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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

#301

Post by [deleted] »

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…

[deleted]

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

#302

Post by edanm »

kevincox wrote: post #124
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.

I think the situation parent writes about is more likely (and more informative). Namely that there are places with two major-enough platforms such that everyone has to accommodate both (e.g. browsers).

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

#303

Post by myohmy »

leodriesch wrote: post #250
GekkePrutser wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Yes, developers are a major threat vector in any non-IT company. Which is why large companies can't innovate.

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

#304

Post by zoomablemind »

olyjohn wrote: post #286
zoomablemind wrote: post #259

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>...I REALLY hope the LibreOffice transition goes well. If anything that rings alert on my mind is the LO's Calc, which at times decides to become slow and consume the CPU for no apparent reason. Or equally annoying flacky interoprability betwen LO Writer and MS Office Word (works in general, but loses some alignment, magles styles etc.) As much as I'm for LO and want them to succeed, I feel for the clerks dealing wi…

You say you want them to succeed, but I don't believe you are sincere. This negativity with anecdotal evidence is so annoying. Like the whole world will come to a halt because some document formatting got fucked up. I see this same shit with Excel all the time. It's fucking FULL of bugs that have just been around for so long, people just get used to it and work around it. I mean, if you selected a group of 30 rows in…

>... You say you want them to succeed, but I don't believe you are sincere.

Not sure what drives your experience, but I've been using LO (Linux based) continuously for the past 10 yrs. Still do. More so, tried to convert other users. I don't believe I'm the only one to stumble on some usability issues with LO.

Did I get used to dealing with the issues? Nope. This still annoys me every time, it's also a drag to interoperate with MS Office (no, it's not going away soon in this world). Other users? Well, most of my attempted converts now either pay the subscription or use the GSuite or ... stick to the older version of MS Office.

So I myself do want the LO to get better, but for the most of the failed "converts" it's a lost cause for now.

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

#305

Post by AtlasBarfed »

mistrial9 wrote: post #293
nodejs_rulez_1 wrote: post #249

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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?

great to see the "H-word" used as a slur, again (great for my own sense of antagonistic prejuidice being alive and well that is). for a more constructive reinforcement of what a "hippy way" might be, in business and government: anti-rascist, that is actively inviting and communicating with others socially; inclusive generally; valuing cooperation; building and valuing talent for its own sake; bringing in arts to shar…

"node_js_rulez_1" decries hippy open source support model.

... ummmmmmm ... look in your username.

Seriously, your stack is running on hippies, top to bottom.

TOP TO BOTTOM.

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

#306

Post by marcosdumay »

mfer wrote: post #262
deknos wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

this is misrepresentation. you cannot install systemwide software on any enterprise-installed system THAT was their problem. before limux there was no permission management and everybody was admin.

Windows and macOS allow you to install software (most of the time) without being an admin on the system. You only need to be an admin if the software to be installed needs certain capabilities. On Linux this isn't typical. You usually need to be an admin to install deb or rpm. Things are changing but it's not fast.

Wait, what?

You mean, the Unix way of "you run your software from wherever you want" needs admin for installing software, while Windows doesn't?

You can lock Linux down so that normal users can't replace almost the entire system on their sessions. This is possible. It is also usually a lot of work.

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

#307

Post by jodrellblank »

olyjohn wrote: post #286
zoomablemind wrote: post #259

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>...I REALLY hope the LibreOffice transition goes well. If anything that rings alert on my mind is the LO's Calc, which at times decides to become slow and consume the CPU for no apparent reason. Or equally annoying flacky interoprability betwen LO Writer and MS Office Word (works in general, but loses some alignment, magles styles etc.) As much as I'm for LO and want them to succeed, I feel for the clerks dealing wi…

You say you want them to succeed, but I don't believe you are sincere. This negativity with anecdotal evidence is so annoying. Like the whole world will come to a halt because some document formatting got fucked up. I see this same shit with Excel all the time. It's fucking FULL of bugs that have just been around for so long, people just get used to it and work around it. I mean, if you selected a group of 30 rows in…

> This negativity with anecdotal evidence is so annoying.

Isn’t it.

> “It's such a fucking basic feature. To de-select a single row out of a group that is selected. It's the single most counter-productive thing ever.”

Probably not as counter-productive as throwing away thousands of person-years of learned skill and experience because of some Linux fanaticism.

How is “it’s not as good but we can patch it until it’s equivalently buggy, people will get used to it” any compelling reason to change over?

How is “but but I hate microsoft” any compelling reason to change over?

And the techcommunity.microsoft thread from 2018 announcing deselect has people who used that “multi-click makes a cell darker” feature and are bothered that it’s gone.

> “Microsoft charges enterprises and governments substantial amounts of money for, and provides precisely dick for support in return.”

You mean like that feature you were crying out for and then found that they built? That kind of nothing?

Or like how Office 365 has collaborative editing and LibreOffice has a page saying it’s been in development since 2006 and isn’t ready and linking to an old mailing list post from 2020 talking about deprecating he API they had built for it, as the latest update?

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

#308

Post by loudmax »

Arainach wrote: post #189
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.

>This is not what a free market looks like What do you mean by this? Companies choosing the best option rather than the cheapest option is perfectly compatible with a free market. MS Office has been designed for decades to be easy to manage and support and has plenty of training resources available. LibreOffice still has plenty of rough edges in those areas. As an individual user, maybe those are worth overlooking fo…

> an unregulated free market always turns into a monopoly (or at best an oligopoly) eventually

Free doesn't mean unregulated.

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

#309

Post by cardanome »

AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote: post #297
trulyme wrote: post #295

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What does "up to date" even mean in this context? It's not like there is a new version of Kmail every day. Why do you care if your version is a bit older? That said, the exception is a browser, where I would prefer to use the upstream version for security reasons.

> What does "up to date" even mean in this context? It's not like there is a new version of Kmail every day. Why do you care if your version is a bit older? Honestly, anything that a developer has pushed. Sometimes I want an SVN build of DOSBox or need a bleeding edge feature of some tool I use all the time. On Windows, this is simply a matter of downloading a binary, but by and large Linux software doesn't work that…

For this we now have the AppImage format! (or snap/flatpack depending on your preference)

For the few cases were you need bleeding edge you can just download and run it just like on Windows. For most applications bleeding edge is really not necessary and you can just normally install via package manager.

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

#310

Post by tdeck »

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…

Organizations like school systems don't have a great track record managing custom software projects. They don't know what to look for and who to hire, and how much things should cost. It's very likely that these problems would translate into funding FOSS development as well. Also, it's a big headache to manage custom development compared to buying or downloading an off the shelf package.
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