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Danish Ministry Replaces Windows and Microsoft Office with Linux and LibreOffice

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

#41

Post by o_m »

mrweasel wrote: post #24

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.

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

#42

Post by rcarmo »

thyristan wrote: post #34
skinkestek wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm currently working at a large public institution in Norway. Half the team runs Linux, and the only real constraint is using Edge for SSO. (Firefox works too - you just have to actually log in like it's 2008.) Honestly, everything else runs smoother than what my Windows-using teammates are dealing with.

That is probably just a setting missing from your Firefox profile that allows your company Kerberos realm/domain. If your institution hasn't locked down your Firefox config, you can fix this yourself: https://docs.redhat.com/en/documentation/red_hat_enterprise_...

It’s really not. Edge bundles a number of authentication libraries with the Linux version that enable things like remote passkey support.

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

#43

Post by b112 »

mrweasel wrote: post #37
s1mplicissimus wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They'll just force the students out of the relatively protected Google Workspace for Students, into the "real" Google/Gmail ecosystems where they are less protected against data mining What? This sounds like there is an observable way of telling that there's different levels of data mining going on in these two spaces, mind sharing the evidence?

There is no data mining/profiling in Googles educational offering (also no ads, which there is in regular Gmail): > Google Workspace for Education Core Services (like Gmail, Google Calendar, Classroom, and more) have no ads, and student information in Core Services is never used to create profiles for ad targeting, or sold to third parties.[1] 1) https://edu.google.com/intl/ALL_us/our-values/privacy-securi...

Makes sense. Get them used to using Google services, or else someone else will step in and do it.

Same reason Microsoft used to give all sorts of free licenses to students.

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

#44

Post by AdamN »

skinkestek wrote: post #33
mrweasel wrote: post #24

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'm currently working at a large public institution in Norway. Half the team runs Linux, and the only real constraint is using Edge for SSO. (Firefox works too - you just have to actually log in like it's 2008.) Honestly, everything else runs smoother than what my Windows-using teammates are dealing with.

I feel reasonably confident that if the focus is on open tooling and sovereignty and not saving money then a shift to Linux can 100% work even at large and complex organizations.

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

#45

Post by jve »

mrweasel wrote: post #24

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…

> Are these Linux machines going to authenticate against the Azure Active Directory... Are they using Intune, if so what's the replacement strategy where?

This comes up all the time when we talk about Linux in corporate deployment. As I have only experience in MS word regarding governance, let me ask this:

- Is there really no tools for Linux world that allows managing loads of Linux machines in an easy manner as it is in MS word (applying GPO policies)? A tool that can be easily set up and managed and doesn't have to always resort to scripting?

- If there is, why people are not using them?

I'm kind of aware some things are that allow managing Linux machines via Windows AD GPO, but that depends on MS domain there.

Seems like a ripe for a startup to provide open source tool(s) with, say, paid support for the enterprises.

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

#46

Post by b112 »

reacharavindh wrote: post #8

The companies and Government offices in Denmark are heavily entrenched in Microsoft ecosystem as I remember from a few years ago. The amount of money they would be spending in license costs! It is 2025, couldn’t we get away with using cheaper/even free(and or open source) online versions of office software? I don’t even have MS Office installed on my personal computer. When I need to deal with .docs or .xlsx files, I…

It is 2025, couldn’t we get away with using cheaper/even free(and or open source) online versions of office software?

Online?! There should be no usage of anything online to store or work with government data.

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

#47

Post by fock »

mrweasel wrote: post #24

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…

yesterday: I saw the weird CVE for M365 which "exploits" some LLM through messaging embedded in emails.

today: got a very long email, wanted to search for our department in it. Outlook: "Search is a deprecated feature".

Despite all the "but you can't extrapolate to a large org from personal experiences"-FUD around, I think for most orgs (especially governments which are generally far behind on processes) it would be easy to switch from a feature-perspective. The problem is the army of employees and contractors who are very happy to defend Microsoft for keeping their non-automated thiefdoms (such is non-cloud AD administration at most places I extrapolate ....). There is hardly anyone there to implement the necessary processes and rather than to send out their underlings to FOSDEM, leadership is happy to get an invite by Microsoft (or a cloud-provider...) to an "innovation-summit" instead.

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

#48

Post by powgpu »

jve wrote: post #45
mrweasel wrote: post #24

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…

> Are these Linux machines going to authenticate against the Azure Active Directory... Are they using Intune, if so what's the replacement strategy where? This comes up all the time when we talk about Linux in corporate deployment. As I have only experience in MS word regarding governance, let me ask this: - Is there really no tools for Linux world that allows managing loads of Linux machines in an easy manner as it…

well for server is nix, but not sure about desktop.

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

#49

Post by pelagicAustral »

mrweasel wrote: post #39
skinkestek wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm currently working at a large public institution in Norway. Half the team runs Linux, and the only real constraint is using Edge for SSO. (Firefox works too - you just have to actually log in like it's 2008.) Honestly, everything else runs smoother than what my Windows-using teammates are dealing with.

> using Edge for SSO May I ask what that SSO solution is? Because it sounds like it might be a Microsoft product.

Yeah, probably is. I see the same HTTP Auth login when accessing my employers intranet (Sharepoint) from Firefox.

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

#50

Post by fock »

jve wrote: post #45
mrweasel wrote: post #24

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…

> Are these Linux machines going to authenticate against the Azure Active Directory... Are they using Intune, if so what's the replacement strategy where? This comes up all the time when we talk about Linux in corporate deployment. As I have only experience in MS word regarding governance, let me ask this: - Is there really no tools for Linux world that allows managing loads of Linux machines in an easy manner as it…

and then most of the places I know happily allow employees admin access for "just that piece of software they need" and simultaneously push for "zero-trust". There's no point in it at all and you can just as well use saltstack to rollout apparmor-policies on your locked-down linux (and suddenly the same people wanting GPOs tell you that linux is untenable because of usage restrictions)
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