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.”
Nix does have an interesting package manager.
Don’t they need money to fund both aspects? Is there any support to lean on someone goes with Nix?
A lot of governments in the US pretty much go through Microsoft for simplicity. There’s a lot of software obtained from a single vendor. I suppose that’s why rhel is so popular.
Dataport is big enough (5200 employees) to support that kind of thing themselves, and they precisely are the single vendor for the participating states (it’s an inter-state public corporation). More than twice the employees Suse has, quarter the size of RedHat.
Good to know. I did not realize that this team was this large. I hope it works out.