Public sector agencies now urged to switch from Windows XP to open source

Jun 10, 2014 06:47 GMT  ·  By

Windows XP is no longer receiving support from Microsoft, so computers that are running it right now could easily become vulnerable to attacks once someone finds an unpatched vulnerability.

The government of the Indian state of Kerala knows this very well, so it has urged all public sector agencies to move from Windows XP to open-source alternatives by June 30.

In a document rolled out this morning, the government says that such a transition is indeed possible and points to the city of Munich, which has already replaced Microsoft products with open source software.

Officials, however, admit that there might be some problems with app compatibility, but state that Linux is clearly superior in terms of security, as no anti-malware protection is needed.

“So far, there is no evidence of ‘viruses’ or other malware of the types found on proprietary platforms on GNU/Linux. Further, if GNU/Linux desktops are used with the usual precautions (for instance, never work as superuser but only as an ordinary user), it is exceedingly unlikely that any malware can penetrate a GNU/Linux system. Consequently, GNU/Linux desktops do not require anti-virus software at this time,” the paper reads.

As far as applications are concerned, the government says that most programs that currently run on Windows can very well be launched on Linux as well with the help of emulation software Wine. It does admit that “most or all desktop applications may need to be changed” due to compatibility issues with Linux.

Microsoft Office, on the other hand, can be easily replaced by LibreOffice, the government said, while admitting that some document formats might not work on the open-source alternative.

“Both applications can open, edit and save documents in the proprietary format used by MS Office. However, the native formats of LO/OO follow Open Standards, which makes it much more sensible to start exchanging documents in these formats rather than the proprietary format of MS Office. There are some incompatibilities (formatting, fonts) when converting between MS Office formats and these. If the document contents are final, it may better use PDFs when exchanging files with others,” the paper read.

Overall, the government says that moving from Windows XP to Linux isn't such a hard mission after all, but admits that in some cases, it might be difficult to perform the same tasks as on Windows.

“Such migration can indeed be done, provided a structured and systematic approach is followed,” the government said, while also announcing a June 30 deadline for everyone to give up on Windows XP.