German state moving 30,000 PCs to Linux and LibreOffice

the government has given the go-ahead for the first step towards complete digital sovereignty in the state, with further steps to follow.
The term digital sovereignty is very important here. If a public administration uses proprietary, closed software that can’t be studied or modified, it is very difficult to know what happens to users’ data:
We have no influence on the operating processes of such [proprietary] solutions and the handling of data, including a possible outflow of data to third countries. As a state, we have a great responsibility towards our citizens and companies to ensure that their data is kept safe with us and we must ensure that we are always in control of the IT solutions we use and that we can act independently as a state.
Digital sovereignty seems to be the primary impetus, so this might go far. Saving money is secondary.
- digital sovereignty is among the best reasons to switch, good on them!
- There were also previous notes about public tax dollars should not feed private corporations, but stay within a public system
  
  Lol. Geez in America this would be radical ideas haha.
  Seems nice not to have tax dollars going to private companies at a glance. However, I do not trust the government to get the job done right by themselves either in many cases.
- Saving money is secondary.
  Weird how that's always the case in a capitalist society.

They will need to stay the course and not be tempted with huge Microsoft savings Microsoft will give them just like what happened with Munich: https://www.zdnet.com/article/linux-not-windows-why-munich-is-shifting-back-from-microsoft-to-open-source-again/
- The agreement was finalized Sunday and the parties will be in power until 2026. "We will adhere to the principle of 'public money, public code'. That means that as long as there is no confidential or personal data involved, the source code of the city's software will also be made public," the agreement states.
  poggers
- I don't think it is that great of cost savings as you need staff to support Libreoffice
  
  You only need IT support, which you would be paying for one way or another with MS.
  
  You need support for Windows and MS Office.

So the Germany has been moving back and forth between Microsoft and Linux / open-source.
When Munich decided to ditch many of its Windows installations in favor of Linux in 2003, it was considered a groundbreaking moment for open source software -- it was proof that Linux could be used for large-scale government work. However, it looks like that dream didn't quite pan out as expected. The German city has cleared a plan to put Windows 10 on roughly 29,000 city council PCs starting in 2020. There will also be a pilot where Munich runs Office 2016 in virtual machines. The plan was prompted by gripes about both the complexity of the current setup and compatibility headaches.
Do you know what this smells like? Corruption and consulting companies with friends in the govt looking for ways to profit.
What else can be more profitable for a consulting company than shifting the entire IT of a city or a country between two largely incompatible solutions? :)
- Do you know what this smells like? Corruption and consulting companies with friends in the govt looking for ways to profit.
  No it doesn't. It smells like Microsoft has a monopoly on office software, and city employees are not tech enthusiasts. Anyone who used Office at home or in another job is going to complain when they have to learn a new software (regardless of which is "better" - for the average person, different is bad)
  Plus, every document they receive from outside is almost certainly formatted in Office, so if there isn't 100% compatibility, people will again complain.
  Migrating an entire enterprise to FOSS software is not easy, and in government where leadership changes can be more regular, it's not shocking to see the pendulum swing back and forth.
  
  Could be both of those things as well.
  
  Plus, every document they receive from outside is almost certainly formatted in Office, so if there isn't 100% compatibility, people will again complain.
  That’s not like that with governments. Governments are huge clients, they can and should dictate file formats to suppliers.
  If the state of Santa Catarina in Brazil, with a GDP of 2/3 of that of Munich, could transition to Open Document Format almost 20 years ago, Munich can.
  
  For the average person; msoffice and libreoffice function pretty much the same. Even the icons mostly match.
- That's possible, but in the past I think Germany stuck with Windows after Microsoft gave them a better deal or something.
  Heck, they may have even paid Germany to keep using Windows.
  
  That is how big companies operate. There was that huge lawsuit / fine of
  1.4 billion corruption
  A large corporation gave cash to companies and Govt officials to migrate to their software products.
- Because there's no "Germany" in this movement. Different lands, different governments, different offices, etc.
- No.
  Things were very different "back then." Linux was less friendly at the time. And non-Microsoft products still had noticeable gaps. Web browser office suites didn't exist.
  The parts I remember reading were just that it took a long time for workers to get used to the system. Back then, home computers were uncommon for the average person. And what computer experience the average person did have was noticeably different from Linux.
  I did not see articles about tech issues such as viruses or data leaks or configuration issues. Please show any if you have them.
- There's a lot of high level corruption in Germany these days, so I wouldn't be surprised.
- IIRC the last time this made big headlines they tried to roll their own distro and it went very poorly longterm. The TL;DR version was they so thoroughly took the hardest route and made questionable choices that it was almost sure to fail, and then MS swooped in with some great offers and that was that. (This is entirely my dusty recollection of articles I read about it at the time, FWIW.)
  I don't know whether it was malicious compliance because the folks doing the change didn't actually want to do it or what, but that effort was as doomed as Firefly was when Fox aired it out of order and with a constantly shifting schedule.
  Hopefully they make some sensible choices this time around (at a minimum not trying to create a custom distro) and it goes better. It would be great to see this become a cascade effect.
  
  they so thoroughly took the hardest route and made questionable choices that it was almost sure to fail
  Typical government move going full malicious compliance while allowing "a few selected friends" from consulting companies to make a ton of money. They could've just picked Debian and rolled with it. Let's face it, nobody develops desktop applications anymore most of the govt work is already done on custom built web platforms, any OS that can run a browser is good enough to address around 90% of the govt daily work.
  Meanwhile China is creating their own distro that will be successful for sure because they've plans to move the public sector and whatever private they influence to the thing.
- What else can be more profitable for a consulting company than shifting the entire IT of a city or a country between two largely incompatible solutions? :)
  See that's the neat thing SH has (together with HH, HB and ST) its own IT consultancy. Public enterprise, not some public-private partnership, and 5300 staff a quite a bit more than what Munich's IT department has.
  And yes of course Munich is corrupt what do you expect it's Bavaria.
  
  So… it’s exactly what I said but with extra steps.
  A way to provide money to the friends and have underplayed govt workers without the benefits and the stability 😂

This is unironically a good move for them. As Office gets more and more interconnected you have to wonder if there's a danger of using sensitive data as training for their AI. Not only will it save them money it'll also keep their data secure.

I hope they do not try to save that money but rather take the opportunity to invest some of it into the open source ecosystem that are now relying on.
- Hahaha no way. Im Germany we say "Sparen!"
  
  And some lobby bitches say "Schuldenbremse"
- That's not how governments work
  
  Well think again, Germany invests in open source.
  https://sciencebusiness.net/news/cybersecurity/germany-launch-sovereign-tech-fund-secure-digital-infrastructure
  The fund will rise with the savings for sure
  
  And having a government as a significant backer for an open source project is a great recipe for conflicts of interest and general trust erosion.
- I recall randomly check open source project and some of them has German public funding.
- I hope your government has an emergency fund. Savings are really important

I have an idea in which federal state Microsoft Germany headquarters will move next...
- MS HQ in Kiel? That would be so desperate.

Doesn’t Germany do this every so many years to get a better Microsoft deal?
- bavaria... we are different.
- Which is leas good, but still fine.
  One of the marginal transitional benefits of open source software is keeping proprietary shit at least kind of in it's place.

I wonder if this is related to https://www.sovereigntechfund.de/. This as it shouldn't be about saving cost. It should be about being sovereign.
- I'm not sure it'll even save them money, at least initially. They're likely paying consultants to work out the best approach, they need to retrain staff, and they'd probably go with a distro like RedHat that has vendor support (plus have paid support for LibreOffice too)
- Not being held hostage by one US company should be a priority by much more countries

Moving to Firefox will make a huge impact too
- It's the validation downvote. If you get any attention at all someone somewhere will downvote you.
  
  Maybe a $BROWSER user...

If they put as much money into these foss projects as they where giving microsoft before, maybe Libreoffice will become halfway decent.
I use Libreoffice and it's fine for a non-power user, but it sure has some rough edges
- It has some rough edges to be sure. I've found myself fighting with it quite a bit. But it's usable.
  I'm just glad there is more incentive for [organization] to help patch the issues.
  
  While I'm all for OSS, I'm also objective enough to know where it's not a good idea. And I think this is one of them. They have commercial one available in their own country called softmaker, which comes with support which is really important for a business or organization. I've been using it for many years because the OSS where just not right for me. Also liked WPS more but Linux dev was slow, but now I found my match
- But let's be honest, most seats at the government does not use anything much advanced anyway.
  There are places where nested formulas in pivot tables are needed to work, but most places are using just simple documents.

A good number of European cities and countries have tried Linux and open source software in the past. They use it for a few years and then they have almost always have quietly gone back to MS Windows and Office products.
As much as I enjoy using Linux, (and no, I don't use Arch), and open source for my own needs, I would be willing to bet after a few years, this German state will quietly move back to Micosoft products again.
- The intense pressure from Microsoft doesn't have anything to do with it I'm sure.
  
  It’s cheaper to find support
  
  Microsoft certainly tries it's best to keep you locked into their ecosystem by making it inconvenient but not impossible to leave though that's not the real reason, it's security. Businesses and especially governments are scared of nation state hackers contributing malicious code to open source products and falsely assume it's safer to use closed source software because those incidents aren't public. There's so much great software out there I'd love to use and the first question I'm asked when I bring it up is can you prove China hasn't contributed code?
- As the result of a change in the city's government, to leave LiMux and at the time, critics of the decision blamed the mayor and deputy mayor and cast a suspicious eye on the US software giant's decision to move its headquarters to Munich.
  Just a coincidence.
  https://www.zdnet.com/article/linux-not-windows-why-munich-is-shifting-back-from-microsoft-to-open-source-again/

- Again with the squeaky shoes

Awesome. Now stick with it!
And remember, different isn't wrong, it's different.

Awesome. Bravo.
Which municipality was it that switched to Linux only to be seduced back to Windows?
Sadly, I think most employees would hate it particularly if the transition isn't well managed.
- That was apparently Munich. And even with a promised 90% discount (of which I don't know the terms), they stayed away from Microsoft. But recently they switched back anyway :(
  https://itsfoss.com/munich-linux-failure/
  
  My buddies and I have worked at companies that went through similar transitions and reversions.
  The issue is not the cost or even the ideology. It is the training and support. There are a LOT of really good training resources for MS Office and, at least for millennials, outright education in k-12. So, by switching to libre office or anything similar, you are suddenly putting a large burden on yourself and random enthusiast youtubers who will start advertising nordvpn partway through explaining what a pivot table is. Because the vast majority of people don't know how to google "how to edit the footer for slides in Libre Office"
  And that RAPIDLY adds up to being a lot more expensive than even the full priced licenses from MS. your more technically competent staff suddenly have very large support burdens because "Oh, I just have a quick question" and that increases their burnout.
  That said, it is going to be really interesting in the next 5-10 years (... assuming the world doesn't end in a series of thermonuclear explosions first) since gen-z are very much brought up on Google Docs and the like. So even MS Office will have a significant training overhead for new hires.
  At one of my other jobs we had to migrate a codebase from SVN to Git. it... was incredibly overdue and it was making for a greater burden on new hires who had to learn an antiquated toolset to contribute. But it was a genuine concern because most of the existing developers who understood "where the bodies were buried" had already "suffered through giving up on CVS for no good reason". And we genuinely had to acknowledge that we would lose staff "on both sides" and, while I am not proud to admit it, more or less set up a few underperforming early career staff to be sacrificial lambs. Making it a point to let Old Fuck #5 know that the guy who was struggling to understanding how to write performant kernels was available to work through how to write a commit message. That way the rock stars who we were dependent on would not put in their notice.
  
  If only my employer, the state of Geneva, Switzerland, did the same.
  I hate the fact we’re giving so much taxpayer’s money to the GAFAMs.
- ~~That was Munich. This is also Munich.~~
  
  Following a successful pilot project, the northern German federal state of Schleswig-Holstein has decided to move from Microsoft Windows and Microsoft Office to Linux and LibreOffice (and other free and open source software) on the 30,000 PCs used in the local government.
  Munich is in Schleswig-Holstein now?
- Tuens out after the switch back to windows which I linked to in another reply, they actually switched back to Linux in 2020!
  https://www.zdnet.com/article/linux-not-windows-why-munich-is-shifting-back-from-microsoft-to-open-source-again/
  
  Really?!
  I'd never heard about that.

MS will erect another campus and things will go back to "normal". Hopefully this will last at this time...
Good documentary about MS hold over German government: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=duaYLW7LQvg
- it'd be funny if municipalities all over the eu started switching to Linux because they want a Microsoft campus
- Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
  https://www.piped.video/watch?v=duaYLW7LQvg
  Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
  I'm open-source; check me out at GitHub.
- That's only half the story if you look into it. I think they also had issues with the transition.
  
  I think they also had issues with the transition.
  They were blown out of proportion. Every single problem was magnified as if Windows had none at all. IIRC the sysadmins actually said they had less support tickets to deal with than before.

BASED

The last time I tried it, which is now a few years ago, LibreOffice Calc was substantially slower than Excell for larger spreadsheets. Like a difference between night and day, it was no acceptable substitute if productivity was a concern, which it usually is.
Imo a big swoop change like this, which is done for ideological reasons, but without practical considerations, is doomed to fail and leave a lasting bad impression in peoples' minds. Imo it would have been far better to only drop windows 10/11 for a familiar looking Linux distro, while continuing to use Microsoft Office.
- If an Excel sheet is that big, it should be replaced with a proper database, which most likely would run on Linux. I think you're right, though, about the lack of planning around the practicalities.
  
  Using the right tool in an office setting isn't something that's typically done. Unless that tool is a spreadsheet of course. A spreadsheet is always the right tool.
  
  There often aren't spare funds to develop something proper.
  
  What is the best sheet to Db Tool out there? Surely this is a normalized path by now, right?
  
  In structural engineering (bridge design etc), we use quite complicated spreadsheets for calculations; a database wouldn't be the right tool for that job. We use excel because everyone knows how to use it and it's easy to print to PDF and see the inputs and outputs and any graphical summaries you have added. Using a spreadsheet makes it easy to check and easy to adapt/change when you want to do a slightly different calculation next time.
  I've tried building spreadsheets of similar complexity in libreoffice and it's true they are very slow in comparison and more prone to crashing.
  Libreoffice works well for some tasks and I enjoy using it at home but honestly if I tried to use it at work it would cut my productivity significantly. I'm probably using it more intensively than most people though.
- Software freedom is about being in control of your computing. We can't verify what proprietary software from a foreign company is doing on a government computer.
  Public money public code is about citizens getting back the code we paid for. When a proprietary company improves software to get paid then they keep that advantage to themselves. LibreOffice is a collaborative project, everyone gains from it being improved by our money.
  These aught to be valid concerns as much as productivity: to the degree it affects people. It cannot be dissmssed as being idelogical.
  
  Those are ideological reasons though and me calling them idealogical does not mean that I dismiss them as valid reasons. Idealogy in itself is not a bad thing and it should certainly have a part in decision making.
  Where we differ in opinion is in which should take priority: I'm of the opinion that practicality should trump ideology (in this case), while you find the idealogical reasons more important.
- I think reducing their reasons to ideological is not fair. They stand to save a lot of money, reduce the risk of leaking data (to MS or hackers), and will have the ability to fork/add their own features.
  While I am not familiar enough with Calc or Excel to comment on the speed, I imagine having an entire government using it could get the ball rolling on optimizations.
  
  They stand to save a lot of money
  Do they? They'll now have to start training people to use Linux.
  These people aren't going to be enthusiasts like us. They need to be shown where everything is.
  
  The money that will be saved is peanuts compared to the cost of the workers. Loss of productivity through the implementation of bad tools can be very costly. The various Microsoft Office programs also offer the possibility to add bespoke features. Microsoft Office does not leak data unless you chose to let it do so, at least in the eu.
  Optimizations that might happen once a program with unacceptable performance is in a production environment, are generally optimizations that never happen. I've never seen a program make such a turnaround, it's wishful thinking without a basis in reality.
  This thing really is set up for failure. I'm not against organisations moving away from products from large monopolistic companies, rather the opposite, I'm very much in favor. But if the move is done in such a way that it's bound to fail and then cement itself into people's mind as a bad thing, then it has accomplished the opposite of what it has set out to do. Right now Linux is ready for widespread adoption in environments where productivity matters, but in my experience libre office is not.
- It's a question of both expenses and dependency on a monopolist.
  There simply won't ever be an opportunity to move from MS solutions to FOSS solutions which won't have these problems.
  Being dependent is possibly more expensive in the long term too.
  
  If you throw even half the money that would go to ms license for the foss community instead you can get some pretty huge improvements for that foss program. Blender for example, got actually nice looking and seriously good program while being foss because they got decent funding
- Lol, has sheets the size where performance matters and talks about productivity. And then chalks LO up to failure because of this. Maybe converting your .xlsx to .ods would save more money then, LO is faster there, because .xlsx & co are inherently broken.
- Wow, Schleswig-Holstein meaning well and starting beef by doing it. I'm sure there's no precedent for that.

Well, guy who actually lives there (Schleswig-Holstein) here. Be precise in what's written in tfa. What it laments about is that one (single) work place is about to be installed and that subsequent steps are about to follow.
I don't want to sound too pessimistic here. The fact, that this topic is on the high level agenda shows that it has strong supporters - for the moment.
But weighing in past decades' province goverment's spendings in large scale software projects and peoples' fear of everything even marginally IT, I'm very reluctant to see the big move here. Opposition against changes to my windows is simply unfathomable strong.
Nevertheless - and I mean that - it's a good development.
- Do they seem like they are paying for a integrator like SUSE (they are THE German commercial FOSS/Linux company in my head) or is it more enthusiasts trying to push changes and providing support?
  
  I guess it will be even worse. Instead of taking good money for hiring good people (I know this strategy is over simplified, as there are mandatory regulations for gv not being allowed to compete with the private sector. But if there would be the political will to find a way, there would be a way), gv will take even more money and found a consortium of 'experts' who will spend most of the funding to invent an exceptionally complex new wheel that none has ever seen before and take years in development... And the next gv will roll back. And that's that. Thinking about it I notice how desillusionated I became over the years...
  Hopefully I will be wrong. This time. At least once.
- Doesn't matter, it only needs to stick once. And each year the big projects FOSS/Linux have tremendous improvements so if it's half decent in the eyes of the gv users it'll be a big Win

This makes me want to try LibreOffice again. Is it really close-enough to on-par? I tried OpenOffice and LibreOffice a few times through the years and always found weird hiccups, like filetype issues, files looking different between programs, weird UI choices, etc... I would love to have a legitimate replacement option.
- No issues here. Have to use (mainly) excel at work, but use libre office calc at home, for years. Hate excel with all my heart. Mainly autocomplete and UI issues, but also issues when using more than one instance with excel. No problems with file exchange, p.e. with my tax person. Imho excel was THE leader but they enshittyfied it to the max.
- Libreoffice is strongest when you're using ODT format because it's an open standard. It's not at all their fault for docx incompatibilities because they change the format CONSTANTLY and of course their only documentation is internal.
  Personally I haven't had those issues though, only slight formatting differences when opening docx files, and half the time it's because I didn't have the font installed. You can change to the ribbon style if you really want but personally I prefer the older style, I find it's easier to find what I want.
  
  This is a really good tip. I admit I never really experimented beyond .doc/.docx due purely to muscle memory. It makes sense that would cause issues.
- No issues as long as you switch the toolbar to use tabs or contextual groups instead of the insane button overload which is still the default for some reason.
- I use Word at work and OnlyOffice and it works perfectly fine for my needs.
  I don’t see any reason to go back to any proprietary software at home 😇
- If you need MS office compatibility, don't use Libreoffice. If you just want to use the software for your own documents, Libreoffice is (imo) better* once you get used to it. If you need Basic Excel macros, Libreoffice won't work unfortunately.
  (*) the thing I hate about excel is that everything works "like magic" which is fine as long as it works. When something doesn't work, you are screwed because you cannot explicitly tell Excel what to do. It wants to do its own magic instead of obeying your will.
- I've been using libreoffice for several years, and when I have to cowork with someone, compatibility issues always happen. However, since last year, I've been experimenting transitioning to onlyoffice for a few academic works, and it has been so smooth. So far, I opened all documents people sent me without issues, and published some works, and no one involved in the process complained about anything. If you need compatibility with ms office, I suggest using onlyoffice. It's also foss and can be used at most OSes, even on android.
  Edit: I see that other people already suggested onlyoffice. I didn't mean to sound like those pushy comments that appear on our inbox from people saying the same thing again and again.
- OnlyOffice is good. Better compatibility with MS office and nicer UI than libreoffice.
  
  I don't like that it feels more like a webpage in a browser than real software.

Let's hope they put the money they save into the projects

i could swear they did this before.. like 10+ years ago when ODF was being pushed hardcore, but then i read they switched back to microsoft for some reason.
- This is another state, last one was Munich

Haaa! It feels good to hear. I hope that theyll support free software financially.

... told them 20 years ago already. Well then, finally ...

o7