this post was submitted on 02 Jun 2025
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they will save 188,000 € on Microsoft license fees per year

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[–] [email protected] 3 points 3 days ago

It would be nice to redirect a part of that money to support the development of used software. Thunderbird for example is constantly at risk of being shut down.

[–] [email protected] 50 points 6 days ago (2 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.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 6 days ago (1 children)

Agree. Fb, Whatsapp, Instagram, Linkedin, Quora, Twitter, Tumblr - I do believe that social networks should be independent and decentralized and not manipulated by one person - thats why Lemmy, Mastodon is the best choice for me

[–] [email protected] 2 points 5 days ago

I hate it so much that Whatsapp made itself a social media

[–] [email protected] 26 points 6 days ago

LETS GOOOOO

[–] redditor_chatter44 27 points 6 days ago (1 children)

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

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[–] [email protected] 22 points 6 days ago (15 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.

[–] [email protected] 29 points 6 days ago (1 children)

This has been planned for quite some time, so not really.

Also, other states insist on using Palantir so there's that...

[–] [email protected] 6 points 6 days ago (1 children)

I have seen this happen before, for a while, then somehow M$ convinced them to switch back.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 6 days ago (1 children)

Yeah, I think this happens somewhere in Germany every few years. MS then makes a concerted effort to woo some politicians back, and a few years later we have news that a city or state is moving back to MS. Yes, it is good that cities / states are trying Linux and challenging MS, but there is soo much more to any of this than technical superiority or licensing fees.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 6 days ago

188K dollars or euros, is basically the cost to put one warm sales body in the territory, to keep the hooks in acknowledging that they should be paid for their software.

To me, it's about digital sovereignty, and the states should stand on their own two feet and know how their own computers work, not just rely on a foreign company.

[–] sockenklaus 19 points 6 days ago

In other news: the German military partners with Google to provide the software for their new cloud service...

https://www.heise.de/en/news/Bundeswehr-relies-on-Google-Cloud-10397526.html

[–] [email protected] 4 points 6 days ago (1 children)

A small part of Germany, but maybe

[–] [email protected] 2 points 6 days ago

Hopefully it sets an example and path for others to follow.

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[–] [email protected] 17 points 6 days ago (5 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.

[–] [email protected] 20 points 6 days 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 )

[–] [email protected] 13 points 6 days ago

Plus government computers are always old as shit so Linux should install nice and easy, give em mint for that windows like UI.

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[–] [email protected] 17 points 6 days 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.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 6 days ago

the IT support will go through hell.

I thought IT support was already in perpetual hell?

For the last 10+ years "the desktop" has been over 90% the browser, and the Chrome, Firefox, Edge user experiences are pretty similar to start with. Chrome on Linux vs Chrome on Windows is virtually indistinguishable.

I gave my wife a Dell laptop new from the factory with Ubuntu on it about 3 years ago. The printer support in Windows was already bad, and yes it's a bit worse in Linux, otherwise she just complains less and has fewer screaming fits of frustration.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 6 days ago (6 children)

There used to be skins for KDE that made it look and feel 1:1 like Windows XP, I don't know if these things still exist. If yes, there you have it: Just make the system behave like Windows and they won't notice a difference. They only have to use Office, Mail and print files anyways. Most other tools they use are browser-based and will feel the same way

[–] [email protected] 4 points 6 days ago

Yep still exist.

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[–] [email protected] 3 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago)

I also work for the state and it's pretty discouraging how MS has us by the balls on everything. Every application we use is written in VB.net or Visual C# which also depend on running on a Windows server. Switching to Linux would be a nightmare and cost millions for no real gain. Maybe we could run SQL Server on Linux but I'm sure that even that has some gotchas that the state would not want to deal with.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 6 days ago (1 children)

I'm more surprised that a city in Germany didn't switch to Linux a decade or more ago.

Late to the party is still showing up, good for them.

[–] unabart 4 points 6 days ago

Too busy faxing each other. Germany is Luddite Land, by choice.

Source: moved here 7 years ago. Germans are a weird bunch. Change is not welcome in just about any form.

Nice to see them adopt the open source apps, though. They can probably get some screaming deals on some US Robotics 56k modems on eBay Local.

🤪😘

[–] [email protected] 3 points 5 days ago

Ofc its Schleswig-Holstein. The only sane state with sane politicians

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