Munich City Council has announced that a total of 2,000 Linux CDs featuring the Ubuntu 12.04 Long Term Support (LTS) distribution will be given away from next Monday in Munich’s public libraries according to the German technology news site Heise. The city’s Administration and Personnel Commission decided to take this step on 19th June 2013 because Microsoft is finally ending support for Windows XP on 8th April 2014 and will not be providing any more security patches for the operating system from that date onwards.
Bavaria’s capital city thus wants to make sure first and foremost that computers which have been using Windows XP do not end up as electronic waste. Furthermore, Munich wants to be regarded as an “innovative expert in the open source sector”.
Nevertheless, the council points out that it cannot provide any support at all for the chosen Linux distribution and that users should refer to for this to suppliers in the database of the local Chamber of Commerce & Industry (IHK) and ubuntuusers.de.