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Danish Ministry Replaces Windows and Microsoft Office with Linux and LibreOffice

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131–140 of 239 posts

Re: Danish Ministry Replaces Windows and Microsoft Office with Linux and LibreOffice

#131

As many IT people in Denmark is pointing out, it's not really about replacing Office and Windows, it's all the surrounding infrastructure that will be the main issue. Are these Linux machines going to authenticate against the Azure Active Directory, maybe just a local Active Directory, or are the IT department going to run a separate service in parallel? Are they moving away from Exchange Server... probably not, give…

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Re: Danish Ministry Replaces Windows and Microsoft Office with Linux and LibreOffice

#132
post #41

As many IT people in Denmark is pointing out, it's not really about replacing Office and Windows, it's all the surrounding infrastructure that will be the main issue. Are these Linux machines going to authenticate against the Azure Active Directory, maybe just a local Active Directory, or are the IT department going to run a separate service in parallel? Are they moving away from Exchange Server... probably not, give…

I see this as a win. It will hopefully prune the incompetent managers/leaders and all the other incompetent tech workers that don't understand there is a world outside of the Microsoft/Google ecosystem.

I want to believe that it is not actual incompetence (and nobody will get pruned) but rather laziness/habit/lack of motivation. I have been in a big org where any issues related to how non-windows systems were integrated were, frustratingly, ignored, even if those systems were supposed to be supported and offered as choices (and indeed chosen by many employees). The IT people working on the servers did not care because in windows everything was working fine, and other departments did not have the actual tools to solve anything. They were asking us if we had any spare computer around they could borrow to test things ffs. I hope such changes bring at least the necessary motivation to engage with such issues seriously.

Re: Danish Ministry Replaces Windows and Microsoft Office with Linux and LibreOffice

#133

As many IT people in Denmark is pointing out, it's not really about replacing Office and Windows, it's all the surrounding infrastructure that will be the main issue. Are these Linux machines going to authenticate against the Azure Active Directory, maybe just a local Active Directory, or are the IT department going to run a separate service in parallel? Are they moving away from Exchange Server... probably not, give…

Entra (prev AAD) can be replaced by literally any other OAuth provider for SSO - shibboleth is an on-prem option.

Traditional AD is harder to replace, but OpenShift’s IdP has an AD server mode that is capable of many use-cases; the cases it doesn’t do are GPO, Windows Update forcing, and other stuff no longer relevant on linux.

Are they moving away from Exchange Server? I’d hope so, MTAs are a dime a dozen in linux land. There’s a dozen homegrown alternatives for calendar + mail, from ProtonMail to running Exim + caldav.

The rentier companies may have “extended” the open source backing, but you’re not missing much except marketing.

Re: Danish Ministry Replaces Windows and Microsoft Office with Linux and LibreOffice

#134

LibreOffice is great, but not supporting multiple users simultaneously editing the same document is a serious limitation compared to proprietary solutions such as MS Office and Google Workspace. Also, replacing Windows by Linux and MS Office by LibreOffice is only the surface of the problem. What about replacing Entra (identity and access management), Intune (endpoint management), file sharing (OneDrive), email and c…

Lack of features is not an excuse for a government to adopt proprietary software.

Surely, the Danish government can figure out how to support real-time collaboration in LibreOffice.

Re: Danish Ministry Replaces Windows and Microsoft Office with Linux and LibreOffice

#135

LibreOffice is terrible. I cannot believe how anyone can do anything with it. I cannot stand Word but it's just impossible to find a true replacement for it. OnlyOffice should get more recognition. It is the closest you can get for Word replacement

> I cannot stand Word but it's just impossible to find a true replacement for it.

As someone who's never used Word: what do you use Word for that it's hard to find a replacement?

(For me, the "light" things I want to note down and version, I use one of the lightweight markup languages. The "heavy" things, I either use TeX or something to convert my lightweight markup into a pdf or whatever people want. What am I missing?)

Re: Danish Ministry Replaces Windows and Microsoft Office with Linux and LibreOffice

#136

LibreOffice is great, but not supporting multiple users simultaneously editing the same document is a serious limitation compared to proprietary solutions such as MS Office and Google Workspace. Also, replacing Windows by Linux and MS Office by LibreOffice is only the surface of the problem. What about replacing Entra (identity and access management), Intune (endpoint management), file sharing (OneDrive), email and c…

Lack of features is not an excuse for a government to adopt proprietary software. Surely, the Danish government can figure out how to support real-time collaboration in LibreOffice.

I believe the Danish gov is roughly spending 50M EUR/year to MS, certainly you can get the features needed paying for dev time for an open source project with some of that spend.

Re: Danish Ministry Replaces Windows and Microsoft Office with Linux and LibreOffice

#137

LibreOffice is great, but not supporting multiple users simultaneously editing the same document is a serious limitation compared to proprietary solutions such as MS Office and Google Workspace. Also, replacing Windows by Linux and MS Office by LibreOffice is only the surface of the problem. What about replacing Entra (identity and access management), Intune (endpoint management), file sharing (OneDrive), email and c…

> What about replacing Entra (identity and access management), Intune (endpoint management), file sharing (OneDrive), email and calendar (Exchange Online)?

Simple, switch when they find something that fits their need. They don't have to switch everything at the same time. And it's not just about switching technologies, it's probably also about fighting against pushbacks ("lobbying", etc), dealing with training, and other unforseen (at least to the layman) things that happens when a huge entity starts pulling away from microsoft. I don't think there are degooglify/demicrosoftify-yourself manuals at the state level.

Re: Danish Ministry Replaces Windows and Microsoft Office with Linux and LibreOffice

#138
post #89

As many IT people in Denmark is pointing out, it's not really about replacing Office and Windows, it's all the surrounding infrastructure that will be the main issue. Are these Linux machines going to authenticate against the Azure Active Directory, maybe just a local Active Directory, or are the IT department going to run a separate service in parallel? Are they moving away from Exchange Server... probably not, give…

Sorry but if you work with Word you can’t complain about a loss of productivity. People are just accustomed to pain of working with Word. The change to LibreOffice is way smaller than MSs switch to Ribbon menus

Yes

Re: Danish Ministry Replaces Windows and Microsoft Office with Linux and LibreOffice

#139

LibreOffice is terrible. I cannot believe how anyone can do anything with it. I cannot stand Word but it's just impossible to find a true replacement for it. OnlyOffice should get more recognition. It is the closest you can get for Word replacement

LibreOffice does everything I need it to...

Most people only use a small percentage of functionality in any app.

Re: Danish Ministry Replaces Windows and Microsoft Office with Linux and LibreOffice

#140
post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've stopped recommending LibreOffice to anyone after I found out about OnlyOffice, its UI/UX is much better and I've personally been using it without running into any issues or limitations. I'm not a super big power user so I don't know if it lacks features that professionals need, but it's been perfect in my case

People are switching from MS Office to LibreOffice because MS Office is US-controlled. Who's controlling OnlyOffice?

Not sure who supports OnlyOffice, but i know it's on the north-east of the world. Apparently they have quite a bit of bots/shills in this page right now XD.
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