Switzerland's Federal Government Is Replacing Microsoft on 3k Computers

But comments like this one makes me think people don't realize what a MacGyvere'd together hack job a Linux distro truly is.

The idea on paper is that a company like Microsoft can offer a more consistent and stable experience, but apparently they're even failing at that these days.

But to look at a Linux distro as an alternative to consistency and stability is pretty funny to me.

The truth is that any org that chooses to migrate from Microsoft to Open source will face completely new challenges. And the end result will be +-0, if they're lucky.

Libre is generally ok, but they deal with lots of documents from different ppl/orgs that just need to have similar rendering. Windows is so bloated it's insane

Or: if Microsoft are very smart they'll have Office for Linux and a GPO connector to manage Linux devices (and divert logins via Entra) in the wings, so much less retraining will be required.

As someone who regularly uses both, and even in spite of the ad avalanche that (a bog-standard home install of) Windows has become: [X] to doubt. I regularly have issues on my corporate Linux laptop that I suspect wouldn't ever happen on Windows. Fleet management is easiest on Windows, with Active Directory, Group Policy, images, etc. Maybe package managers make software management easier on Linux, but fleet sysadmin is basically built-in on Windows.

Linux is superb for servers—I use Proxmox VE as the hypervisor on my homelab—but it still has a rather long way to go as a sharp-edge-free desktop OS, regardless of whether it is for home or corporate use.

Firstly, I would wager a large amount of personal computing is now done on a phone/tablet. None of my relatives have laptops for personal use. They may have work laptop (which will be running Windows). I this often with a lot of Linux users where they are still fighting the last war which has long been lost.

Secondly, Every single Linux/DE distro has a bunch of issues. Doesn't matter what it is. There are loads of odd bugs (doesn't matter the DE or Distro) that are present, that simply don't exist on Windows. These are things around device and display handling

e.g.

- My bluetooth mouse needs paired again every kernel update. My solution to this will be to buy another mouse probably.

- One of my USB wireless headsets doesn't work with Pipewire. The solution to this was to buy another one.

- Games while it is great that I could finally ditch Windows for playing games. You have to be using the right DE. This is because Mutter (which is Gnome's Window Manager), completely fucks the frame-pacing in some games. KDE that doesn't happen. This is why Gaming distros exist because all these stupid problems with Gaming are pre-fixed by the distro.

- When I changed from Gnome to KDE, all my browser sessions tabs, logins etc were gone because KDE Keyrings and Gnome Keyrings for some reason don't use the same underlying store.

All of these issues need either new hardware / obscure settings to be enabled via the terminal to fix, or require two large projects to actually talk to each other.

Thirdly, it isn't just the OS. For every application on the computer you have to either see if the program is supported on Linux and/or there is an alternative, or they may have a bunch of stuff tied into the Microsoft Ecosystem. Sometimes there isn't really an alternative.

Finally, Unlike big corporations you get bizarre things happening in Linux-distro land almost weekly due to some personal drama. This is seldom reported on because honestly this happens in smaller enthusiast projects normally, but they have a way of trickling up into the wider ecosystem.

Having Tuxedo, System76 and co is great, but what most people care about is what there are in regular consumer shops.

Linux adoption among consumer hardware has only been a success where it is invisible to the user, like the Linux kernel on Android or WebOS, firmware on DVD/BlueRay players,...

They are replacing Office365.

Such a key feature and probably the one thing that keeps me locked into the Apple ecosystem

I guess that when you "test" something, it means that you have not yet decided that you will completely migrate there?

- One, that probably, for most of the users, what's is locking them to Windows is a bunch of Microsoft applications. Once you've moved out of those apps, you're free to move them to any other OS.

- Two, on government computers there are usually a bunch of things that might be a bit custom and not readily available in other OSes. Smart card readers for weird standards, custom software for security or administration processes, uncommon peripherals...

- Three, there are departments that are going to be tied to Windows for a long time, due to very specific software, for example CAD or things like that

So I'd say Office is a big and easier win that could allow later allow to move a lot of workstations to Linux. Then, you can focus on the other less common uses of Windows and see how feasible is migrating them. But starting directly moving to Linux would mean starting directly with edge cases and problems.

Also Linux Mint isn't community supported. Large corporations and governments like to have operating systems with long support cycles. That why RHEL has like 10 year support cycles.

If only the title had a subtitle or even a full article to provide more information.

The technical part is probably relatively easy in comparison. Especially because the stakes are low (parallel run with the existing system, good will from everyone involved).

At a certain point I’d expect that tech sovereignty concerns will tip while governments out of the US-vendor mindset.

Every organization has their own hacks, bespoke tools, processes and hardware that has to be painstakingly replaced, reprogrammed and users retrained. In many cases, Linux alternatives don't exist so they either have to be written or processes/hardware replaced.

These are OLD organizations and none of them is really the same as any other. Legendarily, companies like SAP made their whole fortunes managing this kind of complexity.

It's just a lot of work with a lot of edge cases you've never thought of (or seen in your life) that takes years.

In my experience, non-basic formulas are beyond 99% of people and they use it simply for adding stuff up in a grid. This is why Google Sheets is used in many places as a replacement (even if it balloons RAM usage when presented with a large sheet of data), simply because all of the wonderful features of Excel are unused.

The most complex operation some people do seems to be lookup tables.

What can't be done in any other way?

I think if we focus on "has been", and not consider something dire like "will always be"...then i see it as an opportunity (and opportunity for LibreOffice and others like it). Because i do agree that a small % of people do use/need advance features from excel...so if i were the European Union, then i would gather such data for advanced usage (which is best done when pilots are rolled out), and throw a little money at addressing that (by a little, i mean little for big governments, so talking like a few million, etc.). I'd throw some money at the devs who contribute to LibreOffice, openDesk, whatever...and specifically address whatever shotcomings might exist in the free and open source offerings. Maybe its not an overnight solution, but it would serve to produce 2 things:

1. You pay devs to address the issue...reducing or removing any gaps between excel and offerings like LibreOffice, etc.

2. The devs you threw money at will gain ever more experience addressing needs for this now more expanded marketplace...creating possibly some more jobs and/or opportunites for more local vendors to support these govs, and any businesses that follow suit in adopting such open source offerings...

...I think these create or expedite a marketplace...and one that is not controlled by the U.s. or any single dominant player. So, i think while it might be slow, its a good long-term approach.

It's almost a standard negotiating tactic when it comes time for license renewal.

There isn't really anything worth attention here. Pathetic, indeed.

Why not just hide/flag the story and move on with your life? No one is forcing you to comment. And apparently the rest of HN disagrees with you, it is on the frontpage after all which happens after we all vote or don't vote for it.

If I didn't knew better, it does sound like you're slightly jealous of something...

That's life, spies going to spy, state psychopaths from the military and the three-latter agencies exist regardless whether you see them or not and they don't care about the "common good". They must be taken into the account.

The less power humans have over each other - the better. Instead of pressuring each other to bring profits people would be able to speak like equals.

Second, the EU has been pouring money into an OpenOffice fork for official use and replacement of Office 365 for a while. https://office.eu/

The results have been pretty surprisingly good. There’s a lot of functionality missing on first use, but I think if I let it churn through a few million more tokens it could get close.

I would be very concerned if I were a MS, SaaS or Adobe about what’s to come in the near future.

Not a problem in the age of infinite redesign churn.

And MS Office corporate licenses account for a significant part of MS's revenue stream. More than 400 million Office 365 licenses paid in 2024, not one-off Windows licenses. So a business might save $150 per person per year on a large group of staff migrating them to a FOSS alternative for email and a replacement for light users that only ever touch Word/Excel/PowerPoint. And they might never know the difference, functionally. That's also less of a tangled web than switching operating systems and network setups that would require work for any users of critical systems. I can see the logic in migrating the willing as a test out of Office, then a few more people every month until you have one pool of FOSS users, and one pool of must use Office 365 users.

That shift might not be nothing to a small business as well, and at scale, might also be significant to larger businesses. Even if 5% of Office 365 users moved over, that's tens of millions of users.

The point of migration seems to be data-storage compliance anyway. They can later migrate off Windows easily once openDesk gets them going.

Maybe not the case for everyone, but this has been the reason for making as much in-house software as possible behind a web frontend.

That was more than 20 years ago.

Half of our laboratory PC rooms used Linux or BSD and we had licences like Matlab for Linux early on. The other half used Windows and yes, we could get very good license prices from Microsoft precisely because we had so many Linux machines. It was almost free.

You could even say that Microsoft spent money on us trying to buy the University sales gatekeepers with things like free expensive travel to States' conferences, free laptops and stuff.

We were probably not a normal University as we were a technical University and regularly organised conferences inviting people like Stallman.(Our technical University also managed the servers of the Humanities side of the University).

It was not that hard. Today, with so many programs running in Webassembly, it should be much easier.

>Is it just political symbolic migration because they have anything better to do with tax payers money?

Usually when you replace privative software with open source you spend 10x or so less in licenses. The problem being that the open source software is not as capable as the privative.

I did not understood why instead of spending 10 times less with open source, you spend half and pay for the necessary capabilities improving the open source software.

I understood it later. In the past it was a scheme lots of politicians used for getting negotiation power against Microsoft. Digital sovereignty was very down the priorities list compared to getting a good price.

Now, after the Ukraine war, and Trump actively using the US dependence against Europe, digital sovereignty is a very real issue, even critical.

It will fail because employees want "mouse point and click", "mouse point and double click" interfaces and are unable to use anything else.