Open Norway: Norwegian Broadcasting Moves to OpenOffice and ODF
Norway's national broadcasting and TV facility NRK is intent on using the Open Document Format as a standard and is therefore changing its clients over to OpenOffice.
Norway appreciates free standards. After the government a year ago recommended Ogg Vorbis, FLAC and Ogg Theora next to their commercial alternatives MP3 and H.264 as standards for audio and video files, this year it focuses on ODF as the standard document format. According to the governmnent's Reference Catalog for IT Standards, the recommendation should become binding in January of 2011.
The first larger institution, Norway's national radio and TV corporation, Norsk rikkringkasting (NRK), is now taking the move to OpenOffice seriously. The conversion is based on the better ODF support, therefore the NRK is running many of its clients on Mac OS X because the Mac version of Microsoft's Office Suite doesn't support the open document format. Another reason for the move is the Microsoft Office licensing costs.
From the first of March the majority of the 4,300 NRK clients will run OpenOffice as the standard. The 850 or so Mac systems will get OpenOffice installed in the coming weeks, even thin clients will use it. Only administrative systems will continue to use both office suite versions, with users to decide which one they prefer.
Successful Pilot Project
Before the announced conversion, the NRK has already begun a successful pilot project in Tyholt that, according to project leader Steinar Bjørlykke, surprisingly went without a hitch. Only a couple of Visual Basic scripts and template layouts caused some problems with a few documents with embedded audio files, which was resolved with some plugins. Visual Basic was to be avoided as much as possible for the scripting problem.
A benefit was also noticed in that OpenOffice opened some Word and Excel documents significantly faster than the corresponding Microsoft programs.
Source: NRKbeta site
Comments
comments powered by DisqusSubscribe to our Linux Newsletters
Find Linux and Open Source Jobs
Subscribe to our ADMIN Newsletters
Support Our Work
Linux Magazine content is made possible with support from readers like you. Please consider contributing when you’ve found an article to be beneficial.
![Learn More](https://www.linux-magazine.com/var/linux_magazin/storage/images/media/linux-magazine-eng-us/images/misc/learn-more/834592-1-eng-US/Learn-More_medium.png)
News
-
NVIDIA Released Driver for Upcoming NVIDIA 560 GPU for Linux
Not only has NVIDIA released the driver for its upcoming CPU series, it's the first release that defaults to using open-source GPU kernel modules.
-
OpenMandriva Lx 24.07 Released
If you’re into rolling release Linux distributions, OpenMandriva ROME has a new snapshot with a new kernel.
-
Kernel 6.10 Available for General Usage
Linus Torvalds has released the 6.10 kernel and it includes significant performance increases for Intel Core hybrid systems and more.
-
TUXEDO Computers Releases InfinityBook Pro 14 Gen9 Laptop
Sporting either AMD or Intel CPUs, the TUXEDO InfinityBook Pro 14 is an extremely compact, lightweight, sturdy powerhouse.
-
Google Extends Support for Linux Kernels Used for Android
Because the LTS Linux kernel releases are so important to Android, Google has decided to extend the support period beyond that offered by the kernel development team.
-
Linux Mint 22 Stable Delayed
If you're anxious about getting your hands on the stable release of Linux Mint 22, it looks as if you're going to have to wait a bit longer.
-
Nitrux 3.5.1 Available for Install
The latest version of the immutable, systemd-free distribution includes an updated kernel and NVIDIA driver.
-
Debian 12.6 Released with Plenty of Bug Fixes and Updates
The sixth update to Debian "Bookworm" is all about security mitigations and making adjustments for some "serious problems."
-
Canonical Offers 12-Year LTS for Open Source Docker Images
Canonical is expanding its LTS offering to reach beyond the DEB packages with a new distro-less Docker image.
-
Plasma Desktop 6.1 Released with Several Enhancements
If you're a fan of Plasma Desktop, you should be excited about this new point release.
Norway richest country in the world