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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

#241

Post by monocasa »

nivenkos wrote: post #201
ilamont wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Was a post-mortem of the Munich project published anywhere? Some people may remember the hype over the One Laptop Per Child Project, which had a noble mission that many people could get behind. In 2011 I heard from someone at MIT who criticized aspects of the program such as no real planning for support when the devices broke down in the field. Other issues came out years later, including unrealistic cost estimates a…

It's a shame it failed and there are no real cheap netbooks anymore (aside from Chromebooks). I used an Acer Aspire One when travelling through Germany as a student (to research jobs and conferences) - and it was amazing being able to program and write papers on such a small device. Reading about the hardware issues reminds me a lot of the ZX Spectrum reviews (especially the keyboard!) - keeping a low price means a l…

The GPD laptops fill that space for me now. My GPD Pocket literally fits in some of my pockets, is a regular x86 machine. Came with Windows 10, but I'm running Mint on it.

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

#242

Post by ThinkBeat »

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.

There are several commercial alternatives to MS Office I prefer WPS Office or Softmaker Office to OpenOffice.

In my personal opinion OpenOffice is not a suitable alternative.

I still let MS suck money with Office365 due to great grammar and spell checking (in multiple languages),

A set of features I use a lot that are not available in the competition,

A couple of useful add ins/integratioF

Full compatibility with other Office365 victims.

Plus, a huge set of templates are available for free or for purchase.

Corel Word Perfect Suite https://www.wordperfect.com/en/product/office-suite/

WPS Office Suite https://www.wps.com/ Quite a few people I know switched to WPS Office Suite when Microsoft demanded subscription fees. It seems ok for most things. Much easier for people to adopt coming from Office than Open Office.

The Apple Office Apps

Softwaker Free Office (German) https://www.softmaker.com/en/ https://www.freeoffice.com/en/

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

#243

Post by SavantIdiot »

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'd like to see a better GUI before forcing that switch.

Is there something more simple than the Gnome GUI that ships by default with Ubuntu? I've been playing with Gnome/KDE since the late 90's and they still are behind IMHO. Is there something more like iOS-simplicity for Linux distros? That would be key.

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

#245

Post by azangru »

fsflover wrote: post #205
earthnail wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Actually, the Limux project is well alive: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LiMux#Timeline May 2020 - Newly elected politicians in Munich take a U-turn and implement a plan to go back to the original plan of migrating to LiMux.

Fascinating!

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

#246

Post by deknos »

afavour wrote: post #227
deknos wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. Bullshit > The simple truth is that Microsoft's products were/are just far superior than what the Limux initiative shipped. The Linux transition caused massive productivi…

> I was there. You are just biased. That doesn’t mean you’re free of bias. If anything it means the opposite. “Limux worked” and “we solved a whole ton of problems and had to implement printing dialogs, QT interfaces and more” feel like statements somewhat at odds with each other. Were all these bug fixes complete on day one or did they have to be done after the Limux switch had been made? Obviously I’m an outside ob…

LOL, damned if you do, damned if you don't

> That doesn’t mean you’re free of bias. If anything it means the opposite.

Maybe, but at least i know what i talk about. You observe from the outside and talk about "meme-level bad"? do you believe anything BILD and AZ writes?

> “Limux worked” and “we solved a whole ton of problems and had to implement printing dialogs, QT interfaces and more” feel like statements somewhat at odds with each other. Were all these bug fixes complete on day one or did they have to be done after the Limux switch had been made?

again, damned if you do, damned if you dont:

Linux can do something, which windows cannot || : eh, wo cares

Linux can do what Windows can: oh, they just copy windows, windows is surely better.

Windows can do, what linux cannot do (perhaps it does it in another way): linux is not ready!!!!

Linux implements stuff, features or bugfixes: linux is not ready!

Funny thing is: we often implemented requirements which were dropped, if windows could not fulfill them. NOBODY said windows is not "ready". Ready for which value?

> Obviously I’m an outside observer here but boasting that you had to do a whole ton of work including network management and that no one has done much to it since makes it sound to me like maybe Linux isn’t or wasn’t ready.

This was 5 to 15 years ago. Windows also had a lot to improve in that time. Do you say then, that Windows was also not ready?

And we not only did Bugfixes but also Improvements (the network manager stuff was one such thing).

There was a time, when Linux for public institutions was not ready. But that time is long gone. (conservatively 5 years i would say, some would say more).

I see shortcomings, but there are those also with Windows. But nobody says "Windows is not ready". And that makes me kinda angry, especially if people do not know what they are talking about with "meme-level bad" or "brutally disaster". That's just outright lying and makes people angry who poured their soul into making it work for the users.

Because we also trained users on the plattform, even with libreoffice, so we could get their feedback.

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

#247

Post by aasasd »

scanny wrote: post #4

Seems to be a running trend in Germany to move toward open software. Tangentially related to this: The city of Munich has flip-flopped between their own version of linux and windows [0]. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LiMux

Yeah, pretty sure I was hearing about German cities switching every few months for the past ten years or so.

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

#248

Post by freeflight »

chrisseaton wrote: post #233
freeflight wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One major competitor who's also a massive corporation and has an even more questionable approach to handling user data. So while it might not be a pure "MS tax" anymore, in a way there still is a corporate monopoly tax.

How many different implementations of basic office software do we need? There's no point having hundreds of companies independently building the same thing.

Putting all your eggs into one basket is a bad approach for pretty much anything, particularly when that basket is one that has its own monetary interests as its main motivator.

You want valid alternatives to keep the products offered competitive, and the competitors honest, as entrenched monopolies are rarely conductive to innovation and often extremely opposed to consumer interests.

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

#249

Post by nodejs_rulez_1 »

gentleman11 wrote: post #238
earthnail wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

The problem is that a lot of organizations see foss as purely a free thing and not an investment. If they put half the money they spent on licensing into paying people to improve the foss packages they use, the ecosystem would transform and everyone would benefit. Massive cost savings overall, and it would push paid software to work harder to compete (who knows, it might even force Microsoft to offer decent privacy p…

> If they put half the money they spent on licensing into paying people to improve the foss packages...

Like in a legally-binding contract way or some hippie way hoping for the best?

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

#250

Post by leodriesch »

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.

Is this also true for developers? I’ve only seen “install anything you want” types of setups yet, are there companies that don’t allow that on your work laptop?
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