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A German state is ditching Windows and Microsoft Office for Linux and LibreOffice on the 30,000 PCs it uses for local government functions (www.theregister.com)

submitted 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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Schleswig-Holstein, Germany's most northern state, is starting its switch from Microsoft Office to LibreOffice, and is planning to move from Windows to Linux on the 30,000 PCs it uses for local government functions.

Concerns over data security are also front and center in the Minister-President's statement, especially data that may make its way to other countries. Back in 2021, when the transition plans were first being drawn up, the hardware requirements for Windows 11 were also mentioned as a reason to move away from Microsoft.

Saunders noted that "the reasons for switching to Linux and LibreOffice are different today. Back when LiMux started, it was mostly seen as a way to save money. Now the focus is far more on data protection, privacy and security. Consider that the European Data Protection Supervisor (EDPS) recently found that the European Commission's use of Microsoft 365 breaches data protection law for EU institutions and bodies."

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[–] [email protected] 5 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (9 children)

Ad I said yesterday when this was posted. They tried this about 15 years ago, reverted to Windows after a few years.

I wish them all the luck in the world with this, truly. But I'm not sure a government has the drive, management, and flexibility to pull this off successfully.

If we want to see Linux compete with Windows for the desktop, it will need to start at the opposite end of the spectrum: small environments where the need for specialized apps is minimal, IT is a smaller group, flexibility is much higher, end users are a smaller group (from a training perspective) and reduced cost realizations are more apparent and impactful.

We may be seeing the beginning of this with VMWare's new, exorbitant licensing costs causing a push to other solutions such as Proxmox/TrueNAS for virtualization/virtualization backup in the SMB.

And if we really want to see a sea change, we need to get Linux as a desktop in education. But that would require settling on a single shell, and generally a single distribution (or at a minimum ensure there's a consistent set of tools in the OS).

Seems like an "Education Build" would be a great idea. But, again, who's going to back it, and which Linux distro gets the nod?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 7 months ago (4 children)

It's done before in Munich. It can work.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Yeah but they switched back to Windows in 2017 for no reason. :( some Bad rumors say it had to do with Microsoft building its headquater in munich 2016. But no one knows if the decision to build it in munich is indeed related to the switch back to. Windows.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 7 months ago

Seriously? With the amount of political corruption in Germany I really don't think there's any reason to doubt that at all

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