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# How an Italian Logistics Company Moved From Windows to Linux: A Real Migration Story
- URL: https://itsfoss.com/linux-stories/italian-logistics-company-migration/
- Published: 2026-09-17T07:51:08.000Z
- Updated: 2026-09-17T07:52:28.000Z
- Description: Mišo Oroz shares how he migrated a small transport and logistics company in,Bergamo, Italy to Linux and open source to reduce cost and ordinary technical problems.
- Author: Abhishek Prakash
- Tags: Linux Stories

In the past, I have shared stories of how real people using Linux in the real world. My favorite is the interview with [Stu Keroff](https://itsfoss.com/news/interview-stu-keroff/), who educates students to make the best use of Linux in school.

When Mišo reached out to me and shared how he helped a local small business move from Windows to Linux, I though of reviving that old series where real people share real stories of how they migrated to Linux and open source.

Mišo Oroz is the founder of [Zerolock](https://zerolock.it/?ref=itsfoss.com), an Italian IT company based in Spirano, Bergamo, specialised in migrating small and medium businesses from proprietary systems to Linux and open source. 

Here's his story.

![Mišo Oroz is the founder of Zerolock](https://itsfoss.com/content/images/2026/09/miso.webp)

---

I got the call in early 2026\. The owner of a small transport and logistics company in Mapello, Bergamo, had five office workstations and a team of drivers who needed to stay in contact throughout the day. He was not looking for a philosophy lesson about open source. He was tired of paying for software that kept causing problems, tired of calling an external technician, and tired of his team losing time to things that had nothing to do with moving goods from one place to another.

## What they had before

The office ran on a standard setup that most small Italian businesses would recognise. Five workstations running a proprietary operating system (you know which one), a commercial office suite licensed per user, third-party antivirus renewed annually. 

![IT desk of the logistic company in Italy](https://itsfoss.com/content/images/2026/09/miso-story-client-it-desk.webp)

The drivers communicated with the office using WhatsApp on their personal phones, which meant company conversations were happening on a consumer messaging app with no archiving, no administration, and no separation between personal and work messages.

Their data lived partly on local machines and partly on a shared folder. When I asked to see where the most important company documents were stored, it took a few minutes to find the most recent version of a file that should have been immediately accessible.

The owner had paid for eight to ten external IT interventions over two years. Update failures, slowdowns, the occasional scare that turned out to be less serious than it looked but still cost half a day of anxiety and cleanup time.

## The assessment

Before touching anything, I spent time understanding what each person actually did on their computers every day. This matters more than any list of installed software, because the real question is not what tools exist but which ones are genuinely in use and how.

The office staff used a word processor, a spreadsheet, email, and a shared filing system. The owner needed occasional remote access when he was out on the road. The drivers needed a reliable way to communicate with the office without using personal phones. No sector-specific proprietary software that would be difficult to replace, which made the project significantly more straightforward than many migrations I have worked on.

## The stack

The replacement infrastructure was built entirely on open source components.

Kubuntu 26.04 LTS on all five office workstations. LibreOffice replacing the commercial office suite. Thunderbird for email. Nextcloud deployed on a server hosted in Italy, replacing both the local shared folder and eliminating any dependency on foreign cloud providers. [Mattermost](https://mattermost.com/?ref=itsfoss.com) for internal communication, installed on the same Italian infrastructure, accessible from both the office workstations and the drivers' phones via the mobile app.

![Kubuntu running on the computers](https://itsfoss.com/content/images/2026/09/logistic-company-computer-after-linux-migration.webp)

The office used an Epson WorkForce WF-C579R, a networked A4 colour multifunction connected via ethernet. This was the most technically interesting part of the hardware setup.

Kubuntu 26.04 automatically installed a driverless IPP driver, which caused two concrete problems: duplex printing reversed the back page regardless of whether long-side or short-side binding was selected, and print speed was noticeably slower than it had been on the previous system. The driverless path, which works well for many modern printers, does not handle all Epson business devices correctly on 26.04 because the Epson PPA does not yet support the current release.

The solution was to install printer-driver-escpr via apt and force the correct driver using lpadmin. After that, duplex worked correctly and speed returned to normal.

For scanning to a network folder, I set up Samba on each administration workstation, created a Scanner folder in each user's home directory, and configured the scan destination on the Epson web admin panel via IP address using SMB with dedicated credentials set through smbpasswd. This is worth documenting for anyone running Epson business printers on Kubuntu 26.04, because the driverless default will cause the same duplex problem and the fix is not obvious.

[pfSense](https://www.pfsense.org/?ref=itsfoss.com) as the network firewall. Encrypted automated backups running nightly. For remote access I deployed RustDesk through my own VPS, which solved a specific challenge with Kubuntu 26: the system runs on Wayland by default, and many remote desktop tools that work reliably on older Linux systems have compatibility issues with Wayland. RustDesk via a self-hosted relay server worked consistently once that configuration was in place, and it has been the standard approach for all my Kubuntu 26 deployments since.

> Total recurring licence cost after migration: zero.

## The migration

Everything was built and tested on a separate machine before touching any production workstation. I validated every workflow, confirmed that existing documents opened correctly in LibreOffice, tested the Nextcloud connection, and set up Mattermost including the mobile configuration for the drivers.

The actual migration happened over a weekend. Each workstation was rebuilt from scratch with a clean Kubuntu installation. Data was migrated from the existing shared folder to Nextcloud over the local network before the weekend, so that by Monday morning the files were already in the right place on the new system. The drivers received the Mattermost app on their phones with the configuration already set up. From day one they had a dedicated work channel separate from their personal messaging.

## Training and the first days on site

The weekend migration was only the beginning. The following Monday I was on site for the first three days of the working week and available by phone for the rest. Each employee received individual training on the tools they actually used, not a generic overview of the new system. I sat next to each person and worked through their specific daily tasks: how to open and save documents in LibreOffice, how to access files on Nextcloud, how to use Mattermost for internal messages.

![Employees happily use Linux now](https://itsfoss.com/content/images/2026/09/company-runs-on-linux-now.webp)

This part of the project is not glamorous but it is where migrations succeed or fail. The software can be perfect and the migration still falls apart if the people using it feel abandoned on Monday morning. Being on site those first days meant I could answer questions immediately rather than leaving people stuck waiting for an email reply.

## What was actually difficult

Two things created friction, as I mentioned earlier. Since this is sort of a case study, I will highlight those two hurdles again.

The first was the printer. The Epson driverless issue was not something I had encountered before on 26.04 and it took a few hours to diagnose and resolve. The duplex problem was intermittent enough that it would have been easy to miss during testing and only surface in daily use. I now test duplex printing explicitly on every Kubuntu 26.04 deployment with a networked Epson.

The second was the Wayland remote access setup. Kubuntu 26 required a different approach to remote desktop than older Linux systems. Testing different configurations took additional time before I arrived at the RustDesk and self-hosted VPS solution that now works reliably. It is a known challenge with Wayland that the ecosystem is actively improving, but at the time it required real problem-solving.

> The adjustment period for the office staff was easier than I had anticipated, largely because of the time spent on site. The drivers adapted fastest. For them the change was a new app on their phone that replaced a WhatsApp group, and within a day or two it felt normal.

## Six months later

The company has not called me for a single ordinary technical issue since the migration.

The productivity difference showed up in ways that were immediately visible. Before the migration, the workday started with machines that took several minutes to become usable after login, with antivirus scans running in the background competing for resources. Unscheduled updates had a habit of appearing at the worst possible moments, sometimes forcing restarts mid-morning. When something broke, work stopped until the external technician arrived.

After the migration, bootup is fast, background processes do not fight for CPU during working hours, and updates run overnight without touching the working day. The time that had been quietly disappearing into slowdowns, restarts, and waiting is simply not disappearing anymore.

Licence costs for the operating system, office suite, and antivirus are gone. The Nextcloud server costs less per month than their previous storage arrangement. The external technician has not been called.

The drivers now have a proper work communication channel that is administered, archived, and completely separate from their personal phones.

The end result is one hour per day recovered per employee, zero ordinary technical issues after migration, zero recurring licence costs. We have a happy client.