Munich successfully pivoted to Linux for over a decade, then Microsoft Germany moved their HQ to Munich no doubt greasing many wheels in the process and Munich switched back to Windows a year later IIRC.
From my own small slice of experience, it seems likely related to a handful of issues:
End Users: Who are addicted to using Outlook being their job.
End Users: Who still need to inter-operate with others using MS products.
MS Access possibly being the 'best' CRUD interface. (I think it even comes with an expense database template? I think it might also connect to ODBC setups, which are their own nightmare but at least multi-user.)
Various literal corner cases that break workflows. Such as the RTF support LibreOffice lacking the ability to understand feature Y which other file formats can handle (E.G. repeat header row on new pages), or those same import/exports not looking exactly the same in other 'office' software.
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As a suggestion, even though I'm not familiar with the LibreOffice XML formats offhand, it would be nice if we took a modern, big computer, look at digital typesetting, text area layouts and flow rules. With documents containing multiple types of data and multiple presentation modes (for one document), with a required 'generic' mode that matches traditional web pages, layouts specific to paper sizes / screen sizes, and layout support for anchoring / positioning within those layouts. There also wouldn't be a strong differentiation between 4th dimensional content (moving screens/pages), tables, charts/drawings, or any other type of elements. That might be 'better enough' that MS has to adopt it too.
The average CERN user already does not use Windows or any MS products. All research infra is Linux (Cern Linux, a CentOS derivative), and apart from a stray Macbook, I've never seen anyone use anything but Linux.
Windows was for a few desktops, administrative staff and optionally email (some Exchange or OWA stuff or sth).
Government workers in South Korea are actually some of the brightest in the country. The jobs are extremely competitive and you have to score very highly on a set of standardize tests to qualify.
Ah a test, that's defiantly going to get the "best" at passing tests whether this leads to good policy and implementation is arguable, the Active X debacle suggests not.
It is probably more to do with the cultural influence of the Imperial examination
I wouldn't be surprised if the switch didn't help their problems at all, since if they didn't get rid of Windows 2000 when switching to Linux, they're likely still running some legacy applications on their homegrown LiMux systems and suffering from the resulting interoperability problems.
There's plenty of reporting to be found if you just search "munich linux".
From the end of [0]:
> At the time Munich began the move to LiMux in 2004, it was one of the largest organizations to reject Windows, and Microsoft took the city's leaving so seriously that its then CEO Steve Ballmer flew to Munich, but the mayor at the time, Christian Ude, stood firm.
> More recently, Microsoft last year moved its German company headquarters to Munich.
Seems like a good strategy. Switch to Linux. Gets Microsoft attention, and returns to the stack of software that you know and love via a bunch of free and cheap licenses while creating a bunch of local jobs and getting hefty kick backs.
With the exception of the hypothetical corruption, I don’t blame them.
