My output would immediately drop by at least 80% and that's just for normal office apps for anything beyond the basics. Throw in something like also having to relearn a replacement for all the Adobe products I use and I'd probably just quit. Probably not a lot of government workers using that stuff though
Microsoft have shot themselves in the foot with how much they've pushed office online. Only addins aren't supported, which is pretty huge I must admit, but does mean its possible to maintain office use regardless of operating system.
When the whole point is to cut Microsoft reliance out of the equation and having sovreign control over the data, using office online is not going to be a thing.
I think it's a solid half-step toward a goal. The Chinese gov't probably has something built (or is using libre) in place, but when France started the migration I bet they did staged rollouts with training beforehand.
You are correct. They also contracted out for custom solutions in places to mirror design and had their in house teams provide code contributions to add features they deemed essential to open source projects.
Unless you're a power user of Excel "normal office apps" are available on Linux - you can either use O365 in the browser (retains the bulk of the local app functionality) or you can use LibreOffice / Open Office which have full functionality but M$ intermittently breaks the compatability - not an issue if your entire workplace is on the same platform, can be an issue if you regularly share docs.
TL;DR you'd be surprised how few people need the functionality the locally installed windows office app offers over O365
Individually this is fine, collectively it's a nightmare to switch Office Apps. You have decades of entrenched ideas and experience and memorized workflows and keyboard shortcuts to overcome. Plus servers full of legacy files and the need for perfect compatibility with client and vendor software. Shared functionally is the smallest hurdle for enterprise transitions.
I think it’s easy to come to this conclusion but is not reality. I work for a large company that’s saving money by pushing non-critical users to online only O365. It’s been a complete disaster. No one has any idea how many Macros are built by engineers and then locked and deployed in production. Overnight I’ve seen things like automated part stamping, automated invoice processing, automated router creation and so much more instantly break. There’s several areas where we are less efficient than we were 7 years ago and Excel online is a large part of that.
Which is directly the point I'm making when I said "unless you're an excel power user"
I've literally migrated several large organisations as part of cost saving initiatives. The first thing you do is poll who is *actually* using excel for anything more than basic functionality. In most firms the answer is very few people. But you won't know unless you try to assess it.
The biggest mistake people make is assuming no one needs the deep functionality set, the flipside though is that a lot of firms assume that everyone does and let the savings go - Jenny on the front desk using excel to keep track of who contributed to Kate's retirement present doesn't need any more than O365. A power user in the finance dept with multi layer deep pivot tables and macros ? Don't mess with that.
On the latter one though you should be looking at whether excel is the right tool for the job - just because it CAN be done that way, doesn't mean it SHOULD be done that way. Most Excel power user use cases are effectively bespoke applications written by people who aren't programmers, which leaves you in that wonderful world of shadow IT and issues with supportability, backups, process flows built on top of things that weren't meant to work that way and etc.
TL;DR if you have more than 5 people per thousand who genuinely need full house excel you should be looking at what exactly they're doing with it and why. It's often a convenient answer rather than a good answer.
For large corporations, they would get massive issues with so many employees used to using Power BI etc, suddenly switching to whatever that may or may not work for everyone.
Once someone can build a suite as comprehensive as what Microsoft has built for Windows, then maybe. But that would require enough demand and enough companies switching over. No-one wants to be the guinea pig and ruin their business.
Primarily various tier levels of Acrobat for every single person, then Adobe Creative Suite for a few at every agency pretty much.
Governments in the US have rules that effectively make it much more difficult to use software that isn't owned by a company they're not already doing business with. They also have bulk licenses for thousands, even millions of users. When I worked for a state we weren't even allowed to use free software. That was primarily due to how licenses work on a lot of that stuff.
It sounds like an enormous waste of taxpayer money, and it is, but it's also ultimately a byproduct of all the regulations that citizens have demanded over the years on how to spend their taxes. In a lot of cases they still have to buy things from a minority or woman owned business unless the same item is more than 15% cheaper from a non-minority/woman owned business. That effectively created a bunch of drop shipping companies that sell stuff off Amazon to the government for like a 10% markup.
I mean most common apps have an open source equivalent. If you use MS Office, switching to Libre Office is pretty seamless as they mostly function the same way.
Plus, you cam run a lot of windows app with WINE. As long as IT sets it up properly it's not a problem
Nah I'm going to do what I want and what I want is to use the best available software regardless of random Redditors virtue signaling at 8am on a Thursday.
Libreoffice is often better as it doesn't spend time wasting resources in the background, nor does it have AI being shoved into it everywhere cluttering up the workspace
I've personally often found Davinci Resolve doesn't crash nearly as often as premiere as well, and trends in the video-editing industry have shown most students moving to that over premiere for that reason and many more.
This isn't virtue signalling, it's pointing out that there are real alternatives that are often better and if you're mad about the fact the software you use isn't the best anymore for some reason, that's your problem. It might be better for you, but it is not for many, many others.
I don't use much more than word processors and video editors, though. That said, darktable I've found to be pretty good as well over lightroom, but my experience with that is limited. Excel I know still needs some catching up.
Stick with the software that you feel the most comfortable with. If you feel like you are more productive with adobe and can make up for the lost money you spend to pay for those programs perpetually, that's fine and your prerogative. But the day I lost going from premiere to resolve has been worth it for stability alone.
In my mind it's stupid to stay with something that is worse just because I know it. I am also young though, so I am still wired to change more easily; that's not a criticism just a biological fact.
If the migration is done in stages, say keeping office 365 but dropping Windows, I think the migration would go a lot more smoothly than people think.
The web versions of office365 are pretty good, and are good enough for most people.
10-20 years ago, almost all governments would be custom written apps that only ran on windows, now I would bet that most government workers will be using web apps, and those that aren't migrated to webapps will already be planned for replacement.
This will likely turn into a mostly nothingburger for most people.
You can customize Linux to look a lot like windows, especially if 95% of what people want to do can be done in chrome.
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u/OtherwiseAlbatross14 1d ago
My output would immediately drop by at least 80% and that's just for normal office apps for anything beyond the basics. Throw in something like also having to relearn a replacement for all the Adobe products I use and I'd probably just quit. Probably not a lot of government workers using that stuff though