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The Danish Ministry of Digitalization Is Switching to Linux and LibreOffice

politiken.dk

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Re: The Danish Ministry of Digitalization Is Switching to Linux and LibreOffice

#71

Post by Jolter »

pieds wrote: post #40
lordnacho wrote: post #13

Talking to my Danish friends, and I have a fair few in tech, the country is owned by Microsoft. A lot of code jobs are c# on Azure, and all the office people use Excel. This is a welcome change. I've thought for a long time, why would your average office worker even need to pay MS for their desktop OS when so many things could just be done on the web? And why develop a bunch of stuff on a proprietary platform when yo…

They don't have the capacity. The opinion you present is actually part of the narrative you are seemingly against. That you can compete with big tech if you just want to. And you "can" compete with big tech, but it isn't actually possible. Because the right pre-requisites, environment and priorities doesn't exist. Not in Europe, not in much of the US and not in much of the world. The European companies the would (or…

You say that the priorities are missing, but this article is about just that: this politician is changing the priorities. Admittedly for a rather small number of office workers, but it should be seen as a pilot project. Half the ministry staff will be off MS Office by end of summer, is the plan.

Re: The Danish Ministry of Digitalization Is Switching to Linux and LibreOffice

#72

Post by larodi »

wodenokoto wrote: post #17
digitalWestie wrote: post #6

It's a few times over the years I've read about govs switching to linux like this. Anyone know how they got on?

Usually they get a good offer from Microsoft and drop the conversation. But this time it is not about pricing, but politics, so maybe they won't budge as easily.

is tempting to think they actually choose one of the several providers of office services, based in Europe, not some stupid attempt at moving non-technical people to linux...

Re: The Danish Ministry of Digitalization Is Switching to Linux and LibreOffice

#73

Post by fleshmonad »

mmooss wrote: post #65

The issues in this situation are always, 1. How much is compatibility with outside users and past documents necessary? No office application can successfully, reliably convert anything but relatively simple documents (have LLMs done better somehow?). Each conversion reduces fidelity and often integrity; send a few revisions back and forth and it can become a problem. Simply adding a small headache every time an outsi…

What is it with Microsoft shills everywhere? Everytime some subject like this headline comes up, people fetch some kind of dubious arguments like "muh deployment". This is actually trivial in linux, and even if not, the effort to implement a solution will be of use to future parties switching to FOSS. Why is it that people always want change to make something better, but screach when they actually have to improve something. It's really curious. But I guess shills are gonna shill, or maybe I am just ignorant and or too stupid to see the grave mistake Denmark is committing right now, because they don't use Microsoft® PowerDeploy™ Copilot enabled Decentralized Update Solutions™

Re: The Danish Ministry of Digitalization Is Switching to Linux and LibreOffice

#74

Post by neepi »

NitpickLawyer wrote: post #60
Andrew_nenakhov wrote: post #12

I used to love LibreOffice when it was OpenOffice.org. When it got unshackled from Oracle, it somehow became kinda uglier, and unfortunately it wasn't able to keep up with the times technology-wise, as all efforts to make it online are a failure of usability and speed. What we, the humanity, need, is a free-as-in-freedom open source set of web applications that work like Google Docs / Spreadsheets / Slides, but can b…

> What we, the humanity, need, is a free-as-in-freedom open source set of web applications that work like Google Docs / Spreadsheets / Slides, but can be self-hosted and would natively use OpenDocument file format. There's an effort called numerique, out of fr and de governments. It seems to have docs, spreadsheet and meet now, and more on the way. https://lasuite.numerique.gouv.fr/en

Oh now that is interesting.

Source here as well https://github.com/suitenumerique

Re: The Danish Ministry of Digitalization Is Switching to Linux and LibreOffice

#75

Post by xioxox »

adrian_b wrote: post #28
Andrew_nenakhov wrote: post #12

I used to love LibreOffice when it was OpenOffice.org. When it got unshackled from Oracle, it somehow became kinda uglier, and unfortunately it wasn't able to keep up with the times technology-wise, as all efforts to make it online are a failure of usability and speed. What we, the humanity, need, is a free-as-in-freedom open source set of web applications that work like Google Docs / Spreadsheets / Slides, but can b…

I do not care whether LibreOffice looks ugly or not. What I care is that the documents that I generate with LibreOffice look beautiful and that depends on me choosing beautiful high-quality typefaces (not the default ugly typefaces of LibreOffice) and on choosing adequate formatting of the documents. All that LibreOffice has to do is provide adequate support for all OpenType features and for all formatting options th…

Unfortunately the LibreOffice Impress is pretty bad. PowerPoint is what keeps me using Office. LibreOffice formatting looks bad on the screen (it resizes bitmaps to make the fuzzy) and the user interface for constructing slides is both clunky, slow and buggy. I don't understand how the UI can be this slow in 2025 on a fast PC. Basic functionality, like resizing an equation, just doesn't work.

Re: The Danish Ministry of Digitalization Is Switching to Linux and LibreOffice

#76

Post by jaapz »

ryanackley wrote: post #41
adrian_b wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I do not care whether LibreOffice looks ugly or not. What I care is that the documents that I generate with LibreOffice look beautiful and that depends on me choosing beautiful high-quality typefaces (not the default ugly typefaces of LibreOffice) and on choosing adequate formatting of the documents. All that LibreOffice has to do is provide adequate support for all OpenType features and for all formatting options th…

I'm no Microsoft fanboy but LibreOffice is hideous and the compatibility has not kept up even after the MS Office formats moved to xml. Also, most of my interactions with Office Documents nowadays are through the online tools. I don't even have to install a binary on my computer anymore. These enterprises should invest a fraction of what they used to spend on Microsoft Office into a development effort to modernize Li…

Hideous? It looks just like any word processor to me. A dated look, yes, but I wouldn't call it ugly.

What needs modernizing precisely? IMHO the UI for most things in libreoffice's word processor is simple and easily found. Can't say the same of word these days.

Re: The Danish Ministry of Digitalization Is Switching to Linux and LibreOffice

#77

Post by sgt »

It's a great way for Denmark to negotiate a better deal with Microsoft for the next round of licenses. No way they will stick with Linux.

It's just too fiddly, requiring way more "IT people" running around configuring Samba shares and printer drivers.

And LibreOffice is many many years behind MS Office, and it'll continue to be that way.

Sorry for the pessimism but this was true in 2005, in 2015, and in 2025.

Re: The Danish Ministry of Digitalization Is Switching to Linux and LibreOffice

#78

Post by letters90 »

lordofgibbons wrote: post #10

I wish there was a fund we could pool money into to make LibreOffice less ugly to look at. I'll happily donate to the cause.

If denmark was to successfully adopt libreoffice they would probably invest in its upkeep aswell

Preventing another migration is a cost reduction in itself

Re: The Danish Ministry of Digitalization Is Switching to Linux and LibreOffice

#79

Post by Qem »

pu_pe wrote: post #64

Denmark is at particular risk because if the US does something concrete against Greenland, they might want to retaliate with sanctions at the very least. Impossible to do that if you have a strong dependency on American tech companies.

> they might want to retaliate with sanctions at the very least.

Just like what happened to the International Criminal Court recently, when Microsoft tried to obstruct war crimes investigations by blocking their email: https://www.computerweekly.com/opinion/Microsofts-ICC-email-...

Re: The Danish Ministry of Digitalization Is Switching to Linux and LibreOffice

#80

Post by kriro »

Usually the biggest hurdles are Active Directory, deep Excel trenches and reliance on Outlook. The OS itself, browsers to get the job done and non-Excel office stuff are usually not an issue. There might also be deep reliance on Acrobat or some digital signature stuff etc.

Either way, great news. I hope it works well.

How are Danes submitting taxes? That's still Windows only software in many countries (though many have switched to web portals already).

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