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German state planning to switch 25,000 PCs to LibreOffice
331–340 of 368 posts
Re: German state planning to switch 25,000 PCs to LibreOffice
#332Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
If only that were true, but there isn't an AppImage (my preference, but same applies to flat and sanp too) for every program. Or even most programs in my experience.
Yeah, honestly I don't understand understand why it is not more popular. Probably still needs a bit of time to really catch on.
Though I don't think the situation is that bleak. Any popular application where user have a reasonable interest in having the latest version should have some way to ship it on Linux?
Thinking about what I personally use, blender just has a tarball, no trouble, VS Codium, Godot, Unity, Love2d all have AppImages, the IntelliJ IDEs can be installed via snap. Browsers are handled by package manager. Most of my dev stuff is running on docker anyway.
Yes, it is a bit of a mess with all the different ways to ship binaries but I can't think of something I am painfully missing. I don't care about having the newest version for most apps though so maybe I am more easily pleased.
Re: German state planning to switch 25,000 PCs to LibreOffice
#333I think what people get wrong with FOSS is, they assume that it's free as in beer. If I was a big company or national government planning on moving to FOSS I wouldn't count on a cost saving at all. Instead I'd take all that licence money 'saved', ring fence it, donate half of it to the opensource projects being used (to pay full time developers to maintain them), and half to a contract developer house to create and c…
> All FOSS does is let you choose who you pay to do that work. Until Amazon makes it available as AWS and corners the market. Then you're paying the largest vendor again. The only reason this hasn't happened to desktop linux is because the market share is so small. (Oh wait -- Red Hat, OpenSuse, etc.)
Those are all just buyers themselves in the context of FOSS. They invest in open source software, which everyone can benefit from. To them, it's a cost of the products and services they sell.
Re: German state planning to switch 25,000 PCs to LibreOffice
#334Earlier quoted context omitted.
It'd greatly help if you focused on the arguments you want to share — I understand the frustration from someone claiming your work is "subpar", but this way your message gets lost altogether.
Well, when others overreach, why should i not be allowed to overreach? otherwise it's tonepolicing. when people ask neutrally i explain neutrally and i am polite.. but "brutally disaster" is almost slanting in my eyes.
> Well, when others overreach, why should i not be allowed to overreach?
Because this is how you win the trust of the observers.
Re: German state planning to switch 25,000 PCs to LibreOffice
#335Now 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…
Yes and about time, and yes USA and rest of world should catch on also.
Re: German state planning to switch 25,000 PCs to LibreOffice
#336Earlier quoted context omitted.
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'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…
> The LTT video hit one specific packaging bug in PopOS that was present for only an hour, and was unfortunate.
It's not just that. There are a whole lot more issues that were explained in the WAN show episodes, for example not being able to drag and drop between a GTK and QT app. As a technical user I understand why this happens but am frustrated that this issue exists in the first place as there is also no technical reason why it can't be fixed. As a new user or someone not technically inclined it must be completely mind boggling to have to find out the hard way that certain things don't work between certain apps.
Re: German state planning to switch 25,000 PCs to LibreOffice
#337Now 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…
> By the end of 2026, Microsoft Office is to be replaced by LibreOffice on all 25,000 computers used by civil servants and employees (including teachers), and the Windows operating system is to be replaced by GNU/Linux
It literally says they are going to switch to Linux in the first paragraph.
Re: German state planning to switch 25,000 PCs to LibreOffice
#338Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 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…
Funny you mentioned Mint with Cinnamon because Luke distrohopped from Mint because he couldn't solve an issue with window dragging and it's been a known bug for over 7 years now.
https://youtu.be/mN3QFw2BEcw?t=3845 https://github.com/linuxmint/cinnamon/issues/2465
> Linux has quite improved from X. These days, you install Y and you are good to go. Super easy to use and just works. It is based on Z, so you can use all the packages but with the bad stuff and experiments removed.
People have been saying this since literally forever. Just replace X, Y and Z with whatever's in vogue right now. I've been through enough forum threads and chats all the way back to when forums were still a thing and IRC dominated the chat space. It's always the same "it's different this time around". No it's not, the Linux desktop has structural issues that will never be solved because of its decentralized and throw away nature.
I'm not saying this is a reason to pick Windows though, your gripes with Windows are valid too, but a Linux desktop to solve Window's problems doesn't seem like a solution to me.
Re: German state planning to switch 25,000 PCs to LibreOffice
#339Earlier 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…
It’s hard to predict whether you could make MS products in foss with global cooperation at lower cost to taxpayers (since it can be expensive to get politicians to agree with goals across international borders).
Re: German state planning to switch 25,000 PCs to LibreOffice
#340I really would like to pay to use a viable alternative for MS Office on Linux that’s not clunky like Libre Office. I’m trying Softmaker program now and it’s fairly decent.
Have you tried WPS? https://www.wps.com/
Thanks for the suggestion - I did not know about WPS but will give it a try.