A German state is ditching Windows and Microsoft Office for Linux and LibreOffice on the 30,000 PCs it uses for local government functions
A German state is ditching Windows and Microsoft Office for Linux and LibreOffice on the 30,000 PCs it uses for local government functions
'Complete digital sovereignty' ... sounds familiar
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."
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Does LibreOffice finally have ribbon or does it still look like MS Office 2003? You can hate on Microsoft all your want (and I'd gladly join you in most cases) and I get the privacy concerns but the Office suite is, after all those decades, still unmatched (well maybe except Outlook).
while it does have a ribbon, the exclusive ribbon while discarding the menu is the main reason why Microsoft Office is fucked up beyond repair.
Ribbon is one of the best inventions Microsoft ever came up with and I will die on this hill. I'm old enough to remember very well the suffering when I was trying to find something in the classic menus or among the billion equal sized icons scattered across multiple toolbars in old MS Office versions. When Office 2007 came out, everything was suddenly so much easier to find, often with less clicks. I don't see any reason why I'd need the old style menu in addition to ribbon.
There was something faster and more reliable: keyboard shortcuts.
The ribbon is for people who use the mouse for stuff that is much faster to do with a keyboard.
You can't possibly have every feature on a keyboard shortcut, even just all those various formatting features in Word for example where you often have to choose something from a list of options. And even if you somehow did manage to have a shortcut for everything, you'd still only remember those you use frequently enough.
Not to mention, I'm pretty sure most of those shortcuts from 2003 still work today.
Okay, let me rephrase my initial criticism:
- let have whoever would like to have three rows of ribbon icons whose description is only visible as a mouse-over hint
- fuck Microsoft for forcefully removing the regular office drop-down menus
The second part in this process was completely unnecessary and made office a worthless pile of bloatware.
It has a ribbon. I'd say its on par with Office 2016.