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German state ditches Microsoft for Linux and LibreOffice

zdnet.com

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Re: German state ditches Microsoft for Linux and LibreOffice

#171

Post by Intralexical »

TOMDM wrote: post #124
FriedEggFred wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Gimp, blender, firefox and obs are all very successful OSS alternatives that come to mind.

You really gimped your argument by including it; otherwise I'd agree it can be done.

Krita would have been a much better example I think. They've had some reasonably successful crowdfunding campaigns and ongoing monthly income, with focused visions of the product they create, and they've proven capable of attracting actual users who are in it for the art instead of just your "FOSS"-radical Stallman types.

Re: German state ditches Microsoft for Linux and LibreOffice

#172

Post by jasonjayr »

jeremyjh wrote: post #85
worldsayshi wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What features in Office are essential for those users that you don't get from Google? If you're talking about Excel I can imagine there are such features but not so much in other apps.

It’s always mainly about Excel, but some people are really set on Outlook, too.

Oh boy. Outlook users are in for a surprise with "New Outlook" is forced on them in the near future. Microsoft has been pushing and warning about this change for some time ....

Re: German state ditches Microsoft for Linux and LibreOffice

#173

Post by HKH2 »

alluro2 wrote: post #145
raincole wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I honestly still hate office ribbon.

Same here - there are 1000 options, across 15 tabs, and I have to look through all the icons and labels till I find the one, with active tab and even displayed options changing depending on content selection.... It's a constant battle if you don't spend hours a day in MS apps and develop muscle memory. I do realize that there are probably no ideal UIs for accessing such a breadth of options, and it was a valid attemp…

> maybe something like the Start menu is the right approach - quick search, but also categories and lists of tools.

Sounds like Google Docs.

Re: German state ditches Microsoft for Linux and LibreOffice

#174

Post by mairusu »

briHass wrote: post #117
holografix wrote: post #21

Very hard for me to understand why, in a world of Google docs, anyone would want to deal with the bloated mess that is ms office. I was helping an elderly relative who works as a translator and hasn’t touched a modern version of word in about 5 years. They had a new computer and I got an ms office sub for them. The poor person re-did about 4 hours of their work 3x because they couldn’t find the file MS Word had guara…

People always forget about Outlook. Name me a competing desktop app that does integrated calendar, email, todo, and meetings as well as Outlook. Thunderbird is (unfortunately) a joke, and web clients aren't as nice when managing complex folder arrangements and lots of mail.

RIP then. https://proton.me/blog/outlook-is-microsofts-new-data-collec...

Re: German state ditches Microsoft for Linux and LibreOffice

#175

Post by mairusu »

maxcoder4 wrote: post #129
nextos wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Schleswig-Holstein is not poor. It is next to Denmark, and it is really nice and well developed. I think transitioning to a different platform is mostly an organizational and political, rather than technical problem, and the main roadblock is educating users and altering processes to migrate away from MS Office. That said, modern Linux distributions like NixOS or Guix could be great to manage large fleets of computer…

As a long time Linux user, I think problems are partially technical. For example: * A lot of software used by them is certainly Windows only (they will have to find alternatives, change their workflows or invest in some windows virtual machines) * Windows tooling for organizations is much more mature. There's a reason virtually everyone uses AD. * Linux is very focused on user freedoms. This is not usually important…

The reason everyone uses AD isn't that AD is good. It's that they either have no other choice, or they don't have any competent people in setting up other tools since all basic sysadmins only learn AD in schools.

Re: German state ditches Microsoft for Linux and LibreOffice

#176

Post by Reviving1514 »

alluro2 wrote: post #145
raincole wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I honestly still hate office ribbon.

Same here - there are 1000 options, across 15 tabs, and I have to look through all the icons and labels till I find the one, with active tab and even displayed options changing depending on content selection.... It's a constant battle if you don't spend hours a day in MS apps and develop muscle memory. I do realize that there are probably no ideal UIs for accessing such a breadth of options, and it was a valid attemp…

I already use the search function in Office to find everything I need. Is that what you had in mind or was it something different?

Re: German state ditches Microsoft for Linux and LibreOffice

#177

Post by smackeyacky »

jeremyjh wrote: post #85
worldsayshi wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What features in Office are essential for those users that you don't get from Google? If you're talking about Excel I can imagine there are such features but not so much in other apps.

It’s always mainly about Excel, but some people are really set on Outlook, too.

If some kind soul wants to point to an email client that has a capability like Outlook rules I'm dying to know about it. I have a mate whose business is entirely based on a big set of Outlook rules to do processing and there doesn't seem to be any good alternative.

Outlook online doesn't seem to have any rule capability and can't talk to 3rd party email servers.

Re: German state ditches Microsoft for Linux and LibreOffice

#178

Post by wrp »

sega_sai wrote: post #35

I have been using Libreoffice/OpenOffice continuously pretty much for last 20 years (mostly Impress/presentation part for teaching/presentations). And the number of bugs, crashes, issues with video etc occasionally gets very annoying. I was hoping over the years things would improve, but I don't quite see that unfortunately. If I could get something to replace LibreOffice that is not online and works on Linux I would…

Also longtime user of OO/LO just because that's what's available on Linux, even though it's clunky. I've been particularly disappointed with things like typesetting control in LO Writer, printing management, and PDF handling. When I'm doing something where the details really matter, I still usually resort to commercial tools on Windows.

Re: German state ditches Microsoft for Linux and LibreOffice

#179

Post by mairusu »

dannyphantom wrote: post #134
mandevil wrote: post #109

I'm sorry, what year is it? Am I posting on Slashdot still? Is this year finally going to be the year where Linux desktops become something for normies? When Munich did this it never got to a majority of their desktops, is my recollection, it maxed out in the 40%s. Now we're going to do it all over again with a different, much poorer, German state?

Oh wow, I wasn't really online at that point in my life but I wanted to read more about it - were these the articles/threads you remember? Munich Finally Starts to Embrace Linux, September 26, 2006 - https://slashdot.org/story/06/09/26/0236246/munich-finally-s... Munich Reverses Course, May Ditch Linux For Microsoft, August 18, 2014 - https://linux.slashdot.org/story/14/08/18/2219253/munich-rev...

https://www.zdnet.com/article/linux-not-windows-why-munich-i...

Re: German state ditches Microsoft for Linux and LibreOffice

#180

Post by wolverine876 »

tichiian wrote: post #132
wolverine876 wrote: post #31

Can LibreOffice on Linux deliver management solutions? Think of 1,000 workstations, a small to mid-sized network: you need software that automates installation, configuration, security, etc. It's not like at home: Even if everyone is in the same building, you can't manually install, configure, change configuration, upgrade, etc. 1,000 times (think about it; not only the time and quality issues, but you'd spend a tota…

Linux has far superior management solutions when compared to anything Microsoft has. First, start with software packaging: In Microsoft-land, there is MSI, but there is also stuff delivered as .zip, .exe (generated from tons of different install builders, so completely inconsistent) and a handful of half-assed package non-solutions like chocolatey, nuget and others. When you want to install something, and there is an…

Another Internet rant. Does that make it more likely or less likely to be accurate?

Have you adminstered autmomated, managed networks? Using Windows? Some of the things you say indicate not. For example, things are not nearly as difficult as you say and consumer Windows installations aren't used:

> removing software, the bane of any windows installation?

Also,

> Just even something as trivial as a for-loop and ssh being possible makes such a huge difference.

I'm not sure what you are saying is missing in Windows. You can run remote commands from a cli and automation definitely supports loops.

> any Windows setup I've ever seen has been abysmal compared to even the worst-run Linux shop out there

Oh, I forgot, nothing was meant literally, it was just a rant. sigh.

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