“the council decided it was time to use open source not only for its servers but also for its desktop computers. The IT department has since replaced the ubiquitous proprietary office suite by the open source alternative LibreOffe on nearly all of the 147 PCs at the municipal office, the library, schools, the police station and in the local museum. "Because of a few complex documents, we retain one proprietary office license for one PC at the city hall."”

“Switching office suites was smooth, says Rebelo. The first few days staffers had to explore the software menus. "But LibreOffice is very similar to the proprietary office suite we used previously. The most recent version of LibreOffice also substantially improves document compatibility and reduces the number of interoperability errors."”

see Portuguese Vieira do Minho profits from a decade of open source | Joinup.

Yes. The same benefits of FLOSS on servers can be had on desktop PCs. That’s obvious but people keep thinking it’s revolutionary. It’s not. Many individuals and organizations have been using FLOSS desktops for a decade or longer. What’s the hold-up? At least, these guys can now migrate to GNU/Linux for very little cost since all their servers and applications are now compatible.

1. Ivan October 10th, 2012

   LOSS, the choice of the fashionable dictator.

2. kozmcrae October 10th, 2012

   Oh no! More bad news for the Cult of Microsoft!