German state gov. ditching Windows for Linux, 30K workers migrating

https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2024/04/german-state-gov-ditching-windows-for-linux-30k-workers-migrating/

by rbanffy • 2 years ago

43 27 2 years ago

arstechnica.com

pndy2• 2 years ago

That's what whole Europe should do already years ago because considering all the data mining Microsoft conducts in their products it become quite dangerous to use anything they released in nearly a decade.

In 2015 Munich reverted their decision from 2004 about migrating to Linux (they opted for an Ubuntu derivative) and OpenOffice [1][2], so let's hope that the Schleswig-Holstein government will stick to open source solutions this time for good and that will become a trend worth following.

[1] https://onmsft.com/news/german-city-that-ditched-windows-for...

[2] https://web.archive.org/web/20150821225906/https://www.techr...

netsharc• 2 years ago

The first article seems to be very pro-Microsoft and doesn't mention how Ballmer lobbied Munich hard to return to the Microsoft system, including offering steep discounts and promising to open an MS headquarter in Munich. I wonder how nice the dinner the 2 mentioned politicians got.

This site admittedly looks like a conspiracy site, but it says onmsft.com is a bogus site: https://techwrongs.org/o/2015/08/24/sabine-pfeiler-and-otto-...

pndy2• 2 years ago

I do remember this story about Munich going for open source and then switching back but I don't recall any side story about MS lobbying for opening headquarter in the city or offering discounts. That's what brave search served me when I enter the keywords so excuse me for choosing the source - sadly, the sites that do PR for the companies pretending to serve news, leaks, reviews are all around us.

And honestly, it's not really surprising that MS lobbied - they managed to do the same in Poland too many times in the past. My sister starting computer classes in the high school was given a pamphlet with instruction how to register an account in (back then) Windows Live ecosystem, how to use mail and create a blog there, and how great SkyDrive is for storing your files.

CapeTheory• 2 years ago

hleswig-Holstein is also developing an open source directory service to replace Microsoft's Active Directory

Colour me intrigued - but don't we already have this with FreeIPA?

sorieus• 2 years ago

Yeah, I don't see what this is going to different. I mean at the end of the day, we have LDAP then you just package all the other fun bits around it kerberos, sssd, dns, cert management etc.

patrakov2• 2 years ago

And after that, an information security auditor from a cyber insurance company comes and says: "sorry, you have to delete all of that, our automation that checks for insecure settings only supports the real AD".

patrakov2• 2 years ago

In the meanwhile, in the Philippines, I had to buy Microsoft Office for my company's treasurer who, so far, used LibreOffice successfully. The reason is that the only officially approved application for submitting the "alphalist" of withheld taxes to the tax agency (BIR) has a hard dependency on Excel for printing (instead of printing, it launches Excel with some pre-populated spreadsheet), and auditors require a hard copy.

P.S. Without this "export to Excel for printing" functionality (EDIT: and maybe something else, too, I have not tested all the buttons), the app also works in Wine.

NelsonMinar• 2 years ago

Not the first German government to do this. Here's something about München in 2020, I think there's been others: https://www.zdnet.com/article/linux-not-windows-why-munich-i...

zeroCalories5• 2 years ago

This is the kinda thing that makes me nervous. My brother asked me about my Linux workstation and said he wanted to try it after I explained why I like Linux. After a month, and tons of tech issues, he was back on Windows. I've only seen it work at tech companies and, for what it's worth, they were all using Google workspaces.

winrid2• 2 years ago

Specific hardware and software versions that you test first should be fine. They do the same thing with any other OS, so I'd hope they do that here.

zeroCalories5• 2 years ago

Operating systems, and enterprise solutions, are complex ecosystems. You never know what you'll need, and find that a lot of basic stuff doesn't work properly. For example, with 30k people, you know they have graphic designers. Hopefully they don't get forced to learn inkscape and gimp, so they're already out. What about the millions of conferencing applications that people use? Personally, I've had many embarrassing failures with Zoom and Webex on Linux. What if you need to do an external presentation? Hope you don't have any compatibility issues with the projectors(real story T_T). Of course I still wish them luck as I would prefer a Linux based world, but let's not pretend this won't be a bumpy ride.

sschueller• 2 years ago

Now with the money they are saving on licenses they should spend that to improve those open source projects.

Also public money, public code.

internetter• 2 years ago

Schrödter also claimed that the move would help with the state's budget by diverting money from licensing fees to "real programming services from our domestic digital economy" that could also create local jobs.

wruza• 2 years ago

It’s nice to see that they looked at previous attempts and do not underestimate (or at least are aware of) the insane complexity of this move. I’m really curious about their migration plan details, knowledge bases and all other supportive structures involved. Documenting this openly could be an immense help for both this and future migrations.

ChrisArchitect• 2 years ago

[dupe] why wasting our time OP?

Lots of earlier discussion on the official post: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39928173

daniel-s• 2 years ago

LibreOffice is fine, but IMO the main appeal of Office is all of the collaborative tools: realtime collaboration on documents, SharePoint/document sharing, OneDrive, Teams integration, etc.

How does that work on Linux+LibreOffice?

German state gov. ditching Windows for Linux, 30K workers migrating

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