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.”
LibreOffice is perfectly fine for your Dear Princess Celestia letters (which 99 percent of Word users do is write simple letters), but once you start doing more advanced formatting (such as tables and text boxes and other embeddings), LibreO really doesn’t like it. And good luck if you have to convert such a Word document.
This is disingenuous and misleading.
Yes compatibility with Word with complex formatting is problematic, but is that really libreoffice or is it Ms office?
For documents drafted in LibreOffice complex formatting is rock solid. It’s patently false to say its just generally inferior to Word in this regard.
Yeah it is always funny when people shit on non-MS office suites for not being 100% comaltible with MS Office, when it is Microsoft who doesn’t stick to the international standards.
How can they be international standards if they don’t include Microsoft? Doesn’t Microsoft and all its employees count as part of this global international world? See, Microsoft is the victim here.
edit /s /s /s /s /s /s
You might want to look into what standardization means.
Start here: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Organization_for_Standardization
And here more on our specific case: https://www.iso.org/standard/66363.html
Imo companies who hinder or harm standardization (Microsoft and Apple are the leaders here) are literally among the worst things on this earth.
Malarkey. It does give with tables and boxes. I’ve been digitizing my home be brew ttrpg system slowly over the last few years, using libreoffice. Zero issues, zero difficulty.
And I’ve now written three novels, a novella, and many short stories with it. The native epub output isn’t perfect, but it does fine for alpha/beta reading. And that’s the only flaw it has for prose.
I’ve converted older word documents in the process of the ttrpg formatting, btw, with no issues.
The word processing part is all I really use, so I can’t say much about anything else in the suite, but librewriter is fully capable.
I do lots of advanced formatting in LibreOffice and it works a LOT better than Microsoft Office ever has, mostly because the functionality is consistently found in the same dialogues across versions. Also, references are not permanently broken like those in documents submitted by my windows using colleagues.
Does Word like advanced formatting? I’ve found LaTeX easier to use for typesetting, and I don’t like LaTeX.
Wait a second lemme just quickly program my letter
You don’t compose your letter in word either… Nor do most people need “advance” formating for letter. I doubt you are formating floating subfigures, aligning equations, and organizing citations for every email.
I’m not knowledgeable enough to know if that’s true or not, but having it be pushed to the test with serious work at that scale will hopefully get those compatibility issues ironed out quickly. Anyone can contribute after all, and no doubt the government will have programmers that are looking to help.
That’s a blatant lie. LibreOffice Writer works better than M$ Word for every single purpose and application.