As many IT people in Denmark is pointing out, it's not really about replacing Office and Windows, it's all the surrounding infrastructure that will be the main issue.
Are these Linux machines going to authenticate against the Azure Active Directory, maybe just a local Active Directory, or are the IT department going to run a separate service in parallel? Are they moving away from Exchange Server... probably not, given that it's half of the staff. Are they using Intune, if so what's the replacement strategy where?
My guess is that many of these staff members are going to use webmail and run Windows programs in remote desktop. The investments in the infrastructure isn't high enough, nor have they addressed any of the hard problems and the time frame is rather short. I doubt any significant money and time has been set aside for training.
It is going to end in complete failure, the employees are going to complain about lost productivity and a frustrating work environment. They are setting themselves up for complete failure.
The same is happening in a number of schools, where Linux and LibreOffice is set to replace ChromeBooks for some students. The expectation is that the cost is going to be €2.25M per year, for the next two years, then there will be a cost saving of €4-5M. Again no plans for handling authentication, email, file sharing or provisioning. They'll just force the students out of the relatively protected Google Workspace for Students, into the "real" Google/Gmail ecosystems where they are less protected against data mining.
This will all end badly and it will be because of poor planning. Then the next US president steps in, calms things down and we forget the whole thing in 2 years.
LibreOffice is great, but not supporting multiple users simultaneously editing the same document is a serious limitation compared to proprietary solutions such as MS Office and Google Workspace.
Also, replacing Windows by Linux and MS Office by LibreOffice is only the surface of the problem. What about replacing Entra (identity and access management), Intune (endpoint management), file sharing (OneDrive), email and calendar (Exchange Online)?
Russia, China, and India have invested a lot in developing their equivalent of 365 and Google Workspace (mainly via Yandex, Alibaba, and Zoho). Europe needs to accelerate on this.
Edit: There is some progress on LibreOffice real-time collaboration:
The Austrian Federal Ministry of Justice has been on LibreOffice for many years now, with the Austrian Federal Computing Center developing extensions specifically for their use-cases.
This is a great trend. I wonder how long until Microsoft's Ballmer-type people fly into Munich again to commit corruption / lobbying.
As much as I applaud the move away from proprietary software, when it comes to Office, particularly Excel, there are going to be a LOT of custom macros dotted around that will be difficult to replace, particularly when they integrate with other applications via COM. These are usually written with the best intentions by people wanting to be more productive.
Something this article doesn't mention is that this only pertains to the ministry itself, which has like 80 employees, and not its much larger subsidiaries (Digitaliseringsstyrelsen and Danmarks Statistik).
Aarhus and Copenhagen municipalities are planning to do the same, and have around 80000 employees, that's a much bigger deal in my opinion.
I was recently wondering why something of this nature hasn't happened long ago. Governments have to be spending so much money on licensing fees.
It seems like you could throw a fraction of that money at open source software, actually make it good and then not be beholden to corporations like Microsoft or Google. Combine this sort push between multiple governments and the world gets good (at least relatively) software for all of the major office and design concerns.
CAD software is the same. I tried freecad recently after a long hiatus and came back to immediately crashing after trying to make a cube from a sketch and also finding out that there's no midpoint constraint (wtf) if I remember correctly.
The companies and Government offices in Denmark are heavily entrenched in Microsoft ecosystem as I remember from a few years ago. The amount of money they would be spending in license costs!
It is 2025, couldn’t we get away with using cheaper/even free(and or open source) online versions of office software?
I don’t even have MS Office installed on my personal computer. When I need to deal with .docs or .xlsx files, I either use Google docs or Libre Office if it is too complicated for Google Docs.
Governments should fund more open source projects. Apparently there's a model of governance here that could work. Enough people like writing software. The innate motivation is there. With funding, there could be more of it.
There might be some iffy issues. For example, if a state backs certain open source software too hard, then I'm afraid you get "state backed vaporware" in some cases. I can definitely see where it'll be like "Denmark has start open source initiative xyz" but because it's so externally pushed, from a motivation standpoint, it becomes half baked.
So I'm more advocating for a gentle monetary nudge.
Somebody tell the Danish legal team that Tritium (https://tritium.legal) runs on Linux :).
I said it on the prior thread, and I think it's worth reiterating: Politics aside, Microsoft has such a strangle hold on so many industries it's insane. That reach is just extending with copilot + OpenAI and Azure. The next few years could be bleak if it plays the way MSFT is trying to push it. Good for Denmark.
LibreOffice is terrible. I cannot believe how anyone can do anything with it. I cannot stand Word but it's just impossible to find a true replacement for it. OnlyOffice should get more recognition. It is the closest you can get for Word replacement
Maybe of interest to some people given the discussions in this thread: https://sciebo.de is an example of a successful "let's roll our own collaboration infrastructure" project at scale (aimed at about half a million users) based on Nextcloud with Collabora Office (= live document collaboration) and more integrated applications (calendars, contacts, tasks, forms, those kinds of things).
All hosted and maintained at German universities, with federation between them, with support for guest users and whatnot.
Quite nice and back when it started, it was very important for us because it enabled us to get a huge chunk of sensitive data back from Dropbox, Google Drive and the other cloud providers.
They're planning the whole migration in less than 6 months. As they say (or at least google translate says), "Held og lykke". A lot of these migration plans strike me as being basically a negotiating tactic with Microsoft.
Americans do not realize how much damage Trump has done to the trust in American services. Europeans used to consider America as an ally the same as other European countries, now it is more like an unreliable trade partner.
Microsoft tried to reassure the Europeans [1] but not even a month later they were forced to disable the email account of ICC Chief Prosecutor Karim Khan [2] due to sanctions from Trump voiding their reassurance completely. What happens when Trump gets mad at Denmark for not giving him Greenland and forces Microsoft to turn off Danish services?
Every large European company and all of the governments are now considering how to move away from US services. They may not be able to do it quickly but it is a part of the conversation. Customers specifically request that new systems should be independent from US service providers.
In my view the damage has been done and will not go away even after Trump. The Europeans have realized that their only true allies, that they can trust in terms of critical infrastructure, are other European nations. It used to include America, it no longer does.
Many comments here point out the difficulties in replacing the digital infrastructure of a large organisation, but according to the ministry’s website, the ministry is only ten months old: “As a result of the formation of a new government 29th of August 2024 the Ministry of Digital Affairs has been established”.
There probably isn’t any huge or complex infrastructure to replace.
Have to see it before I believe it. There is already danish laws, from back in the early 00s, stating that open source software should be used or developed in all cases where it is possible. The public IT provider and supporter Statens IT are so bad at their job that I cannot see how they would carry this out.
How does Linux fit into the eco system that surrounds it?
I have no idea what systems the Danish government uses, but
being a "Microsoft shop" with Exchange, Active directory, Teams etc
is not uncommon.
I hope they will address and fix or have work arounds for all of them.
I feel sorry for the people who work there havin to nmove to LibreOffice.
IT is free, and it works, but if you have spent 20 years or more using
Microsoft Office, it will feel quite foreign and it is missing a large
set of features.
The ministry will slow down considerably for some time while the employees learn how to use LibreOffice in all the ways they are used to.
My experience from a few large companies and government institutions is
that a lot of employees do not want to change, or learn a whole different
system. Forcing this change upon all is guarateed to create friction.
I think the best way to go about these types of efforts is to:
(1) build a coalition with agreed upon goals, governance, etc.
(2) define the desired systems and architecture for it
(3) define the file formats and wire protocols to support the features/functionality
(4) start building it
There would need to be conferences every 6 or 12 months.
There would also need to be lots of documentation, training, videos, podcasts, etc.
It would be a huge effort but possibly also extremely rewarding.
Honestly, if they manage to make the transition without major problems, it will greatly improve Denmark's sovereignty.
My concern is mostly about the government depending on open source software without contributing in some way. I really hope they fund and/or contribute to both projects.
Another interesting question to consider is whether the likelihood of attacks on these projects will increase. Knowing that government(s) use LibreOffice makes it a much more valuable target for attackers willing to pull of something like xz-utils. Likewise, increasing adoption of Linux for desktop usage could result in more vulnerabilities being discovered and more malware targeting Linux desktops.
I think there's a lot to see in the near future...
<yawn> Kitchen-sink office suites are dinosaurs. It's like switching from riding an ankylosaurus to riding a glyptodont. Personal computing was and is a tarpit. It was and is used to automate and complicate paper-style processes. Every time I have to fill out a PDF form, I want to scream! <grimace>. Big fat slow 90's-style document-oriented processes have got to go!
I am struggling with increasing number of daily (sometimes hourly) annoyances of Windows during my work, distracting me considerably by now, so this news fills me with envy. I have an increasing urge fuelled by this - but not only by this - to switch job/profession.
Some from the top of my head: randomly forcing me to put the window I am moving to the numbered sections of 1-2-3 without the chance of cancel, forcing me to size and position choices mandated; 'update and shut down' actually works as 'update and restart' finding my computer on in the middle of night or in the morning; hibernating while update is available turns on the computer during the night; renaming of OneDrive files clears the name sometimes typing; switching wifi (between previously used ones) on its own, while being in a perfectly working remote desktop connection, breaking it randonly; taskbar buttons loose icons after resuming from hibernation; yes/no message box is transparent through remote desktop; ... some from the past few (less than 4) days.
For any of their finance or planning people using Excel as a daily driver, the productivity lost will far outweigh any financial or ethical gains.
We’re also at the cusp of AI getting added throughout MS Office and Windows which will be the next driver of productivity and collaboration, and it’ll be at least a decade before Libreoffice catches up.
Saying this as a believer in open source and with no great love for M$. It’s just not 1997 any more.
Danish Ministry Replaces Windows and Microsoft Office with Linux and LibreOffice
(heise.de)411 points by jlpcsl 12 June 2025 | 208 comments
Comments
Are these Linux machines going to authenticate against the Azure Active Directory, maybe just a local Active Directory, or are the IT department going to run a separate service in parallel? Are they moving away from Exchange Server... probably not, given that it's half of the staff. Are they using Intune, if so what's the replacement strategy where?
My guess is that many of these staff members are going to use webmail and run Windows programs in remote desktop. The investments in the infrastructure isn't high enough, nor have they addressed any of the hard problems and the time frame is rather short. I doubt any significant money and time has been set aside for training.
It is going to end in complete failure, the employees are going to complain about lost productivity and a frustrating work environment. They are setting themselves up for complete failure.
The same is happening in a number of schools, where Linux and LibreOffice is set to replace ChromeBooks for some students. The expectation is that the cost is going to be €2.25M per year, for the next two years, then there will be a cost saving of €4-5M. Again no plans for handling authentication, email, file sharing or provisioning. They'll just force the students out of the relatively protected Google Workspace for Students, into the "real" Google/Gmail ecosystems where they are less protected against data mining.
This will all end badly and it will be because of poor planning. Then the next US president steps in, calms things down and we forget the whole thing in 2 years.
Also, replacing Windows by Linux and MS Office by LibreOffice is only the surface of the problem. What about replacing Entra (identity and access management), Intune (endpoint management), file sharing (OneDrive), email and calendar (Exchange Online)?
Russia, China, and India have invested a lot in developing their equivalent of 365 and Google Workspace (mainly via Yandex, Alibaba, and Zoho). Europe needs to accelerate on this.
Edit: There is some progress on LibreOffice real-time collaboration:
https://zetaoffice.net/
https://www.theregister.com/2025/02/13/libreoffice_wasm_zeta...
This is a great trend. I wonder how long until Microsoft's Ballmer-type people fly into Munich again to commit corruption / lobbying.
Aarhus and Copenhagen municipalities are planning to do the same, and have around 80000 employees, that's a much bigger deal in my opinion.
It seems like you could throw a fraction of that money at open source software, actually make it good and then not be beholden to corporations like Microsoft or Google. Combine this sort push between multiple governments and the world gets good (at least relatively) software for all of the major office and design concerns.
CAD software is the same. I tried freecad recently after a long hiatus and came back to immediately crashing after trying to make a cube from a sketch and also finding out that there's no midpoint constraint (wtf) if I remember correctly.
It is 2025, couldn’t we get away with using cheaper/even free(and or open source) online versions of office software?
I don’t even have MS Office installed on my personal computer. When I need to deal with .docs or .xlsx files, I either use Google docs or Libre Office if it is too complicated for Google Docs.
There might be some iffy issues. For example, if a state backs certain open source software too hard, then I'm afraid you get "state backed vaporware" in some cases. I can definitely see where it'll be like "Denmark has start open source initiative xyz" but because it's so externally pushed, from a motivation standpoint, it becomes half baked.
So I'm more advocating for a gentle monetary nudge.
I said it on the prior thread, and I think it's worth reiterating: Politics aside, Microsoft has such a strangle hold on so many industries it's insane. That reach is just extending with copilot + OpenAI and Azure. The next few years could be bleak if it plays the way MSFT is trying to push it. Good for Denmark.
All hosted and maintained at German universities, with federation between them, with support for guest users and whatnot.
Quite nice and back when it started, it was very important for us because it enabled us to get a huge chunk of sensitive data back from Dropbox, Google Drive and the other cloud providers.
There's not too much English documentation around but https://wwuit-sys.zivgitlabpages.uni-muenster.de/sciebo/docs... is good.
Every large European company and all of the governments are now considering how to move away from US services. They may not be able to do it quickly but it is a part of the conversation. Customers specifically request that new systems should be independent from US service providers.
In my view the damage has been done and will not go away even after Trump. The Europeans have realized that their only true allies, that they can trust in terms of critical infrastructure, are other European nations. It used to include America, it no longer does.
[1] https://blogs.microsoft.com/on-the-issues/2025/04/30/europea...
[2] https://nltimes.nl/2025/05/20/microsofts-icc-email-block-tri...
There probably isn’t any huge or complex infrastructure to replace.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/LiMux
I hope they will address and fix or have work arounds for all of them.
I feel sorry for the people who work there havin to nmove to LibreOffice. IT is free, and it works, but if you have spent 20 years or more using Microsoft Office, it will feel quite foreign and it is missing a large set of features.
The ministry will slow down considerably for some time while the employees learn how to use LibreOffice in all the ways they are used to.
My experience from a few large companies and government institutions is that a lot of employees do not want to change, or learn a whole different system. Forcing this change upon all is guarateed to create friction.
Much more important than that the change
There would need to be conferences every 6 or 12 months. There would also need to be lots of documentation, training, videos, podcasts, etc.
It would be a huge effort but possibly also extremely rewarding.
My concern is mostly about the government depending on open source software without contributing in some way. I really hope they fund and/or contribute to both projects.
Another interesting question to consider is whether the likelihood of attacks on these projects will increase. Knowing that government(s) use LibreOffice makes it a much more valuable target for attackers willing to pull of something like xz-utils. Likewise, increasing adoption of Linux for desktop usage could result in more vulnerabilities being discovered and more malware targeting Linux desktops.
I think there's a lot to see in the near future...
Some from the top of my head: randomly forcing me to put the window I am moving to the numbered sections of 1-2-3 without the chance of cancel, forcing me to size and position choices mandated; 'update and shut down' actually works as 'update and restart' finding my computer on in the middle of night or in the morning; hibernating while update is available turns on the computer during the night; renaming of OneDrive files clears the name sometimes typing; switching wifi (between previously used ones) on its own, while being in a perfectly working remote desktop connection, breaking it randonly; taskbar buttons loose icons after resuming from hibernation; yes/no message box is transparent through remote desktop; ... some from the past few (less than 4) days.
We’re also at the cusp of AI getting added throughout MS Office and Windows which will be the next driver of productivity and collaboration, and it’ll be at least a decade before Libreoffice catches up.
Saying this as a believer in open source and with no great love for M$. It’s just not 1997 any more.