This year saw the completion of the city of Munich's switch to Linux, a move that began about ten years ago



From Computerworld:

The Munich city authority migrated around 14,800 of the 15,000 or so PCs on its network to LiMux, its own Linux distribution based on Ubuntu, exceeding its initial goal of migrating 12,000 desktops.

Munich decided to migrate its IT systems when Microsoft said it planned to discontinue support for the operating system the city then relied on, Windows NT 4.0. The city was forced to choose between moving to a newer version of Windows, or finding an alternative platform, as new software and new versions of existing software would not be available on Windows NT. The city council decided to go with Linux to become more independent from software vendors.

  Moving a city to Linux requires political backing, says Munich project leader