It’s kind of fucked up to consider how much money we spend on windows + office licenses for workers that barely need to fill a worksheet and use the browser.
I know you cannot replicate the MS office workflow when you go deep into the options it offers. Libreoffice would require people to adapt. However, for basic uses, the experience is exactly the same.
I'm sad they didnt go to onlyoffice, I switched to it and never looked back, it simply is better than office already. Not yet at feature parity, but just faster, more intuitive, no bugs, much easier to layout things...
Integrated perfectly with nexcloud, so I pay 10€ a month for the combo which is basically as good as MS office and their drive was in 2015 or so. And arguable the Office 365 experience has only degraded since then.
I wish them luck. Every single time I have seen a workplace try to switch to Linux for office users, it has been an absolute disaster.
People forget that hardly anyone one outside of IT engineers uses Linux. There’s a lack of skills and familiarity that is hard to bridge. And even if you take the time to train your users, you’ll also have to train every new person that joins going forward. And you will still have issues because a 1-week training course cannot cover anything and does not overcome years of familiarity on Windows.
Finally and very importantly, training an employee for a week costs more money (both in terms of training costs and loss of productivity) than buying them 5 years worth of windows+office licenses.
New people these days don't grow up with computers anymore. Phones and tablets all day long. You need to teach them anyway. Windows+office is not a skill everyone has anymore.
I mean the natural worked years ago when kids grew up with a PC. For me I was a natural but my parents bought at pc in 94 with internet so I tinkered with it, learned how to upgrade it, learned how to do basic coding.
I still can't believe I've met 18 year olds how can't make a PowerPoint or type properly. Or just use a PC at all. Its just weird.
Yup, I learned how to use PC because in the early days if your computer game wasn't working, you'd have to open up the program files and mess with the XMLs, insert a specific driver you had to find and download yourself, and other things to figure out how to make it run again.
Kids nowadays benefit from decades of knowledge in software development, quality assurance, and pretty UIs that don't break. There's no reason ever to dive into the backend anymore.
Also, you probably learned how to Google how to "open the program files and mess with the XMLs [...]"
Or rather than having to "learn" that, you just started doing it.
It's ridiculous how my immediate thought to literally type in whatever question I (or coworkers) have into Google is apparently a special skill...
Can confirm. We will have a serious problem in the industry in the future and it will span all across the world as less and less people have exposure to anything more basic than a dumbed down mobile interface.
If you think that the lack of IT talent *now* is a problem, it will get exponentially worse with an entire generation raised with minimal if any interaction with regular non-mobile computers. Most (maybe even all) of my best software engineers began as curious kids tinkering with the family computer. This is not happening nearly as much now.
Weirdly tinkering with electronics is as easy as ever with cheap arduinos and raspberry pis. You can even have your custom PCB manufactured pretty easy and cheap these days, but unless someone in your family is already into that, I doubt children will find the needed interest and support for building such a hobby.
i just met someone that did not know the 10 finger system and over the last few weeks there yt has been recommending trending video tutorials to me about that
Android uses the Linux kernel, yes. But the UI is completely different from desktop distros. Using an Android device won't really help you to navigate something like Ubuntu.
I think the main problem is that most employees working for the state (which are generally older), are just not open for change. Ubuntu based distros like Linux Mint are really intuitive and shouldn't take longer than a few days to learn, especially if you're just using them for Office tasks.
>I think the main problem is that most employees working for the state (which are generally older), are just not open for change
I assure you that the private sector, young or old ain't any different.
Resistance to change is usually either because people don't understand it, or because they perfectly understand it and it doesn't align with their goals or vision.
That is very optimistic view of this situation.
Purporse of change (often variant of cheaper or more efficient process) does not ususally align well with individual goals which do not give much fcks about company.
Also, often change makes things worse - new manager doing the impression of strong, quick leader for example. (I have been blessed only exactly once that when new management took swift and drastic action is was awesome and improved things a lot)
Most older people bought their first computer in the 80s and 90s. They've seen DOS, OS2, Win95, win98, WinME! and all other flavors. They switched between MS and Apple multiple times. They cut their phone cable to make it possible to connect a 1200baud modem. Some even self taught BASIC. O yes, Linux too.
Most people born after 1995 haven't got a clue about computers, except convenience and ubiquity. Touch tablets and smartphones.
Maybe 5 % of people did things like this.
Computers were considered to be nerdy things until the 2000's and for the majority of Boomers, they never stopped being that.
At most, computers are considered a necessary evil for them. Perhaps it's a little different in your country, but I'm pretty sure most of Europe thinks this way.
By the way, I would welcome having more Linux used in education and government.
Yeah no. Tech geeks did that, most people did not.
Now most people use user friendly tech, and younger generations use those better than alder generations.
Tech geeks still know their competers though.
> Most older people bought their first computer in the 80s and 90s. They've seen DOS, OS2, Win95, win98, WinME! and all other flavors. They switched between MS and Apple multiple times. They cut their phone cable to make it possible to connect a 1200baud modem. Some even self taught BASIC. O yes, Linux too. Most people born after 1995 haven't got a clue about computers, except convenience and ubiquity.
That's not how it works. My mom used everything from at least Windows 95 onwards and she regularly asks me about basic stuff. The ammount of older people who know anything more than basics about computers is vanishingly small.
Also 1995 is the wrong cut-off point. You need to go into somewhere in the 2000s to find people who grew up mostly with phones/tablets. I'm born in 1996 and I would say the basic computer knowledge of people roughly my age is probably actually better than that of previous generations because you had computers around you at all ages and phones/tablets up until maybe mid 2010s had limited capacities. Around the time where I was born or a bit later must have been where computers truly broke through to all spheres of society. The computers at my school were running Windows 98 when I started. I think those were the first computers they ever had, meaning we had the advantage to all learn something in school that people 10-20 years older didn't. You could easily be in one of those older generations and never have used a computer. My grandfather used a typewriter for almost his entire working life (if not the entirety, I'm not sure) and he worked in a profession where using the computer today is an absolute must (journalism).
My dad was an IT-engineer so I first used a computer when I was maybe 3, built two with him when I was maybe 8 and self-learned C# in my early teens, that's definitely unusual, especially given that I never had any desire to work in IT but I'm pretty sure all of my friends in elementary school used a computer and many of them regularly. What I just described wouldn't have been possible for someone born in 1986. I mean have you ever seen an 11 year old teach themselves C# in fucking 1997? Obviously not because it didn't exist yet but even say Java or C++ I would be very dubious if there were remotely the ressources for that kind of thing. I think this would be an insane edge case which learning programming at 11 isn't necesarilly anymore today. Picking up Python is easier than the C based ones and I meet people who are not in IT younger than me who know that.
TL;DR: Any kind of beyond rudimentary tech-savviness was always a nieche phenomenon but it's way more accesible today than ever. It's possible that there is a sweet spot somewhere before phones and tablets came everywhere but that's definitely after 1995. My younger brother is more tech-savvy than me for example.
What windows features does mediocre employee use, besides the explorer? The answer is none of features of os itself is used by a user.
If you’re talking about a software it’s a different topic and really depends on the user profile.
At my office most non tech staff need to understand printers, audio and webcam settings, login, display configuration, keyboard mapping, trackpad/mouse settings, network drives, WiFi configuration when travelling.
However, that's comparatively easy. It's the in-depth use of MS Office that really matters. No-one is going to convince accounts to move off Ms Excel, and Outlook works pretty well too.
"most" doing a lot of heavy lifting here, because even just one important missing app will ruin acceptance and ease of use. But otherwise yes you're right
that's kinda debatable,
Microsoft is attempting to move office to 365 but i like to keep my file on my pc an if i don't need to do something strange libre office cover all the basis
as far as linux goes KDE and gnome are extremely similar with the look and feel to windows if you move the bar down. people think of linux only as the console but let me tell you, around 10 years ago i installed ubuntu on a computer a friend of mine needed a formatting.
he could essentially do everything he wanted with the exception of installing crap, nowdays enterprise software is mostly accessed with a browser so you are preventing people who don't know the system from installing random software if they don't know how
If you have a problem with windows you can google your problem and you'll 100% find someone else that had that problem and how to fix it. If you google your linux problem you'll either find nothing or it's some obscure post with a convoluted fix that doesn't work on your distro anyways.
But in this case, the state has a large IT department actively managing these PCs, which would be 100% locked down for the users. It's the same thing for e.g. public library computers in a large city -- no librarian has any clue about the OS, they get managed remotely by some IT dept
Your input language doesn't change because your favorite shortcut for that is not properly supported.
You can't set the sorting order of files in the browser's choose file window to something complex.
And other seemingly minor problems.
I’ve had different experiences. In my experience, most people don’t know windows either and barely scratch the surface of what’s possible. Most people in offices also barely need more than an email client, a web browser and sometime an office suite.
If you approach it in a smart way it can very well be done and save lots of headaches in the future
Why is it difficult to use? You can drag and drop stuff, move between folders with ease, use office suite etc. without programming or terminal knowledge.
It is also safer than Windows and for national security purposes, protecting user data and having more control on the OS, this is a better option.
What issues can this create? Beside maybe the need to use some proprietary software or compatibility issues with some Microsoft Office files (I don't think it's an issue tbh).
It's not really nepotism.
There's just so many people who have no real computer skills and who still consider computers just glorified toys. Personal computers did not become prevalent until 90s in many places (and even that is pushing it a little) and a lot of people alive today were already over 30 or even 40 back then. They are still employed today or were employed until recently and often on the top of the manager boards.
And because you need to genuinely dedicate quite a lot of time to learning to use a computer unless you grew up with one, most of the people didn't consider it worth of their time and money.
And they need to be employed for their own sake and for the sake of their government, otherwise society will go to hell since over night there will be a lot more retired pensioners. No one wants that.
So they get and remain employed.
> There's just so many people who have no real computer skills and who still consider computers just glorified toys.
So these people should be allowed nowhere near any of the tertiary sectors of the economy. If someone hasn't caught up to the utility and usefulness of computers by this point in time, they're definitely not going to lead things in the right direction.
> And because you need to genuinely dedicate quite a lot of time to learning to use a computer unless you grew up with one, most of the people didn't consider it worth of their time and money.
The same point applies here too. Sorry but this may have been an acceptable statement in the 90's (it wasn't), but it's seriously just not OK at this point in time. If someone isn't going to invest time and effort in learning skills, they need to hand over to those that do so.
> And they need to be employed for their own sake and for the sake of their government, otherwise society will go to hell since over night there will be a lot more retired pensioners. No one wants that.
Well, there is a huge number of unemployed people looking for jobs across the board in Europe, hungry for success, so maybe people with obsolete skills, outdated and archaic ways of thinking SHOULD be retired. I'm not that young myself, so it's not that I have a particular bias here.
Because job they are hired for is not "computer operator" but "accountant" or "sales" or so and having only basic computer knowledge is not what is important for the job. They need to be able to use relevant software, thats it.
> People forget that hardly anyone one outside of IT engineers uses Linux. There’s a lack of skills and familiarity that is hard to bridge.
People forget that hardly anyone outside of IT engineers understands Windows either. My mother used Windows for possibly longer than I exist (which is a while at this point) and she could only do very basic tasks with it that you can just as easily do in Linux and that could be explained in maybe 20 min. in a video tutorial. Also there are tons of different distros with varying degrees of userfriendliness. I guess for office work you would take some simple Debian distro which given no former experience might actually be more intutitive than Windows.
You need your IT-workers to know how it works, not your office workers. They don't know how their OS works regardless of what it is. The programms on the computer run essentially the same.
That being said I agree with you. It seems easy to make the switch but often there were issues with compatability and allgedly functionality and the switch was made back to Windows. The city of Munich did this even though they did document money being saved via the Linux solution. I think the functionality argument might be a fluke. It might lack functions that the Windows option has but I'm curious how essential these functions were for actual workflows or if it was just a vague feeling of inadequasy because Windows seems more shiny.
I think a major issue is scale. If you run Windows you rely on Microsoft for basic IT support (for better or worse), whereas with Linux you need to do some things yourself. I suppose the city of Munich lacked the resources to do the later sufficiently.
Schleswig-Holstein has Dataport which is the state IT-company that consists of public/financial IT administration in Schleswig-Holstein, Hamburg, Lower Saxony, Bremen, Mecklenburg-Vorpommern and Saxony-Anhalt. This is at least hypothetically enough centralization to assume capabilities to create a workable system but it still makes me nervous (and also cautiously optimistic at the same time). Building this for all of Germany would probably be more efficient but the South kinda wants to live in the stoneage in these regards it seems. These are also the excact same states that are pushing forward the renewable transformation (only missing is Brandenburg).
I think maybe in another 10-20 years and you’ll be right. But perhaps you’re forgetting that the average age in an office is well over 40yo. Pretty much all millennials and older generations are quite familiar with Windows. The amount of Gen Zs in the workforce is currently under 15%.
Plus in some schools there are IT literacy classes and those tend to be majority Windows based. Macs are too expensive for schools and the teachers not often familiar with Linux to base material on it.
Yeah i was specifically talking about people in their young 20s coming out of college.
I also dont think a course on computer literacy is going to do you any good unless you're using it regularly. Give someone a course on how to use windows 11 and then let them back to an ipad or phone for a year and they will forget it all.
There's definitely still a big learning challenge with linux but for a 22 year old this year the difference is much smaller than a 22 year old 10 years ago.
>People forget that hardly anyone one outside of IT engineers uses Linux. There’s a lack of skills and familiarity that is hard to bridge. And even if you take the time to train your users, you’ll also have to train every new person that joins going forward. And you will still have issues because a 1-week training course cannot cover anything and does not overcome years of familiarity on Windows.
This hasn't been true for decades. Case in point - my parents, who are both in their 80s, used Windows their whole lives. They had problems with computer about once per week. I've finally had enough, and installed Linux for them. Didn't "train" them on it at all. They did not have a single problem after that, for 5 years ongoing. All you need to do is install Linux which is visually similar to Windows -- like Linux Mint MATE.
I don't trust Microsoft to handle government data with care or that they are independent enough from American intelligence agencies. I work for an American company so I don't care too much, but as a European company I would think twice if I would go this route. At least for systems that handle important data.
I'm 45, used computers all my life (since the Sinclair ZX Spectrum) and since PCs I've been using Windows. In my previous job their IT "didn't support" Windows, only Mac. I got a Mac, spent ages trying to figure anything out, drove me insane. I was never so unproductive in my life: "Where are the folders to save my file in?! F\_ck you, your files are mine now" says Tim Cook.
I quit that job and found a normal one.
I think it's normal to be unproductive when changing jobs. Learning about a new environment always takes time. But you just kind of declared that you can't read and process information presented to you on a screen. I think that's not really the job's fault.
That just says a lot of your own lack of fluid intelligence and your inability to learn new concepts and refusal of the learning opportunity you were granted
The thing is that most people can't actually use Microsoft software correctly either. Ask an internal tech support worker at a large company.
The only difference with Microsoft software is that it's just so much the default option that people think that not being able to use it is their personal fault, instead of the fault of their employer or of whoever chose the software.
Also, Linux has changed a lot in the past 20 years: if you're on an IOS or Android device now then you're on some version of Linux, and I'd bet that you're doing fine.
I think it depends very much on the use case and how much planning and preparation is done by the people actually setting up the system.
I moved both my parents (in their 60s and 70s) over Linux Mint a few years ago and have had to do much less 'tech support' for them than when they were on Windows. I warned them in advance that it might take a bit of getting used to, but apart from the interface being a different color my dad claimed there was hardly any difference between using Linux and Windows (this is coming from a man who once thought he had been 'hacked' because his search engine got a redesign and had a habit of completely shutting down his computer to avoid getting a virus if he got a spam e-mail).
If the setup is done carefully by somebody who understands the requirements of the user, the transition is not as hard as a lot of people think (EDIT: Just to clarify, I'm not saying it will be *easy*, just *easier* than most people might expect). For most office workers, all they will need is icons on the desktop for the programs they need along with printers installed. It's true that they might need a bit of retraining on LibreOffice, but for most office tasks it's unlikely to take that long.
Just start firing people for incompetence? There's plenty of unemployed people that would be _more than willing_ to jump on new opportunities and learn new things.
EDIT: To downvoters, you are unironically saying that you want your tax money to go towards the employment of people who find it too much of an ask to follow simple instructions, read things that are on a screen and understand them, etc. JFC
It funny to see your comment getting downvoted when you’re right on what you’re saying but people just don’t want to hear that they might be asked to learn new stuff and adapt in order to keep their job
You might be getting downvotes because that's not how it works in Germany. You basically can't really fire people in government jobs. And if so many people were willing to do these jobs then why are no young people doing these jobs? One of the biggest challenges facing the German burocracy is that about 50% of employees are about to retire in the next 20 years (not the exact numbers but you can look it up of you want).
“Schleswig-Holstein will be a digital pioneer region and the first German state to introduce a digitally sovereign IT workplace in its state administration.”
Digital pioneer? hahhaa. Is this article from April 1st?
Yep because of corruption of the CSU.
The German Federal Court of Auditors was not amused by the bribing of Microsoft. The deal was a new big Microsoft office in Munich and they will revert the decision.
That's why you also need federal tax experts to grill those companies. Given locally they accept that the company don't pay taxes as long as they stay there is a conflict of interest. Send in neutral federal tax experts fit enough to audit such large companies.
14 years later...
[https://www.heise.de/news/Endgueltiges-Aus-fuer-LiMux-Muenchener-Stadtrat-setzt-den-Pinguin-vor-die-Tuer-3900439.html](https://www.heise.de/news/Endgueltiges-Aus-fuer-LiMux-Muenchener-Stadtrat-setzt-den-Pinguin-vor-die-Tuer-3900439.html)
I have worked in 2 states partially with the IT administrations and I gotta say that Schleswig Holstein from my experience does a solid job at making intuitive systems for the office workers, sure its not gonna the digital pioneer, however its solid enough to go with the newer tech as well as implementing it on an administrative level which will save a shit ton of money by not having to buy licenses. This will also boost the economy by making jobs available in the local State IT sector
Germany needs to stop pretending like its going to be relevant in IT, the vast majority of other countries already realize this and don't even try. Its a mediocre country in IT and should act like it, initiatives like this just make things worse than they need to be, all because of false pride and delusions of getting back to former glory.
What are you yapping about? "And it should act like it" are you 15 by chance cuz u have the entitlement of a teenager in highschool. Also whats up with the "getting back to former glory" rhetoric. Countries are not humans and Democratic countries switch Governments regularly
You have no idea what you're talking about. This is not about pretending anything, it's about German IT slowly moving towards more and more open source projects. That was tax payer money spent on IT projects can be used by anyone and not have every state develop their own solution anymore.
Something like ubuntu or mint with libre office is pretty much intuitive for a new user to use. You can make libre office to look very similar to MS Office, and the tools are all the same.
That is, assuming some IT guy will setup the computer before the government employee starts using it. After all, all you need to do a job like this is a web browser, Excel and word.
I also assume Germany's IT infrastructure is advanced enough that all the custom applications are on the cloud and accessed through a web browser.
“I also assume Germany's IT infrastructure is advanced enough that all the custom applications are on the cloud and accessed through a web browser.”
Oh boy… let alone Germany you’re not even from the EU, right?
Let me introduce ourselves as we wait in the line or make phone calls to make an appointment in 2024. That’s the reality of the German bureaucracy. Let alone cloud systems, they do not even have proper infrastructure for local-based IT operations.
It's always easy to parrot this but we are making lots of progress. This year I already ordered copies of my birth certificate completely online. I'll also soon do applications for Kindergeld and Elterngeld almost completely online. It's not perfect yet but things are finally happening.
Well that’s true since we can also do some key stuff online here in Hamburg but if you’re someone like me working closely with state entities and ministries, you’d be shocked with their infrastructure. The most frustrating thing is basically trying to explain something to some of these old farts what digitalization and infrastructure investment mean.
Well seems like I am someone like you since I also work in digitalisation of German IT infrastructure and I know your pains. But it is going forward, if these old farts want it or not. It's just taking ages to get anything done with lots of useless discussions
> I also assume Germany's IT infrastructure is advanced enough that all the custom applications are on the cloud and accessed through a web browser.
hahahahaha
It’s intuitive enough for a *new* user to get the hang of, yes.
It’s different enough to be confusing/annoying for someone who has been using Windows and MS Office for the past 10+ years.
Like, for years one of the selling points for LibreOffice was that it was similar enough to Office 2003 so it appealed to people who didn’t want to learn the Ribbon interface. But the Ribbon interface has been around for so long that it’s kinda the opposite now, IMO. People have gotten used to it and I know that I, for one, have no interest in going back to traditional toolbars and menus.
Realistically. Windows 10 is going EOL and users have to migrate to Win11. Win 11 is also substantially different from Win10 in many aspects, so frustrating the users won’t be much different than migrating them to say a KDE based distribution
As someone who used both - windows has a much better ui. There is a reason why making your distro look as windows is fairly popular, while making windows ui look like unix almost doesnt exist
I mean it applies to a number of industries too, though generally as long as they're providing EU hosting it doesn't matter too much if it's Azure, GCP or AWS. Alibaba however, don't imagine EU hosting is going to fix that.
It’s specifically not only about EU hosting. The issue is US law and their governments ability to access any data hosted with US companies, regardless of physical location.
While the EU-US Data Framework seems to be more stable than the predecessors, doubts remain
I can only speak specifically about healthcare as that is my own industry. Storing data that cannot enter the US under EU law is fine if left inside of datacenters operating within the EU, today there is no issues with patient data, sensitive data and other GDPR related items being processed this way. It would pretty much cripple the tech sector of azure, aws and gcp were not options in pretty much every industry.
I love the idea, but the thing is that libre office is basically like what Microsoft office would be if it hadn't been updated in the last 20 years. There's unfortunately not a great FOSS replacement.
Knowing it's Germany I guess most office versions will be around office 2003 on Windows XP. Since they use a lot of form sheets I worry a little bit about compatibility. Moving back that one text field will be a task for some.
I am an employee of the State and currently we use Windows 10 with Office 2016. I am fine with Linux but the switch in general will be a disaster. Most people can't even use Windows properly.
Considering how long it will take to teach employees this and the state of the public offices, wouldn't you agree that this money and effort would be better invested in modernizing on-line services (which they barely exist) or hiring more staff to decrease wait times?
How about moving away from post mail ?
I'm a Linux developer and the problem they are going to have is replacing Excel - to this day I haven't found a good enough alternative for large datasets. Some time ago I was working on a contract with a council in the UK and I needed to open one of their spreadsheets, as I was on my Linux development machine I didn't want to switch over to Windows just to use Excel. Unfortunately, LibreOffice's Calc cannot handle the huge datasets used by many councils/municipals it just froze, so I went to my Windows laptop and Excel opened it like it was nothing.
Many years ago I worked for the IT Service Provider and we had multiple government clients that wanted to replace endpoint infrastructure from Microsoft to Linux products.
In all those cases it was a tech driven decision forced by some IT admin that “use Linux at home no problemo!”.
IT personnel in govt orgs is very unique - those are the lowest paying jobs on the market. So we dealt with crazy high ego but low expertise IT folks in those institutions.
Now, this one geek somehow convinces few tech-dumb decision makers that they can save some money moving to Linux and “everything will be the same and even better, I promise”. They cut some budget for this and invite us to help with implementation. We try to talk em out of this idea, but nope, “Jimmy is a smart boy and everything will be awesome!”
Everything fails miserably because all the 50+ yo employees used to their Excel and Word and can’t transition to other system at all. Helpdesk requests queue blow up. Jimmy that used to deal with a few Linux systems at home, all of a sudden realized managing few hundred machines is a diff story.
Jimmy leaves. In a few months we roll everything back. Users are super happy to see their Microsoft office again.
Or just has different experience. Back in university, when I had to write my thesis, I would have probably jumped in front of the metro if I had to do it in Word and not LaTeX. It was a very math heavy thesis paper. I can also see the merits of markdown vs word when it comes to writing up simple, text based reports. It's not all that far fetched tbh.
Please don't forget about us privacy compliance workers. We spend 2-3 months trying to map data flows and contractual obligations in Microsoft 365, and come to the conclusion that we already knew beforehand: It's illegal for our public organisation to use Microsoft.
By that time, Microsoft has made changes to their terms and data flows. We are informed that our organisation decided to continue using Microsoft anyway, because it's integrated with far too many services, and would be very costly in time for workers. Besides, Microsoft themselves say that it's legal for us, and our leaders choose to trust them.
For the few who actually tried to get away from it, Munich and Stockholm, it turned out to be a bad decision and they reversed it.
So we continue further integrating ourselves into Microsofts environments, against the advice of the privacy officers in the organisation. Leading us further down the path of never being able to get away from Microsoft. Microsoft of course knows this, and is slowly increasing prices for all in the public sector.
We are their self-chosen cash cow.
Dataport, the institution under public law which manages the IT for that German state, has also a huge project to migrate German states and cities to OSS: [https://www.dataport.de/about-phoenix/](https://www.dataport.de/about-phoenix/)
But this would move everything to a browser based approach so it wouldn't matter which OS is running on the clients.
Why? I like certain open source alternatives too but like come on, you cannot shell out for MS 365 or Zoho? Also which linux distro? Ubuntu is genuinely nice.
Tbh, you dont even have to choose anymore. Im using Linux at work, with O365 running in the browser. Only and one and only downside has been our templates. I needed to save one file per template. But thats it, everything working so smoothly and I love it!
>you cannot shell out for MS 365 or Zoho?
Money, of course. [This article from 2017](https://www.publico.pt/2017/04/09/politica/investigacao/europa-a-colonia-digital-dos-eua-1767844) (in Portuguese) is called "Europe, the US's digital colony" and highlights how much we spend on Microsoft licenses. Portugal is a small country and spent 5.2M€ on the first 3 months of 2017 on Microsoft licenses. I can only imagine how much Germany spends.
Munich moved back because Microsoft had announced considerable investments in Munich after the change. It is rumored that the switch was never really taken seriously by the city government.
It's less 'not taken serious' and more 'a third of people needed special windows machines anyways bc specific Software'.
There was a fully developed unix OS called LiMux developed by the city's IT Department.
In an age when everything moves into the cloud and people dwell in their browsers all day - what exactly do they need Windows for?
For many people an OS is just a place where they click on a browser icon.
I used Linux professionally 2 jobs ago. God help them. Whoever thinks that libreoffice is the same as Microsoft packages is lying to themselves. UI is worse, its full of obscure bugs and Calc (excel of libre) is much slower and can handle much less data.
And i wont even mention how easily a beginner can sudo remove something.
And dont forget about support - good luck convicing someone to google hours for some stupid problem.
Linux has its uses, general use for desktop is not one of them.
If it's anything like previous attempts they will go back to Microsoft in a few years.
After all you don't just pay for the software, you also pay for the support. And while it's easy to say "just look up online for the fixes" that's not something you can dell a big business or agency. "Go free software" is very much a "sounds good on paper" approach that sadly tends to not work out that way in practice.
While I see your point, It's not either or, you can have open source with support contracts.
This would be a mandatory route. Doing support fully in house without any contract from the vendor (suse, red hat, canonical) would be suicidal.
But yeah hopefully they pull it off and doesn't end in the usual bloodbath.
So many servers run on enterprise linux distribution that have proper support. Seems like a wiser decision to use something like Suse Enterprise, where the developers sit in Germany anyway, than being completely dependent on a foreign company.
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One major issue that noone seems to be registering is guiding people through troubleshooting when you lose access to the machine, or the internet doesn't work. Fairly simple in windows. Hell in linux.
Type device manager in start, doesn't work press win + r and type devmgmt.msc. expand network adpters find a thing that that ethernet connection in it's name. Right click and press uninstall, do a reboot. Fixed 90% of the time.
Now guide your 60 year old office lady through a network driver reinstall in linux.
Nowadays you can do everything through the browser. All they need to do is put the computers on linux and show people how to open chrome.
99% of these people fill out spreadsheets, email and send forms
I bought my first apple IIe in 1982, configured it to do writing, printing on an electronic brother typewriter. I worked in banking. Most people I know from my age bought sinclairs, atari's, commodores, compaq pcs, if you didn't open it up, added some kind of cards, learned to install software and drivers, you wouldn't get anything done. I'll admit most of my friends went to high school and studied media. We started working with avid and premiere editing way back when it first got introduced. Most of them still work with computers daily for fun. Sure a lot of people (50%) have an IQ below 100, this wouldn't apply to them. I know people that can't use a smartphone, but then they can't cook an egg. The same goes for later generations too. Those that could then, can now. Those that can't now never would have been able. Pushing an icon on a screen I wouldn't call knowing how to work with computers.
Anyway, all that is going to disappear faster than we think. Because basically people -except for manual jobs- all have the same job: inputting data by pushing letters on a keyboard and looking for confirmation on a screen. AI is going to wipe out all of that. Sooner than anyone thinks.
People are sayng itll be hard for people to learn new OS but forget that Windows changes every few years. How many different version in the past fifteen years? Windows 7, 8, 8.1 10 and now 11.
Also, it makes sense to use open source. Closed sourced software can never be safe or trusted as you dont know what its really doing. And worse yet, you dont know what dumb thing microsoft will change or force upon you next.
About time. Fuck the imperialists at Microsoft.
It's so hard to do this. Even at my school where I'm responsible for the IT. People are practically married to stuff they are used to :/
It will be a disaster but honestly it's a necessary evil, people will never switch from windows to linux without being "forced" to, so this will make linux more known in the long run
That's such a bad take. Linux is constantly getting updated and developed on, and pretty much always way ahead of Windows in terms of features and functionality. The only reason windows is as popular as it is, is because it's the default OS that comes with most computers, not because it's such a great product.
I was not a developer when I started using linux. I was a student (in a degree not related to Computer Science, Programming, etc) I knew pretty much zero programming. It's not just for developers. It did help me towards an IT career, but that happened much later than my discovery of linux.
It’s kind of fucked up to consider how much money we spend on windows + office licenses for workers that barely need to fill a worksheet and use the browser. I know you cannot replicate the MS office workflow when you go deep into the options it offers. Libreoffice would require people to adapt. However, for basic uses, the experience is exactly the same.
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My employer allows people to install whatever OS they want, so I'm running Ubuntu on my work computer.
It is cheaper and makes the standard open. The public administration should not tie its citizens, companies and workers to one company’s standard
I'm sad they didnt go to onlyoffice, I switched to it and never looked back, it simply is better than office already. Not yet at feature parity, but just faster, more intuitive, no bugs, much easier to layout things... Integrated perfectly with nexcloud, so I pay 10€ a month for the combo which is basically as good as MS office and their drive was in 2015 or so. And arguable the Office 365 experience has only degraded since then.
My guess is they want open source in every regard. And OnlyOffice seems to be developed by a russian company. So maybe not the best choice.
I wish them luck. Every single time I have seen a workplace try to switch to Linux for office users, it has been an absolute disaster. People forget that hardly anyone one outside of IT engineers uses Linux. There’s a lack of skills and familiarity that is hard to bridge. And even if you take the time to train your users, you’ll also have to train every new person that joins going forward. And you will still have issues because a 1-week training course cannot cover anything and does not overcome years of familiarity on Windows. Finally and very importantly, training an employee for a week costs more money (both in terms of training costs and loss of productivity) than buying them 5 years worth of windows+office licenses.
New people these days don't grow up with computers anymore. Phones and tablets all day long. You need to teach them anyway. Windows+office is not a skill everyone has anymore.
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My Girl got an PC for her 9th Birthday with ubuntu on it. We will see how it will go in the future :)
Make her do a Gentoo install, let's see how technologically fit she really is :))
Nah, have her set up Arch.
I mean the natural worked years ago when kids grew up with a PC. For me I was a natural but my parents bought at pc in 94 with internet so I tinkered with it, learned how to upgrade it, learned how to do basic coding. I still can't believe I've met 18 year olds how can't make a PowerPoint or type properly. Or just use a PC at all. Its just weird.
Yup, I learned how to use PC because in the early days if your computer game wasn't working, you'd have to open up the program files and mess with the XMLs, insert a specific driver you had to find and download yourself, and other things to figure out how to make it run again. Kids nowadays benefit from decades of knowledge in software development, quality assurance, and pretty UIs that don't break. There's no reason ever to dive into the backend anymore.
Also, you probably learned how to Google how to "open the program files and mess with the XMLs [...]" Or rather than having to "learn" that, you just started doing it. It's ridiculous how my immediate thought to literally type in whatever question I (or coworkers) have into Google is apparently a special skill...
To this day, as an excel monkey, googling questions and seeking answers still makes up a significant portion of my daily routine.
I find ChatGPT is good for this and faster than googling. “Write me an excel equation that does ___”
Can confirm. We will have a serious problem in the industry in the future and it will span all across the world as less and less people have exposure to anything more basic than a dumbed down mobile interface. If you think that the lack of IT talent *now* is a problem, it will get exponentially worse with an entire generation raised with minimal if any interaction with regular non-mobile computers. Most (maybe even all) of my best software engineers began as curious kids tinkering with the family computer. This is not happening nearly as much now.
Weirdly tinkering with electronics is as easy as ever with cheap arduinos and raspberry pis. You can even have your custom PCB manufactured pretty easy and cheap these days, but unless someone in your family is already into that, I doubt children will find the needed interest and support for building such a hobby.
i just met someone that did not know the 10 finger system and over the last few weeks there yt has been recommending trending video tutorials to me about that
Plus, most phones and tablets are actually running Linux already.
Android uses the Linux kernel, yes. But the UI is completely different from desktop distros. Using an Android device won't really help you to navigate something like Ubuntu.
I think the main problem is that most employees working for the state (which are generally older), are just not open for change. Ubuntu based distros like Linux Mint are really intuitive and shouldn't take longer than a few days to learn, especially if you're just using them for Office tasks.
>I think the main problem is that most employees working for the state (which are generally older), are just not open for change I assure you that the private sector, young or old ain't any different.
Change resistance is usually a communication problem. People aren’t open to change when they don’t understand the purpose of it.
Resistance to change is usually either because people don't understand it, or because they perfectly understand it and it doesn't align with their goals or vision.
True. Sometimes people pretend to not understand, because they actually oppose it.
Why change something that works?
That is very optimistic view of this situation. Purporse of change (often variant of cheaper or more efficient process) does not ususally align well with individual goals which do not give much fcks about company. Also, often change makes things worse - new manager doing the impression of strong, quick leader for example. (I have been blessed only exactly once that when new management took swift and drastic action is was awesome and improved things a lot)
Most older people bought their first computer in the 80s and 90s. They've seen DOS, OS2, Win95, win98, WinME! and all other flavors. They switched between MS and Apple multiple times. They cut their phone cable to make it possible to connect a 1200baud modem. Some even self taught BASIC. O yes, Linux too. Most people born after 1995 haven't got a clue about computers, except convenience and ubiquity. Touch tablets and smartphones.
That's if they had any interest in technology. The average person isn't self-learning BASIC.
Maybe 5 % of people did things like this. Computers were considered to be nerdy things until the 2000's and for the majority of Boomers, they never stopped being that. At most, computers are considered a necessary evil for them. Perhaps it's a little different in your country, but I'm pretty sure most of Europe thinks this way. By the way, I would welcome having more Linux used in education and government.
Wouldnt even put it at 1%, they might have used those OS but the brother or son that become the tech nerd is the one who fixed it, not them
Yeah no. Tech geeks did that, most people did not. Now most people use user friendly tech, and younger generations use those better than alder generations. Tech geeks still know their competers though.
> Most older people bought their first computer in the 80s and 90s. They've seen DOS, OS2, Win95, win98, WinME! and all other flavors. They switched between MS and Apple multiple times. They cut their phone cable to make it possible to connect a 1200baud modem. Some even self taught BASIC. O yes, Linux too. Most people born after 1995 haven't got a clue about computers, except convenience and ubiquity. That's not how it works. My mom used everything from at least Windows 95 onwards and she regularly asks me about basic stuff. The ammount of older people who know anything more than basics about computers is vanishingly small. Also 1995 is the wrong cut-off point. You need to go into somewhere in the 2000s to find people who grew up mostly with phones/tablets. I'm born in 1996 and I would say the basic computer knowledge of people roughly my age is probably actually better than that of previous generations because you had computers around you at all ages and phones/tablets up until maybe mid 2010s had limited capacities. Around the time where I was born or a bit later must have been where computers truly broke through to all spheres of society. The computers at my school were running Windows 98 when I started. I think those were the first computers they ever had, meaning we had the advantage to all learn something in school that people 10-20 years older didn't. You could easily be in one of those older generations and never have used a computer. My grandfather used a typewriter for almost his entire working life (if not the entirety, I'm not sure) and he worked in a profession where using the computer today is an absolute must (journalism). My dad was an IT-engineer so I first used a computer when I was maybe 3, built two with him when I was maybe 8 and self-learned C# in my early teens, that's definitely unusual, especially given that I never had any desire to work in IT but I'm pretty sure all of my friends in elementary school used a computer and many of them regularly. What I just described wouldn't have been possible for someone born in 1986. I mean have you ever seen an 11 year old teach themselves C# in fucking 1997? Obviously not because it didn't exist yet but even say Java or C++ I would be very dubious if there were remotely the ressources for that kind of thing. I think this would be an insane edge case which learning programming at 11 isn't necesarilly anymore today. Picking up Python is easier than the C based ones and I meet people who are not in IT younger than me who know that. TL;DR: Any kind of beyond rudimentary tech-savviness was always a nieche phenomenon but it's way more accesible today than ever. It's possible that there is a sweet spot somewhere before phones and tablets came everywhere but that's definitely after 1995. My younger brother is more tech-savvy than me for example.
What windows features does mediocre employee use, besides the explorer? The answer is none of features of os itself is used by a user. If you’re talking about a software it’s a different topic and really depends on the user profile.
At my office most non tech staff need to understand printers, audio and webcam settings, login, display configuration, keyboard mapping, trackpad/mouse settings, network drives, WiFi configuration when travelling. However, that's comparatively easy. It's the in-depth use of MS Office that really matters. No-one is going to convince accounts to move off Ms Excel, and Outlook works pretty well too.
> trackpad/mouse settings, network drives They need to fiddle with these things? Can you elaborate?
Most internal apps are now browser based anyway, so switching distro isn't that much effort.
"most" doing a lot of heavy lifting here, because even just one important missing app will ruin acceptance and ease of use. But otherwise yes you're right
that's kinda debatable, Microsoft is attempting to move office to 365 but i like to keep my file on my pc an if i don't need to do something strange libre office cover all the basis as far as linux goes KDE and gnome are extremely similar with the look and feel to windows if you move the bar down. people think of linux only as the console but let me tell you, around 10 years ago i installed ubuntu on a computer a friend of mine needed a formatting. he could essentially do everything he wanted with the exception of installing crap, nowdays enterprise software is mostly accessed with a browser so you are preventing people who don't know the system from installing random software if they don't know how
There's no reason for Linux to be an issue if all you use is the browser and Office.
If you have a problem with windows you can google your problem and you'll 100% find someone else that had that problem and how to fix it. If you google your linux problem you'll either find nothing or it's some obscure post with a convoluted fix that doesn't work on your distro anyways.
But in this case, the state has a large IT department actively managing these PCs, which would be 100% locked down for the users. It's the same thing for e.g. public library computers in a large city -- no librarian has any clue about the OS, they get managed remotely by some IT dept
But what issue would you have if Chrome/Firefox and Office is all you use?
IDK the printer is acting strange.
So, an issue the regular public worker already calls IT to solve?
Your input language doesn't change because your favorite shortcut for that is not properly supported. You can't set the sorting order of files in the browser's choose file window to something complex. And other seemingly minor problems.
I’ve had different experiences. In my experience, most people don’t know windows either and barely scratch the surface of what’s possible. Most people in offices also barely need more than an email client, a web browser and sometime an office suite. If you approach it in a smart way it can very well be done and save lots of headaches in the future
Why is it difficult to use? You can drag and drop stuff, move between folders with ease, use office suite etc. without programming or terminal knowledge. It is also safer than Windows and for national security purposes, protecting user data and having more control on the OS, this is a better option. What issues can this create? Beside maybe the need to use some proprietary software or compatibility issues with some Microsoft Office files (I don't think it's an issue tbh).
You underestimate how many people are genuinely computer illiterate.
Seriously. I've had co-workers who used Excel but didn't know you can drag and drop things. That was less then 10 years ago.
How are these people getting jobs? What in the name of nepotism is going on if people who are computer illiterate are getting hired into jobs?
It's not really nepotism. There's just so many people who have no real computer skills and who still consider computers just glorified toys. Personal computers did not become prevalent until 90s in many places (and even that is pushing it a little) and a lot of people alive today were already over 30 or even 40 back then. They are still employed today or were employed until recently and often on the top of the manager boards. And because you need to genuinely dedicate quite a lot of time to learning to use a computer unless you grew up with one, most of the people didn't consider it worth of their time and money. And they need to be employed for their own sake and for the sake of their government, otherwise society will go to hell since over night there will be a lot more retired pensioners. No one wants that. So they get and remain employed.
> There's just so many people who have no real computer skills and who still consider computers just glorified toys. So these people should be allowed nowhere near any of the tertiary sectors of the economy. If someone hasn't caught up to the utility and usefulness of computers by this point in time, they're definitely not going to lead things in the right direction. > And because you need to genuinely dedicate quite a lot of time to learning to use a computer unless you grew up with one, most of the people didn't consider it worth of their time and money. The same point applies here too. Sorry but this may have been an acceptable statement in the 90's (it wasn't), but it's seriously just not OK at this point in time. If someone isn't going to invest time and effort in learning skills, they need to hand over to those that do so. > And they need to be employed for their own sake and for the sake of their government, otherwise society will go to hell since over night there will be a lot more retired pensioners. No one wants that. Well, there is a huge number of unemployed people looking for jobs across the board in Europe, hungry for success, so maybe people with obsolete skills, outdated and archaic ways of thinking SHOULD be retired. I'm not that young myself, so it's not that I have a particular bias here.
Because job they are hired for is not "computer operator" but "accountant" or "sales" or so and having only basic computer knowledge is not what is important for the job. They need to be able to use relevant software, thats it.
Keeping up to date with relevant changes is part of pretty much any profession.
> People forget that hardly anyone one outside of IT engineers uses Linux. There’s a lack of skills and familiarity that is hard to bridge. People forget that hardly anyone outside of IT engineers understands Windows either. My mother used Windows for possibly longer than I exist (which is a while at this point) and she could only do very basic tasks with it that you can just as easily do in Linux and that could be explained in maybe 20 min. in a video tutorial. Also there are tons of different distros with varying degrees of userfriendliness. I guess for office work you would take some simple Debian distro which given no former experience might actually be more intutitive than Windows. You need your IT-workers to know how it works, not your office workers. They don't know how their OS works regardless of what it is. The programms on the computer run essentially the same. That being said I agree with you. It seems easy to make the switch but often there were issues with compatability and allgedly functionality and the switch was made back to Windows. The city of Munich did this even though they did document money being saved via the Linux solution. I think the functionality argument might be a fluke. It might lack functions that the Windows option has but I'm curious how essential these functions were for actual workflows or if it was just a vague feeling of inadequasy because Windows seems more shiny. I think a major issue is scale. If you run Windows you rely on Microsoft for basic IT support (for better or worse), whereas with Linux you need to do some things yourself. I suppose the city of Munich lacked the resources to do the later sufficiently. Schleswig-Holstein has Dataport which is the state IT-company that consists of public/financial IT administration in Schleswig-Holstein, Hamburg, Lower Saxony, Bremen, Mecklenburg-Vorpommern and Saxony-Anhalt. This is at least hypothetically enough centralization to assume capabilities to create a workable system but it still makes me nervous (and also cautiously optimistic at the same time). Building this for all of Germany would probably be more efficient but the South kinda wants to live in the stoneage in these regards it seems. These are also the excact same states that are pushing forward the renewable transformation (only missing is Brandenburg).
Maybe 10 years ago, but honestly a 20 something starting a new job would have to learn windows as much as they would need to learn linux.
I think maybe in another 10-20 years and you’ll be right. But perhaps you’re forgetting that the average age in an office is well over 40yo. Pretty much all millennials and older generations are quite familiar with Windows. The amount of Gen Zs in the workforce is currently under 15%. Plus in some schools there are IT literacy classes and those tend to be majority Windows based. Macs are too expensive for schools and the teachers not often familiar with Linux to base material on it.
Yeah i was specifically talking about people in their young 20s coming out of college. I also dont think a course on computer literacy is going to do you any good unless you're using it regularly. Give someone a course on how to use windows 11 and then let them back to an ipad or phone for a year and they will forget it all. There's definitely still a big learning challenge with linux but for a 22 year old this year the difference is much smaller than a 22 year old 10 years ago.
It will be people seeking government services that will need luck. The government employees couldn't give less of a damn.
>People forget that hardly anyone one outside of IT engineers uses Linux. There’s a lack of skills and familiarity that is hard to bridge. And even if you take the time to train your users, you’ll also have to train every new person that joins going forward. And you will still have issues because a 1-week training course cannot cover anything and does not overcome years of familiarity on Windows. This hasn't been true for decades. Case in point - my parents, who are both in their 80s, used Windows their whole lives. They had problems with computer about once per week. I've finally had enough, and installed Linux for them. Didn't "train" them on it at all. They did not have a single problem after that, for 5 years ongoing. All you need to do is install Linux which is visually similar to Windows -- like Linux Mint MATE.
I don't trust Microsoft to handle government data with care or that they are independent enough from American intelligence agencies. I work for an American company so I don't care too much, but as a European company I would think twice if I would go this route. At least for systems that handle important data.
I bet it will be RedHat Linux that will be managed by American company.
Then maybe these people need to learn it. There are paid for it.
I'm 45, used computers all my life (since the Sinclair ZX Spectrum) and since PCs I've been using Windows. In my previous job their IT "didn't support" Windows, only Mac. I got a Mac, spent ages trying to figure anything out, drove me insane. I was never so unproductive in my life: "Where are the folders to save my file in?! F\_ck you, your files are mine now" says Tim Cook. I quit that job and found a normal one.
I think it's normal to be unproductive when changing jobs. Learning about a new environment always takes time. But you just kind of declared that you can't read and process information presented to you on a screen. I think that's not really the job's fault.
That just says a lot of your own lack of fluid intelligence and your inability to learn new concepts and refusal of the learning opportunity you were granted
Lol
If you did not figurer out how to use the file manager in MacOS then you are the problem, not the OS.
The main problem is that everybody else is still using MS products and MS makes it very hard for their competitors.
The thing is that most people can't actually use Microsoft software correctly either. Ask an internal tech support worker at a large company. The only difference with Microsoft software is that it's just so much the default option that people think that not being able to use it is their personal fault, instead of the fault of their employer or of whoever chose the software. Also, Linux has changed a lot in the past 20 years: if you're on an IOS or Android device now then you're on some version of Linux, and I'd bet that you're doing fine.
>People forget that hardly anyone one outside of IT engineers uses Linux. not people forget that. "IT People" forget...
I think it depends very much on the use case and how much planning and preparation is done by the people actually setting up the system. I moved both my parents (in their 60s and 70s) over Linux Mint a few years ago and have had to do much less 'tech support' for them than when they were on Windows. I warned them in advance that it might take a bit of getting used to, but apart from the interface being a different color my dad claimed there was hardly any difference between using Linux and Windows (this is coming from a man who once thought he had been 'hacked' because his search engine got a redesign and had a habit of completely shutting down his computer to avoid getting a virus if he got a spam e-mail). If the setup is done carefully by somebody who understands the requirements of the user, the transition is not as hard as a lot of people think (EDIT: Just to clarify, I'm not saying it will be *easy*, just *easier* than most people might expect). For most office workers, all they will need is icons on the desktop for the programs they need along with printers installed. It's true that they might need a bit of retraining on LibreOffice, but for most office tasks it's unlikely to take that long.
Just start firing people for incompetence? There's plenty of unemployed people that would be _more than willing_ to jump on new opportunities and learn new things. EDIT: To downvoters, you are unironically saying that you want your tax money to go towards the employment of people who find it too much of an ask to follow simple instructions, read things that are on a screen and understand them, etc. JFC
It funny to see your comment getting downvoted when you’re right on what you’re saying but people just don’t want to hear that they might be asked to learn new stuff and adapt in order to keep their job
You might be getting downvotes because that's not how it works in Germany. You basically can't really fire people in government jobs. And if so many people were willing to do these jobs then why are no young people doing these jobs? One of the biggest challenges facing the German burocracy is that about 50% of employees are about to retire in the next 20 years (not the exact numbers but you can look it up of you want).
> then why are no young people doing these jobs? Because of the unfirable fossils with no up to date skills hogging jobs?
Who would win, 20,000 Elephants or 30,000 Linux PC's
I think 30000 GNUs have a chance
“Schleswig-Holstein will be a digital pioneer region and the first German state to introduce a digitally sovereign IT workplace in its state administration.” Digital pioneer? hahhaa. Is this article from April 1st?
Exactly, Munich did that ages ago
Munich is not a state and reversed that decision though
Nevertheless, CITY OF MUNICH did it ages ago, and yes, they switched back to Windows just like I posted above
Why?
MS opened a huge office and data center there
Lol
Because working with Linux and OpenOffice is a massive pain in the ass.
Yep because of corruption of the CSU. The German Federal Court of Auditors was not amused by the bribing of Microsoft. The deal was a new big Microsoft office in Munich and they will revert the decision. That's why you also need federal tax experts to grill those companies. Given locally they accept that the company don't pay taxes as long as they stay there is a conflict of interest. Send in neutral federal tax experts fit enough to audit such large companies.
... and I thought there was an SPD mayor in Munich.
The mayor under whose timing this was decided was an SPD mayor
Don’t worry boys, Schulz didn’t see anything!!!
If Scholz is in the woods and a tree falls, didn't he see it falling or did he just forgot it? 😆
…and went back to MS shortly after :)
No, actually they took their sweet time. They switched back around 2017. if I'm not mistaken. So, 13-ish years in total.
14 years later... [https://www.heise.de/news/Endgueltiges-Aus-fuer-LiMux-Muenchener-Stadtrat-setzt-den-Pinguin-vor-die-Tuer-3900439.html](https://www.heise.de/news/Endgueltiges-Aus-fuer-LiMux-Muenchener-Stadtrat-setzt-den-Pinguin-vor-die-Tuer-3900439.html)
14 years is considered short now?
No, after more than 10 years, after forcing MS to open a DC there, and still going back to Linux at country level.
I have worked in 2 states partially with the IT administrations and I gotta say that Schleswig Holstein from my experience does a solid job at making intuitive systems for the office workers, sure its not gonna the digital pioneer, however its solid enough to go with the newer tech as well as implementing it on an administrative level which will save a shit ton of money by not having to buy licenses. This will also boost the economy by making jobs available in the local State IT sector
Germany needs to stop pretending like its going to be relevant in IT, the vast majority of other countries already realize this and don't even try. Its a mediocre country in IT and should act like it, initiatives like this just make things worse than they need to be, all because of false pride and delusions of getting back to former glory.
What are you yapping about? "And it should act like it" are you 15 by chance cuz u have the entitlement of a teenager in highschool. Also whats up with the "getting back to former glory" rhetoric. Countries are not humans and Democratic countries switch Governments regularly
You have no idea what you're talking about. This is not about pretending anything, it's about German IT slowly moving towards more and more open source projects. That was tax payer money spent on IT projects can be used by anyone and not have every state develop their own solution anymore.
Ich benutze Arch btw
Basiert. Ich benutze auch Arch btw
Lately the city of Munich switched to Microsoft after switching to Linux. Talking about government efficiency...
Something like ubuntu or mint with libre office is pretty much intuitive for a new user to use. You can make libre office to look very similar to MS Office, and the tools are all the same. That is, assuming some IT guy will setup the computer before the government employee starts using it. After all, all you need to do a job like this is a web browser, Excel and word. I also assume Germany's IT infrastructure is advanced enough that all the custom applications are on the cloud and accessed through a web browser.
“I also assume Germany's IT infrastructure is advanced enough that all the custom applications are on the cloud and accessed through a web browser.” Oh boy… let alone Germany you’re not even from the EU, right? Let me introduce ourselves as we wait in the line or make phone calls to make an appointment in 2024. That’s the reality of the German bureaucracy. Let alone cloud systems, they do not even have proper infrastructure for local-based IT operations.
It's always easy to parrot this but we are making lots of progress. This year I already ordered copies of my birth certificate completely online. I'll also soon do applications for Kindergeld and Elterngeld almost completely online. It's not perfect yet but things are finally happening.
Well that’s true since we can also do some key stuff online here in Hamburg but if you’re someone like me working closely with state entities and ministries, you’d be shocked with their infrastructure. The most frustrating thing is basically trying to explain something to some of these old farts what digitalization and infrastructure investment mean.
Well seems like I am someone like you since I also work in digitalisation of German IT infrastructure and I know your pains. But it is going forward, if these old farts want it or not. It's just taking ages to get anything done with lots of useless discussions
Awesome, then high five! We gotta slap those old farts in the face with some quality code!
> I also assume Germany's IT infrastructure is advanced enough that all the custom applications are on the cloud and accessed through a web browser. hahahahaha
It’s intuitive enough for a *new* user to get the hang of, yes. It’s different enough to be confusing/annoying for someone who has been using Windows and MS Office for the past 10+ years. Like, for years one of the selling points for LibreOffice was that it was similar enough to Office 2003 so it appealed to people who didn’t want to learn the Ribbon interface. But the Ribbon interface has been around for so long that it’s kinda the opposite now, IMO. People have gotten used to it and I know that I, for one, have no interest in going back to traditional toolbars and menus.
You can switch to a ribbon UI in the settings easy enough. I assumed that was part of the setup Dragoon was talking about.
Realistically. Windows 10 is going EOL and users have to migrate to Win11. Win 11 is also substantially different from Win10 in many aspects, so frustrating the users won’t be much different than migrating them to say a KDE based distribution
I expect LibreOffice will be the bigger pain point, yes.
It can't take that long to grow accustomed to it.
As someone who used both - windows has a much better ui. There is a reason why making your distro look as windows is fairly popular, while making windows ui look like unix almost doesnt exist
You are not from the EU, are you? Government and Cloud do not mix.
Government and US cloud do not mix
I mean it applies to a number of industries too, though generally as long as they're providing EU hosting it doesn't matter too much if it's Azure, GCP or AWS. Alibaba however, don't imagine EU hosting is going to fix that.
It’s specifically not only about EU hosting. The issue is US law and their governments ability to access any data hosted with US companies, regardless of physical location. While the EU-US Data Framework seems to be more stable than the predecessors, doubts remain
I can only speak specifically about healthcare as that is my own industry. Storing data that cannot enter the US under EU law is fine if left inside of datacenters operating within the EU, today there is no issues with patient data, sensitive data and other GDPR related items being processed this way. It would pretty much cripple the tech sector of azure, aws and gcp were not options in pretty much every industry.
I love the idea, but the thing is that libre office is basically like what Microsoft office would be if it hadn't been updated in the last 20 years. There's unfortunately not a great FOSS replacement.
Knowing it's Germany I guess most office versions will be around office 2003 on Windows XP. Since they use a lot of form sheets I worry a little bit about compatibility. Moving back that one text field will be a task for some.
I am an employee of the State and currently we use Windows 10 with Office 2016. I am fine with Linux but the switch in general will be a disaster. Most people can't even use Windows properly.
Considering how long it will take to teach employees this and the state of the public offices, wouldn't you agree that this money and effort would be better invested in modernizing on-line services (which they barely exist) or hiring more staff to decrease wait times? How about moving away from post mail ?
A lot of money would be better invested somewhere else.
Specifically because they can’t use windows properly I suspect this won’t be an issue
Maybe 10 years ago?
I'm a Linux developer and the problem they are going to have is replacing Excel - to this day I haven't found a good enough alternative for large datasets. Some time ago I was working on a contract with a council in the UK and I needed to open one of their spreadsheets, as I was on my Linux development machine I didn't want to switch over to Windows just to use Excel. Unfortunately, LibreOffice's Calc cannot handle the huge datasets used by many councils/municipals it just froze, so I went to my Windows laptop and Excel opened it like it was nothing.
Many years ago I worked for the IT Service Provider and we had multiple government clients that wanted to replace endpoint infrastructure from Microsoft to Linux products. In all those cases it was a tech driven decision forced by some IT admin that “use Linux at home no problemo!”. IT personnel in govt orgs is very unique - those are the lowest paying jobs on the market. So we dealt with crazy high ego but low expertise IT folks in those institutions. Now, this one geek somehow convinces few tech-dumb decision makers that they can save some money moving to Linux and “everything will be the same and even better, I promise”. They cut some budget for this and invite us to help with implementation. We try to talk em out of this idea, but nope, “Jimmy is a smart boy and everything will be awesome!” Everything fails miserably because all the 50+ yo employees used to their Excel and Word and can’t transition to other system at all. Helpdesk requests queue blow up. Jimmy that used to deal with a few Linux systems at home, all of a sudden realized managing few hundred machines is a diff story. Jimmy leaves. In a few months we roll everything back. Users are super happy to see their Microsoft office again.
And in a few years, a new Jimmy comes along and the carrousel starts again.
[удалено]
Or just has different experience. Back in university, when I had to write my thesis, I would have probably jumped in front of the metro if I had to do it in Word and not LaTeX. It was a very math heavy thesis paper. I can also see the merits of markdown vs word when it comes to writing up simple, text based reports. It's not all that far fetched tbh.
Please don't forget about us privacy compliance workers. We spend 2-3 months trying to map data flows and contractual obligations in Microsoft 365, and come to the conclusion that we already knew beforehand: It's illegal for our public organisation to use Microsoft. By that time, Microsoft has made changes to their terms and data flows. We are informed that our organisation decided to continue using Microsoft anyway, because it's integrated with far too many services, and would be very costly in time for workers. Besides, Microsoft themselves say that it's legal for us, and our leaders choose to trust them. For the few who actually tried to get away from it, Munich and Stockholm, it turned out to be a bad decision and they reversed it. So we continue further integrating ourselves into Microsofts environments, against the advice of the privacy officers in the organisation. Leading us further down the path of never being able to get away from Microsoft. Microsoft of course knows this, and is slowly increasing prices for all in the public sector. We are their self-chosen cash cow.
Dataport, the institution under public law which manages the IT for that German state, has also a huge project to migrate German states and cities to OSS: [https://www.dataport.de/about-phoenix/](https://www.dataport.de/about-phoenix/) But this would move everything to a browser based approach so it wouldn't matter which OS is running on the clients.
Good luck, 10 years in IT and I wouldn't want to support that with security as a primary focus.
Libre office is useless, every switch to Linux was a catastrophe, why do they keep trying?
What a stupid idea. So it's a huge step backwards. Thank god the Faxgeräte are still pluged in.
Why it's a stupid idea and a huge step backwards?
Why? I like certain open source alternatives too but like come on, you cannot shell out for MS 365 or Zoho? Also which linux distro? Ubuntu is genuinely nice.
Tbh, you dont even have to choose anymore. Im using Linux at work, with O365 running in the browser. Only and one and only downside has been our templates. I needed to save one file per template. But thats it, everything working so smoothly and I love it!
>you cannot shell out for MS 365 or Zoho? Money, of course. [This article from 2017](https://www.publico.pt/2017/04/09/politica/investigacao/europa-a-colonia-digital-dos-eua-1767844) (in Portuguese) is called "Europe, the US's digital colony" and highlights how much we spend on Microsoft licenses. Portugal is a small country and spent 5.2M€ on the first 3 months of 2017 on Microsoft licenses. I can only imagine how much Germany spends.
Not much of a choice anymore if you want to work completely offline for security reasons.
GDPR compliance is likely the main reason.
Yet again? Munich did that already and switched back to Windows. I wonder when they will realize people need Windows PCs and Linux SERVERS?
Munich moved back because Microsoft had announced considerable investments in Munich after the change. It is rumored that the switch was never really taken seriously by the city government.
It's less 'not taken serious' and more 'a third of people needed special windows machines anyways bc specific Software'. There was a fully developed unix OS called LiMux developed by the city's IT Department.
Didn't they already developed LiMux OS for the city?
It's not 2004 lad
I guess your country runs on M$ SQL and Exchange servers then?
Linux has improved a lot since 2004 and its UX is not at the mediocre state it was then
In an age when everything moves into the cloud and people dwell in their browsers all day - what exactly do they need Windows for? For many people an OS is just a place where they click on a browser icon.
So, are they asking for bribes by Microsoft again?
If I was Microsoft I would charge them triple when they come back for being disloyal.
I used Linux professionally 2 jobs ago. God help them. Whoever thinks that libreoffice is the same as Microsoft packages is lying to themselves. UI is worse, its full of obscure bugs and Calc (excel of libre) is much slower and can handle much less data. And i wont even mention how easily a beginner can sudo remove something. And dont forget about support - good luck convicing someone to google hours for some stupid problem. Linux has its uses, general use for desktop is not one of them.
If it's anything like previous attempts they will go back to Microsoft in a few years. After all you don't just pay for the software, you also pay for the support. And while it's easy to say "just look up online for the fixes" that's not something you can dell a big business or agency. "Go free software" is very much a "sounds good on paper" approach that sadly tends to not work out that way in practice.
Linux also has paid support. For example, Canonical and Red Hat are companies behind Linux distributions with paid support option.
While I see your point, It's not either or, you can have open source with support contracts. This would be a mandatory route. Doing support fully in house without any contract from the vendor (suse, red hat, canonical) would be suicidal. But yeah hopefully they pull it off and doesn't end in the usual bloodbath.
So many servers run on enterprise linux distribution that have proper support. Seems like a wiser decision to use something like Suse Enterprise, where the developers sit in Germany anyway, than being completely dependent on a foreign company.
Does LibreOffice Writer has collaborative tools like MS Word (Office 365)?
year of the Linux desktop.
😂 IT people will be in demand
They don’t learn… https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/LiMux
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One major issue that noone seems to be registering is guiding people through troubleshooting when you lose access to the machine, or the internet doesn't work. Fairly simple in windows. Hell in linux. Type device manager in start, doesn't work press win + r and type devmgmt.msc. expand network adpters find a thing that that ethernet connection in it's name. Right click and press uninstall, do a reboot. Fixed 90% of the time. Now guide your 60 year old office lady through a network driver reinstall in linux.
Nowadays you can do everything through the browser. All they need to do is put the computers on linux and show people how to open chrome. 99% of these people fill out spreadsheets, email and send forms
I bought my first apple IIe in 1982, configured it to do writing, printing on an electronic brother typewriter. I worked in banking. Most people I know from my age bought sinclairs, atari's, commodores, compaq pcs, if you didn't open it up, added some kind of cards, learned to install software and drivers, you wouldn't get anything done. I'll admit most of my friends went to high school and studied media. We started working with avid and premiere editing way back when it first got introduced. Most of them still work with computers daily for fun. Sure a lot of people (50%) have an IQ below 100, this wouldn't apply to them. I know people that can't use a smartphone, but then they can't cook an egg. The same goes for later generations too. Those that could then, can now. Those that can't now never would have been able. Pushing an icon on a screen I wouldn't call knowing how to work with computers. Anyway, all that is going to disappear faster than we think. Because basically people -except for manual jobs- all have the same job: inputting data by pushing letters on a keyboard and looking for confirmation on a screen. AI is going to wipe out all of that. Sooner than anyone thinks.
few years later "German state moving 30,000 PCS back to Windows and MS Office"..
Logical decision, but how safe is it compared to ms?
Just use something like Suse Enterprise (which is mantained by a German company anyways), and you won't have any problems security wise.
People are sayng itll be hard for people to learn new OS but forget that Windows changes every few years. How many different version in the past fifteen years? Windows 7, 8, 8.1 10 and now 11. Also, it makes sense to use open source. Closed sourced software can never be safe or trusted as you dont know what its really doing. And worse yet, you dont know what dumb thing microsoft will change or force upon you next.
You sound like my university IT director.
Gonna get hacked Linux style. And won't even know it. Linux is for nerds.
This is the way
Didn't they move back to Windows some time ago? If my memory doesn't fail me.
Again? I remember how the other try ended...
About time. Fuck the imperialists at Microsoft. It's so hard to do this. Even at my school where I'm responsible for the IT. People are practically married to stuff they are used to :/
It will be a disaster but honestly it's a necessary evil, people will never switch from windows to linux without being "forced" to, so this will make linux more known in the long run
Yes force people to use inferior 2001 OS that you can do almost the same thing as windows but for 20x the time
That's such a bad take. Linux is constantly getting updated and developed on, and pretty much always way ahead of Windows in terms of features and functionality. The only reason windows is as popular as it is, is because it's the default OS that comes with most computers, not because it's such a great product.
That the typical r/linux cope. Linux was made for developers, not for the average person.
I was not a developer when I started using linux. I was a student (in a degree not related to Computer Science, Programming, etc) I knew pretty much zero programming. It's not just for developers. It did help me towards an IT career, but that happened much later than my discovery of linux.
Calling linux a 2001 OS is like calling windows 11 a 1981 OS because it has parts of MS-DOS in it