A German state is ditching Windows and Microsoft Office for Linux and LibreOffice on the 30,000 PCs it uses for local government functions
A German state is ditching Windows and Microsoft Office for Linux and LibreOffice on the 30,000 PCs it uses for local government functions
'Complete digital sovereignty' ... sounds familiar
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."
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Ad I said yesterday when this was posted. They tried this about 15 years ago, reverted to Windows after a few years.
I wish them all the luck in the world with this, truly. But I'm not sure a government has the drive, management, and flexibility to pull this off successfully.
If we want to see Linux compete with Windows for the desktop, it will need to start at the opposite end of the spectrum: small environments where the need for specialized apps is minimal, IT is a smaller group, flexibility is much higher, end users are a smaller group (from a training perspective) and reduced cost realizations are more apparent and impactful.
We may be seeing the beginning of this with VMWare's new, exorbitant licensing costs causing a push to other solutions such as Proxmox/TrueNAS for virtualization/virtualization backup in the SMB.
And if we really want to see a sea change, we need to get Linux as a desktop in education. But that would require settling on a single shell, and generally a single distribution (or at a minimum ensure there's a consistent set of tools in the OS).
Seems like an "Education Build" would be a great idea. But, again, who's going to back it, and which Linux distro gets the nod?
If we want to see Linux compete with Windows for the desktop
Linux could have the Desktop now. You could throw a lightly massaged Mint install down on nearly anyone's desk and they'd be fine.
However Linux is an Operating System, yeah yeah kernel I know, and vanishingly few people actually give a shit about the OS, what they care about is the application set and that's where FOSS, not Linux, completely falls apart.
Linux on the desktop for 30,000 Government PC's? No problem. Removing Microsoft Office from those 30,000 Government PCs? Major problem!
...small environments where the need for specialized apps is minimal...
Nearly everyone uses MSO and even Google hasn't been able to successfully work around this after plowing untold billions and a decade of effort into G-Suite...only to have it widely viewed as an inferior product. When you get to "specialized apps" territory it gets even worse since outside of STEM they're almost all entirely written for Windows. You literally can't get away because the software isn't there to do it.
...IT is a smaller group...
Smaller group means that there's less, or even NO, resources to find, maintain, and train people for "alternate" applications. It's vastly less expensive to simply use the applications that users are already familiar with and that everyone else in their industry is using.
...reduced cost realizations are more apparent and impactful....
The "reduced cost realizations" only come from not buying licenses, which can be impactful, but that expense gets quickly overwhelmed by lost productivity, increased training cost, and higher support burden.
Yes SOME organizations are able to make it work but those orgs are usually staffed with highly technical people and they've got leadership willing to bleed money while everything gets sorted out. Those two conditions don't describe very many businesses and they are certainly not found in Governments.
Linux the OS works just fine but that's not the hurdle. The hurdle is the applications. To quote a famous sweaty guy on a stage one time this fight is about "Developers, Developers, Developers!".
It's done before in Munich. It can work.
Yeah but they switched back to Windows in 2017 for no reason. :( some Bad rumors say it had to do with Microsoft building its headquater in munich 2016. But no one knows if the decision to build it in munich is indeed related to the switch back to. Windows.
Seriously? With the amount of political corruption in Germany I really don't think there's any reason to doubt that at all
"Linux could have the desktop now"
And yet doesn't.
Again, why do enterprises prefer to pay tens of millions per year in licensing rather than deploy Linux as a desktop?
You think these places don't have hundreds or thousands of IT folks with Linux expertise?
Blame game, simple.
Proprietary software comes with a price tag (some people think free = bad), a license (which implies some sort of ownership) and a company behind it which you can sue if something hits the fan. Zero responsibility for the licensee.
FOSS, in the other hand, is no strings attached (for the most part, some sw is dual-licensed and/or there are paid services): if it hits the fan, you clean it up.
So proprietary-mentality managers either cough up money for an IT department, which they almost never do, or fork off money to a proprietary company and write it off as an expense and externalize everything, including resposibility.
Debian Edu has existed for over a decade, originally as a Norwegian distro called Skolelinux ("school Linux"). I'm not sure how they differ from regular Debian at this point, but a big part of the original project was high quality translations.
Wasn't there also something like Edubuntu?
Yeah, and their latest release was 5 months ago, so they're probably still a thing.