866
submitted 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

At a time of growing concern over the power of the world's mighty tech companies, one German state is turning its back on US giant Microsoft.

In less than three months' time, almost no civil servant, police officer or judge in Schleswig-Holstein will be using any of Microsoft's ubiquitous programs at work.

top 50 comments
sorted by: hot top new old
[-] [email protected] 150 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

The whole article is a good read but this is the important bit:

Instead, the northern state will turn to open-source software to "take back control" over data storage and ensure "digital sovereignty", its digitalisation minister, Dirk Schroedter, told AFP.

They also blame Trump which is pretty hilarious but probably not terribly relevant to the community.

[-] [email protected] 91 points 1 month ago

Trump's executive order forced Microsoft to disable access for ICC's Chief Prosecutor. So, in a sense, Trump is indeed a threat to digital sovereignty.

[-] [email protected] 44 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

Oh, he is a threat to all types of sovereignty, in every sense.

[-] [email protected] 39 points 1 month ago

THE HAGUE, Netherlands (AP) — The International Criminal Court’s chief prosecutor has lost access to his email, and his bank accounts have been frozen.

https://www.pbs.org/newshour/world/trumps-sanctions-on-iccs-chief-prosecutor-have-halted-tribunals-work-officials-and-lawyers-say

[-] [email protected] 54 points 1 month ago

That includes Windows, right?

Right?

[-] [email protected] 90 points 1 month ago
[-] [email protected] 58 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

Linux is great for government work.

They dont need compatibility as much. They have their systems only they use, therefore they can easily make them on Linux or emulate.

Otherwise they need a office suite like Libre.

And there's money to save. Benefits the whole country.

[-] [email protected] 38 points 1 month ago

They have their systems only they use, therefore they can easily make them on Linux or emulate.

Also, a lot of systems are web-based (and therefore automatically multi-platform) these days.

[-] [email protected] 22 points 1 month ago

Don't forget, most computers are faster on Linux than on the newest windows version, so you can hold off on upgrades for longer if the hardware is physically fine, which just further decreases costs.

[-] [email protected] 14 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

I have a Dell laptop from 2013 I'm running Mint on 🫡

Granted, I'm only using it for web browsing and note taking, but still.

load more comments (1 replies)
[-] [email protected] 12 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

and therefore automatically multi-platform

But not necessarily multibrowser.

Damn those people developing only for Chrome.

load more comments (1 replies)
[-] [email protected] 6 points 1 month ago

And gamers are looking to SteamOS to replace windows.

[-] [email protected] 10 points 1 month ago

SteamOS is not a good desktop distribution, which isn't surprising as it's not supposed to be one. It's specialised for handhelds.

Go install Ubuntu or something, really anything, ideally don't have an Nvidia GPU, install steam, done. SteamOS has no special sauce regarding running games.

load more comments (1 replies)
load more comments (1 replies)
[-] [email protected] 15 points 1 month ago

Es ist wirklich das Jahr des Linux-Desktops

load more comments (1 replies)
[-] [email protected] 46 points 1 month ago

YEAR OF THE LINUX DESKTOP!

[-] [email protected] 30 points 1 month ago
[-] [email protected] 9 points 1 month ago

Yes, but only in Europe, and no Americans are allowed. 😕

load more comments (1 replies)
[-] [email protected] 33 points 1 month ago

I get it! It’s a fucking terrible program. At the moment I’ve got two instances of it running, one old and one new. Why the fuck? Why doesn’t all the old things transfer to the new one?

It’s also a joke to maneuver. The different subjects have “hidden” subcategories that aren’t supposed to be hidden but are! So you have two extra clicks to find the folder.. it’s a giant fucking joke that a company the size of MS can’t make this tolerable.

load more comments (3 replies)
[-] [email protected] 31 points 1 month ago

I never understood how a huge government can't be bothered to host their own nextcloud or whatever for a couple dozen mil per year instead of spending hundreds of millions per year on onedrive and other commercial crap.

[-] [email protected] 20 points 1 month ago

Legal liability for when the service, inevitably, gets breached. If the government hosts it, they're liable. If the vendor hosts it, the vendor is liable. Simple as money matters.

[-] [email protected] 6 points 1 month ago

So they could just use a service offered by (checks notes) T-Systems, Siemens, Lufthansa Systems, SAP, TeamViewer AG,... what's that? In all these years these companies were relying on US service providers as well, instead of innovating? Well that sucks.

load more comments (1 replies)
load more comments (2 replies)
[-] [email protected] 22 points 1 month ago

I'm stuck with Teams in my job.

I fucking hate it.

[-] [email protected] 8 points 1 month ago

It crashes, it loses things, it has a lousy search function, to automate messaging you need to learn one of the arcane and convoluted MS services because they deprecated the much easier webhooks...

When something fails (and it always does) we just say "Well... it's Teams", and that sums it up.

[-] [email protected] 6 points 1 month ago

Same. I've come to terms using it in browser mode on Edge, same for Outlook. The desktop applications are so horrific, I uninstalled both. Half the time they wouldn't work or force log me out.

Now I literally have a standalone screen that's showing nothing but Edge with those two tabs on, and all my productive environment is on a nice large screen where I don't have to see the crap.

load more comments (2 replies)
[-] [email protected] 20 points 1 month ago

I'm definitely in the minority, but i really never had or have any issues with Windows or Teams like everyone seems to complain so much about. With that said, I absolutely love that they are making this move. As someone who works in the area and sees the pricing and how much our company spends on Microsoft I find it appalling and absurd that anyone is willing to spend that much on licensing... I wish I could work on a project like this just to see what the savings could be overall.

[-] [email protected] 8 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

The worst part for teams is if you do contract work and need to be a part of multiple teams instances... It's a MASSIVE fucking pain. Microsoft's login processes are absolute infuriating and even more so if you have to log in to multiple different accounts that all somehow have the same email address but different tenants without letting you know which account version is for which tenant.

We had to use slack for our internal stuff so we could always be in contact with each other because you could only be signed into one teams instance at a time without jumping through crazy hoops.

I initially wanted us to move to teams but that hurdle stopped us. I'm kinda glad in hindsight.

[-] [email protected] 7 points 1 month ago

Used Teams for a bit. Seemed fine, just used it like any other IRC clone. Didn't use it for video. Windows has a lot of annoyances; death by a thousand cuts. The Windows ecosystem also sucks: to the point where graphic card and mouse driver installers try to install spyware.

[-] [email protected] 18 points 1 month ago
[-] [email protected] 16 points 1 month ago

Why would we uninstall France?

[-] [email protected] 11 points 1 month ago

Why would we uninstall France?

🤔

German state hits uninstall on France

😅

[-] [email protected] 12 points 1 month ago

Aren't French authorities quite ahed on FOSS adoption in their platform? I.e. https://lasuite.numerique.gouv.fr/en

[-] [email protected] 9 points 1 month ago

even the most sensitive information are collected through Microsoft and government sites use adobe too 🤷 Windows is the OS in almost all government computers.

not to forget all the WhatsApp use for official communication

facebook and xitter accounts of most government offices are still active

load more comments (1 replies)
load more comments (1 replies)
[-] [email protected] 13 points 1 month ago

You love to see it.

[-] [email protected] 12 points 1 month ago

Working with information today could be hundreds of times better if there were serious open standards. Switching away from outdated proprietary junk, to an open source version of that junk is great, but late. And, let's hope, its the start of real change. To catch up to where we should have been decades ago if we hadn't been held back by lazy MS et al. Digital information should zip between people and have real meaning. Not have to go through a thick layer of IT, and files and formats, and redundant copies, and silos and having to know tech to get things done. Peoples expectations are so low, they are satisfied with the crap we have today.

[-] [email protected] 12 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

hadn’t been held back by lazy MS et al.

MS is not lazy but working hard to maintain their lead.

edit: Just noticed that my phrasing is bad and could be seen as praise. OP is right, MS is holding everybody back.

I meant to say that they abuse their market domination to maintain their lead.

Look at MS Teams. It was free until Slack was done as a competitor.

MS did things but that's inevitable. The crucial part are the things that they prevented.

It's increadible that OP is even downvoted.

[-] [email protected] 6 points 1 month ago

You’re way off here. Microsoft are the industry leaders in this space because they’re so far ahead of everyone else because they focus on this stuff. They’re far from lazy, they’re the opposite in fact. As someone who manages the whole MS suite from entra to dev ops all the way to managed instance dbs and defender and everything in between daily, their integration across everything and their pace of updates is insane.

What products specifically are you calling “outdated junk” and why?

[-] [email protected] 7 points 1 month ago

I can also explain Microsoft's straglehold on enterprise/government/institutional IT in two words: Group Policy. Nothing - absolutely nothing - from any other OS maker comes close to the granular level of configurability, customisation and flexibility that comes with Group Policy, not even ChromeOS or iOS.

load more comments (18 replies)
[-] [email protected] 9 points 1 month ago

I didn't see what exactly they're using for a Teams replacement?

load more comments (4 replies)
[-] [email protected] 9 points 1 month ago

It was barely tolerable, then they gated proper noise cancellation behind some AI privacy destroying BS. Excellent choice, fu Microsoft

[-] [email protected] 6 points 1 month ago

Teams is just an incomprehensible version of Discord. What's the open source version of that? Matrix?

[-] [email protected] 12 points 1 month ago

Incomprehensible? How? It’s got team/channel chats, private chats, and meetings. What makes it stand out is, like everything else MS does, the integration across all their services.

It definitely needs some improvement, but “incomprehensible” it isn’t.

load more comments (1 replies)
[-] [email protected] 7 points 4 weeks ago

Can anything be more incomprehensible that Discord?

[-] [email protected] 6 points 1 month ago

I want to say various cities/regions in Germany make statements like this every few years? And they usually end up rolling back when it becomes clear the cost to retrain both existing staff and new staff isn't worth it.

That said: This gets the national security bump so maybe it will stick. Also nobody on the planet likes to use Teams.

[-] [email protected] 14 points 1 month ago

Yes, but: this endeavour comes after/along with the development of a unified "open desk", a replacement solution for the office and collaboration tools from microsoft etc, backed by the federal government. This ensures a base layer of interoperability between offices and makes training probably easier.

load more comments (3 replies)
[-] [email protected] 6 points 1 month ago

At my work all but me love microsoft. But ..... They started to complain about teams too. I only use the chat because it's impossible to avoid.

[-] [email protected] 8 points 1 month ago

Literally no one I work with likes Teams but we keep using it because that's just what we do. Other options basically don't exist simply by virtue of being either not Microsoft or not overwhelmingly the market leader.

load more comments (2 replies)
load more comments (2 replies)
[-] [email protected] 6 points 1 month ago
load more comments
view more: next ›
this post was submitted on 13 Jun 2025
866 points (99.7% liked)

Technology

72763 readers
2213 users here now

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


Our Rules


  1. Follow the lemmy.world rules.
  2. Only tech related news or articles.
  3. Be excellent to each other!
  4. Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
  5. Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
  6. Politics threads may be removed.
  7. No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
  8. Only approved bots from the list below, this includes using AI responses and summaries. To ask if your bot can be added please contact a mod.
  9. Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
  10. Accounts 7 days and younger will have their posts automatically removed.

Approved Bots


founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS