Technology

59148 readers

2280 users here now

This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.

Our Rules

Follow the lemmy.world rules.
Only tech related content.
Be excellent to each another!
Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
Politics threads may be removed.
No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
Only approved bots from the list below, to ask if your bot can be added please contact us.
Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed

Approved Bots

founded 1 year ago

MODERATORS

[email protected]

1155

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]

165 comments fedilink hide all child comments

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."

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

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

Nix does have an interesting package manager.

The states are paying them to support a desktop, not an OS to run whatever on.

Don't they need money to fund both aspects? Is there any support to lean on someone goes with Nix?

A lot of governments in the US pretty much go through Microsoft for simplicity. There's a lot of software obtained from a single vendor. I suppose that's why rhel is so popular.

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

Dataport is big enough (5200 employees) to support that kind of thing themselves, and they precisely are the single vendor for the participating states (it's an inter-state public corporation). More than twice the employees Suse has, quarter the size of RedHat.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago)

Good to know. I did not realize that this team was this large. I hope it works out.