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A German state is ditching Windows and Microsoft Office for Linux and LibreOffice on the 30,000 PCs it uses for local government functions (www.theregister.com)

submitted 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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Schleswig-Holstein, Germany's most northern state, is starting its switch from Microsoft Office to LibreOffice, and is planning to move from Windows to Linux on the 30,000 PCs it uses for local government functions.

Concerns over data security are also front and center in the Minister-President's statement, especially data that may make its way to other countries. Back in 2021, when the transition plans were first being drawn up, the hardware requirements for Windows 11 were also mentioned as a reason to move away from Microsoft.

Saunders noted that "the reasons for switching to Linux and LibreOffice are different today. Back when LiMux started, it was mostly seen as a way to save money. Now the focus is far more on data protection, privacy and security. Consider that the European Data Protection Supervisor (EDPS) recently found that the European Commission's use of Microsoft 365 breaches data protection law for EU institutions and bodies."

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[–] 0x0 25 points 7 months ago (7 children)

Wasn't it Munich who did that a few years back, only to backtrack sometime later?

[–] [email protected] 14 points 7 months ago (5 children)

I fully expect this to get backtracked almost immediately. From my experience most government employees can barely handle a browser upgrade with a UI change, and they will 100% throw a collective fit if their Word and/or Outlook goes away.

[–] [email protected] 17 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago)

It's not just office, SH and many other parts of the German government have been slowly replacing the entire O365 suite with OpenDesk, which is an open source product based on Matrix, Jitsi, LibreOffice, and a few other tools.

The goal is to have a fully integrated solution for calender, chat, calls, documents, cloud storage, etc.

My employer is developing parts of that solution and we recently switched our internal communication over to it, and tbh, it's working really well.

Now is the perfect point in time to do it, with the GDPR ruling regarding O365 and Microsoft fumbling the migration between old teams and new teams.

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