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German state moving 30k PCs to LibreOffice

blog.documentfoundation.org

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Re: German state moving 30k PCs to LibreOffice

#201

Post by sgift »

bruce511 wrote: post #167
mattalex wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 existi…

They always stated that it won't be cheaper. That was not the intention.

The main point was that Munich saw an opportunity to leave a monopoly for an option with competition. When the LiMux decision was made Munich had to change their whole IT landscape anyway (They ran on NT4 and even extended support was running out / getting extremely costly), so they thought: If we have to change anyway, why not change for something where we have more options?

Re: German state moving 30k PCs to LibreOffice

#202

Post by weinzierl »

jillesvangurp wrote: post #118
weinzierl wrote: post #98

As much as I congratulate them for moving away from Microsoft Office as much I feel this is a step in the wrong direction. We need to move our administration away from the paper centric workflows of a world that is long gone for most people.

Exactly. Rubber Stamps belong in a museum. Along with Fax machines. And the people still insisting on using those for "security reasons". Common practice in Germany is to receive an email with a pdf, print it, sign it (or stamp) it, and then put it in the post. This both stupid and slow. German bureaucracy is still paper driven. Having lived in other countries with more or less full digital access to all the stuff Ge…

Past week I travelled to London by train. I tried to book this trip a couple of months in advance from Deutsche Bahn website, but only got obscure error messages when finalizing the booking(*).

So I tried the french SNCF app and the booking was done in a couple of minutes, all tickets conveniently in the app - expect for the German leg of the travel. SNCF sent me a Deutsche Bahn paper ticket via snail mail.

(*) Tried for about a week, on different computers, my mobile, from another account. Sent a complaint, received an email answer that said they could not help me, but I could send my email to another address - except the other address was the very address I sent my complaint in the first place. Went to Deutsche Bahn office eventually, train I wanted was supposedly booked out, which I know wasn't true because booked it later via SNCF. They reluctantly tried to find me an alternative, but apparently they had to go through all the combinations manually. It took forever and wasn't successful either.

Re: German state moving 30k PCs to LibreOffice

#203

Post by datenhorst »

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.

Is Office365 really down that often? I'm fortunate enough to not have to use it but I don't hear any complaints from my colleagues that do.

Re: German state moving 30k PCs to LibreOffice

#204

Post by 1970-01-01 »

f_allwein wrote: post #15

Did not work well in Munich, my hometown, in 2004. Hope the lessons have been learned. https://itsfoss.com/munich-linux-failure/

I predict it will yet fail again. Desktop Linux maintains it's bad reputation very well, and 20 years is just enough time for everyone to forget the details. Unless they have an insane user to IT ratio (perhaps 6:1), the adoption pain points will soon be rediscovered and overwhelm the project.

Re: German state moving 30k PCs to LibreOffice

#205

Post by wkat4242 »

rad_gruchalski wrote: post #135
guappa wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You just do it like USA does: if you want to do business with the public sector, you must not rely on a foreign cloud.

What are the alternatives. Like, really. I get it: Hetzner and OVH exist. But what are the alternatives to AWS, GCP, Azure?

Scaleway is a great alternative to AWS. A lot cheaper too! And API compatible.

Re: German state moving 30k PCs to LibreOffice

#206

Post by boringg »

datenhorst wrote: post #203
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.

Is Office365 really down that often? I'm fortunate enough to not have to use it but I don't hear any complaints from my colleagues that do.

The fact that it would even go down and it requires online connection to vacuum up my data is such a bananas level oversight from MS. That company, man, that company.

Re: German state moving 30k PCs to LibreOffice

#207

Post by pigpang »

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.

I have the opposite issue - if I want to work on a document or sheet, I open it in LibreOffice, because it is intuitive to use for me. I use office rarely, so I have no time to memorize how to use MS Office properly, while LibreOffice can be used out of box.

Re: German state moving 30k PCs to LibreOffice

#208

Post by zelphirkalt »

4gotunameagain wrote: post #113
isodev wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But isn’t this the very centralisation we’re trying to avoid?

When it's open source, forking / moving is always an option and you're not vendor locked or being charged exuberant fees with no other option.

And of course it would have to be OSS to be in any way justifiable, that public money is put into it.

Re: German state moving 30k PCs to LibreOffice

#209

Post by erAck »

sgift wrote: post #99
Havoc wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah last time with Munich they moved back to MS after MS just so happened to move their HQ to that state. Microsoft is clearly keen to avoid this becoming a thing. If governments can shift successfully then so can businesses https://mspoweruser.com/microsoft-germany-moves-into-a-new-h...

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 link is just about a move from one part of Munich to another (MS German HQ has always been in Munich).

Nope. They moved from Unterschleißheim (administrative district of Munich in Upper Bavaria) to Schwabing (district of Munich town), which tax-paying wise makes the difference.

Re: German state moving 30k PCs to LibreOffice

#210

Post by quesera »

doubled112 wrote: post #140
Hamuko wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> and if Linux turns too complex there is always macos I have witnessed in person people switching from Windows to macOS have issues adapting to a different operating system and its concepts, like the fact that pressing the X button in the top-left corner doesn't close the application. Therefore I am rather skeptical that you can just throw some Linux distro at a bunch of novice computer users without large amounts o…

Your example feels like shots fired because the programs running without windows concept still confuses me. It just doesn't compute. I'm a sysadmin and have been using Macs on and off since System 7, Windows since 95, and probably 10000 Linux distros/DE combos. Just as a point of reference.

> programs running without windows concept still confuses me

> I'm a sysadmin and have been using ... probably 10000 Linux distros/DE combos

Most of the things I run on Unix systems do not have windows. This doesn't confuse me at all! :)

I know what you mean of course. A GUI application without windows is superficially confusing, but you can certainly imagine something daemon-like that runs all the time and only occasionally requires interaction in the form of configuration or control.

What you're really talking about is document-based applications, which can continue running when no documents (windows) are open. This may be less intuitive if you think about things in a document-centric way, vs an application-centric way. There are advantages and conveniences to both.

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