You look forward to your microwaved popcorn, as suddenly a small chill runs down your spine. “Time is almost up…” You shudder and start running towards the microwave, stepping on the child’s lego and the cat in the process.

As you enter the kitchen the timer reaches zero, and you know you have failed. 120 beeps are about to commence, separated by two seconds - four minutes. Not even removing the power supply would help as this model has an emergency power supply. In case of loss of power supply it will do what the microwave does best: beep

True, thank you - I am at work and was typing that in a hurry before the next meeting, so that was indeed a bit off.

A bit of additional context: The “legislation” passed on Wednesday was only a non-binding recommendation to the government. Basically a list of “the parliament would like you to do that”. So Merz threw away his “Brandmauer” (wall of fire against the AfD) for something that doesn’t even matter.

But, it gets better. It’ll repeat today, but this time with actual legislation. The CDU/CSU is trying to blackmail the other democratic parties into voting for it, because else the AFD will get stronger again. But they aren’t having it, so odds are high that we’ll get a repeat today. Just even worse because this time the outcome actually means something besides symbolism.

Keep in mind - that guy is currently in Position number 1 to become the next Chancellor, he’s always lying and backtracking on promises he made. Such as the promise that, after our government fell in November: “We’ll only pass things that can find support with the democratic forces.” Or a much earlier promise of:“Anyone who cooperates with the AfD will face a party-removal.” Even Merkel cut him down to size a bit yesterday by saying that she thinks it’s wrong - and Merkel basically never comes out of the woodwork to give her opinion on stuff in such a way.

Yeah, exactly. And the Lock-In-Effect is huge, too. You only need to have a piece of required software that doesn’t have a Linux version (we have this situation) and you’ll be stuck for a looong time.

As someone in German Government who has written a thesis on OSS in government:

Happens regularly, on a small scale, but almost always eventually leads to a rollback to Windows. People are discontent with the solutions on Linux since they have to get used to something else, and the aging governmental workers and exactly very keen on things changing.

The City of Munich had a similar program of switching to Linux before, only took Microsoft to open an office in the city to revert on those plans.

The federal government recently finished rolling out a centralised, unified client around all of their ministries and other institutions. Which OS? Guessed it, Windows 10.

Dont get me wrong, having something like the French Police would be amazing, but the highly federal nature and old workforce of government make it super unlikely for Linux to have a proper chance. Taking into consideration the lack of suitable employees to drive forward such a change, the lack of money at local government levels and the fact that most of the specific software required doesn’t have a version for Linux doesn’t fill me with hope.

Yeah, it’s something I observed, too. I’m new here, coming from a STEM field myself - Many places give off a tech-elitist vibe, though.

Customization options for Firefox get reactions like “nobody needs this”. I like it here so far, but the tech-bubble is obviously super prominent here, and in many places it simply seems very “If you’re not a tech-y don’t talk to me because I know better”. It’s worrying because it will lead to people leaving again when they get the cliché reactions of “use Linux, don’t use Windows” or “ewww, Reddit”. People should be less hostile, but I guess that’s just a problem of the Internet in general and doesn’t just apply here.

I hope to see it succeed, though!

Thank you! It’s a small, yet beautiful city in Eastern Germany, not far from the Polish border - “Spremberg”.

I use Amazing Marvin - super customizable to make your own workflow, so you can make it as simple or complicated as you’d like. Small team, but responds super quickly to questions and requests.