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A German state is ditching Windows and Microsoft Office for Linux and LibreOffice on the 30,000 PCs it uses for local government functions

Schleswig-Holstein, Germany's most northern state, is starting its switch from Microsoft Office to LibreOffice, and is planning to move from Windows to Linux on the 30,000 PCs it uses for local government functions.

Concerns over data security are also front and center in the Minister-President's statement, especially data that may make its way to other countries. Back in 2021, when the transition plans were first being drawn up, the hardware requirements for Windows 11 were also mentioned as a reason to move away from Microsoft.

Saunders noted that "the reasons for switching to Linux and LibreOffice are different today. Back when LiMux started, it was mostly seen as a way to save money. Now the focus is far more on data protection, privacy and security. Consider that the European Data Protection Supervisor (EDPS) recently found that the European Commission's use of Microsoft 365 breaches data protection law for EU institutions and bodies."

Freuks ,
@Freuks@lemmy.ml avatar

German is a good country about open culture

BaardFigur ,

Based

wuphysics87 , (edited )

I love this, but having used ms office extensively for work, we all know it has many more features. Libreoffice isn't a drop in replacement, but maybe with the increased user base it can become one.

Appoxo ,
@Appoxo@lemmy.dbzer0.com avatar

Meanwhile another german city (munich) is going back to MS

but maybe with the increased user base it can become one.

You think the state will contribute? I highly doubt that. At best it will be gov specific functionalities.

wuphysics87 ,

You'd need a massive increase in tech support. Likely more than you'd spend on ms in the first place. Seems a political gambit or a political gaff.

VeganCheesecake ,

Well, Munich decided to switch back around the time Microsoft was negotiating about building their Germany HQ there. There have been allegations of backroom dealings, but I dunno if there's ever been anything proven. There is a very big, very shiny building with a sign that says Microsoft near where I lived when I was there, though.

Though I also read some articles about them partially going back to FOSS, so who knows what they'll do in the end.

Potatos_are_not_friends ,

It really depends on the needs.

When my entire company (10k employees) switched to LibreOffice, it was almost fine. There was like 50 ppl who were frustrated at breaking changes. But many adapted and it was a pretty clean transition.

As for LibreCalc, fuck that. What a nightmare. Employees resorted to creating Google accounts to use Google Sheets instead. We still don't have a solution, and if one particular director gets his way, that whole department might switch back to Windows just for Excel.

Gimpydude ,

I used to work at Merrill Lynch, we had a Linux desktop pilot. We were an 80k company but had less than 1k users in the program, and most of us were capable of self-support.

It's definitely doable at scale especially since most apps are web based these days, but there certainly is a retraining effort needed for support, and Windows would still be there. For most organizations, that's not worth the effort.

rob_t_firefly ,
@rob_t_firefly@lemmy.world avatar

Ich verwende übrigens Arch.

KpntAutismus ,

*Gewölbe

Jekyll ,

*Bogen

deczzz ,
@deczzz@lemmy.dbzer0.com avatar

Thanks

mightyfoolish ,

I wonder what they will choose for their base. I was surprised LiMux was based off Debian since Suse is headquartered in Luxembourg City. I personally would welcome a large organization choosing Suse products as we need more competition for RHEL (which would be a huge boon in productivity since we won't need like 3 projects to spend a decent amount of time repackaging RHEL).

barsoap ,

According to an old interview, pretty much whatever: They're saying "five big distributions are suitable".

They're starting the switch with apps, not the OS. From a technical POV it'd be nice to see NixOS as it's devops / managed deployment heaven. It also happens to be European and, just like Debian, it's a community distro.

For a project of this size, doubly and triply if it gets even more states as users, it absolutely does make sense to have your own release channel, have a team working on nothing but pushing patches (security and otherwise) onto an LTS branch and upstream as well as integration testing for the precise desktop you're shipping to users: The states are paying them to support a desktop, not an OS to run whatever on.

mightyfoolish ,

Nix does have an interesting package manager.

The states are paying them to support a desktop, not an OS to run whatever on.

Don't they need money to fund both aspects? Is there any support to lean on someone goes with Nix?

A lot of governments in the US pretty much go through Microsoft for simplicity. There's a lot of software obtained from a single vendor. I suppose that's why rhel is so popular.

barsoap ,

Dataport is big enough (5200 employees) to support that kind of thing themselves, and they precisely are the single vendor for the participating states (it's an inter-state public corporation). More than twice the employees Suse has, quarter the size of RedHat.

mightyfoolish ,

Good to know. I did not realize that this team was this large. I hope it works out.

Mjpasta710 ,

Redhat and Debian are separate projects, tmk.

mightyfoolish ,

I don't know if you understood my original post, it was too get an alternative to an enterprise distro with vendor paid support. In this regard the alternatives to Debian are more OpenSuse and Rocky, not RHEL (this is not a comparison of quality).

Yeah, the other alternative would be to set up a consultation company that is based around Debian. I guess that is what Dataport is supposed to be then, the support. It's s different route but still works.

dumpsterlid ,

This is the sexiest thing Germany has done since that German couple that drives the Porsche in Super Troopers.
https://lemmy.world/pictrs/image/6eed3d3b-09fe-4516-8f97-e03b3e527c33.jpeg

joe_jowhat ,

Switching to an open-source project is easy, but the concern is more about the context in which they are used and how long they will persist in using these. It might be more convenient for the government to initially try Linux for some pilot projects that require less human intervention. This is because I’m not sure how familiar civil servants are with Linux and LibreOffice. On the other hand, open-source projects don’t provide after-sales services and may have technical or compatibility issues. It requires time for them to get accustomed to them.

puppy , (edited )

According to the article,

  1. They are also migrating backend infrastructure such as emails servers etc.
  2. They already have Linux migration experience in some German states as well as the current proposer.
  3. Companies such as RedHat, Canonical and OpenSuse do offer enterprise level support. So open source software doesn't have "after sales" support is a myth.
  4. They say that the goal of the migration is privacy and security, no necessarily cost driven. They may very well be prepared to pay a premium for enterprise level support.
  5. They have already identified compatibilities issues in their previous project. They got them because they mixed Windows and Linux, the article says. That's why they migrate everything to Linux this time.
joe_jowhat , (edited )

Your clarification helps me understand their swtiching. Thanks 👍

slaeg ,

They've thought about that too, and see training as vital where others before them have failed. Also OS and programs will look somewhat similar to what users are used to, from what I can recall.

Producing documents or e-mails can't be that functionally different, right? Many don't need much more than that. However, I could see integration of third-party software as a challenge, but one that in most cases could be easily overcome.

Appoxo ,
@Appoxo@lemmy.dbzer0.com avatar

Producing documents or e-mails can't be that functionally different, right?

If you do complicated stuff in docx and then try open it in something like Libre the formatting will be interpreted differently.
Source: I partly create forms for templats in Libre/OpenOffice at work.

fne8w2ah ,

I wish my country would also stop subsidising M$ and transition to Linux as well.

Ilgaz ,

It is all about private "dinners".

dan1101 ,
@dan1101@lemm.ee avatar

Yeah for the simple stuff LibreOffice will be just fine but for anything complex like mail merges and such it's probably going to require a lot of work re-doing things.

Harbinger01173430 ,

When someone uses a text editor like LibreOffice, whenever someone mentions complex tasks, I'd imagine writing a thesis, a series of books, a big ass report or the like. Mail merges sound like something another app should do...

dan1101 ,
@dan1101@lemm.ee avatar

Yeah LibreOffice will do things like mail merges, but I mean it will probably require relearning the process. It will be different than the process they used with MS Office.

If you just porting over simple things like letters and simple documents you should be able to move back and forth between MS Office and LibreOffice with few changes.

Eyck_of_denesle ,

I genuinely hate AI art

ChaoticNeutralCzech ,

This one is terrible because it's like a montage of a penguin colony over a generic historic painting of a port city. Very little creativity and quality control. I'd just combine some actual photo of the Kiel port and penguins jumping out of water. (Not necessarily these two)

Kiel port, cathedral in background Penguins jumping out of water

siipale ,

You mean collage? I agree. I think your suggestion would work best if it was also made to look like an obvious collage. If it was accurately photoshopped to look like the penguins were actually there it would look silly.

barsoap ,

What you actually want is a nice picture of either a market place or seafront promenade and a fat and content (as usual) Tux munching a Fischbrötchen

ChaoticNeutralCzech ,

Cool but that would require some cultural awareness, and the reporters cannot be bothered.

Regrettable_incident ,
@Regrettable_incident@lemmy.world avatar

Damn I didn't even notice. Guess I don't really look at the pictures.

OneBeer ,

It's the most sophisticated thing about the whole article, unfortunately.

TheFriar ,

Right? The rash of AI images used in journalism is genuinely troubling. It seems like at least 50% of news article thumbnails I see are AI these days.

And, like…are those penguins in the back cheering with human arms? Is that an orca jumping out of the water? What the fuck is going on.

FiniteBanjo ,

Maybe soon a unified CSV handling might be possible.

ChaoticNeutralCzech ,

Commas are too common, we should go with semicolons. And \n and UTF-8 by default. And a header that defines changes from defaults, plus metadata such as data logger model and settings. These are some significant quality-of-life improvements but I'd guess it will take another file extension before that happens.

FiniteBanjo ,

I just don't like that CSV exists as a format and has no standards currently. If you remove commas from CSV then you're taking the C out of CSV.

mightyfoolish ,

SCSV (semicolon separated values) at least sounds like an upgrade to CSV. Or maybe just use something that is flexible but is standard like JSON?

ChaoticNeutralCzech ,

Yeah, SCSV would work, with a .ssv file extension for FAT compatibility.

JSON is overkill, tabular data is often recorded by 8-bit devices. Yes, you can use a dishwasher to cook salmon, but building a dishwasher is difficult and it can break in many more places. Each piece of salmon also needs to be carefully wrapped.

mightyfoolish ,

Yeah, I get what you mean. I'm so overprotective of my dishwasher I actually pre-scrub plates very quickly so not to clog the dishwasher (which is pretty similar to sanitizing inputs for putting them in a database I guess). 😊 It's still much faster than doing the dishes by hands.

But the point is something simple can run on a simple device with minimal supervision.

blackbirdbiryani ,

At that point why not use TSV?

barsoap ,

ASCII 0x1f, unit separator and 0x1e, record separator. There's also 0x1d group separator and 0x1c file separator.

Both CSV and TSV have been a mistake from the start it's not like they'd be suitable for binary data anyway and not using ASCII control codes specifically made for in-band messaging of record fields means they ate into the printable characters (and yes \n and \t are printable, they move the print head that's a printing action).

If you want binary compatibility either use bencode or throw ASN.1 at it. The important thing is to have a simple enough data model, don't try to save code in the base compatibility version, evaluate the whole sheet before export if you have to. Using sqlite as interchange format is a bit hacky, but honestly defensible especially with the code (which kinda is the spec) being public domain.

umbraroze ,

I can confidently say that CSV support is one of those problems that even the brightest computer scientists will be pondering for the decades to come.

Supporting CSVs sounds like an easy problem, but it's not. It's like a whole different complexity type. Time complexity, space complexity, and now, the dreaded subclass between spec complexity and organisational complexity.

You can't just make the users agree which delimiter to use and how quotes are supposed to work. That's nearly impossible. No no no.

NoRodent ,
@NoRodent@lemmy.world avatar

Does LibreOffice finally have ribbon or does it still look like MS Office 2003? You can hate on Microsoft all your want (and I'd gladly join you in most cases) and I get the privacy concerns but the Office suite is, after all those decades, still unmatched (well maybe except Outlook).

photonic_sorcerer ,

It has a ribbon. I'd say its on par with Office 2016.

raspberriesareyummy ,

while it does have a ribbon, the exclusive ribbon while discarding the menu is the main reason why Microsoft Office is fucked up beyond repair.

NoRodent ,
@NoRodent@lemmy.world avatar

Ribbon is one of the best inventions Microsoft ever came up with and I will die on this hill. I'm old enough to remember very well the suffering when I was trying to find something in the classic menus or among the billion equal sized icons scattered across multiple toolbars in old MS Office versions. When Office 2007 came out, everything was suddenly so much easier to find, often with less clicks. I don't see any reason why I'd need the old style menu in addition to ribbon.

raspberriesareyummy ,

There was something faster and more reliable: keyboard shortcuts.

The ribbon is for people who use the mouse for stuff that is much faster to do with a keyboard.

NoRodent ,
@NoRodent@lemmy.world avatar

You can't possibly have every feature on a keyboard shortcut, even just all those various formatting features in Word for example where you often have to choose something from a list of options. And even if you somehow did manage to have a shortcut for everything, you'd still only remember those you use frequently enough.

Not to mention, I'm pretty sure most of those shortcuts from 2003 still work today.

raspberriesareyummy ,

Okay, let me rephrase my initial criticism:

  • let have whoever would like to have three rows of ribbon icons whose description is only visible as a mouse-over hint
  • fuck Microsoft for forcefully removing the regular office drop-down menus

The second part in this process was completely unnecessary and made office a worthless pile of bloatware.

Johnmannesca ,
@Johnmannesca@lemmy.world avatar

I like the Math program as it has LaTeX compatibility, but if we don't start adopting this worldwide it might become a nagging problem for the next quarter century.

baseless_discourse ,

I am not aware that libreoffice math is compatible with latex. How do you enable it?

Johnmannesca ,
@Johnmannesca@lemmy.world avatar

https://extensions.libreoffice.org/en/extensions/show/texmaths-1

baseless_discourse ,

Okay I thought you mean libreoffice math. I have been using texmath since forever, but recently I am migrating towards libreoffice math, since texmath don't work with the flatpak version.

Fortunately, I find the language of libreoffice math quite similar to latex and has a much better UX than texmath.

Blaster_M ,

LibreOffice is perfectly fine for your Dear Princess Celestia letters (which 99 percent of Word users do is write simple letters), but once you start doing more advanced formatting (such as tables and text boxes and other embeddings), LibreO really doesn't like it. And good luck if you have to convert such a Word document.

maynarkh ,

Does Word like advanced formatting? I've found LaTeX easier to use for typesetting, and I don't like LaTeX.

Wizard_Pope ,
@Wizard_Pope@lemmy.world avatar

Wait a second lemme just quickly program my letter

baseless_discourse , (edited )

You don't compose your letter in word either... Nor do most people need "advance" formating for letter. I doubt you are formating floating subfigures, aligning equations, and organizing citations for every email.

raspberriesareyummy ,

I do lots of advanced formatting in LibreOffice and it works a LOT better than Microsoft Office ever has, mostly because the functionality is consistently found in the same dialogues across versions.
Also, references are not permanently broken like those in documents submitted by my windows using colleagues.

fine_sandy_bottom ,

This is disingenuous and misleading.

Yes compatibility with Word with complex formatting is problematic, but is that really libreoffice or is it Ms office?

For documents drafted in LibreOffice complex formatting is rock solid. It's patently false to say its just generally inferior to Word in this regard.

menemen ,
@menemen@lemmy.world avatar

Yeah it is always funny when people shit on non-MS office suites for not being 100% comaltible with MS Office, when it is Microsoft who doesn't stick to the international standards.

dumpsterlid , (edited )

How can they be international standards if they don’t include Microsoft? Doesn’t Microsoft and all its employees count as part of this global international world? See, Microsoft is the victim here.

edit /s /s /s /s /s /s

menemen , (edited )
@menemen@lemmy.world avatar

You might want to look into what standardization means.

Start here: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Organization_for_Standardization

And here more on our specific case: https://www.iso.org/standard/66363.html

Imo companies who hinder or harm standardization (Microsoft and Apple are the leaders here) are literally among the worst things on this earth.

southsamurai ,
@southsamurai@sh.itjust.works avatar

Malarkey. It does give with tables and boxes. I've been digitizing my home be brew ttrpg system slowly over the last few years, using libreoffice. Zero issues, zero difficulty.

And I've now written three novels, a novella, and many short stories with it. The native epub output isn't perfect, but it does fine for alpha/beta reading. And that's the only flaw it has for prose.

I've converted older word documents in the process of the ttrpg formatting, btw, with no issues.

The word processing part is all I really use, so I can't say much about anything else in the suite, but librewriter is fully capable.

ricdeh ,
@ricdeh@lemmy.world avatar

That's a blatant lie. LibreOffice Writer works better than M$ Word for every single purpose and application.

moon ,

I'm not knowledgeable enough to know if that's true or not, but having it be pushed to the test with serious work at that scale will hopefully get those compatibility issues ironed out quickly. Anyone can contribute after all, and no doubt the government will have programmers that are looking to help.

Tramort ,

This isn't going to happen.

This headline comes up every year that it's time for the government to negotiate contracts with Microsoft. Once they get the best price they think they can, they will accept it and issue a news release that "we're staying in Windows after all".

It's lame, but it's what is going to happen.

BeigeAgenda ,
@BeigeAgenda@lemmy.ca avatar

Munich did exactly that in 2017, so let's see how far Sleswig-Holstein is willing to go, hopefully they won't be falling for Microsofts sweet talk.

raspberriesareyummy ,

The reason Munich switched back to Windows, when users were just fine working with Limux, was a corrupt politician who ordered the return to windows, probably pocketing a hefty bribe in the process.

deczzz ,
@deczzz@lemmy.dbzer0.com avatar

Source?

raspberriesareyummy ,

https://www.zdnet.de/88202452/stadt-muenchen-erwaegt-abkehr-von-linux/

The article from 2014 explains how this was mostly a political quarrel, with a former administration transitioning away from Microsoft (which as a US corporation has no business in any government administration of another country), and the conservatives pushing (under a "social democrat" mayor, admittedly) to go back to MS against technological advice.

Im Stadtrat hingegen steht den Berichten zufolge eine fraktionsübergreifende Mehrheit hinter LiMux. Bettina Messinger, Sprecherin der SPD-Fraktion für Personal, Verwaltung und IT, sagte Heise Online, dass man keine neue Haltung zu dem Thema habe. Sie bezeichnete die Umstellung auf Linux als „mutige Entscheidung“. Kritische Stimmen und Beschwerden seien im EDV-Bereich nichts Ungewöhnliches. Man müsse LiMux und das Umfeld nun stetig verbessern und nutzerfreundlicher gestalten. Unter anderem sei dafür mehr IT-Personal in der Verwaltung nötig.

Auch die CSU-Fraktion unterstützt LiMux weiter. Deren IT-Experte Otto Seidl nannte Schmidts Kritik „eine sachfremde Einzelmeinung eines Juristen“. Die Grünen warnen Heise zufolge vor einem „teuren Schildbürgerstreich“, sollte die Stadt zu Microsoft zurückkehren. Demnach wollen die Abgeordneten in einer Ausschusssitzung klären, woher die Beschwerden stammen.

In other words: the "manyfold complaints" were an "ad populum" argument without sources and were most likely made up.

tal ,
@tal@lemmy.today avatar

I remember some city in Germany actually doing it some years back and then eventually giving up and switching back.

googles

It's a little unclear exactly what software was and wasn't switched, but sounds like it's Munich, and now they're back on LibreOffice again.

https://winbuzzer.com/2020/05/14/munich-ditches-microsoft-office-and-windows-in-favor-of-open-source-xcxwbn/

By 2006, the city had started a concerted effort to move away from Microsoft products and onto Linux. Fast forward to 2013 and 80% of all workstations in the government and related organizations were running LiMux. However, Microsoft’s Windows and Office services were still used.

As we reported back in 2017, the government made a controversial decision to abandon open source and return to Windows.

A newly elected government in Munich, Germany has said it will aim to use open source solutions in its offices. In doing so, the government is moving away from Windows and Microsoft Office despite committing to the products several years ago.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LiMux

LiMux was a project launched by the city of Munich in 2004 in order to replace the software on its desktop computers, migrating from Microsoft Windows to free software based on Linux.[citation needed] By 2012, the city had migrated 12,600 of its 15,500 desktops to LiMux. In November 2017 Munich City Council resolved to reverse the migration and return to Microsoft Windows-based software by 2020.[1][2][3] In May 2020, it was reported that the newly elected politicians in Munich, while not going back to the original plan of migrating to LiMux wholesale, will prefer Free Software for future endeavours.[4]

EDIT: I guess I should have just read the other comment responding to the parent, which mentioned Munich.

menemen ,
@menemen@lemmy.world avatar

Amd just after Munich announced it will go back to Windows, Microsoft decided to move its German central to Munich. What a coincidence.

Delta_V ,

!remindme 1 fiscal quarter

Nolegjoe ,

Good lord, they are in for a world of hurt.

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