this post was submitted on 27 Apr 2024
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https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2024/04/german-state-gov-ditching-windows-for-linux-30k-workers-migrating/
We’ll see.
As someone in German Government who has written a thesis on OSS in government:
Happens regularly, on a small scale, but almost always eventually leads to a rollback to Windows. People are discontent with the solutions on Linux since they have to get used to something else, and the aging governmental workers and exactly very keen on things changing.
The City of Munich had a similar program of switching to Linux before, only took Microsoft to open an office in the city to revert on those plans.
The federal government recently finished rolling out a centralised, unified client around all of their ministries and other institutions. Which OS? Guessed it, Windows 10.
Dont get me wrong, having something like the French Police would be amazing, but the highly federal nature and old workforce of government make it super unlikely for Linux to have a proper chance. Taking into consideration the lack of suitable employees to drive forward such a change, the lack of money at local government levels and the fact that most of the specific software required doesn't have a version for Linux doesn't fill me with hope.
Office suites are a tricky one. The shitstorm when MS changed it to the ribbon UI was insane. Business users really do not like change. That and the minor incompatibilities in document loading to LibreOffice. I mean, it's like 99.9% of the way there, but that 0.1% is guaranteed to be in the middle of one of those massive spreadsheets that absolutely fucking everything hinges on.
Still, Office has been going in-browser for a while now. They might at least get off Windows, even if they're stuck with Office.
Let’s hope it gains traction and you can write another paper on the success of oss in government.
I want more entities to switch to Linux like that, but that's unlikely in the near future. Most offices have Windows professional or enterprise (LTSC) which don't have most of the bullshit regular Windows has.
Yeah, exactly. And the Lock-In-Effect is huge, too. You only need to have a piece of required software that doesn't have a Linux version (we have this situation) and you'll be stuck for a looong time.
What kind of stuff, or bullshit, does it not have that regular windows has?