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German state planning to switch 25,000 PCs to LibreOffice

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

#121

Post by cies »

bildung wrote: post #91
sgt wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 mi…

> Didn't Munich do this like 20 years ago and it was a complete failure? No, it was reversed for political reasons. The majority of users were happy. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LiMux

Yups. From another thread:

> It got rolled back after they elected [a] mayor who got Microsoft to move their German headquarters to Munich.

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

#123

Post by GoblinSlayer »

mc32 wrote: post #92
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…

Too little too late. Most “office collab” is going cloud. Neither Google nor MS are threatened by free/open thick client alternatives. Users will still need their onedrive googledrive for collab. Admittedly some work is non collab but more and more of that gets pushed to SaaS.

https://www.collaboraoffice.com/collabora-online/

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

#124

Post by kevincox »

rich_sasha wrote: post #102

I think the main "drawback" of LibreOffice is that it is not widely used. If you receive a docx document and it formats funny, or vice versa (common on LibreOffice and not entirely their fault), it's on you for using weird software, or penny-pinching on a MS Office license. If it becomes common, people just accept the minor incompatibility and move on. It will also get better as funds and attention flow to these proj…

> If it becomes common, people just accept the minor incompatibility and move on

If LibreOffice becomes more popular people will receive an odt document, MS Office will format it funny and it will be their fault for using weird software.

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

#125

Post by fuzzy2 »

bluedino wrote: post #110

What is the open source alternative to Office365? 'Regular' Office is becoming more and more rare. Which is a shame, between the licensing costs, having to re-download or re-install the desktop apps, having to deal with OneDrive, etc.

Hm, depends what part of Office 365 you need, the offering is truly gigantic. If you need something like Word Online, there's some stuff floating around (search "open source google docs" to find them). As for the rest, Exchange Online, Sharepoint, especially how it's all integrated, I'm afraid there's simply no alternative.

Nextcloud offers some integration in that regard.

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

#126

Post by cardanome »

rich_sasha wrote: post #99
cardanome wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would agree that the Linux Desktop sucks in absolute terms when we think what a sane Desktop experience could look like but compared to Windows, this does not hold true. Linux has quite improved from the early KDE 4 days. These days, you install Linux Mint with Cinnamon and you are good to go. Super easy to use and just works. It is based on Ubuntu, so you can use all the packages but with the bad stuff and experim…

This has been said ad infinitum. My experience is that Windows works, but very poorly. It is slow, hangs, steals my data and treats me like an abusive parent treats a toddler. But for me, Linux doesn't work. Or maybe it works 90%. Something's always broken, and a different thing is broken with each update. It requires constant tinkering. One flawless and amazing experience I had was working on Linux at a medium-sized…

What exactly does not work? What Distro were you using?

Serious question because my experience is that I install Linux Mint and everything just works. Updates never break anything. Why should they?

The only arguable pain point is maybe graphics drivers but honestly installing proprietary ones is just a few clicks these days. Plus you don't need them for office work anyway. (Maybe also some power saving features on certain lesser known laptops? As a ThinkPad user I always enjoyed great support.)

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

#127

Post by sjcoles »

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.

For what it's worth I have about 200 Linux Laptops and VDI (about 3:1 ratio) and the support burden is much less than Windows.

Need to perform an update on the fleet? Click a couple buttons to version a repo to dev, old dev to test, test to prod, schedule a remote execution of `yum update -y`, wait. None of this will it won't it work song and dance of Windows updates.

Need to perform a config change? Branch the ansible playbook repo, test your changes, merge to master, pull down repo on foreman, and schedule playbook execution.

No bullshit, all text files, all standard protocols. It just works as I would hope Windows would.

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

#128

Post by slightwinder »

sgt wrote: post #69
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 mi…

It wasn't a complete failure, more the opposite, a great success. Until Microsoft moved their HQ to Munich and some old conservatives started complaining about some miniscule problems. Of course, there were issues, every software has issues. And Bavaria's IT is very problematic in general, having many issues overall. But those were all solvable, at a cheaper price than the rollback to Windows had cost at the end.

And fun fact: now 4 Years later, after the reigning political party has changed, they are switching back to Open Source and probably Linux.

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

#129

Post by GoblinSlayer »

sgt wrote: post #69
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 mi…

Did it fail? https://www.zdnet.com/article/linux-not-windows-why-munich-i... (2020)

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

#130

Post by apexalpha »

formerly_proven wrote: post #73
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…

Munich did that a few years ago, which got rolled back after they elected the dude mayor who got Microsoft to move their German headquarters to Munich. Completely unrelated events, of course. There were of course some technical problems as well, e.g. because a number of administrative tasks can only be performed using Excel 2003 with VBS macros enabled and stuff like that, as well as "technical problems", like "users…

To be fair, you're probably downlplaying it. How much enterprise software runs on Linux? Probably not a lot. LibreOffice is nice, but it can't compete with MS office. let alone Exchange, outlook...
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