There's Nextcloud/OCIS/Owncloud for Sharepoint (god I fucking hate Sharepoint) and Onedrive, there's Libreoffice/Collabora (and Onlyoffice, but that's russian...), there's Thunderbird for Email. Windows is absolutely replaceable also, of course, maybe even easier than the Office365 subscription mentioned above.
The lock in only exists in brains of (old) people that can't adapt. MS products can all be replaced, and should be in the EU. You simply cannot trust an American company anymore after Trump.
People get a lot of cash, house and other benefits when they pick up suppliers.
And if they don't get a direct bribe, for some reasons, they end up as VP of what ever branch more or less directly related to their previous job as client.
Someone yanked your chain with this one. Nobody gets a house or a job at Microsoft for buying Microsoft, these cases can't even register in the statistic of the total volume of orders. Every tech company would buy you a house if that worked, when a house is always a rounding error on the value of the contracts we're talking about.
They buy it because it's the "safe", "does everything" choice that "everyone else has". It's easier to deal with a single party than it is to get licenses and support from 20 other suppliers that then blame each other when there are issues at the border between 2 of the products. You can talk to anyone else who has Teams, your files are always fully compatible, all of the rest of your software integrates, single identity, etc. A lot of good it is that you have Google Meet and Libre Office when the partners you work closes to have Teams and MS Office.
Users are proficient with the products, you can find skilled admins everywhere. Incumbency has a lot of inertia.
So you have to pay millions in support contracts every year, it's the cost of doing business. So MS gets hacked every other day, what could you have done about it better when even MS (!!!) couldn't?
This is the same comment we’re referring to right? The one that said that MS gets contracts because they buy houses and cars or give jobs to the people deciding where the contract goes?
That’s someone who read a couple of articles on corruption and just extrapolated to “all of it must be the same”.
If you browse HN everyday, at least once a weak, you'll see security issues related to Azure and Microsoft product, to the point that Microsoft stopped bounty programs or don't include some products.
If you want to establish a pattern or rule you’ll need way more than one example you can’t give.
Is Google’s search engine used just because they give money to those who do? Because they pay Apple and Mozilla. Just set Google as default and the check’s in the mail right?
The last paragraph was obviously a diss at MS for costing a lot in support and having shitty security. Anyone with first hand experience (as opposed to hearing the stories) with MS contracts and heard the justifications again and again doesn’t need the joke explained.
Exactly this. A while back, a greybeard told me "CVS never flew anyone to the Bahamas for a few rounds of bikini golf", when I was complaining about my employer picking the version control system and torture device "Serena Dimensions".
> The lock in only exists in brains of (old) people that can't adapt.
I think this is a little superficial. There will be mountains of existing Word/Excel/Powerpoint documents that would need converting, as well as configured permissions structures and remotely managed laptop configurations that currently are working well. Of course anything is possible given enough time and money. The real issue isn't to do with your ageism. It's whether that time and money is best spent on this particular area.
>There will be mountains of existing Word/Excel/Powerpoint documents that would need converting, as well as configured permissions structures and remotely managed laptop configurations that currently are working well
Well, they are not working well right now, because they could be rendered inoperable at any moment through Microsoft flipping a switch. That risk is real and has precedent (ICC having their Outlook access revoked).
>The real issue isn't to do with your ageism. It's whether that time and money is best spent on this particular area.
When European sovereignty is on the line, it's never too expensive.
>Excel? (Finance runs on custom Excel macros and sheets)
Libreoffice calc, R and Python were needed. And if that doesn't work, finance needs to work around the vendor lockin
>Teams?
Matrix, Jitsi, Bigbluebutton, Mattermost
>Office 365 in general, security, DLP, MFA?
Authentik, Keycloak for MFA/security, OpenZFS with Nextcloud/Opencloud for DLP
It's possible, though of course less integrated and more work involved than just selling your soul to MS. But I am sure that time will also solve that, now that people are more interested in open source.
There's not even a reasonable FOSS calendar for Linux that integrates with email. Thunderbird has it, but it doesn't work with Google's Advanced Protection for instance.
Evolution has worked with every corporate environment I’ve been in since 2003. Mail, calendar, contacts, tasks has always worked great, including companies that have used outlook, Google, and others.
I personally don’t love thunderbird, but what is it missing?
Gnome through their online accounts supports most major corporate providers which has calendars showing up in evolution, the dedicated calendar app, and in the status bar of gnome shell.
I have worked in (German) Government, and apart from complacency (and maybe corruption, see Limux) there's nothing stopping the German government (at least at federal level) from adopting open source.
If processes depend on some crappy excel table (created by somebody 20 years ago) or even worse, sharepoint app (commissioned by people who shouldn't be deciding things like this), the processes suck and need to be rebuilt anyhow.
In what way do they need Microsoft Software or Technology except maybe Windows for their Passport Application?
That's special software developed for one customer only anyways. So it's perfectly possible to target another Platform or do this as some kind of WebApp.
And until then run some Windows Desktops for those special applications/services
"So it's perfectly possible to target another Platform or do this as some kind of WebApp."
Yes, it is possible to rewrite software. But currently most of that software was written and licenced for windows.
Just choosing another plattform might, or might not work. And if it doesn't, many people will be angry for not getting tax refunds back, or getting a new passport, or being able to register a new car etc.
Bugs are real. And there is a saying, never change a running system.
So yes, I do agree that the system is not running so well being dependant on Trump and change is required, but this is not just some webapp for fun that needs replacement. We are talking about critical government services, with lots of custom made software, that was often exclusivly written for windows.
Really cool! I wish that Coreboot was available for more recent Thinkpads. I have a Z13 Gen2 which I plan to use until it falls apart, and would love to liberate it with Coreboot. But alas, I can't.
How's your experience with that? It's on the top of my dream laptop list but it's expensive and the second gen is more so....looks like they killed off the line right before it got to the sweet spot (ryzen ai max line) just like the surface laptop which makes me sad.
There were a lot of reports about those things having power or heat firmware problems?
It's the best laptop I have ever used. I have it since it newly came out in 2023 and it never let me down, is quick (I have the 7840u), quiet (passive in power-saver platform profile, unless pushed, but even then it's manageable), can do USB4 so I can use it with a EGPU, which works fantastically. Sleep (S0) works as expected with updated EC FW under Debian stable.
It's incredibly portable, when you take it out of the box you wonder if it's not too small (it's not, it's a perfect size :)).
Battery endurance is good, at least for me. You won't make 10h flights while compiling Chromium though. Get the LCD instead of the OLED if you can, the OLED looks good but uses way more battery I hear.
If you can find it in the max config (64GB, 7840u, 2TB) it's going to make you happy for a long, long time I think.
I don't know what I will use after it dies. There's nothing comparable in portability, power and build quality (which is really, really amazing).
I agree with you: this thing, a few mm thicker and heavier due to beefier heatsink, with a Ryzen 395+ and 128GB would be so incredible. I'd dump so much money into that...
I have one for work; I was excited to receive it, I’ve never been more disappointed with a laptop bearing the ThinkPad brand. Lots of intermittent issues with graphics, BT audio, and performance.
>Because google actually cares about hardware and software security.
That statement might not have aged so well, especially consindering googles attempt to lock out apps from their devices, If the developers do not comply with being oficially registered.
There is a difference between security and privacy or freedom of use. Locking down the device to only allow a subset of apps that Google has some control over (by requiring developers to register) is a measure that can increase security, even though it obviously takes some control away from the end-user.
The fact that the play store is not exactly known for exceptionally high standards w.r.t. malware, or that there are lots of valid concerns that come along with a company controlling who is allowed to supply apps for the device is a different topic.
GrapheneOS was contacted by one of the largest Android OEMs in June 2025 and we're actively working with them. They're going to be announcing our partnership in March 2026 and the phones meeting our requirements with official GrapheneOS support are scheduled for 2027.
Yes, March 2026 is when the first announcement from the OEM will be which is when people will find out which OEM it is. A fair bit into 2027 is when the devices supporting GrapheneOS will be launched. It was theoretically possible for it to happen for 2026 but not very realistic and the hardware wasn't quite there yet.
In my opinion (which is worth what it is worth), 2027 is perfectly fine (my Pixel should live a lot longer than that anyway). What I find huge is that it is concretely happening! It will show recognition for GrapheneOS, and it will be great to have an alternative to the Google Pixels.
Also, people looking at GrapheneOS want technical excellence, so better not rush it :-).
