they will save 188,000 € on Microsoft license fees per year

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[–] 241 points 1 year ago* (11 children)

Fingers crossed that this will be an indisputable success. 🤞
Allegedly a similar project in Munich went really really well, but was shut down when the right wing came into power.
For some reason the right wing of Munich doesn't like freedom. 🙄

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    [–] 126 points 1 year ago (2 children)

    This is the sort of adoption we need to bring Linux into the mainstream

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  • [–] 35 points 1 year ago (1 child)

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

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

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  • [–] 18 points 1 year ago

    Blender got ported to Linux in 1998, to Windows in 1999. The modal interface and key command language is no accident, it literally is a 3d vi.

    Linux is generally strong when it comes to 3d graphics workstations, it inherited IRIX' market share, plenty of artists around, especially in the film industry, who'd go on a strike if you took away dragging windows with alt+LMB. Graphics, that is, CAD is dominated by Windows as CAD started out as 2d sketch software which ran on cheap DOS machines.

    Houdini is also Unix-native and Blender's only surviving competitor (considered by features, not industry inertia), Maya started out as cross-platform IRIX+Windows.

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  • [–] 99 points 1 year ago

    Microsoft blocking email access to the ICJ director may be the best thing to happen for Linux adoption since the SteamDeck. Now every Microsoft lobbyst can be asked what would happen is the US government order Microsoft to block them out of their infrastructure.

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  • [–] 78 points 1 year ago (18 children)

    It's gonna be a rough few months for the IT department

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  • [–] 85 points 1 year ago (15 children)

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

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  • [–] 47 points 1 year ago (11 children)

    Assuming the IT staff isn't comprised of a bunch of junior techs that only know the Microsoft suite and not the actual inner workings of how email and Linux works.

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  • [–] 16 points 1 year ago (2 children)

    I feel like most of the items aren't going to be real troubleshooting.

    It's been a good bit since I worked the support desk, but even with generic microsoft updates, most of the 'questions' were basically the worst users finding a way to say 'It used to be this and I want it to be this way, hold my hand for an hour while telling me its not this way anymore until I get tired and then complain to someone else'.

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  • [–] 65 points 1 year ago (6 children)

    Just wait for Microsoft to start astroturfing the initiative.

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    [–] 61 points 1 year ago

    Let's hope it sticks when Microsoft backs up the money truck.

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  • [–] 52 points 1 year ago (3 children)

    It would be nice to see the European governments start a genuine effort on funding open source development, and start laying the foundation for a migration to their own Linux distro. Microsoft isn't trustworthy. Hell, most American big tech is untrustworthy. Moving your government offices to an in house developed OS is going to be paramount for their security in the future.

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    [–] 49 points 1 year ago (2 children)

    Germany has done this multiple times before. Microsoft has historically swept in with some sweetheart deal to lure them back.

    Hopefully it sticks this time.

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    [–] 47 points 1 year ago (3 children)

    I switched to Thunderbird about a year and a half ago.

    Last week I had to help a coworker with their Outlook and holy shit is it so much worse than when I dropped it. There is so much AI garbage in every little thing and bad design getting in the way of just sending and receiving emails.

    Same thing for the other office products

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  • [–] 43 points 1 year ago (29 children)

    LibreOffice is a great alternative for 99% of people, but there is that 1% of people who is gonna be disappointment. This is a great step though.

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    [–] 40 points 1 year ago (18 children)
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    [–] 39 points 1 year ago (15 children)

    I can't see a reason why Linux distro wouldn't be enough for 99% of office machines. Unless deployment is really that much better and easier with Windows and MS Office. And whatever proprietary apps they use that need running on certain OS.

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  • [–] 16 points 1 year ago (4 children)

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

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

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    [–] 38 points 1 year ago (18 children)

    If the trend continues then maybe the hacker community will start focusing on Linux. Can you imagine "I don't need a virus scanner, I use Windows, the under dog OS"

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    [–] 37 points 1 year ago (8 children)

    I sometimes wonder what if everyone who spends money on licensing fees instead takes the same amount of money and puts it into FOSS. Imagine what we could achieve? Likely the money would be used more efficiently because they could donate it to non-profit companies which don't need to pay tax.

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    [–] 27 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    Would love to see further movements towards foss software in many other governments

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    [–] 26 points 1 year ago

    This is great! I hope it succeeds, and shows others that it is possible.

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  • [–] 25 points 1 year ago

    LETS GOOOOO

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  • [–] 24 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    it is just step 1

    we will get rid of all closed source shit.

    weak bavarians failed after successfull transistion to "LiMux" (their linux fork) they got bribed with 8k M$ jobs in munich.

    but not the state of schleswig-holstein! we will prevail.

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    [–] 22 points 1 year ago (19 children)

    Holy fuck, that's the clearest sign for war prepararion ive seen from Europe yet, they don't want the US in their computers.

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    [–] 17 points 1 year ago

    Lie to me once Microsoft shame on you, lie to me twice shame on me.

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  • [–] 17 points 1 year ago (15 children)

    I admire the plan, but I doubt the public sector is going to completely acclimate to Linux. The average age of an employee in the public sector is something like 40+.

    You might get lucky and get them to use one new program like LibreOffice, but there's no way you're going to completely revamp every desktop PC to Linux. I work in this field, and while everyone has been nice and friendly, they (and the entire system around them) are also hugely resistant to digital change. If they ever make the move to a Linux Desktop environment, the IT support will go through hell.

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  • [–] 19 points 1 year ago (4 children)

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

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

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  • [–] 17 points 1 year ago

    Eh, I don't know. I've worked developing software for the administration and their computer use is just the applications (web or native) they had built to perform their tasks. The OS is very irrelevant to them, some orgs even had shortcuts to these native programs put in their intranet, back in the days of java applets.

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    [–] 17 points 1 year ago (22 children)

    That sounds like a ridiculously lowballed amount. Also, working with open source tools should increase productivity and decrease brainrot among workers in the public sector. Using Microshit kills brain cells. Not even joking, I actually think it makes users fucking dumb.

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