The German state of Schleswig-Holstein is making waves with its ambitious plan to ditch Microsoft Office, Exchange, and Windows in favor of Open Source alternatives. This bold move has significant implications for digital sovereignty, public procurement, and the future of the European digital ecosystem. The EuroStack Project unpacks the plan and its broader implications.
they will save 188,000 € on Microsoft license fees per year
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.
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.