German state moving 30k PCs to LibreOffice • Hacker News Board

Re: German state moving 30k PCs to LibreOffice

#161

Post by a2800276 » Thu, Apr 04, 2024, 12:31 PM UTC

CalRobert wrote: post #117

My wife just started a new job in the Netherlands and I was super excited to hear that her office uses Ubuntu and LibreOffice for all their PC's. She wasn't interviewing for a tech job but apparently her being reasonably familiar with both was helpful at her interview (all those years of Raspberry Pis around the house paid off!) Is this normal? It certainly would be an outlier back in the US.

It's an outlier in Germany as well. The municipal government in Munich tried to migrate to OSS around ~2004, but had to roll back after a couple of years. Most municipalities and government agencies would _like_ to utilize more OSS, but don't really have any concrete idea of how to proceed.

Re: German state moving 30k PCs to LibreOffice

#162

Post by prmoustache » Thu, Apr 04, 2024, 12:31 PM UTC

ChicagoDave wrote: post #108

prmoustache wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I haven't seen a particular productivity boost anywhere from regular office + sharepoint and office365. I also haven't noted a productivity difference between sharepoint (which office 365 really is) and other content management platforms. Ironically the only place where office 365 offered a boost is in the linux world really. You don't even need a local suite office to open msoffice documents.

Most non-technical people have a pattern of work. They know how to do their job because it’s been repeated over years. This change will alter many of those patterns. Even the simplest things like text editor or using a command line will be disruptive. The support staff is going to be overwhelmed.

Why are you talking about using a command line or a text editor? How does it relate to the subject?

Re: German state moving 30k PCs to LibreOffice

#163

Post by vasco » Thu, Apr 04, 2024, 12:32 PM UTC

jorvi wrote: post #31

monospaced wrote: post #3

The will likely be using Phoenix: https://www.dataport.de/about-phoenix/ The German government developed a fully free and open source solution that is quite similar (consisting of Nextcloud, jitsi, Collabora etc.) and can be deployed using Kubernetes: https://gitlab.opencode.de/bmi/opendesk

It’s kind of a bummer that there’s a bunch of these separate OSS initiatives in Spain, France, Germany and a few other countries.. Instead of everyone rolling their own subvariant of Nextcloud, Matrix, LibreOffice etc, imagine if there was an EU mandate set up and some serious money was budgeted to it. You’d get a triple multiplier of more budget, less duplication of effort, and a self-reinforcing cycle where more us…

State mandated projects give you things like the Lidl AWS "alternative" who's pricing page is a downloadable PDF.

Re: German state moving 30k PCs to LibreOffice

#164

Post by Cyphase » Thu, Apr 04, 2024, 12:33 PM UTC

moooo99 wrote: post #60

dikei wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be fair, there are not many professions that a single individual can make so much impact as Software Engineering. People say 10x Software Engineer, rarely 10x Electrical Engineer.

I would argue most volunteer firefighters and other social volunteers have more net-positive impact than the vast majority software engineers.

They didn't say positive. I think they were thinking in terms of leverage.

Re: German state moving 30k PCs to LibreOffice

#165

Post by lucumo » Thu, Apr 04, 2024, 12:34 PM UTC

mglz wrote: post #126

moolcool wrote: post #125

Open source is great, but LibreOffice is a nightmare to use when you want to any actual work. I feel for the German bureaucrats.

What issues for example?

I'm not sure if this still current, but a few years ago I switched from LibreOffice to MS Office because Calc was unbearably slow. I wasn't doing anything crazy, but also not trivial: 6 or 7 sheets, with a bunch of formulas with never more than about 500 cells filled (10 columns, 50 lines), and on most sheets a lot less.

Excel blazes through it. I feel it was a very good decision, even though I'm a miser.

Re: German state moving 30k PCs to LibreOffice

#166

Post by zo1 » Thu, Apr 04, 2024, 12:36 PM UTC

daeros wrote: post #29

Stranger43 wrote: post #7

The germans have been tinkering with policies mandating non-cloud dependent products for a while wondering if this is a start of it actually getting implemented on a large scale or if the delay attempts will remain successful elsewhere across the region. If this is a start of an actual migration away from cloud dependence, it's a matter of time before windows(which is as cloud dependent as office those days for enter…

sane policy. Every time Office 365 is down I watch the maddening dash of IT workers who can't get anything done, it's amusing.

I live in a badly-maintained, "3rd world" country, and since we got office 365 maybe a half decade ago (probably more) it's been down once, for one afternoon. And that was due to what looks like an undersea cable sabotage.

What kind of internet/IT department do you have where you have any sort of regular office outage?

Re: German state moving 30k PCs to LibreOffice

#167

Post by bruce511 » Thu, Apr 04, 2024, 12:38 PM UTC

mattalex wrote: post #133

sgift wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The link is just about a move from one part of Munich to another (MS German HQ has always been in Munich). From what I remember it was more that we had a coalition with the CSU for four years and unsurprisingly, the moment conservatives were part of the cities government all went back to "help the companies". (MS had tried to pressure against the move from the start, but wasn't really successful in the first years)

The problem was mostly that the only guy that was really backing the project (Christian Ude, SPD), was replaced with his successor (Dieter Reiter, SPD) who just didn't have the drive necessary to maintain the project. The entire design of "LiMux" was doomed from the start: it was a highly customized version of Ubuntu that was only used in Munich (not even throughout the entire state). That made everything ridiculousl…

I've no doubt that there was incompetence involved. Which is to be somewhat expected since Linux requires a set of skills to install and administer at scale, and few people have that particular skillset.

Equally I'm sure it was never going to be a cost saving exercise since firstly the cost of Windows is negligible, and second the conversion costs, in-house skill requirements, re-training of users, and porting existing software are all significant.

So you go from cheap software to free software, but from cheap IT staff to expensive, perhaps-incompetant, hard-to-replace IT staff.

If the savings aren't real then the fallback argument is privacy etc. But Libre Office runs fine on Windows. So by all means start there.

Re: German state moving 30k PCs to LibreOffice

#168

Post by planede » Thu, Apr 04, 2024, 12:39 PM UTC

bzzzt wrote: post #141

mglz wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What issues for example?

Did they fix the unusable slow rendering on retina Macs yet? Couldn't even normally scroll through a blank document last time I tried...

I suppose they won't use macs anyway.

Re: German state moving 30k PCs to LibreOffice

#169

Post by freetanga » Thu, Apr 04, 2024, 12:41 PM UTC

daeros wrote: post #29

Stranger43 wrote: post #7

The germans have been tinkering with policies mandating non-cloud dependent products for a while wondering if this is a start of it actually getting implemented on a large scale or if the delay attempts will remain successful elsewhere across the region. If this is a start of an actual migration away from cloud dependence, it's a matter of time before windows(which is as cloud dependent as office those days for enter…

sane policy. Every time Office 365 is down I watch the maddening dash of IT workers who can't get anything done, it's amusing.

Every time my MS rep brings up O365 I correct him: “it’s Office 363. It does not work twice a year”

Re: German state moving 30k PCs to LibreOffice

#170

Post by dubcanada » Thu, Apr 04, 2024, 12:41 PM UTC

zo1 wrote: post #166

daeros wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

sane policy. Every time Office 365 is down I watch the maddening dash of IT workers who can't get anything done, it's amusing.

I live in a badly-maintained, "3rd world" country, and since we got office 365 maybe a half decade ago (probably more) it's been down once, for one afternoon. And that was due to what looks like an undersea cable sabotage. What kind of internet/IT department do you have where you have any sort of regular office outage?

https://twitter.com/MSFT365Status just scrolling through there is several outages, Teams, performance issues, etc. However it does tend to be only a specific area/country or a set of products rather then all of Office 365.