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German state planning to switch 25,000 PCs to LibreOffice

blog.documentfoundation.org

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Re: German state planning to switch 25,000 PCs to LibreOffice

#61

Post by winstonschmidt »

RedShift1 wrote: post #30
nivenkos wrote: post #24

Now switch to Linux too. The more we invest together, the easier it becomes. German states can help Spanish states, and Finnish schools, Danish universities, and French businesses, etc. - collaboratively investing so that everyone benefits and Europe can build its own Tech industry and have some independence from the US. This is absolutely critical to move away from the dominance of "Big Tech" to FOSS solutions that…

I agree with your arguments but the Linux desktop sucks, I would never want to use it full time let alone support it (note that I used to be a full time Linux desktop user, I left after KDE 4 came about). Linus Tech Tips is running a series on desktop Linux and they are hitting the hammer on the nail where exactly all the pain points are.

I really don't get the hate that Linux Desktop gets. When comparing Mac OS to Gnome the difference feels marginal (at least for normal users) these days - everything feels snappy, consistent and looks nice. What exactly are the pain points?

Re: German state planning to switch 25,000 PCs to LibreOffice

#63

Post by pfortuny »

nivenkos wrote: post #24

Now switch to Linux too. The more we invest together, the easier it becomes. German states can help Spanish states, and Finnish schools, Danish universities, and French businesses, etc. - collaboratively investing so that everyone benefits and Europe can build its own Tech industry and have some independence from the US. This is absolutely critical to move away from the dominance of "Big Tech" to FOSS solutions that…

I agree with you but they did in Munich and then they undid it.

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

Re: German state planning to switch 25,000 PCs to LibreOffice

#64

Post by guerrilla »

Folcon wrote: post #48
nivenkos wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've used Linux full-time at home for 10 years, and now at work (in an enterprise). For the most part, it works well and doesn't require a whole lot more support. The LTT video hit one specific packaging bug in PopOS that was present for only an hour, and was unfortunate. But to judge so much on that is unreasonable, shit happens in software engineering, it'd be like trying to use Facebook in the window where it was…

As someone who used to be an avid linux desktop user, but has subsequently moved away from it and is interested in the current ecosystem with a view to maybe coming back, what would you say is a good entry point? I used to run Ubuntu back in the day if that helps. I'm curious to get a sense of how much has changed.

I've been using Arch Linux on Lenovo hardware (desktops and laptops) and have had no problems in years. I imagine the "easy" distros are even better with even more features. I wouldn't sweat it too much.

Re: German state planning to switch 25,000 PCs to LibreOffice

#66

Post by agumonkey »

loudmax wrote: post #20

This is the kind of story that would have been cheered on on Slashdot twenty years ago. But here we are in 2021 and a major organization having the temerity to not pay the Microsoft tax is newsworthy. This is not what a free market looks like.

I think it's misguided.

1) Some orgs are stuck with older LO versions 2) veresions that aren't good enough, MS marketing team probably doesn't have to make a lot of efforts to entice organizations to pay for their stuff. For instance Writer custom fields UI is way too hard to use (to the point i'm not sure it's not a bug). You can't make people work with that no matter how trained they are.

Re: German state planning to switch 25,000 PCs to LibreOffice

#68

Post by pasabagi »

nivenkos wrote: post #24

Now switch to Linux too. The more we invest together, the easier it becomes. German states can help Spanish states, and Finnish schools, Danish universities, and French businesses, etc. - collaboratively investing so that everyone benefits and Europe can build its own Tech industry and have some independence from the US. This is absolutely critical to move away from the dominance of "Big Tech" to FOSS solutions that…

Aside from the obvious strategic/people power side of it, honestly, I think being a user of closed-source is just the wrong model for a big organization. Ultimately, closed-source software is like running a factory with a machine you aren't allowed to repair.

Having your core means of production and security essentially at the mercy of somebody else's support team seems kind of insane to me. I get the point in the 90s, when software was a smaller part of all institutions, but these days, it's just such a massive strategic disadvantage that even if the software is way better, it's still worse.

Re: German state planning to switch 25,000 PCs to LibreOffice

#69

Post by sgt »

nivenkos wrote: post #24

Now switch to Linux too. The more we invest together, the easier it becomes. German states can help Spanish states, and Finnish schools, Danish universities, and French businesses, etc. - collaboratively investing so that everyone benefits and Europe can build its own Tech industry and have some independence from the US. This is absolutely critical to move away from the dominance of "Big Tech" to FOSS solutions that…

Didn't Munich do this like 20 years ago and it was a complete failure?

Linux and OpenOffice. I think one of the major concerns at the time was that OpenOffice didn't work well with all the Excel and Word documents they needed to open, so people opted out and installed Windows instead. To the regular office worker, it didn't matter much if the computer ran Linux or Windows, as long as it worked.

To the IT admin, it might have been more work to administer thousands of Linux machines, due to the slightly less mature environment.

Re: German state planning to switch 25,000 PCs to LibreOffice

#70

Post by marcodiego »

leokennis wrote: post #60
pbasista wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is possible. But apparently, people in Germany are looking for software based on attributes that reach beyond the elemental metrics like "nice to use" or "supports corporate integration". They might care more about the ability to audit the software's behavior and to easily make changes where necessary. They might also like to contribute patches back to the original LibreOffice community because they know that th…

Devil's advocate here. Recently my employer (large corporate) went all in on (as it is now called) Microsoft 365: Teams, SharePoint online, OneDrive etc. While I have no illusions about Microsoft's business model and motives, the truth is that "it just works" and makes collaboration very easy. Create a team in Teams, add a document which everyone can edit (if needed at the same time), click a button, share it with so…

Consider OnlyOffice or the version offered by Collabora with on-line features. I really don't know how good these options are but they exist.
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