Can Dutch universities do without Microsoft?

Re:Can Dutch universities do without Microsoft? by amoshebb on Friday November 28, 2025 @12:45PM (#46080883)

I have found daily-driving Ubuntu at Delft shocking pleasant. Chrome, zotero, obsidian, zoom, and so on all work great. Outlook, teams, and the office suite, and signing pdfs are all the sharpest edges by far.

I feel if the TUs were required to dogfood this, especially if generously funded such that startups could come along and provide the same service and support, that it could be a great positive externality

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Re:Can Dutch universities do without Microsoft? by letmetweakit on Friday November 28, 2025 @12:56PM (#46080991)

Why would you need Outlook? Can't you use it in a browser?

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Re:Can Dutch universities do without Microsoft? by amoshebb on Friday November 28, 2025 @01:20PM (#46081243)

Yes, chrome gives me a little “PWA” so I can even have an icon in my dock, but it’s not as nice

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Re:Can Dutch universities do without Microsoft? by anonymouskimmer on Friday November 28, 2025 @12:59PM (#46081024)

Yes, and the same can be done with Teams. That's what I do on my Linux laptop.

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Re:Can Dutch universities do without Microsoft? by elbear on Friday November 28, 2025 @01:07PM (#46081111)

My university uses Teams and the browser version is missing some features. For example, I can't see the files uploaded by the professor. That tab won't load.

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Re:Can Dutch universities do without Microsoft? by aquariusDue on Friday November 28, 2025 @12:58PM (#46081011)

PDF signing is the bane of my existence, luckily I can get by with a cloud solution but it's nowhere near how easy I wish it would be. Sadly I'm still forced to use a Windows VM or dual-boot because the tax authority in my country requires a root/digital certificate for login to their web system, at least for incorporated entities.

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Re:Can Dutch universities do without Microsoft? by anonymouskimmer on Friday November 28, 2025 @01:01PM (#46081051)

Would this procedure work with the certificates you need to use?

https://enterpriseadmins.org/blog/lab-infrastructure/install...

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Re:Can Dutch universities do without Microsoft? by aquariusDue on Saturday November 29, 2025 @10:23AM (#46088203)

Thanks for the tip, it might work if I can figure out where the certificate is stored on Windows because I am forced to go through an application first.

The application I mentioned: https://www.certsign.ro/en/products/eidas-trust-services/pap...

Also back on Windows the website I needed to access didn't work with Firefox so I had to resort to Chrome sadly but maybe I'll have better luck now.

Thanks for pointing me in the right direction!

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Re:Can Dutch universities do without Microsoft? by anonymouskimmer on Saturday November 29, 2025 @08:40PM (#46092741)

You're welcome. This article is from Microsoft itself and may help more: https://woshub.com/add-certificate-to-trusted-on-linux/

Vivaldi is a nice chromium-based browser that I use on Linux for sites that don't work on Firefox. The certutil commands for it are apparently these: https://labs.gwendragon.de/blog/Web/Browser/Vivaldi/linux-ad...

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Re:Can Dutch universities do without Microsoft? by Spunkie on Saturday November 29, 2025 @12:15AM (#46085321)

I can find a dozen solutions to sign a PDF on linux without much trouble. Now redacting seems a whole nother story.

I've failed to find even a single option on linux that does real PDF redaction like adobe acrobat. Most don't do redaction at all or worse they say they redact but it's actually just black highlighter on black text or some other kind of overlay that leaves the underlying text data intact.

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