they will save 188,000 € on Microsoft license fees per year
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.
Ofc its Schleswig-Holstein. The only sane state with sane politicians
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.
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.
🤪😘
LETS GOOOOO
Would love to see further movements towards foss software in many other governments
Moreeeee MOREEEE preach it
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.
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
I hate it so much that Whatsapp made itself a social media
from what i know Germany already does this
Holy fuck, that’s the clearest sign for war prepararion ive seen from Europe yet, they don’t want the US in their computers.
very interesting observation… I came to conclusion if USA withdraw from NATO - EU and Great Britain will not send military troops to Poland in case russian invasion
I think you may have the thread confused.
Absolutely not. Open source software shift means not just installing Linux on your pc but also rejecting social media which now are instrument of manipulation and lie. It is clearly seen how social media channels (mentioned above) quickly remove posts that contradicts major ‘PARTY LINE’. I see it ALL the time. ‘Know the truth and truth makes you free’. Slavery starts when people live in lie.
So what’s the right distro to prepare for a Russian invasion?
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
Don’t worry. They’ll get a big discount on licenses and swap right back again.
I dunno, free’s still a lot cheaper, once it’s setup, it’ll be so much more flexible, it’ll hardly be worth going back.
Ain’t no such thing as free.
Okay.
When it’s just you, on your own PC, and you don’t value your time, it’s free.
Just from the license fees here, we’re talking what, roughly 2000 employees?
At that scale, you’re going to be paying for support. Whether through a third party, or employing enough people to fix all the things that can go wrong. And not everyone in IT knows enough about Linux to fix broken boxes.
I once recommended Linux for our customer servers, to be installed hundreds of miles away. And what I found was that employees who knew Linux (and specifically how to fix it when it fucks up) were more expensive than the trained monkeys we sent out to fix things, who at least knew how to copy data off it and reinstall Windows/slap a new drive in it, and that issues were my fault for recommending it. It was also easier to talk customers through some settings in Windows if it falls off the network somehow, than it was to deal with getting them to type things into a command line.
And that’s before you even consider servers and where your stuff all goes. With MS it goes into “the cloud”, and you don’t need to worry too much about anything other than paying for it. With your own hardware, you very much need to worry because if you don’t, then one day it won’t be there any more.
At that scale it starts to be about the cost of support, and if M$ will hold their hands for the installation, configuration and maintenance, at some point that costs the state more to provide for Linux than the M$ licenses… Of course, when they lean so heavily on M$ for keeping their systems running, the temptation for abuse becomes strong…
If I were “head of state” I would insist on development of homegrown talent to at least maintain the systems, hopefully configure and even build them too, not as a matter of money, but as a matter of security, independence, etc. I would try to pull back before reaching the point of developing locally used systems that aren’t used elsewhere, that’s not good long term, but if you develop the local talent to run the things, and they naturally build some of their own things, encourage that to be shared with the larger world in addition to leveraging the best shared (locally vetted, secure) tools from elsewhere.
A small part of Germany, but maybe
Hopefully it sets an example and path for others to follow.
This has been planned for quite some time, so not really.
Also, other states insist on using Palantir so there’s that…
I have seen this happen before, for a while, then somehow M$ convinced them to switch back.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
The names have changed. I literally had that conversation with “an engineer” 20 years ago wherein he concluded “I don’t know, if I have to learn new names for most of the programs I use (Word, Photoshop, maybe two others) I don’t think I want to use that other OS.” I had to support his position, if you can’t retrain to click on “Libre Office Writer” instead of “Office Word”, then a move to Linux isn’t for you.
Except most people just click a link on their desktop that goes to a thing they have a completely different name for anyways. If you don’t tell them anything (or just say it’s a new version of Windows) they likely won’t notice the actual differences, just complain about missing a specific icon for something without being able to correctly name what it is
Icons look different, etc. People are ridiculously inflexible.
Yet they are fine with using Windows 11, which looks completely different to Windows 7 or XP. They complained in the beginning just as much but then they were fine with it. People get used to change, they just hate it in the beginning.
Yep still exist.
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.
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 )
Cross platform app development has been a viable and very available choice for 20+ years now.
Organizations which are developing their specialty applications locked in to a specific OS… get what they deserve.
Look im an IT guy, and enforcing 2FA for all accounts at our company directly caused at least 2 people to quit at my company.
People are enormously resistant to change. It doesn’t even matter if it actually impacts their job or anything, they will freak out and complain.
Hell 2 weeks ago I added a 3rd AP to one of our offices and just the act of moving the APs around caused enough of a disturbance that HR heard about it. And that was me giving them better internet! There wasn’t even any downtime! I just moved the things that sit on the ceiling and nobody notices!
Plus government computers are always old as shit so Linux should install nice and easy, give em mint for that windows like UI.
Good, amazing but I’m not a linux fanboy who will feel giddy for this. My friends would definitely press me over this. But yeah I’m happy
Unfortunately nextcloud sucks
So use some of that money saved to pay some nextcloud developers to improve it.
I was thinking about trying it out on my server. Why does it suck?
Personal/Family use is fine, it’s kinda fiddly but so is most selfhosted software.
At an organizational level, that fiddliness spirals into a ton of work, which doesn’t really overlap with other IT Duties in the way that troubleshooting OneDrive usually ends up solving problems with the whole Microsoft suite.
I’ve been using it for over a decade. I use it to auto upload all my family photos from family phones. I use the calendars to organize. I use Notes on my phone all the time and pick them up my laptop. I use Passwords for all my passwords. I use Contacts to sync my contacts from my phone and Thunderbird. Then I nightly remote backup it to a machine I leave at my parent’s. It’s great.
I wouldn’t say categorically that it sucks.
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It is inefficient and requires far too many server resources for what it does. Won’t really run on less than 2gb/RAM minimum, with 1-2 users.
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Add ONS seem to be all over the place with lots of incompatibilities, some default add ons that just plain don’t work.
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In my short testing it seems to be a bit unstable.
In my opinion, it suffers from many of the same problems as other projects that started out and we’re developed largely by hobbyists like zoneminder, and even home assistant to some extent. Sprawling growth, no strict architecture, little concern for refactoring.
Interesting. What would you recommend as an alternative?
I’m not sure myself, there seems to be better software out there for each individual part of what nextcloud does, but not the whole thing. I’ve been reading up on open cloud, which is a fork of a rewrite of owncloud, which is what nextcloud is forked from. https://opencloud.eu/en/opencloud-community
I haven’t tried it out yet though.
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I sometimes wonder what if everyone who spends money on licensing fees instead takes the same amount of money and puts it into FOSS. Imagine what we could achieve? Likely the money would be used more efficiently because they could donate it to non-profit companies which don’t need to pay tax.
Just remember, the license fees mostly don’t go into development, or maintenance, or security, or any of that, they mostly pay for “sales” which includes a strong component of end customer support. When you divert “all that money” into FOSS, FOSS development and maintenance might be lucky to get 20%, the other 80% will be spend training and employing tech support.
There are companies which offer training and support to FOSS. Companies could also pay those companies.
And there could be insight into whether the money is actually used for developing the relevant application.
I don’t see how this gives any insight into how your subscription price is being used for products relevant to you.
Your subscription price is the source of those dividends. It pays the shareholders, it pays the sales staff’s commissions, it pays for management, it pays for executive salaries and bonuses, it pays for legal counsel, it pays for political lobbying. Your subscription price is working hard, for the company, not for you.
An interesting fact about Europe is they’ve long disobeyed their own procurement laws to choose Microsoft software, whether its corruption or what I’ve got no idea, I assume so though.
I think it’s simple pragmatism. It will cost them, money and lost productivity, retraining all their computer users.
Regardless of the technical aspects, just the bitching and moaning of the workforce alone is enough to push the decision makers to take their chances with enforcers of the procurement laws instead.
There in that place where closed systems are frowned upon, Install Linux, Problem Solved.
That is such a crazy amount of money on license fees, especially when you consider that there are mostly free alternatives. I am always choosing foss options as I build my small business.
Right now, I am using onedrive, and Microsoft for my business email. Which I think comes out to like $5 a month.
My understanding is that for reliable email, you need to host with microsoft or google otherwise you are more likely to get sorted into junk mail. If that is incorrect, please let me know.
I agree with your assessment of e-mail… you either rent under a big provider or you spend countless hours playing whack-a-mole with whitelist-blacklist keepers. The big providers do this too, but they’re so big it’s not a major slice of their operation.
a crazy amount of money on license fees
License fees pay for development, sales, support, and profit. When you go open source you can skip the sales and profit, but you have to pick up a bit of development and ALL the support, which is considerable during times of big changes, like migration to a new desktop.
My understanding is that for reliable email, you need to host with microsoft or google otherwise you are more likely to get sorted into junk mail. If that is incorrect, please let me know.
I don’t know. I never had a problems with a smaller mail provider.
Define smaller.
I gave up running mail through my own domain hosted by a “smaller” provider (Canadian hosting company with less than 1M clients) because I was constantly having delivery issues because somebody somewhere on an adjacent subnet got blacklisted for SPAM, or worse.
I would guess a few thousand users.
That might be borderline - probably easiest (and most cost efficient) to work through a big provider (M$, Google, etc) to let them solve the problems for you, for a small fee, rather than tasking 0.1 FTEs on constantly whacking the moles.
I don’t know why it should be easier. I pay this provider and I get a working email account without problems.
These days it’s really about managing SPF and DKIM records. But I usually tell people just “use an email provider”. It doesn’t have to be a big one or anything, just someone else because email is an enormous headache and it’s just frankly not worth it.
Even if you set up all of your records correctly, every other email provider is going to look into the reputation of your email server and a lot of them will still filter your stuff into junk mail because its 99% of people running their own email server are using it to serve junk mail.
It isn’t or the op posted the wrong number: 6 EUR/user/year is nothing for organizations
My understanding is that for reliable email, you need to host with microsoft or google otherwise you are more likely to get sorted into junk mail.
That’s technically accurate, but it depends on the context. For example, if you set up DMARC properly and use a brand new custom domain as a personal email, yeah, you’re much more likely to get sent to spam, but not necessarily right away, and as you use that more frequently, or communicate with people using the larger providers like Google or Microsoft, the higher the “reputation” of your domain will get.
If you want the highest possible level of reliability though, then yeah, Google or Microsoft’s options are likely gonna give you the highest chance right off the bat without any fuss.
The domain name doesn’t matter at all. The really important thing is the IP of your MTA (the server sending mails). Eg. if it was previously used to send spam you need to get a new one from your server provider, as it will be blocked everywhere. Also the server configuration needs to be good. Use dkim, dmark, spf, mta-sts, etc.
Kinda lame, but at the same time I get it.
So, I guess I’m sticking with OneDrive and Microsoft email.
I eventually migrated all my e-mail to gmail, because I don’t feel any satisfaction or value out of “beating the system” to make my personal domain work as an e-mail address.
Good on them. Those are all solid choices.
I prefer Evolution over Thunderbird, personally. But to be fair, there aren’t any mail clients for Linux that I would say I genuinely like. I’m always open to suggestions, though.
