public services of an entire german state switches from Microsoft to open source (Libreoffice, Linux, Nextcloud, Thunderbird)

Agree. Fb, Whatsapp, Instagram, Linkedin, Quora, Twitter, Tumblr - I do believe that social networks should be independent and decentralized and not manipulated by one person - thats why Lemmy, Mastodon is the best choice for me

was shut down when the right wing came into power.

...and when M$ moved their headquarters into the city of Munich, making some nice impact on the city treasury.

Munich racist shitheads (a.k.a. CSU) absolutely do love that sweet "freedom money" a.k.a. bribes though. Corrupt fuckers...

The German Microsoft headquarters are in Munich.

Hard to catch fish if you see the fish as dumb idiots, for some reason the fish don't seem to respond well to it idk.

Just remember, the license fees mostly don't go into development, or maintenance, or security, or any of that, they mostly pay for "sales" which includes a strong component of end customer support. When you divert "all that money" into FOSS, FOSS development and maintenance might be lucky to get 20%, the other 80% will be spend training and employing tech support.

And there could be insight into whether the money is actually used for developing the relevant application.

This and software companies openly supporting Linux. For example, if Adobe and AutoCAD among others would build some tars then you could see it.

Ironically, Game Engines are ahead of the curve on this. You could build Unreal Engine from the github page on Linux for many years now and we also have Godot and Blender. I think several PCB design and also architecture tools already exist on Linux as well, so there is definitely room for a lot of industries and businesses to shift away from Windows as long as they can find a competent tech guy to maintain everything with minimal downtime.

This has been planned for quite some time, so not really.

Also, other states insist on using Palantir so there's that...

A small part of Germany, but maybe

Don't worry. They'll get a big discount on licenses and swap right back again.

very interesting observation... I came to conclusion if USA withdraw from NATO - EU and Great Britain will not send military troops to Poland in case russian invasion

Embrace, extend, extinguish will accelerate.

Didn't the Trump admin suspend enforcement of foreign anti-bribery laws? Microsoft just has to write a check to the right person to kill this.

Actually being able to troubleshoot things yourself instead of waiting for a reply from Microsoft support is a godsend.

Imagine them switching to Linux and suddenly shit works

Some localities in Germany have been incorporating Linux into their systems for 20+ years.

That may explain why the financial benefits seem low.

I know what you are saying, but it is not so bad: First of all, most things people are doing at work is not really related to the OS underneath. So if you are responsible for creating passports, you are using the special government program for passport creation. If you are a policeman, you are using the special police software to do your policework. Yeah, you need additional training, but in the best case your usual software keeps working. Most people are not really interacting with the OS during their work day.

(and let's be honest: Microsofts totally insane UI changes are also requiring lots of training. If you are used to just click on some specific buttons that somebody told you to click on, you're totally lost in Microsofts crazy wonderland of ridiculous UI changes )

There used to be skins for KDE that made it look and feel 1:1 like Windows XP, I don't know if these things still exist. If yes, there you have it: Just make the system behave like Windows and they won't notice a difference. They only have to use Office, Mail and print files anyways. Most other tools they use are browser-based and will feel the same way

The hacker community it's very focused on Linux since most servers in the world run it. The fly by night script kiddies and botnet creators definitely prefer end user systems though.

You say that like it's not already focused on. The majority of Internet infrastructure runs on Linux.

Please become a thing. Having viruses custom tailored for your OS means you've made it.

Same goes for any software.

I don't understand why people act like Windows is the holy grail of computing.

It sucks, it barely works for 90% of users, and the rest will use anything else.

Just as Linux will work for 98% of people, and those last ones are due to handful of evil companies.

People bitch and moan every time MS Office apps are updated, too; I can't count the number of times I've heard coworkers complain. TBF though, I refuse to hit the "Try the new Outlook" toggle on my work laptop - I tried it once and it was worse in every way.

I'm glad the only MS products I use at this point are work-issued.

I.wouldn't be so sure, the world runs on M$ spreadsheets and their shenanigans.

For me the trouble has always been interactions with other people. It's way better than 10 years ago. Just LibreOffices ribbon interface looks so much better today than 5 years ago. File compatibility is just going to be a continued growing pain until LibreOffice hits a major marketshare

I just switched to Linux and got a new win11 laptop for my wife.

Had to install a old HP Laser MFC (going to switch to brother when I run out of toner).

It just worked on Linux mint. Auto installed. Printing and scanning.
On win10 worked automatically. Printing and scanning.
On Win 11 it installed with a generic driver and printed fine but not scanning. Had to get the win10 driver from the site... WTH.

The only thing preventing me from full adoption in it is the lack of being able to convert to table like in excel. I've moved to it for my word processing. But I can't shake excel because I use that feature almost every time I use the program.

After that i just need to find replacements for OneNote and OneDrive and I'll finally be free.

It's horrendous. Can't even explain how bad it is now.

Those proprietary apps are the really big factor. A lot of stuff is run from a browser these days, but some systems are just too expensive to replace.

The advantage Windows has is Intune for device management.
The disadvantage is having to use Intune.

Linux is just much easier to script an install an manage using any of the IaC tools you might already be using for your servers. Yes, you can manage Windows with the same tools but it just isn't as reliable in my experience.

Windows + office + account and identity management all come with Ms 365 business in the first tier past family. For about $15 or $16 a month you can use InTune to set up logins and select enrollment with MFA as well a provision computers and management with InTune including Boyd self enrollment for laptops, Android, and Apple. All your files get rbac, backup, and recovery from day 1. You can, and I would recommend strongly against this, even manage your osx devices from InTune.

It's very slick and there is a reason business use it. This thread is somewhat delusional on how easy it is to manage and how terrible office 365 is.

It's not.

The problem is that one percent that does need Windows.

Unicorns suck in IT. It's a small number of systems that take a disproportionate amount of admin overhead.

So IT leadership has to decide if they support a separate OS for a small percentage of users, or one OS that works for everyone (Windows).

My understanding is that for reliable email, you need to host with microsoft or google otherwise you are more likely to get sorted into junk mail. If that is incorrect, please let me know.

I don't know. I never had a problems with a smaller mail provider.

My understanding is that for reliable email, you need to host with microsoft or google otherwise you are more likely to get sorted into junk mail.

That's technically accurate, but it depends on the context. For example, if you set up DMARC properly and use a brand new custom domain as a personal email, yeah, you're much more likely to get sent to spam, but not necessarily right away, and as you use that more frequently, or communicate with people using the larger providers like Google or Microsoft, the higher the "reputation" of your domain will get.

If you want the highest possible level of reliability though, then yeah, Google or Microsoft's options are likely gonna give you the highest chance right off the bat without any fuss.