TL;DR:
Denmark is replacing Microsoft Windows and Office with Linux and LibreOffice in government offices to boost digital sovereignty and reduce reliance on US tech firms. The switch will start mid-2025 and be phased to allow fallbacks if needed. It’s part of a broader EU push for open-source solutions.
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I have heard only a little about this but hopefully they will combine it with the Linux initiative as well. I am following the EU OS but not sure where it will lead
I know I saw an article or post regarding this here but was unable to find it
Tbh libreoffice is quite underwheing in terms of both performance and stability.
Also some logics are quite “funny”, like conditional formatting and such.
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A lot of money has been burned by trying to switch to Linux and open source solutions in German public administration and switching back to Windows because they realized it is a lot more expensive than expected. It’s not Linux itself which is the problem, but porting/rewriting all the administrative software which only ran on Microsoft’s software stack, both in the cloud as well as locally on endpoints. Will probably be the same in Denmark.
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It is shocking that they didnt even perform dependencies assessment and pilot tests before mass adoptation.
As far as I know, not only Germany, but also some french Ministery, all the Italy Defence Ministery, some spanish regional administrations among others worldwide has turn into linux + LibreOffice. I don’t know what stage of success they are at or if they’ve reversed it, but perhaps with luck they’re slowly setting a trend. Still, It presents great challenges that I wonder if they will make it possible.
As for Germany, rumor has it that there may have also been some underhand “pressure” ($$) with political changes to reverse in the past the migration. Also, remember the time Ballmer travelled urgently to Germany to make a deal ($$) to stop that. Finally, they supposedly banned Microsoft 365 from schools recently.
In any case, it seems to be still going, at least in one state Updates on Schleswig-Holstein moving to LibreOffice - The Document Foundation Blog
Could you elaborate more on this and put some examples? I understand that the biggest problem would be Excel and only if you use very advanced things (in addition to if a .docx file breaks a little sometimes, but it seems that this is getting better and better).
I’m thinking about implementing FOOS in my small legal business, and I’m struggling to decide whether I’ll be able to or whether it will be impossible to break free from the enormous and unfortunate dependence on Microsoft or Google that we’ve trapped ourselves in. Not now, but with regard to program interoperability, third parties, prices, employees, and, above all, competitiveness. It worries me because it leads me to the question of all or nothing privacy…
I find it suits most of my needs on a day to day basis but can struggle in certain areas. Advanced calculations in xls or libre typically do not translate well if exporting/opening from one to the other.
Here are a few cons of libre calc
- Macros in excel are VBA (libre cannot understand complex VBA macro)
- More advanced chart type options
- No NATIVE real time collaboration (third party)
- Power Query and Power Pivot are amazing for large data sets and Libre has no way to do something similar (that i know of).
I am able to do most if not all normal office functions otherwise. The Libre Draw does misinterpret some pdfs with odd symbols which can be annoying. For a small legal business it should work fine with just the occasional quirk needing some tweaking since they do some things differently.
Yes, this can be a problem. Do you use it frequently at work? If only sporadically, you could always occasionally turn to Google Docs/Sheets or Word/Excel Online. Teams would be another problem, or the higher cost of Mail alternativas like Proton.
In the worst case, you can always continue paying for Microsoft 365 and continue betting on privacy in small victories like in the browser, which I don’t see any real need to use Chrome or Edge versus, for example, Brave.
I use Libre Office exclusively for what my purposes are. If live collaboration is needed, I succumb to sharepoint. Since the company I work for employs thousands globally there is not much of an option regarding the real time collab.
I use Edge as per my company policy for work and VM linux using brave for anything non work specific.
For my personal use I have the full proton suite on fedora for a small company consisting of 5 people. I am not sure how many you have within but I much rather pay for Proton than use anything MS or Google. We communicate typically with element or signal while using git for kanban.
Element (matrix) setup properly easily replaced slack/teams for myself.
For collaboration try CryptPad, it works okay for not so complex use.
Teams unless you need natively integrated workflow, automatic meeting minutes or sharepoint ibtegration, otherwise it is not a huge issue.
My LibreOffice experience is limited to Excel and Visio alternative, if you did use them professionally, you will notice mny issues within minutes.
I can list out some more in my off days.
Can confirm that Cryptpad is not a bad replacement for a collaboration suite.
Besides storage, It’s essentially OnlyOffice bundled with other Cryptpad specific features like a Rich Text Editor and kanban board.
I wouldn’t classify it as a replacement for enterprise users though. They may benefit more from other products.
I do wonder. If MS was an EU company but doing the same thing would they have switched? I know that there is a part of the EU that doesn’t want to use American services, even if they are secure. For e.g., I remember reading about an EU country recommending an EU alternative to Signal’s for their average government employees.
Are you talking about Threema and its use by the Swiss government?
No. Even though they have EU perks, Switzerland is not part of the EU. I’m not 100% sure, but I think it was a French app.
French government and German MoD use Matrix