A northern German state, Schleswig-Holstein, it is planning pass all the computers of their institutions officers, both offices and schools, about 25,000, Windows to Linux, with the aim of adopting free software. The change, as highlighted in Muycomputer, has been in preparation for some time and its planning is already at a fairly advanced stage.
According Mike Saunders of LibreOffice, the state authorities have made this decision to reduce their dependence on proprietary software, and even to end it. Of course, the change will not be immediate, and as for LibreOffice, for example, «By the end of 2026, Microsoft Office will be replaced by LibreOffice on the 25,000 computers used by public officials and employees, including teachers, and the Windows operating system will be replaced by GNU / Linux«.
On the other hand, from Foss Force they point out that it seems that the change is «thing done«, Since the necessary steps for the transition from proprietary to open software have already been raised in the state parliament. In fact, according to Digital Minister of the State, Jan Philipp Albrecht, the transition is already underway, and as an example, the fact that videoconferences held within the state administration are already 90% held through the open source videoconferencing platform Jitsi.
Albrecht notes that they have been testing LibreOffice for two years in the IT department for two years, so they have verified that everything is going correctly before the change, noting that “this also applies, for example, to editing Microsoft Word documents with comments. The interface between LibreOffice and our electronic files software has been working stably for six months, although before that we had to have the developer of the electronic files software develop it.«.
However, the minister recalled that there are still some obstacles to solve before the large-scale and state-level deployment begins. But still, he is sure that the same will not happen as in another region of Germany, in Munich, which began by completely migrating its computers to its own Linux distribution, known as LiMux, ended with the return in 2017 of all computers to Windows a few years ago even though their authorities initially seemed very satisfied.
Everything changed after Microsoft did an intense lobbying work in Germany to reverse the change that even led then-Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer to meet with authorities in Munich, and to decide that the company’s headquarters in the country should change its location. location to move to the outskirts of the city.
The minister has stated in this regard that “the main problem is that the employees were not sufficiently involved. We will do better. We are planning long transition phases with parallel use, and we are integrating open source step by step when departments are ready. With this we generate the reason for a greater introduction, because people can see that it works«.
As to Linux distribution that they will use to replace Windows on state computers, not decided yet. Of course, according to Albrecht, they are currently examining five distributions to choose the one that best suits their needs.
