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.”
Most orgs would do well with basic UIs. As someone who has done help desk, users are fucking stupid more times than not. Microsoft is constantly changing their UI just because they feel like it and we’d get tickets because “Microsoft updated and I can’t find X anymore!”.
Yeah, it’ll take some getting used to for some users at first, but the lack of constant, arbitrary UI updates will help over time.
It looks outdated but that’s what most businesses deal with specifically because of dumb users and because businesses don’t want to pay to keep training users on new UIs or paying for support to educate users and a lot of it is gimmicky, not really providing anything new but just a different way of looking at the same screen.