Federal authorities of the Swiss Confederation recently launched a pilot program to replace Microsoft 365 tools with open-source alternatives. The Federal Chancellery's plan calls for investing 9...
Replacing Microsoft 365 with open-source alternatives might be the right approach to solving the sovereignty problem, but plans could eventually change. Replacing traditional software tools on aging IT systems is no easy “plug-and-play” task, as some users have remarked. The German city of Munich even tried to move from Windows to Linux in 2004, but eventually returned to the old operating system in 2017.
Let’s hope the outcome is better this time. And i also hope the result can be leveraged by other nations.
I’m sure they weren’t using a distro from 2004 in 2017. But what’s weird is that Linux was very mature in 2017. 2009 is my cutoff where I fully dropped windows while still being able to function in a 100% windows environment. If they made it past that point there would have been no reason to go back to windows once they migrated. Without a doubt there were hijinks involved.
What I meant is they went through the rough years of 2000s Linux when hardware support was really problematic and the office suite options were far really behind.
Let’s hope the outcome is better this time. And i also hope the result can be leveraged by other nations.
The fact that they made 2004 Linux work untill 2017 was impressive.
Linux and OSS in 2026 is night and day compared to back then.
I’m sure they weren’t using a distro from 2004 in 2017. But what’s weird is that Linux was very mature in 2017. 2009 is my cutoff where I fully dropped windows while still being able to function in a 100% windows environment. If they made it past that point there would have been no reason to go back to windows once they migrated. Without a doubt there were hijinks involved.
What I meant is they went through the rough years of 2000s Linux when hardware support was really problematic and the office suite options were far really behind.
Server side was pretty good by then though.