Welcome to xlsx vs ods hell
this post was submitted on 12 Jun 2025
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Minister of Digitization sounds like exactly who you want standardizing on ODS, tbh.
Shouldn't be too bad. It'll take a while, but you grab an example you have now in word, tweak it until it works in libreoffice and you're done. The biggest issue I've had was constant transitions between the two. If you just move to one it's a rough start moving, but once you're there you just edit as always. Word isn't even that great at keeping it's own formatting, so it won't be anything new except for learning a new program. it might get difficult once you get to links and embedding, I haven't tried that in libreoffice so I can't speak to whether it's harder or not.
Beyond that, you should be pdf-ing any finalized documents anyway.
Word isn’t even that great at keeping it’s own formatting
To put it mildly.
Which is exactly what many have warned about for 20 years. The Microsoft lock-in is insane.
It's better to get out sooner rather than later.
But considering most of EU is planning similar transitions, I'd be surprised if they don't cooperate on making better import of MS formats in Libre Office.
The Danish government is also planning to make guidelines to make a smooth transition easier. Which will be available for private companies too.
Something that may make it easier is that it's been law for more than a decade, that ALL documents from public services must be made in open standards.
Xlsx is actually an open standard, but only if you use strict mode, which Microsoft conveniently does not make the default option when saving. You have to choose it explicitly when saving.
I know this phrase gets trouted out a lot, especially when it comes to MS, but this is a textbook case of their Embrace, Extend, Extinguish mantra.
Have an open standard (Embrace)... add a bunch of non-open components (Extend)... to fuck over compatibility with competitors and prevent them from gaining market share (Extinguish).
That's what I meant. Microsoft created the Office Open XML format as an open standard, but they don't follow their own standard and make their "extended" version of the standard as the default.
Other Office suites like Libre Office support this format via strict mode, which is not selected by default when you save these files using the Microsoft Office suite.
Technically even Google does this with Chrome: Open standard JS but they also use custom components, sites that use these components break on other browsers.
It's only open in name.
More users will hopefully mean more people finding and reporting edge cases which will lead to better software. Open source is great because anyone can improve it and everyone has the changes if accepted by the developers.
15 years ago, maybe. But I haven't had any compatibility issues in many years.
One drawback. It's not the best option, but Google docs? I know of no bridges.
The goal is to get away from US tech companies.
Every country should do this.
Good move! Yet at the same time they’re buying Palantir software for the police and turning DK into a surveillance state nightmare 🥲
Anyone know what Linux distro? I assume Ubuntu...
Most likely one of the commercial ones that offer support and contractual guarantees of security patches, uptime, service, helpdesk support, etc.
So likely Ubuntu, SUSE, or RHEL.
Any of which would be a very welcome change and a benefit to the Linux community compared to using Windows.
Only SUSE is European, right? So either that or a lesser known one
Isn't Ubuntu a UK company?
Russia is European too :D Sorry about the imprecision, I meant EU company
I don't think so, because Ubuntu is also controlled by a private company, and Ubuntu has issues with open source, making everything they do dual license, meaning they can choose to switch away from open source to proprietary on everything developed within the Ubuntu framework.
So choosing Ubuntu would be incredibly short sighted. Debian is a much stronger candidate. Or an in house distro based on Debian, until a common EU distro is ready, which is already planned.
GOOD lets chance of spAIyware on there