Solved Switzerland takes a Swiss Army knife to Microsoft 365

Scannerman · Sep 15, 2026

no coffee beans

heresy!

XxXxX · Sep 15, 2026

Marie SWE said:
What forum was that?
I heard a year ago that Ubuntu forum more or less is gone.

here is a link to the now old Ubuntu Forum Archives

Ubuntu Forums Archive Viewer

Browse 1,963,098 archived threads from the old Ubuntu Forums.

ubuntuforums.popey.com

the new Ubuntu forum is on Discourse

Ubuntu Discourse

The meeting point for the Ubuntu community.

discourse.ubuntu.com

best of luck Steve ..

Marie SWE · Sep 15, 2026

XxXxX said:
here is a link to the now old Ubuntu Forum Archives

Ubuntu Forums Archive Viewer

Browse 1,963,098 archived threads from the old Ubuntu Forums.

ubuntuforums.popey.com

the new Ubuntu forum is on Discourse

Ubuntu Discourse

The meeting point for the Ubuntu community.

discourse.ubuntu.com

best of luck Steve ..

Thanks, but you cant use Discource without register a phone number.
So thanks, but i wont give any discource server any personal information.

Marcus Vinicus · Sep 15, 2026

I don't think MS are shivering in their boots re losing the Swiss government's business based on the enormous increases in revenue in the last year from Azure and Microsoft 365 Business and Enterprise revenues.

Microsoft Azure Fiscal 2026 Sales Exceed $100B: Hold the Stock Now?

MSFT's Azure tops $100B in annual revenues as AI and cloud growth accelerate, but can strong fundamentals outweigh valuation and spending concerns?

finance.yahoo.com

XxXxX · Sep 16, 2026

Marcus Vinicus said:
I don't think MS are shivering in their boots re losing the Swiss government's business based on the enormous increases in revenue in the last year from Azure and Microsoft 365 Business and Enterprise revenues.

Microsoft Azure Fiscal 2026 Sales Exceed $100B: Hold the Stock Now?

MSFT's Azure tops $100B in annual revenues as AI and cloud growth accelerate, but can strong fundamentals outweigh valuation and spending concerns?

finance.yahoo.com

its not just Switzerland its also most of Europe and European govts moving away from MS and especially 365
if that succeeds then there is a good chance most people and small businesses will follow so they can interact with their respective govt's preferred documentation requirements. the larger corporations may need to use both but that is another story altogether.

but that is important is the move away from MS/Office/365 is already underway, not by just a single one but many doing it collectively
i cant understand why MS wish to break a successful model, standalone installs of their office product.

just my thoughts
best of luck Steve ..

Scannerman · Sep 16, 2026

A little supplementary material to the OP.

Switzerland's Federal Government is Replacing Microsoft on 3,000 Computers

This is the pilot phase, with 3,000 workstations moving away from Microsoft 365. The federal administration has over 54,000 computers.

itsfoss.com

cereberus · Sep 16, 2026

This type of initiative always fails when corporations/public bodys discover their whole infrastructure requires total compatibilty with other companies.

Anybody doing international work (most of Switzerland's commerce I bet) just will not risk their business.

Germans tried similar and reversed with months.

Shambles Bank · Sep 16, 2026

Ghot said:
I have to give credit to Europe in general for NOT putting up with tons of MS cr*p, this included.
I dearly wish the US would follow suit.
MS is really getting out of hand.

This is why I changed my Windows region to a EU country, namely Ireland, so I could take advantage of the EU DMA. So nice being able to remove Edge the official way with no problems and without using any third party tools.

Borg 386 · Sep 16, 2026

Interesting how MS claims that Edge is an important component for updating & removing it will cause problems. But in the EU, they can remove it & apparently there's no probs with updating.

Hmmmmmmmm.....

I might have to give that idea a try Shambles.....just a thought.....

Shambles Bank · Sep 16, 2026

Borg 386 said:
Interesting how MS claims that Edge is an important component for updating & removing it will cause problems. But in the EU, they can remove it & apparently there's no probs with updating.

Hmmmmmmmm.....

I might have to give that idea a try Shambles.....just a thought.....

From someone who has changed the Windows region on all my home computers, it doesn't, well it hasn't in my particular circumstances, caused any issues whatsoever. MS are not allowed to purposely break anything in order to comply with the EU DMA. I implemented my region change through the OOBE (Out of BOX EXPERIENCE) method. It was simple enough and I've had no problems whatsoever. I stress, you do not need to use any third party tools to achieve this.

There will be plenty of people who adore all aspects of the MS architecture, but from my perspective a browser that uses up 3.5gb of drive space has no place on my equipment.

Borg 386 · Sep 16, 2026

Shambles Bank said:
From someone who has changed the Windows region on all my home computers, it doesn't, well it hasn't in my particular circumstances, caused any issues whatsoever. MS are not allowed to purposely break anything in order to comply with the EU DMA. I implemented my region change through the OOBE (Out of BOX EXPERIENCE) method. It was simple enough and I've had no problems whatsoever. I stress, you do not need to use any third party tools to achieve this.

There will be plenty of people who adore all aspects of the MS architecture, but from my perspective a browser that uses up 3.5gb of drive space has no place on my equipment.

Well, I looked it up & apparently there are a few steps including a reg edit, but looks like it can be done without too many steps.

I don't like that fact that Edge seems to always be active in the background, every time I run a couple cleaners at the end of the night there's always some edge files that need to be removed, even though I never use the damn thing.

Shambles Bank · Sep 16, 2026

Borg 386 said:
Well, I looked it up & apparently there are a few steps including a reg edit, but looks like it can be done without too many steps.

I don't like that fact that Edge seems to always be active in the background, every time I run a couple cleaners at the end of the night there's always some edge files that need to be removed, even though I never use the damn thing.

I'm not sure where the reg edit comes into it because I didn't do anything except use OOBE and then I uninstalled Edge and Copilot without any other actions on my part whatsoever other than press the uninstall buttons in the default Apps section. I also use O&O Shutup! and that hasn't caused any problems either, it just disables all of the telemetry rubbish.

I don't have any issues with updates either.

Borg 386 · Sep 16, 2026

Shambles Bank said:
I'm not sure where the reg edit comes into it because I didn't do anything except use OOBE and then I uninstalled Edge and Copilot without any other actions on my part whatsoever other than press the uninstall buttons in the default Apps section. I also use O&O Shutup! and that hasn't caused any problems either, it just disables all of the telemetry rubbish.

I don't have any issues with updates either.

Well, it says after you change to the EU region, you have to change that reg key.

Registry Hack (DeviceRegion): Users on Reddit note that you can open regedit.exe as an administrator, navigate to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Control Panel, and change the DeviceRegion code to an EU country hex value (like Belgium)

The other info mentioned a key that already had your region listed when you set it up had to be deleted & Win would rebuild the key when it got rebooted to match the settings for the region.

You probably didn't have to do that because you set it up OOBE right away when you 1st ran it, so it set that automatically

Opinions are mixed. While some users successfully uninstall Edge through standard settings after a region change or restart, others find the option remains grayed out or that subsequent Windows updates restore the browser.

Solved Switzerland takes a Swiss Army knife to Microsoft 365

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