I remember when stories like this about moving off Microsoft products was somewhat shocking.
Now I'm somewhat shocked that a government is still stuck on Microsoft products.
bryanrasmussen · 1d ago
The way Denmark works is that at some point an inflection point will be hit - I think about 30% of computers being off MS, and then there will be a stampede and everyone will be off MS in the year.
jopsen · 1d ago
Lol, I wouldn't bet on us getting to that infliction point.
All of this will be forgotten when the orange monkey is gone.
So if it has to happen it has to happen yesterday.
raxxorraxor · 1d ago
If they started to actually build their own infrastructure 10 years ago, we would probably have very advanced and secure government OS and tools complementing usual use cases.
China did it because it is capable. I am not yet convinced that Europe will not bungle it again. In recent times talking 2 minutes about technical issues is too much mental strain for a lot of people that need to make decisions.
You don't have to be a geek to understand these issues, just some basic critical thinking skills would suffice. There is also risk here, but it should be easy to mitigate that. Also, people need training to use different applications.
ErrorNoBrain · 1d ago
some munincipalities have already started the process, incl the 2nd largest one with ~half a million citizens.
they save money in the process, switching to a non-american based cloud provider.
oever · 1d ago
Can provide (links with) details on these migrations?
samch · 1d ago
So many of the comments are focusing on Office products. Okay, that’s fair. People can talk Calc vs Excel for example, and that’s fair. What I don’t get is how you replicate knowledge worker collaboration without using a major commercial provider like Google Workspace or M365. How do you handle the use cases solved by collaborative document editing, SharePoint / OneDrive, Teams with DLP, document classification, etc.
I’m not affiliated with Google or MSFT, just genuinely curious how you replace the broader ecosystem around the core Office products using open-source solutions. Has anybody solved for this?
Please note that only ~79 employees will be affected by this decision, which, taken in context, looks a lot like just political posturing in preparation for "Folkemødet" the week-long politician+lobbyist festival going on this week.
In this instance, they sre trying out libre office
buyucu · 1d ago
phasing out Microsoft products is not hard. the only real difficulty is that corporate IT departs are populated with people who have built their entire careers on the Microsoft ecosystem and can't imagine a world beyond Microsoft.
0cf8612b2e1e · 1d ago
That is out of touch for professional users. There is nothing on the planet that competes with Excel. Sure there is spreadsheet software, but nothing that has all of the power and features that experts expect.
It would be like if your manager came in and said, “We are switching away from your expensive jetbrains IDE. You can just use notepad, right?”
ArnoVW · 1d ago
CIO here
Can confirm that I will take Excel from the cold dead hands of our CFO (and the rest of his dept). Hell even macOS Excel is too much weirdness for them. And being user of both platforms I agree with them.
The rest of the company are very happy though on Google Worksheets, making lists and replying to RFP requests in .xlsx, on their Macbook.
We do a survey every year; 95% of staff is happy with the resources out at their disposition. Including those working on a platform that is not their native platform.
End users are more flexible than we think. Especially non technical ones.
tranchebald · 1d ago
Imagine a world where if experts didn’t spend hundreds of hours learning the non transferable skills of VBA macros and Power-Noun integrations, but rather they spent the much less time developing a basic understanding of scripting and prompting and managed tabular data in ways vastly more powerful than excel in a way that is transparent and debugable. Would we not be much better off? Excel is not an engine of progress. It is an anchor.
buyucu · 1d ago
this is exactly the point I was trying to make.
betaby · 1d ago
> There is nothing on the planet that competes with Excel
Debatable. Even then, why that matters? I would think 90% of the world population never used Excel anyway.
> You can just use notepad, right?
No, you are missing the point. Intentionally.
esafak · 1d ago
Excel is powerful? Does it do forecasting, statistics or machine learning? Only in a rudimentary sense. Spreadsheets like Excel are low-code tools. Experts in those domains use a real programming language.
People use Excel because it is familiar, because it has distribution. They don't (care to) know any alternatives. If they'd never been familiar with Excel they wouldn't ask for it.
wenc · 1d ago
As a former ML engineer, Excel is a surprisingly practical tool even for ML folks. It’s a very tactile tool to touch and feel your data and do quick what ifs without doing a lot of coding. Want a graph? Plot it instead of fudging with matplotlib.
Forecasting? Yes. Dynamic formulas? Yes — much better than writing code (you’d have to write a reactive widget in Jupyter).
Most people don’t need to do ML but they need to do complicated formulas and get immediate feedback. Excel is really good at that. Libre office can do 90% of it but Excel has some advanced features that it doesn’t come close to.
esafak · 1d ago
Excel is for playing with data that is already aggregated. You don't see any data scientist in a tech company reaching for spreadsheets. Business analysts use them, maybe, because they work with the raw data rolled up by the engineers.
How are you even going to ingest the data you want to visualize from the database it's in otherwise? It won't fit on your computer as is. You need something like Tableau to query and inspect it.
edit: Sure, let the finance people have their spreadsheets, but don't let that stuff anywhere near engineering and data science. It's a major anti-pattern.
0cf8612b2e1e · 1d ago
Yes, yes, Excel is the Blub tool. Plenty of other options which are better typed, performant, intuitive, whatever.
Every F500 company has accountants, FPNA, auditors, likely even the CFO who are doing their analysis in Excel. They live and breathe it. It is their everything app which they run 40 hours a week. They know Excel, they are the 10x rockstars of their field.
It is a common refrain here that you should absolutely invest in SAAS tools at $/month if it makes your workers more productive. Even if they are not slinging code, these people already have the best tool for their job. Making them all switch to save a few bucks to a less feature complete option is hamstringing yourself.
Could many people switch without issue? Sure, but it is foolhardy to imagine a 100% cut over without enormous pain to the elite staff.
Delphiza · 1d ago
Good points. It is egregious that HN 'technologists' will tell people that the tool that they use for 40+ hours a week to _get stuff done_ is completely wrong and that they must use python and a text editor instead.
Delphiza · 1d ago
There are countless millions of people that are experts in certain domains that do not have the aptitude, confidence, or training to use high-code tools. It is insulting to imply that those people are not experts because they don't use a 'real programming language'. Besides, while imperative programming languages are good at solving a great many problems, they are far from being the best tool for every person, every problem, and every environment.
buyucu · 1d ago
Excel is not powerful. People use it because they are too lazy to learn something new.
oytis · 1d ago
True. It is already happened at least once in Germany that a municipality decided to ditch MS products in favour of open source, and went back after people started complaining that buttons are in the wrong places.
Thank you, that's what I had in mind. The timeline is an amusing read, but as I read it it's really a mix of "buttons in the wrong places" and lobbying.
RajT88 · 1d ago
The thing which stood out to me was the office suite incompatibility statement.
It's probably a legit complaint, but still potentially the fault of Microsoft. People learn how to use Excel, and the free alternative suites don't have all the same functionality (or if they do, it's not the same UI so you have to re-learn it).
And with as prolific as Office is, you're going to have to open office documents. If that doesn't work cleanly, that's a big issue.
I haven't looked into if whatever incompatibilities are a result of Microsoft pressure or technical shenanigans, or it just being a natural consequence of the free suites being less well funded in their development efforts.
I don't think it's impossible to run an enterprise with FOSS - but it is not easy.
jansan · 1d ago
Also, AFAIR Bill Gates personally and in person intervened and paid a visit to Munich's mayor Christian Ude.
Here is an interview with Christian Ude in which he mentiones that Bill Gates was unable to understand how reying on Microsoft products would make a city "dependent":
> Funnily enough, during the conversation, he kept making new financial offers, including what Microsoft would add to the price, for the school department, for example. They continually became cheaper by a million, another million, another million, and later a dozen million. That's how important the symbol of the renegade state capital of Munich, internationally perceived as an IT stronghold, was to Microsoft.
This was Ballmer though, not gates. Maybe Gates had a separate visit.
skywal_l · 1d ago
It seems to me that the windows UI interface change also very often. Between the excel of win95 and today's there is a big difference.
So it can't be the reason.
hnthrow90348765 · 1d ago
I'm really tired of all the overhauls - Win 11 and now Apple.
izacus · 1d ago
Except that in reality the issues weren't just buttons in real places, but actual serious issues with work flows, right?
Kinda dishonest framing there.
buyucu · 1d ago
they will complain for two weeks, and then get used to it. 90% of all users just use a browser. it's not hard to switch.
oytis · 1d ago
It did already happen though. It's not just about buttons of course, there is a lot of lobbying, and if other people you are working with (e.g. other municipalities) stay on MS stack, there are going to be compatibility issues that will of course be blamed on the outliers.
SpicyLemonZest · 1d ago
The Wikipedia article doesn't make it obvious, but even Munich itself wasn't able to migrate everyone off of the MS stack. One of the linkrotted sources (https://web.archive.org/web/20180516042059/https://www.techr...) says they had about 17% of computers running Windows after the migration "completed" because some required programs couldn't run on their Linux distro. It's not obvious whether the working model was that 17% of staff used Windows exclusively or all staff had to find a Windows box to do some of their work, but either one sounds pretty obnoxious to me.
jimbokun · 1d ago
Having to replace all of your IT employees sounds pretty hard to me.
Or at least train them and get them to buy into a different platform.
buyucu · 1d ago
you don't need to replace them. retraining them is pretty easy. but these people have invested their careers in the microsoft ecosystem, and will not initiate this kind of change on their own. they need to be pushed.
lenerdenator · 1d ago
People prefer familiar tools with which to do their jobs and do not like new tools that reduce their perceived productivity. Film at 10.
buyucu · 1d ago
Nothing new or innovative happens with this backwards mindset.
declan_roberts · 1d ago
If they try and use Open Office I'm going to laugh.
The people who say Open Office is great are the same people who say Linux Desktop is great for non-technical users. They're completely oblivious to the shortcomings. Impossible to get through to them, and they're perpetually clueless why most people will choose things like Gdocs and Microsoft.
isu · 1d ago
Laugh or not, I installed Ubuntu on my partner’s mom laptop, she didn’t notice a difference, and she used Windows before that.
The only people who had trouble with Ubuntu were IT support employees of a local telecom provider when they needed to configure a network on the laptop.
somenameforme · 1d ago
To let you pick what I assume is the lowest hanging fruit, what are the most significant short comings of e.g. Calc vs Excel? I use it casually, but "casually" in a way that would probably be at least equivalent to professional use in most cases, and can't recall ever ending up with a blocking issue. So I'm certainly oblivious to the shortcomings and would love to know!
ok123456 · 1d ago
It's not 2001, when using OpenOffice and a Linux desktop meant crippling incompatibilities and an overall poor user experience.
The Linux Desktop may not be "great" by whatever standard of "great" you come up with, but the state of the Microsoft desktop is slow, inconsistent, frustrating, and tries to upsell you, while also attempting to steal your data.
SoftTalker · 1d ago
Yep, the Windows desktop has steadily gotten worse since Windows 2000 Pro. Linux desktops have steadily gotten better.
wg0 · 1d ago
I'd disagree. Most of the government office work can be easily dealt with Libere office.
Same can be said about GNOME.
Yes where what can't be done very well is CAD. All the top notch CAD of any engineering discipline is on Windows. Or Mac maybe.
Second come the games. You don't have Read Dead Redemption or Microsoft Flying Simulator with same fluidity as they are on Windows.
dijit · 1d ago
While I agree with you regarding libreoffice.
My tech illiterate mother got on a lot easier with modern desktop linux than she did with modern desktop windows.
Windows enjoys "ease of use" because of inertia, talk to someone who hasn't used Windows since XP and they'll find KDE a hell of a lot easier than whatever the fuck Windows 11 is doing.
ganyu · 1d ago
Let's just say Windows 11 is a complete different OS compared to Windows 7 lest 10. That's still not counting Windows 11 being a new OS every couple of months, packed with brand new AI features that literally breaks your entire workflow because it's "more AI".
wg0 · 1d ago
It's unfortunate that Microsoft is transforming their OS into an advertising hub. You can't login without a Microsoft account and such.
A better direction for Microsoft is to make it free for personal use and charge the businesses.
esafak · 1d ago
If you name some of these shortcomings people can fix them. What are they?
gcau · 1d ago
I disagree, I've been using linux for 20 years, and know the ins and outs in detail, and it's a easy choice for non-technical users. Just make sure they install the best distro (you know which one...), read the man pages, and know how to get those pesky gpu drivers working, brushing up on their bash skills would help too. Personally I recommend they compile their own kernel with some tweaks.
mindaslab · 1d ago
Time to bribe and enslave Denmark as Microsoft's slave. Or slap sanctions on it, till it buckles.
Now I'm somewhat shocked that a government is still stuck on Microsoft products.
All of this will be forgotten when the orange monkey is gone.
So if it has to happen it has to happen yesterday.
China did it because it is capable. I am not yet convinced that Europe will not bungle it again. In recent times talking 2 minutes about technical issues is too much mental strain for a lot of people that need to make decisions.
You don't have to be a geek to understand these issues, just some basic critical thinking skills would suffice. There is also risk here, but it should be easy to mitigate that. Also, people need training to use different applications.
they save money in the process, switching to a non-american based cloud provider.
Both works pretty well
It would be like if your manager came in and said, “We are switching away from your expensive jetbrains IDE. You can just use notepad, right?”
Can confirm that I will take Excel from the cold dead hands of our CFO (and the rest of his dept). Hell even macOS Excel is too much weirdness for them. And being user of both platforms I agree with them.
The rest of the company are very happy though on Google Worksheets, making lists and replying to RFP requests in .xlsx, on their Macbook.
We do a survey every year; 95% of staff is happy with the resources out at their disposition. Including those working on a platform that is not their native platform.
End users are more flexible than we think. Especially non technical ones.
Debatable. Even then, why that matters? I would think 90% of the world population never used Excel anyway.
> You can just use notepad, right?
No, you are missing the point. Intentionally.
People use Excel because it is familiar, because it has distribution. They don't (care to) know any alternatives. If they'd never been familiar with Excel they wouldn't ask for it.
Forecasting? Yes. Dynamic formulas? Yes — much better than writing code (you’d have to write a reactive widget in Jupyter).
Most people don’t need to do ML but they need to do complicated formulas and get immediate feedback. Excel is really good at that. Libre office can do 90% of it but Excel has some advanced features that it doesn’t come close to.
How are you even going to ingest the data you want to visualize from the database it's in otherwise? It won't fit on your computer as is. You need something like Tableau to query and inspect it.
edit: Sure, let the finance people have their spreadsheets, but don't let that stuff anywhere near engineering and data science. It's a major anti-pattern.
Every F500 company has accountants, FPNA, auditors, likely even the CFO who are doing their analysis in Excel. They live and breathe it. It is their everything app which they run 40 hours a week. They know Excel, they are the 10x rockstars of their field.
It is a common refrain here that you should absolutely invest in SAAS tools at $/month if it makes your workers more productive. Even if they are not slinging code, these people already have the best tool for their job. Making them all switch to save a few bucks to a less feature complete option is hamstringing yourself.
Could many people switch without issue? Sure, but it is foolhardy to imagine a 100% cut over without enormous pain to the elite staff.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LiMux
It was about many things.
It's probably a legit complaint, but still potentially the fault of Microsoft. People learn how to use Excel, and the free alternative suites don't have all the same functionality (or if they do, it's not the same UI so you have to re-learn it).
And with as prolific as Office is, you're going to have to open office documents. If that doesn't work cleanly, that's a big issue.
I haven't looked into if whatever incompatibilities are a result of Microsoft pressure or technical shenanigans, or it just being a natural consequence of the free suites being less well funded in their development efforts.
I don't think it's impossible to run an enterprise with FOSS - but it is not easy.
Here is an interview with Christian Ude in which he mentiones that Bill Gates was unable to understand how reying on Microsoft products would make a city "dependent":
https://www.linux-magazin.de/ausgaben/2019/10/interview-2/
> Funnily enough, during the conversation, he kept making new financial offers, including what Microsoft would add to the price, for the school department, for example. They continually became cheaper by a million, another million, another million, and later a dozen million. That's how important the symbol of the renegade state capital of Munich, internationally perceived as an IT stronghold, was to Microsoft.
This was Ballmer though, not gates. Maybe Gates had a separate visit.
So it can't be the reason.
Kinda dishonest framing there.
Or at least train them and get them to buy into a different platform.
The people who say Open Office is great are the same people who say Linux Desktop is great for non-technical users. They're completely oblivious to the shortcomings. Impossible to get through to them, and they're perpetually clueless why most people will choose things like Gdocs and Microsoft.
The only people who had trouble with Ubuntu were IT support employees of a local telecom provider when they needed to configure a network on the laptop.
The Linux Desktop may not be "great" by whatever standard of "great" you come up with, but the state of the Microsoft desktop is slow, inconsistent, frustrating, and tries to upsell you, while also attempting to steal your data.
Same can be said about GNOME.
Yes where what can't be done very well is CAD. All the top notch CAD of any engineering discipline is on Windows. Or Mac maybe.
Second come the games. You don't have Read Dead Redemption or Microsoft Flying Simulator with same fluidity as they are on Windows.
My tech illiterate mother got on a lot easier with modern desktop linux than she did with modern desktop windows.
Windows enjoys "ease of use" because of inertia, talk to someone who hasn't used Windows since XP and they'll find KDE a hell of a lot easier than whatever the fuck Windows 11 is doing.
A better direction for Microsoft is to make it free for personal use and charge the businesses.
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