15 ms·

Now switch to Linux too. The more we invest together, the easier it becomes. German states can help Spanish states, and Finnish schools, Danish universities, a

Now switch to Linux too. The more we invest together, the easier it becomes. German states can help Spanish states, and Finnish schools, Danish universities, and French businesses, etc. - collaboratively investing so that everyone benefits and Europe can build its own Tech industry and have some independence from the US. This is absolutely critical to move away from the dominance of "Big Tech" to FOSS solutions that independent, small co-operatives can maintain together.

go_elmo 5y ago
This could be a major ease on state budgets, also communal ones and allow to allocate resources where they are more urgently needed. Might require high initial costs for setup & staff education which would amortize over a few years for sure.
- f6v 5y ago
  If you could save money by switching to Linux from Windows, I’d expect to see much more Linux machines in corporations.
  - MeinBlutIstBlau 5y ago
    The only places I've ever heard of having linux on their computers are tech companies or software devs.
  - go_elmo 5y ago
    I only saw linux machines in SE companies so far (at least remote ones). Maybe, just maybe, it is because non-tech people 1) cant handle it as cli is needed from time to time 2) because personal preferences & habits make it almost impossible to "force" using linux on staff..?
    - f6v 5y ago
      > because personal preferences & habits make it almost impossible to "force" using linux on staff..? I’m willing to speculate office workers won’t care. More and more people will have smartphone as the only personal computer. So it won’t be about them not wanting to use Linux at work because they run Windows at home.
    - namdnay 5y ago
      3) Excel macros and VBscript
      - go_elmo 5y ago
        *aka cancer / high burden to switch systems to [insert any turing-complete language]
      - AnIdiotOnTheNet 5y ago
        4) distribution madness 5) lack of userland backwards compatibility 6) poor commercial application support...
Socketier 5y ago
> By the end of 2026, Microsoft Office is to be replaced by LibreOffice on all 25,000 computers used by civil servants and employees (including teachers), and the Windows operating system is to be replaced by GNU/Linux It literally says they are going to switch to Linux in the first paragraph.
RedShift1 5y ago
I agree with your arguments but the Linux desktop sucks, I would never want to use it full time let alone support it (note that I used to be a full time Linux desktop user, I left after KDE 4 came about). Linus Tech Tips is running a series on desktop Linux and they are hitting the hammer on the nail where exactly all the pain points are.
- raspyberr 5y ago
  I can imagine Linux desktop being made to work pretty well for a constrained work environment like an office.
- jhgs 5y ago
  >Linus Tech Tips Sorry
- nivenkos 5y ago
  I've used Linux full-time at home for 10 years, and now at work (in an enterprise). For the most part, it works well and doesn't require a whole lot more support. The LTT video hit one specific packaging bug in PopOS that was present for only an hour, and was unfortunate. But to judge so much on that is unreasonable, shit happens in software engineering, it'd be like trying to use Facebook in the window where it was down and concluding that Facebook is completely unreliable. I'm not a PopOS user myself, but I have a lot of respect for everything they've achieved. It's not fair to constantly attack them for this one incident.
  - Folcon 5y ago
    As someone who used to be an avid linux desktop user, but has subsequently moved away from it and is interested in the current ecosystem with a view to maybe coming back, what would you say is a good entry point? I used to run Ubuntu back in the day if that helps. I'm curious to get a sense of how much has changed.
    - lolinder 5y ago
      Ubuntu is very stable and easy to get started with. I know there's some frustration with Canonical's direction, but it's still very much the distro I'd recommend to anyone who's just getting started. Everything more or less works out of the box for me (as much as it ever did with Windows), and Ubuntu still has the advantage of being the primary focus of most online documentation.
1234letshaveatw 5y ago
That sounds so wonderful! Hopefully the US can also come together by divesting from European goods and services and also participate in this independence movement!
- pessimizer 5y ago
  That's an entirely empty threat. Our trade deficit is larger than the GDP of half the countries on earth combined. What are we going to do with what we purchase in Europe - switch to buying it from China?
- nawgz 5y ago
  Trade might be a good thing in general, but this comment is a bit reductionist with respect to the role of US Big Tech in suppressing and controlling EU tech
  - 1234letshaveatw 5y ago
    The EU seems to have no problem legislating against and penalizing US Big Tech in return. IMO the European attitude towards entrepreneurship and startups does more harm to EU tech than "US Big Tech" ever would or could
    - biztos 5y ago
      I was recently talking to a friend in Spain about a startup idea and he said no way could he join a startup (in a senior role) because if it failed his career would never recover. AFAICT it really is the attitude pushing so much innovation out of the EU and not the legal environment much less the competition. The newer members like Hungary and Romania seem to have a lot less of this problem (but more of other problems like stable business environment and predictable rule of law).
    - bildung 5y ago
      What kind of harm, i.e. which stats to look at to compare the different approaches?
- 5y ago
dan00 5y ago
You have to start somewhere and if you can switch just one software, which you can later also use on linux, it seems like the perfect way to go. Switching is always painful and will result in some troubles. So keeping it at a minimum is a good idea.
pfortuny 5y ago
I agree with you but they did in Munich and then they undid it. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LiMux https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LiMux
- fbn79 5y ago
  They undididing the undid
  - rbanffy 5y ago
    I wonder whether the person or company who paid for the first undiding got the payment undided.
pasabagi 5y ago
Aside from the obvious strategic/people power side of it, honestly, I think being a user of closed-source is just the wrong model for a big organization. Ultimately, closed-source software is like running a factory with a machine you aren't allowed to repair. Having your core means of production and security essentially at the mercy of somebody else's support team seems kind of insane to me. I get the point in the 90s, when software was a smaller part of all institutions, but these days, it's just such a massive strategic disadvantage that even if the software is way better, it's still worse.
- dmitriid 5y ago
  > Ultimately, closed-source software is like running a factory with a machine you aren't allowed to repair. That... that is exactly how factories operate. When something breaks, they call the manufacturer to bring someone in to fix it.
  - pasabagi 5y ago
    I actually thought this when I was writing the comment. The difference is, you call the manufacturer when you actually need their specific expertise, and when they're your best option. You're not obligated to. They haven't generally purposefully hidden the internals of the machine from you - and most machines are designed to be serviced by end-users. If every software supplier was like hilti when it came to support, I don't think there would be a problem - except, they aren't. An engineer from microsoft isn't going to turn up at your office if your computer won't switch on.
    - GravitasFailure 5y ago
      > you call the manufacturer when you actually need their specific expertise, and when they're your best option. You're not obligated to. That depends entirely on the terms of your lease and service agreements. For high end equipment, like the CNC systems at my work, you may not even be given the option to purchase them, and they're so specialized you probably won't have someone that can competently work on them even if your service contact permitted it. Electronics manufacturers are also notorious for sanding off component info or burying components in epoxy blobs to hide information from competitors and customers alike.
sgt 5y ago
Didn't Munich do this like 20 years ago and it was a complete failure? Linux and OpenOffice. I think one of the major concerns at the time was that OpenOffice didn't work well with all the Excel and Word documents they needed to open, so people opted out and installed Windows instead. To the regular office worker, it didn't matter much if the computer ran Linux or Windows, as long as it worked. To the IT admin, it might have been more work to administer thousands of Linux machines, due to the slightly less mature environment.
- robertlagrant 5y ago
  > To the IT admin, it might have been more work to administer thousands of Linux machines, due to the slightly less mature environment. Perhaps they weren't used to non-GUI automation.
- bildung 5y ago
  > Didn't Munich do this like 20 years ago and it was a complete failure? No, it was reversed for political reasons. The majority of users were happy. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LiMux https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LiMux
  - cies 5y ago
    Yups. From another thread: > It got rolled back after they elected [a] mayor who got Microsoft to move their German headquarters to Munich.
    - earthnail 5y ago
      I keep reading that all the time in tech forums, and it's just so far off the truth. It always baffles me how we tech people lose sight of a product's quality and usability the moment it's a FOSS product. We feature new products here on HN everyday, which is "like X but better", and it gets lots of upvotes in the style of "OMG finally someone builds something better". But then you have a FOSS initiative, and because of FOSS, we turn two blind eyes? People in an administration don't care about FOSS or not FOSS. And they shouldn't. Their job is to solve other problems. IT and software is there to serve the administration. If, as a user, I can't get my actual job done, or only with much more hassle than before, then that's all that matters. If we want FOSS to succeed in administrations, we have to put the same product hat on that we wear when we look at all the other software showcased here on HN. And Limux (that was the project's name) just brutally failed here.
formerly_proven 5y ago
Munich did that a few years ago, which got rolled back after they elected the dude mayor who got Microsoft to move their German headquarters to Munich. Completely unrelated events, of course. There were of course some technical problems as well, e.g. because a number of administrative tasks can only be performed using Excel 2003 with VBS macros enabled and stuff like that, as well as "technical problems", like "users can't install software themselves" (i.e. users don't have root on the clients).
- apexalpha 5y ago
  To be fair, you're probably downlplaying it. How much enterprise software runs on Linux? Probably not a lot. LibreOffice is nice, but it can't compete with MS office. let alone Exchange, outlook...
  - mixmastamyk 5y ago
    Strange that so much of it moved to the web then, isn’t it?
  - avh02 5y ago
    you have web portals for outlook at least (doesn't make it usable though, my daily struggles!) Then there's MS teams. I'd rather it just not run anywhere (die) instead of being a "good enough" solution bundled in to the suite. At least if it weren't there we could use something usable like slack instead.
    - MiddleEndian 5y ago
      I haven't used OS X in awhile, but IM clients should just copy Adium. It is (was?) so simple and light and easy to use, it integrated perfectly with OS X's Contacts app, and it was also being easily themed and styled by users. Also its dock icon showed the last few people who had messaged you in the background, rather than just the count of how many messages you had missed.
  - sofixa 5y ago
    What "enterprise software" is needed at a public administration? Almost all of it is custom ordered, so Linux compatibility can be a part of the requirements. Outlook is a dumpster fire, and there are perfectly fine alternatives. Very few people actually need the full might of Excel, and you can always RemoteApp it to them, and have the rest use Libre Office. Or heck, provide them with actual tooling better fit for their requirements than Excel. And in any case, IMHO, "public money, public code". Nothing should be paid for with public money without it being publicly accessible afterwards ( excluding weaponry of course).
silvester23 5y ago
> Now switch to Linux too Yes, that seems to be the plan. Literally the first paragraph says > and the Windows operating system is to be replaced by GNU/Linux
mc32 5y ago
Too little too late. Most “office collab” is going cloud. Neither Google nor MS are threatened by free/open thick client alternatives. Users will still need their onedrive googledrive for collab. Admittedly some work is non collab but more and more of that gets pushed to SaaS.
- nivenkos 5y ago
  That's less of an issue though as it's a bit easier to migrate. If everything were already on Linux, then switching cloud providers is much simpler than switching the desktop systems themselves. Also from my own enterprise experience, Office 365 cloud has still got a long way to go.
  - mc32 5y ago
    It depends. If you have regulations that influence retention and audit trail etc it’s less easy to migrate.
  - Yizahi 5y ago
    That's the thing though - if cloud office has 80-90% of functionality of common desktop office then it's completely covers open source office value proposition. And for the rest several percent of power users open office is still lacking and not an option to switch.
- GoblinSlayer 5y ago
  https://www.collaboraoffice.com/collabora-online/ https://www.collaboraoffice.com/collabora-online/
- yorwba 5y ago
  I think this is Schleswig-Holstein's nextcloud instance: https://infonext.schleswig-holstein.de/nextcloud/index.php/login https://infonext.schleswig-holstein.de/nextcloud/index.php/l...
- jimnotgym 5y ago
  Even more, on 365 you can have the full desktop app, with fully integrated cloud collaboration and storage
niibe 5y ago
As italian I can't agree more
swarnie 5y ago
I think they tried that and it was an expensive disaster.
SavantIdiot 5y ago
I'd like to see a better GUI before forcing that switch. Is there something more simple than the Gnome GUI that ships by default with Ubuntu? I've been playing with Gnome/KDE since the late 90's and they still are behind IMHO. Is there something more like iOS-simplicity for Linux distros? That would be key.
jotadevmc 5y ago
In Spain some steps have already been taken. At least on Madrid, all schools use MAX, which is developed by public workers and includes useful open-source apps that integrate with the existing EducaMadrid platform, entirely run on open-source software. With that said, people have a hard time using it compared to Windows, which they are most likely already used to use. It also becomes a problem when you need to use it at home. Most people dont know how to install an OS.
908B64B197 5y ago
> collaboratively investing so that everyone benefits and Europe can build its own Tech industry and have some independence from the US. So you'll end-up having devs on the payroll instead of license fees. Also, you'll need to compete with the US for the best devs to work on your platform now that you are effectively building a competitor.
bothandeach 5y ago
Yes and about time, and yes USA and rest of world should catch on also.
AtomicOrbital 5y ago
I have been using linux for decades without any need to revert to Microsoft windows ... No excuses hold water on any org to continue to cowtow to "requiring Microsoft windows"
Abishek_Muthian 5y ago
I remember in mid-late 2000s, I was surprised to see Linux and Libre tools everywhere in Govt. offices in India e.g.In Public transport systems. Which might explain why India supposedly had the largest Linux user base[1] then(Might still hold true[2]). Then Bill Gates made a deal with the Govt, Everything became Windows. Nadella made a even bigger deal, Everything became Azure. P.S. Certain states in India e.g. Kerala could still be using FOSS in Govt. officers, but I'm not certain. [1] https://www.pingdom.com/blog/linux-popularity-across-the-globe/ https://www.pingdom.com/blog/linux-popularity-across-the-glo... [2] https://gs.statcounter.com/os-market-share/all/india https://gs.statcounter.com/os-market-share/all/india
France_is_bacon 5y ago
100% tried to move to linux, but couldn't because there is software that only works on Windows, and just can't get around it - have to use it. I tried to dual boot, but it is just such a pain to do that, it's impossible.
top_kekeroni_m8 5y ago
It says they are going to do that as well - in the first paragraph. Did you even read the article?

go_elmo 5y ago

This could be a major ease on state budgets, also communal ones and allow to allocate resources where they are more urgently needed. Might require high initial costs for setup & staff education which would amortize over a few years for sure.

f6v 5y ago
If you could save money by switching to Linux from Windows, I’d expect to see much more Linux machines in corporations.
- MeinBlutIstBlau 5y ago
  The only places I've ever heard of having linux on their computers are tech companies or software devs.
- go_elmo 5y ago
  I only saw linux machines in SE companies so far (at least remote ones). Maybe, just maybe, it is because non-tech people 1) cant handle it as cli is needed from time to time 2) because personal preferences & habits make it almost impossible to "force" using linux on staff..?
  - f6v 5y ago
    > because personal preferences & habits make it almost impossible to "force" using linux on staff..? I’m willing to speculate office workers won’t care. More and more people will have smartphone as the only personal computer. So it won’t be about them not wanting to use Linux at work because they run Windows at home.
  - namdnay 5y ago
    3) Excel macros and VBscript
    - go_elmo 5y ago
      *aka cancer / high burden to switch systems to [insert any turing-complete language]
    - AnIdiotOnTheNet 5y ago
      4) distribution madness 5) lack of userland backwards compatibility 6) poor commercial application support...

Socketier 5y ago

> By the end of 2026, Microsoft Office is to be replaced by LibreOffice on all 25,000 computers used by civil servants and employees (including teachers), and the Windows operating system is to be replaced by GNU/Linux It literally says they are going to switch to Linux in the first paragraph.

RedShift1 5y ago

I agree with your arguments but the Linux desktop sucks, I would never want to use it full time let alone support it (note that I used to be a full time Linux desktop user, I left after KDE 4 came about). Linus Tech Tips is running a series on desktop Linux and they are hitting the hammer on the nail where exactly all the pain points are.

raspyberr 5y ago
I can imagine Linux desktop being made to work pretty well for a constrained work environment like an office.
jhgs 5y ago
>Linus Tech Tips Sorry
nivenkos 5y ago
I've used Linux full-time at home for 10 years, and now at work (in an enterprise). For the most part, it works well and doesn't require a whole lot more support. The LTT video hit one specific packaging bug in PopOS that was present for only an hour, and was unfortunate. But to judge so much on that is unreasonable, shit happens in software engineering, it'd be like trying to use Facebook in the window where it was down and concluding that Facebook is completely unreliable. I'm not a PopOS user myself, but I have a lot of respect for everything they've achieved. It's not fair to constantly attack them for this one incident.
- Folcon 5y ago
  As someone who used to be an avid linux desktop user, but has subsequently moved away from it and is interested in the current ecosystem with a view to maybe coming back, what would you say is a good entry point? I used to run Ubuntu back in the day if that helps. I'm curious to get a sense of how much has changed.
  - lolinder 5y ago
    Ubuntu is very stable and easy to get started with. I know there's some frustration with Canonical's direction, but it's still very much the distro I'd recommend to anyone who's just getting started. Everything more or less works out of the box for me (as much as it ever did with Windows), and Ubuntu still has the advantage of being the primary focus of most online documentation.

1234letshaveatw 5y ago

That sounds so wonderful! Hopefully the US can also come together by divesting from European goods and services and also participate in this independence movement!

pessimizer 5y ago
That's an entirely empty threat. Our trade deficit is larger than the GDP of half the countries on earth combined. What are we going to do with what we purchase in Europe - switch to buying it from China?
nawgz 5y ago
Trade might be a good thing in general, but this comment is a bit reductionist with respect to the role of US Big Tech in suppressing and controlling EU tech
- 1234letshaveatw 5y ago
  The EU seems to have no problem legislating against and penalizing US Big Tech in return. IMO the European attitude towards entrepreneurship and startups does more harm to EU tech than "US Big Tech" ever would or could
  - biztos 5y ago
    I was recently talking to a friend in Spain about a startup idea and he said no way could he join a startup (in a senior role) because if it failed his career would never recover. AFAICT it really is the attitude pushing so much innovation out of the EU and not the legal environment much less the competition. The newer members like Hungary and Romania seem to have a lot less of this problem (but more of other problems like stable business environment and predictable rule of law).
  - bildung 5y ago
    What kind of harm, i.e. which stats to look at to compare the different approaches?
5y ago

dan00 5y ago

You have to start somewhere and if you can switch just one software, which you can later also use on linux, it seems like the perfect way to go. Switching is always painful and will result in some troubles. So keeping it at a minimum is a good idea.

pfortuny 5y ago

I agree with you but they did in Munich and then they undid it. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LiMux https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LiMux

fbn79 5y ago
They undididing the undid
- rbanffy 5y ago
  I wonder whether the person or company who paid for the first undiding got the payment undided.

pasabagi 5y ago

Aside from the obvious strategic/people power side of it, honestly, I think being a user of closed-source is just the wrong model for a big organization. Ultimately, closed-source software is like running a factory with a machine you aren't allowed to repair. Having your core means of production and security essentially at the mercy of somebody else's support team seems kind of insane to me. I get the point in the 90s, when software was a smaller part of all institutions, but these days, it's just such a massive strategic disadvantage that even if the software is way better, it's still worse.

dmitriid 5y ago
> Ultimately, closed-source software is like running a factory with a machine you aren't allowed to repair. That... that is exactly how factories operate. When something breaks, they call the manufacturer to bring someone in to fix it.
- pasabagi 5y ago
  I actually thought this when I was writing the comment. The difference is, you call the manufacturer when you actually need their specific expertise, and when they're your best option. You're not obligated to. They haven't generally purposefully hidden the internals of the machine from you - and most machines are designed to be serviced by end-users. If every software supplier was like hilti when it came to support, I don't think there would be a problem - except, they aren't. An engineer from microsoft isn't going to turn up at your office if your computer won't switch on.
  - GravitasFailure 5y ago
    > you call the manufacturer when you actually need their specific expertise, and when they're your best option. You're not obligated to. That depends entirely on the terms of your lease and service agreements. For high end equipment, like the CNC systems at my work, you may not even be given the option to purchase them, and they're so specialized you probably won't have someone that can competently work on them even if your service contact permitted it. Electronics manufacturers are also notorious for sanding off component info or burying components in epoxy blobs to hide information from competitors and customers alike.

sgt 5y ago

Didn't Munich do this like 20 years ago and it was a complete failure? Linux and OpenOffice. I think one of the major concerns at the time was that OpenOffice didn't work well with all the Excel and Word documents they needed to open, so people opted out and installed Windows instead. To the regular office worker, it didn't matter much if the computer ran Linux or Windows, as long as it worked. To the IT admin, it might have been more work to administer thousands of Linux machines, due to the slightly less mature environment.

robertlagrant 5y ago
> To the IT admin, it might have been more work to administer thousands of Linux machines, due to the slightly less mature environment. Perhaps they weren't used to non-GUI automation.
bildung 5y ago
> Didn't Munich do this like 20 years ago and it was a complete failure? No, it was reversed for political reasons. The majority of users were happy. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LiMux https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LiMux
- cies 5y ago
  Yups. From another thread: > It got rolled back after they elected [a] mayor who got Microsoft to move their German headquarters to Munich.
  - earthnail 5y ago
    I keep reading that all the time in tech forums, and it's just so far off the truth. It always baffles me how we tech people lose sight of a product's quality and usability the moment it's a FOSS product. We feature new products here on HN everyday, which is "like X but better", and it gets lots of upvotes in the style of "OMG finally someone builds something better". But then you have a FOSS initiative, and because of FOSS, we turn two blind eyes? People in an administration don't care about FOSS or not FOSS. And they shouldn't. Their job is to solve other problems. IT and software is there to serve the administration. If, as a user, I can't get my actual job done, or only with much more hassle than before, then that's all that matters. If we want FOSS to succeed in administrations, we have to put the same product hat on that we wear when we look at all the other software showcased here on HN. And Limux (that was the project's name) just brutally failed here.

formerly_proven 5y ago

Munich did that a few years ago, which got rolled back after they elected the dude mayor who got Microsoft to move their German headquarters to Munich. Completely unrelated events, of course. There were of course some technical problems as well, e.g. because a number of administrative tasks can only be performed using Excel 2003 with VBS macros enabled and stuff like that, as well as "technical problems", like "users can't install software themselves" (i.e. users don't have root on the clients).

apexalpha 5y ago
To be fair, you're probably downlplaying it. How much enterprise software runs on Linux? Probably not a lot. LibreOffice is nice, but it can't compete with MS office. let alone Exchange, outlook...
- mixmastamyk 5y ago
  Strange that so much of it moved to the web then, isn’t it?
- avh02 5y ago
  you have web portals for outlook at least (doesn't make it usable though, my daily struggles!) Then there's MS teams. I'd rather it just not run anywhere (die) instead of being a "good enough" solution bundled in to the suite. At least if it weren't there we could use something usable like slack instead.
  - MiddleEndian 5y ago
    I haven't used OS X in awhile, but IM clients should just copy Adium. It is (was?) so simple and light and easy to use, it integrated perfectly with OS X's Contacts app, and it was also being easily themed and styled by users. Also its dock icon showed the last few people who had messaged you in the background, rather than just the count of how many messages you had missed.
- sofixa 5y ago
  What "enterprise software" is needed at a public administration? Almost all of it is custom ordered, so Linux compatibility can be a part of the requirements. Outlook is a dumpster fire, and there are perfectly fine alternatives. Very few people actually need the full might of Excel, and you can always RemoteApp it to them, and have the rest use Libre Office. Or heck, provide them with actual tooling better fit for their requirements than Excel. And in any case, IMHO, "public money, public code". Nothing should be paid for with public money without it being publicly accessible afterwards ( excluding weaponry of course).

silvester23 5y ago

> Now switch to Linux too Yes, that seems to be the plan. Literally the first paragraph says > and the Windows operating system is to be replaced by GNU/Linux

mc32 5y ago

Too little too late. Most “office collab” is going cloud. Neither Google nor MS are threatened by free/open thick client alternatives. Users will still need their onedrive googledrive for collab. Admittedly some work is non collab but more and more of that gets pushed to SaaS.

nivenkos 5y ago
That's less of an issue though as it's a bit easier to migrate. If everything were already on Linux, then switching cloud providers is much simpler than switching the desktop systems themselves. Also from my own enterprise experience, Office 365 cloud has still got a long way to go.
- mc32 5y ago
  It depends. If you have regulations that influence retention and audit trail etc it’s less easy to migrate.
- Yizahi 5y ago
  That's the thing though - if cloud office has 80-90% of functionality of common desktop office then it's completely covers open source office value proposition. And for the rest several percent of power users open office is still lacking and not an option to switch.
GoblinSlayer 5y ago
https://www.collaboraoffice.com/collabora-online/ https://www.collaboraoffice.com/collabora-online/
yorwba 5y ago
I think this is Schleswig-Holstein's nextcloud instance: https://infonext.schleswig-holstein.de/nextcloud/index.php/login https://infonext.schleswig-holstein.de/nextcloud/index.php/l...
jimnotgym 5y ago
Even more, on 365 you can have the full desktop app, with fully integrated cloud collaboration and storage

niibe 5y ago

As italian I can't agree more

swarnie 5y ago

I think they tried that and it was an expensive disaster.

SavantIdiot 5y ago

I'd like to see a better GUI before forcing that switch. Is there something more simple than the Gnome GUI that ships by default with Ubuntu? I've been playing with Gnome/KDE since the late 90's and they still are behind IMHO. Is there something more like iOS-simplicity for Linux distros? That would be key.

jotadevmc 5y ago

In Spain some steps have already been taken. At least on Madrid, all schools use MAX, which is developed by public workers and includes useful open-source apps that integrate with the existing EducaMadrid platform, entirely run on open-source software. With that said, people have a hard time using it compared to Windows, which they are most likely already used to use. It also becomes a problem when you need to use it at home. Most people dont know how to install an OS.

908B64B197 5y ago

> collaboratively investing so that everyone benefits and Europe can build its own Tech industry and have some independence from the US. So you'll end-up having devs on the payroll instead of license fees. Also, you'll need to compete with the US for the best devs to work on your platform now that you are effectively building a competitor.

bothandeach 5y ago

Yes and about time, and yes USA and rest of world should catch on also.

AtomicOrbital 5y ago

I have been using linux for decades without any need to revert to Microsoft windows ... No excuses hold water on any org to continue to cowtow to "requiring Microsoft windows"

Abishek_Muthian 5y ago

I remember in mid-late 2000s, I was surprised to see Linux and Libre tools everywhere in Govt. offices in India e.g.In Public transport systems. Which might explain why India supposedly had the largest Linux user base[1] then(Might still hold true[2]). Then Bill Gates made a deal with the Govt, Everything became Windows. Nadella made a even bigger deal, Everything became Azure. P.S. Certain states in India e.g. Kerala could still be using FOSS in Govt. officers, but I'm not certain. [1] https://www.pingdom.com/blog/linux-popularity-across-the-globe/ https://www.pingdom.com/blog/linux-popularity-across-the-glo... [2] https://gs.statcounter.com/os-market-share/all/india https://gs.statcounter.com/os-market-share/all/india

France_is_bacon 5y ago

100% tried to move to linux, but couldn't because there is software that only works on Windows, and just can't get around it - have to use it. I tried to dual boot, but it is just such a pain to do that, it's impossible.

top_kekeroni_m8 5y ago

It says they are going to do that as well - in the first paragraph. Did you even read the article?