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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

#161

Post by BurningPenguin »

GekkePrutser wrote: post #139
formerly_proven wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Uhh "users can't install software themselves" is how things are supposed to be. If you're still giving everyone admin rights you're going to have a fun time every time one of them falls for phishing.

I work in IT in a German company. Every user has admin rights on the local machine. Why? Because the IT-Boss couldn't figure out how to allow installing updates (software and OS) on Win 7 without having admin. And then there is the semi-official "shadow IT".

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

#162

Post by [deleted] »

Flatuscents wrote: post #90
nivenkos wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Especially in contrast to the current digital colonialism. US Big Tech companies pay almost no corporation taxes in the EU (and if they do, only in Ireland / Luxembourg), and compete and buy out European companies, shipping the high-paying jobs (and the economic benefits and taxes those bring) back to the US (much like the oil industry in Nigeria, etc.). The EU must take a stand against this, like has been done again…

Let’s not overgeneralize. The US is not in lockstep with all EU goals and ideas, but not an ally? As someone who grew up with nuclear drills every week I can assure you I think of the EU as an ally, AND I want you to have a robust Big Tech environment. We share a common cultural interest in freedom and fairness, more or less, despite all the craziness in the world right now. Maybe the US isn’t always the BEST friend,…

[deleted]

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

#163

Post by md8z »

GekkePrutser wrote: post #149
md8z wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I used to volunteer for the FSF and I can't agree with that at all. The FSF is politically/socially irrelevant and GNU has largely failed and been relegated to an extreme niche. The "free software movement" as it stands is still a reactionary movement, a desire to go back to the good old days when hardware vendors also wrote all the software and shipped the source code along with their products. It's just not a reali…

Largely failed? Everyone is using the GNU userland on Linux. I don't see it struggling either really. The Linux desktops are in a better state than they have ever been.

To me that just further illustrates the point that GNU failed. I mean it's right there in the name, it's supposed to be "GNU's not Unix" but the only parts anyone actually uses are clones of Unix that get used on a different Unix-like operating system (Linux) which is not GNU. And the desktop environments also don't have anything to do with GNU. IIRC the only official desktop environment of GNU is GNUstep, which I don't even think is actually packaged by any distros at the moment.

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

#164

Post by earthnail »

cies wrote: post #121
bildung wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

I keep reading that all the time in tech forums, and it's just so far off the truth.

It always baffles me how we tech people lose sight of a product's quality and usability the moment it's a FOSS product. We feature new products here on HN everyday, which is "like X but better", and it gets lots of upvotes in the style of "OMG finally someone builds something better".

But then you have a FOSS initiative, and because of FOSS, we turn two blind eyes?

People in an administration don't care about FOSS or not FOSS. And they shouldn't. Their job is to solve other problems. IT and software is there to serve the administration. If, as a user, I can't get my actual job done, or only with much more hassle than before, then that's all that matters.

If we want FOSS to succeed in administrations, we have to put the same product hat on that we wear when we look at all the other software showcased here on HN. And Limux (that was the project's name) just brutally failed here.

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

#165

Post by avh02 »

apexalpha wrote: post #130
formerly_proven wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

you have web portals for outlook at least (doesn't make it usable though, my daily struggles!)

Then there's MS teams. I'd rather it just not run anywhere (die) instead of being a "good enough" solution bundled in to the suite. At least if it weren't there we could use something usable like slack instead.

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

#166

Post by martin_a »

y4mi wrote: post #93
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? Yes, but the failure was basically manufactured. You cannot keep every process as it was before and just install Linux/libre office, yet that is what they did. Their current processes are optimized for windows to a degree that usage of the Microsoft office suite is part of the training they undergo. Switching at this point would be a multi-year…

The problem with Munich was lobbyism, they were almost done with porting all their systems.

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

#167

Post by albertopv »

throwaway123x2 wrote: post #12

MS Office was so much more functional and nicer to use than libreoffice when I last checked.

This. At home I use Ubuntu I tried Libreoffice few months ago, for anything non trivial it just sucks compared to Office, years behind. I don't know what kind of documents this German state creates, maybe for them Libreoffice feature are good enough. And I'm just talking about document creation feature, whole Office 365 collaboration ecosystem is huge and on Windows PCs it works just fine, at least most of the time.

I really would like them to succed, we really need a real MS Office competitor, but it's very hard, MS can be a powerful opponent[0][1]

[0] https://www.zdnet.com/article/linux-not-windows-why-munich-i... [1] https://www.neowin.net/news/munich-germany-realizes-that-dep...

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

#168

Post by smartbettor »

earthnail wrote: post #159
formerly_proven wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I'm from Munich. As much as I would've liked that project to succeed (I really did), I can tell you that Limux - that was the project's name - was a brutal usability disaster. As in, almost meme-level bad. It's like the Berlin airport in software. Sure, Microsoft has a huge office in Munich, and they definitely applied political pressure, too (it'd be naive to assume they didn't). The project's stated goal was to be…

thanks for mentioning the Berlin airport fiasco - I had never heard the story - hilarious and very troubling for those in Berlin!

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

#169

Post by freeflight »

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

My favorite part about that whole story is how Steve Ballmer, back then VP of MS, and even Bill Gates personally visited Munich to have a talk with the people involved, to convince them how much of a mistake it would be [0]

[0] https://www.golem.de/news/von-microsoft-zu-linux-und-zurueck...

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

#170

Post by sofixa »

earthnail wrote: post #159
formerly_proven wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I'm from Munich. As much as I would've liked that project to succeed (I really did), I can tell you that Limux - that was the project's name - was a brutal usability disaster. As in, almost meme-level bad. It's like the Berlin airport in software. Sure, Microsoft has a huge office in Munich, and they definitely applied political pressure, too (it'd be naive to assume they didn't). The project's stated goal was to be…

Wasn't that only initially, and was drastically improved later on? Even Accenture (the biggest Microsoft partner)'s audit didn't conclusively say that switching back to Windows will be better than what Limux was at that point.

Furthermore, the French Gendermerie is using Linux at a similar scale, and there are no usability problems. If they can make it work, i don't think it's impossible for anyone else.

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