for Windows 10. Mint has worked well (although it does seem to want updates every day). I opened up Windows last week and MS said that they would actually continue to provide security updates for Windows 10 if I logged on with a MS account - so I guess they are actually noticing the migration away from their OS.