21 ms·

France to ditch Windows for Linux to reduce reliance on US tech

• tom-blk 6mo ago
  Got my full support, go go go!!!
• sgt 6mo ago
  That might work for government employees using webapps all day. But for power users it is unlikely to be friction free.
  • ForHackernews 6mo ago
    It doesn't have to be friction-free. The rough edges can be sanded down with government investment that addresses the needs of citizen-users.
    • cududa 6mo ago
      “Well, did it work for those people?” “No, it never does. I mean, these people somehow delude themselves into thinking it might, but…… …But it might work for us!”
  • deaux 6mo ago
    Unlike modern Windows, known for its lack of friction.
    • raverbashing 6mo ago
      "We have two versions of Outlook and none of them are working"
      • Topfi 6mo ago
        There are four ̶s̶i̶x̶ ̶(s̶e̶v̶e̶n̶ five counting the web version) maintained Outlook variants on Windows 11, last I checked and I have issues with each one. Search especially, but then that has remained an unsolved problem for 30 years. I am sure "AI" will finally solve this. Edit: Have checked and found that two I thought were still maintained (16 and 19) were EOLd in October.
  • AussieWog93 6mo ago
    I feel like this is perfect being the enemy of good. So lets say only 80% of their staff can get off Windows and the remaining 20% need to remain on it. That's a great start!
    • arlcode 6mo ago
      And you can require new custom software to be compatible and guarantee an initial market. It's a strategic decision and of course it's not financially optimal. And if in 20 years thered still a few windows computers around in their org that doesn't matter
    • jmclnx 6mo ago
      And a recipe for failure. All 100% of their staff needs to be moved off of Windows at the same time. A few years ago, IBM tried to move everyone to LibreOffice from M/S Office. It failed, the reason why was top level execs and some others were allowed to stay on M/S Office. As time went on, M/S Windows became a Status Symbol. So people went begging and as time went on exceptions were granted. A few even went so far as to buy their own copy, which was allowed. After 8 months IBM gave up. If you want things like this to succeed, you must be 100% in.
  • iso1631 6mo ago
    I'm a power user and I've used linux for over 25 years. My corporate windows machine is total trash and completely unsuitable for any power users, either because its windows or because corporate locks it down so much it's barely more functional than a chromebook, I don't really care.
  • realusername 6mo ago
    That's also what Microsoft 365 is, a webapp, even the latest Outlook is a webapp.
    • sgt 6mo ago
      Nobody in their right mind prefer the web apps over the native apps if they sit all day doing e.g spreadsheets. I tried the M365 web app for Word the other day and it's sluggish.
  • Topfi 6mo ago
    Respectfully, so what? There have always be specific use cases and user bases requiring a specific OS. No one ever considered OpenBSD interchangeable with Windows, few see Linux distros as a 100% drop in replacement for someone relying on Logic Pro. Thing is, I really don't get this knee jerk "but what about INSERT_RARE_EDGECASE". It isn't helpful and argues something no one actually working on these projects ever proposed. Even if MSFT software remains in use, any gained alternative is a win, license costs and strategic autonomy both being valuable. And yes, as you hinted, a large contingent of clerical work may already happen in a browser, with any found exceptions potentially addressable in the coming years, especially as older implementation may be updated anyways. Let's be honest, we all underestimate how much we (can) do solely inside the browser anyways and even more so severely misgauge how few people are reliant on any native (none Electron) software at all outside gaming. Power user is such a nebulous term anyway. To me, someone spending hours on end in Confluence can be a power user, having never left the browser. The same for a designer using Figma. Course, if one truly requires native only software, they may more likely fall under the umbrella power user, but again, few are seriously discussing just forcing those over since, reasonably, one must presume they have a reason for doing what they are doing.
  • dubcanada 6mo ago
    What is a power user in this context? Someone deeply familiar with Windows and has tons of Windows related setup/applications? That doesn't sound like a government worker... They rely on Microsoft Office, but the actual operating system could be anything. The only non-portable application is video games really. While LibreOffice may not have complete excel functionality, the vast majority of functionality can be replicated in web apps/libreoffice. And frankly most of this work can be migrated to AI. You can even skin Linux to look exactly like Windows if you want, or use Mint or something. But really all people need is to be able to open up Chrome and Excel.
    • Topfi 6mo ago
      In fairness, the transition away from MSFT 365 Copilot (as we all of course call Office now) might include more friction. Mountainous VBasic monstrosities are sometimes the way things get done in orgs I am personally familiar with and that can be hard to switch away from. In general though, I consider this focusing on edge cases as just not helpful, especially as one must start a transition to fully uncover them and get to addressing them too. I also don't think that ancient Excel scripts are an unsolvable problem, but one that needs to be very carefully handled.
    • robertlagrant 6mo ago
      I imagine the biggest thing they need to open up is Outlook.
      • DerArzt 6mo ago
        And if the decision away from Windows is an indicator, they will likely be moving email clients as well
      • dubcanada 6mo ago
        Outlook has never been a requirement for work, you can very easily use any email client or outlook.com web app. Outlook is arguably the easiest to replace. Excel is the only thing holding Office 365 together. Word, Outlook, OneDrive, Teams, SharePoint are all very easy to replace
  • einr 6mo ago
    Sometimes organizations need to undertake work that is not friction free to achieve longer term goals.
  • teekert 6mo ago
    I consider myself a Power User, use of Windows is not friction free :) Over the years I've come to believe that there is only one thing important: What you are used to. The friction is in the change process. Not in the destination. As an independent, I have several customers on MS365, you know what my super power is? FireFox cookie containers. One for each org, and I switch with 0 effort between the orgs. No need for Windows in that workflow at all. In fact, using Windows and the native apps would probably give me a lot more friction. Yes, sometimes I have issues. I.e. yesterday Word kept deleting my last 1-2 sentences for some reason, even though hitting ctrl-s tells everytime: "I should not worry". but in general it's fine. My business is on Proton, and I love that MS365 AND Google workspace calender invites go right into my agenda with no effort. There is nice stuff out there. Especially now we have Proton Meet, I can take some ownership over videocalls in Teams and Google Meet finally.
    • ghaff 6mo ago
      >What you are used to. Absolutely. I've given using a tablet (with keyboard) as an alternative to a laptop when traveling and it sort of frustrates me for a lot of things. But talking to people I know who have largely switched over, my conclusion is that, in general, I probably mostly just haven't put the effort and commitment to make it worth it for me. And I'm not sure, not spending nearly as much time on planes as I used to, it's worth it relative to getting a laptop that is even lighter than the combination.
      • teekert 6mo ago
        As part of the human species, which has conquered our planet's poles, its deserts and its jungles, I believe we are in a unique position to adapt to many -if not most- circumstances thrown our way, and flourish.
        • ghaff 6mo ago
          You hopefully can adapt to what you need to. That's not the same things as switching to something you find awkward and you don't find to have a particular, if any advantage.
  • croes 6mo ago
    Power Users faced the same problems when Office changed to ribbon menus. It doesn't has to be friction free.
  • palata 6mo ago
    Can you call yourself "power user" when your point is that switching away from Windows is too hard for you?
    • onraglanroad 6mo ago
      Windows power users are the ones who have the greatest difficulty switching. Basic users just want a web browser and need instructions for anything else anyway. Hardcore geeks have tried everything going and have no problems with Cisco IOS. It's the folk in the middle who struggle. Just kidding about Cisco: it sucks.
  • astrobe_ 6mo ago
    There's a negligible amount of "power users" among government employees; I think the majority of them are trained in reading and applying laws, and given the strong scientific/literary divide in the French culture, they usually think of themselves as inapt with computers (and the erratic behavior of MS products didn't help, if you ask me). But knowing France, what to really worry about is execution, in particular for administrations. Probably people working there who read the TFA already think "oh, big mess incoming" even though they don't know what this "Linux" thing is. I think standard IT/sysadmin training focuses mainly on Windows server etc., Linux being a second class citizen (because that's what the vast majority of small/mid sized businesses use). So recruiting good Linux sysadmins could be an issue, especially since the wages in government agencies are not exactly attractive.
    • onraglanroad 6mo ago
      85% of cloud servers are Linux. It's not a niche product for people who work with servers.
• Latitude7973 6mo ago
  France has been making good moves to achieve software independence from the US. It would be an even better move to allow those in Europe or indeed the rest of the world to also benefit.
  • rvnx 6mo ago
    It's good to differentiate truly independent tech from the unfortunately common government-pushed French-tech that are US-tech rewrapped. e.g. Qwant is a re-skin of Microsoft Bing It's a great move overall.
    • Pay08 6mo ago
      Ok? You could make the same argument about Chinese tech, German tech, or American tech.
      • rvnx 6mo ago
        Still less, there is a lot of sovereignty-washing in EU, and specifically in France because this gives you access to grants and public markets. Bpifrance, the Caisse des Dépôts, France 2030, Horizon Europe, etc. To access that money, you need the right narrative. So companies learn to wrap their pitch in sovereignty language, get the grants, and then quietly build on top of AWS, Azure or GCP. Not that it's dramatic, but there is a difference between hosted in France (where dependency still exists), and hosted + engineered in France. Hopefully this transition to Linux is going to push France government to get rid of Crowdstrike, it's insane they let such backdoor run inside.
        • mickael-kerjean 6mo ago
          As a French citizen who's been building an open source Dropbox alternative for almost a decade [1], the sovereignty talk in France makes me cringe. Everyone has the word in their mouth, but nobody bothers to even search for alternatives, let alone give them a chance. France represents about 1% of my customer base with only a single customer: LVMH. I've had a whole bunch of French universities contacting me, nobody was willing to contribute toward the development because culturally we assume libre software must be free of charge so you'd better either beg for grants or have a rich uncle to sponsor your life. I've tried reaching out to the people who talk loud about sovereignty. Turns out it's just something they say at conferences to entertain each other as they have no power to actually make it happen, and don't even get me started on public markets. [1] https://github.com/mickael-kerjean/filestash https://github.com/mickael-kerjean/filestash
• esskay 6mo ago
  Yeah good on them, everyone needs to do this. It's nuts Windows is still the go-to for anything these days despite everyone knowing what a parasitic, buggy mess it is. "Easy" shouldn't be the excuse in this day and age. Big orgs and especially government entities should be hiring the people that know what they're doing and get off that crummy platform.
  • polski-g 6mo ago
    It makes sense that everyone uses Windows for gaming, because you can't run games in your browser. It makes zero sense for businesses to use Windows if they're only doing PowerPoint and video conferences.
    • embedding-shape 6mo ago
      It's almost like Microsoft might be offering something on top of businesses using Windows, that isn't as commonly available for other platforms. Or businesses are just clueless face-less entities who have no idea what they're doing. Probably the truth is a little bit of both.
      • hootz 6mo ago
        Microsoft offers ease of integration, in exchange for your company to be locked in forever in their domain.
      • prmoustache 6mo ago
        What Microsoftoffer is having only one contact / contract for a huge fraction of the IT needs of a company so I can understand it solves some headache vs building stuff from many bricks with as many contracts.
      • close04 6mo ago
        They offer a full ecosystem where everything integrates with everything else, especially the central pillar of identity. But you will pay for that in more ways than just money or lockin. If you work with their solutions, the more you dig into them with the help of MS people, the scarier it gets. So many "holy cow" moments. Businesses choose it because it works with what they already have, the existing tools, processes, skills and because Microsoft was always a safe choice by virtue of being almost implicit. They choose Microsoft because they're already deep into Microsoft, it's the option carrying the lowest risk and lowest short term cost. Switching to Linux is complex, expensive and risky. The transition is long and expensive, plagued with teething issues, your MS focused knowledge is redundant, the patience of your sponsor can run out before the move delivers anything of impact. Who wants to take such risks when they can just not rock the boat and call it a day?
• JaggerJo 6mo ago
  Hope we’ll do the same in germany.
  • Propelloni 6mo ago
    There were and are initiatives. Of course, they were and are ridiculed all the time. Who can't recall LiMuX or check out ZenDIS (Zentrum für Digitale Souveränität in der öffentlichen Verwaltung). Read up on the current migration away from MS Office in Schleswig-Holstein.
  • newqer 6mo ago
    They tried it a long time ago, but it seems to be rolled back to Windows again. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LiMux https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LiMux I hope our French friends can learn from this initiative during the adoption phase.
    • mijoharas 6mo ago
      I seem to remember many people saying it was done by the mayor because Microsoft moved their German headquarters > Reiter denied that he had initiated the reversal in gratitude for Microsoft moving its German headquarters from Unterschleißheim back to Munich https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LiMux https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LiMux
      • torginus 6mo ago
        I would say that's kind of a conspiracy-y explanation. Big companies in Munich either have their campuses on the outskirts of the city so that people can commute and park without flooding the city or they have it in the heart of the city as that is seen as more prestigious. Lots of companies have flip flopped based on this, and that's what happened in MS case. Tbh not saying MS didn't play dirty in general, but not necessarily in this.
      • radiator 6mo ago
        There exists a relevant, even German, quote: “Never believe anything in politics until it has been officially denied.” ― Otto von Bismarck (first chancellor of Germany from 1871 to 1890)
• spiderfarmer 6mo ago
  Being dependent on US tech feels the same as when we were dependent on Russian energy: strategically unwise and avoidable. We have alternatives, they just need work.
  • Lihh27 6mo ago
    the license was never the real bill. the control plane was
  • carlosjobim 6mo ago
    Like last time, I ask again: Which are the European made computers?
    • cromka 6mo ago
      > "Like last time" I am perplexed by people who use condescending phrases like this. You think we track what you said before?
      • spiderfarmer 6mo ago
        Or that he tracks me, which would be creepy
    • sph 6mo ago
      No European made computers today doesn't preclude the possibility that there will be one tomorrow. RISC-V is the way out, and there are a number of European initiatives (though nothing serious just yet, I admit) As a European dev, because I like RISC-V and because of the geopolitical situation I wouldn't bet on x86 in the long term.
      • rixed 6mo ago
        I've been not betting on x86 in the long term since the PowerPC was announced ;)
    • 2OEH8eoCRo0 6mo ago
• Jyaif 6mo ago
  Unless you need some windows-only software, using windows at this point is masochism. I was never a fan of Linux, but the Microsoft driven enshitification is so strong that Linux is now a better option. To win, all Linux had to do is stand still, and that's exactly what it did! Ubuntu in 2026 is pretty much the same as Ubuntu from 2006.
  • master-lincoln 6mo ago
    WINE has come a long way. Most Windows software now just works on Linux. I don't know why you believe Ubuntu stood still. Looking at the history that does not seem to be the case: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ubuntu_version_history https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ubuntu_version_history
    • embedding-shape 6mo ago
      Personally, the last holdover is Ableton. Last time this came up, bunch of people pointed me to https://github.com/BEEFY-JOE/AbletonLiveOnLinux https://github.com/BEEFY-JOE/AbletonLiveOnLinux which has since then been marked as archived, and I'm still unable to run Ableton 12 properly on Linux via WINE, even though I've probably spent too many man-hours on getting it to work... I'm still eagerly awaiting the day though, any day now surely.
  • carlosjobim 6mo ago
    You forget about MacOS. And Apple are making some very aggressive moves as of lately to capture users.
    • schnitzelstoat 6mo ago
      MacOS is the same sort of walled garden as Windows though. It has plenty of dark patterns in stuff like iCloud too, I imagine with some more years of enshittification it will be in a similar state to Windows today.
      • carlosjobim 6mo ago
• UK-Al05 6mo ago
  These are almost always negation strategies rather than serious initiatives.
  • bayindirh 6mo ago
    I don't think so. Having worked on a similar thing in my country, and the effort is monumental. When doing this in a company, making technical people appreciate free software and making lasting changes is hard enough. When doing this with non-technical people, everything becomes exponentially harder.
  • embedding-shape 6mo ago
    Sometimes yeah, but clearly not in this case, if you took the time to actually read the article. You don't ask entire ministries and public operators to formulate a migration plan from Windows to Linux with a relatively short deadline just for negotiation purposes or just for the fun of it, you do that once you're committed to actually migrating. This is not just a pilot project or some local administration doing an experiment, it's new country-wide policy enforced from the top, hardly a "negotiation strategy".
    • UK-Al05 6mo ago
      I've seen multiple countries do exactly that, then quietly drop it after a few years. If it doesn't look serious that doesn't actually help negotiate.
      • embedding-shape 6mo ago
        > I've seen multiple countries do exactly that, then quietly drop it after a few years I generally consider myself well read when it comes to Linux, Europe and governments, and I can't recall a single country that announced a country-wide requirement to produce a report for how to move to Linux, deadline ~6 months, what countries are you thinking about here? I know in France, Germany and Spain have had a lot of local efforts through the years, but never at this sort of scope, so really interested what exactly you're talking about here.
• schnitzelstoat 6mo ago
  It's a good move. Hopefully, they stick with it. I remember some cases in Germany where they switched and then later switched back. It's a shame that we have no equivalent to Google or AWS in Europe and now that it seems LLMs might eat search, we don't have any of those either.
• faccacta 6mo ago
  It seems like what Europe really needs to do this is a viable mobile OS. It's been true for a while that Linux + LibreOffice is plenty to handle most government workers' needs on the desktop, but that's only good for when they are at their desks. Are there any viable alternatives to iOS and Android that are totally free of "dépendances extra-européennes"? What's the plan?
  • samus 6mo ago
    Android Open Source is good enough. The tough part are device-specific drivers that never make it upstream and are eventually abandoned by the vendor, making upgrade past specific kernel versions very troublesome.
    • notrealyme123 6mo ago
      It is controlled by Google so it not. As long as Google is setting the roadmap for android it is not a viable option.
      • samus 6mo ago
        At the same time it is an open source product and can therefore be forked. Being controlled by Google presents not nearly such an issue as Microsoft products or the Apple ecosystem.
      • microtonal 6mo ago
        Why not? GrapheneOS and others show that it is possible to make viable operating systems on top of AOSP, which also have their own useful extensions. It seems like a waste not to use an existing, well-developed, hardened, open source base, that at the same time provides great compatibility with most existing apps. Since it is open source, it would always be possible to fork if AOSP goes off the rails. I think the primary issue is that it is currently hard to get embargoed security patches, unless you have some partnership with an OEM.
        • tosti 6mo ago
• cynicalsecurity 6mo ago
  Vive la France !
• simmerup 6mo ago
  Switched to Nobara after getting fed up with one too many Windows bugs. Been a really pleasant experience to be honest
• 21asdffdsa12 6mo ago
  There should be a chapter in economic books on how entrenched monopoly companies become on the inside, like small states where little companies (called departments) play freemarket for promotion points, the outside forces completely suspended while the endoplasmic reticulum of the monopoly company lasts.
• harlequinetcie 6mo ago
  I find fascinating how so many people are moving away from Microsoft decades after they should have because of simply the inertia that large organizations have on adoption. Above all, I'm also surprised on how those same organization are using Anthropic or OpenAI or other close source solutions for their agent harnesses instead of going for Open Source. Malte just yesterday showed how powerful innovation with small teams can be achieved particularly in EU. I hope they start looking for those alternatives too for their agentic systems, beyond using pi-mono.
  • Bayart 6mo ago
    > I find fascinating how so many people are moving away from Microsoft decades after they should have because of simply the inertia that large organizations have on adoption. That should be a good lesson in anthropology : the delta between knowing something and acting upon it tends to be immediate necessity. We're still an immature species as we haven't learned to be lazy at scale, that is putting the right amount of work early on to do the least overall. But I'm optimistic we'll get there.
  • port11 6mo ago
    The Trump administration has shown how many US corporations are willing to bend the knee. Perhaps that was the slap in the face we needed in Europe. It’s shown us that “oh, but they’re just a service provider” wasn’t that truthful, and their neutrality should be questioned.
• morog 6mo ago
  I used Linux 10 years ago, but then due to job or corp. and needing Teams and Outlook I was forced to uses Windows. Now with corp job over I was finally able to switch to Linux this week (Fedora + KDE). Loving improvements made in the last 10 years, KDE will always have its quirks, but it is fast and smooth with no crashes yet. I got Claude to make me a migration script which worked brilliantly, haven't needed to boot Windows yet. Browser sessions and everything worked like nothing had changed. All my various ssh / putty configs migrated to Konsole, Thunderbird carries on like nothing has changed. Ahhhh freedom!
  • shevy-java 6mo ago
    Strange. I switched to Linux +25 years ago. My setup became quite minimal; right now I use IceWM for the most part. GNOME3 was always useless; KDE also changed since Nate "I need more moneys!" took over (see his donation daemon or the more recent "systemd-only" tied with wayland-only garbage that KDE succumbed to). Linux is good in that you can combine things that work, so it is more flexible than windows. But desktop wise I don't see it becoming really dominant; GTK is now a GNOMEy-only toolkit. Qt is too busy focusing on their own business model. Desktop Linux is not useless, but it is really just sub-par compared to Windows. I also use Win10 on a second computer; I don't like it but I use it for testing. Linux lacks decision-making power focus (and corporations such as IBM/Red Hat are selfish, so these will never reach any "breakthrough" like the infamous Desktop of the Year, which I heard will come next year together with GNU Hurd ... I think).
    • kalaksi 6mo ago
      > Desktop Linux is not useless, but it is really just sub-par compared to Windows. Each to their own. My experience is the opposite (I use KDE). I have to use Windows at work and it's always such a pain. At least Windows 10/11 finally has multiple workspaces natively and some keyboard shortcuts for managing windows (ironic), but I would have preferred to stay in Windows 10. Now Windows doesn't even support proper suspend anymore and it won't stay in the "modern standby" either. Constantly waking up and doing god knows what with fans screaming. When I take a look what it's doing, task manager claims that nothing resource intensive is going on. I'm guessing it's hiding some internal processes. It calms down when I put it to sleep again. Sorry for the rant, I better stop before I start.
• a-dub 6mo ago
  hmm. hoping that all the weird business requirements get confined to a specific distro with careful gating prior to upstreaming. it would be bad if they were allowed to pollute the ecosystem more generally (which one could argue is why windows is the way it is).
• shevy-java 6mo ago
  At the least the french government has a plan. Now please have a look at Germany - the current leading guy is absolutely clueless as to what he wants to do. From appeasing Trump to ... actually doing what else? Germany with regards to its politicians is a problem for the EU. Yes, we also have Hungary etc... but it's a small country that is over-hyped by the media due to its intrinsic corruption in the leadership; the real problem really is Germany. In the past it always was "too much bureaucracy" - the problem goes much deeper. The THINKING process in Germany is broken. France, Sweden, Denmark, Netherlands, Finland, Norway (not EU but clever nonetheless) and so forth, are much better at THINKING. Something is broken in Germany and Merz is the showcase of cluenessness here.
• LightBug1 6mo ago
  Excellent move. Hopefully these moves continue the trend spreading through Europe. With another 3 or so years with the Orange Dildo in charge, there's a decent chance the momentum will turn into something tangible.
• VadimPR 6mo ago
  Anyone here familiar with the details of GendBuntu[1], the Ubuntu distro used by the French Gendarmerie? I'd love to hear what is working and what isn't on the ground. [1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GendBuntu?useskin=vector https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GendBuntu?useskin=vector
• motbus3 6mo ago
  This should have been done years ago. This will certainly drive bad actors to harm Linux too unfortunately
  • enoint 6mo ago
    France and Germany have endemic malware. Reacting defensively to it might be easier with Claude on the OS source code.
• bloqs 6mo ago
  Fantastic news
• self_awareness 6mo ago
  It's kind of good news, but it's also bad news -- with Linux popularity, crapware will be more popular. I kind of liked times when Linux was used only by power users. Today it's slightly different, and with more popularity... we get things like age verification in systemd. But well, I can always switch to FreeBSD I guess. And that's my plan B.
  • kuon 6mo ago
    I am very happy that Linux is becoming main stream but I share your sentiment. FreeBSD is a nice alternative if you want to stay on the edge.
• Eldodi 6mo ago
  French administration is about to become even more inefficient it was!
  • nxm 6mo ago
    It’s getting downvoted, but I agree it’ll become a bureaucratic mess.
    • deleted 6mo ago
      [deleted]
• zoobab 6mo ago
  What they should launch is an abuse of dominant position on the desktop/laptop market, with appropriate remedies such as fines.
• Frieren 6mo ago
  Europe in general have great software engineers. What it lacks is investment. To see the goverment serving its own country instead of foreign billionaire interests is good change of pace. And Linux development and adoption helps everybody not just France. A win win.
• benterix 6mo ago
  At this point I wouldn't be surprised if American companies started using it if the French get it right. The instability of the current administration is one thing, but Microsoft disregard for its user deserves an appropriate response that will actually hit them where they care.
  • BirAdam 6mo ago
    I would love to self-host France's "La Suite" to keep myself out of Google and MS... but for many companies, it will not matter how much you tell them there are options that are both cheaper and better. They will believe that paying someone tons of money is better because others cannot afford it. That inherently makes it superior... for some reason... you see?
  • mickael-kerjean 6mo ago
    > I wouldn't be surprised if American companies started using it if the French get it right As a French citizen who own a business [1] that is in direct competition with this incentive from my very own government, I'm happy to disclose more than 50% of my customer base is already in America and France represent about 1%. [1] https://github.com/mickael-kerjean/filestash https://github.com/mickael-kerjean/filestash
• dkga 6mo ago
  de Gaule v2.0 :)
• sylens 6mo ago
  Many government orgs have spent the last decade and a half slowly transitioning old legacy applications and platforms to browser-based alternatives. That old ERP software that used to require a thick client? Now it runs in Chrome. Microsoft recognized this and smartly moved to keep these customers locked in via an ever growing Microsoft Office bundle - subscription based, with Teams for their chat and then building up additional capabilities to extend the dependency, like InTune. Where we are at now is that the pain of moving away from Windows is acceptable for many larger organizations and governments, especially those with flat or decreasing budgets. You can just swap out the OS layer and keep other processes the same - keep using Office with just the browser versions if you want, or move to an alternative (like EU-based). Teams works on Linux. There is no moat on Windows anymore
  • alper 6mo ago
    > to browser-based alternatives And many of those tool providers could see for 10-20 years now that if they didn't provide a web based version sometime soon, they would go out of business sooner or later. There are almost no applications that a government employee should be running natively on their machine anyway.
    • eviks 6mo ago
      Except for any application you want a government employee to use efficiently
      • port11 6mo ago
        Are web apps much less efficient to use?
        • eviks 6mo ago
          Yes, slower start, more memory/cpu use, likely worse UI as the transition broke desktop conventions and/or just lost some power features in the process
• HumblyTossed 6mo ago
  This is traditionally how you renegotiate with MS. But seriously, how long before MS offers them a deal they would rather not refuse?
  • perarneng 6mo ago
    It's different this time. It's a geopolitical safety move. You know why it happened and who is responsible for this. Never would have happened otherwise.
• mrtksn 6mo ago
  Prediction: If USA ends up attacking EU, EU will freeze all the US tech company money and compel them to open their platforms and move all the backend services to EU soil in exchange of unfreezing it and continue operating in a free but regulated market. For example locked communication devices are huge national security risk, so Apple will have their money frozen and given two options: 1) Open up iOS etc, bring all the servers to EU. Continue business as usual, EU financial institutions may choose to use Apple services as Apple pay but they may choose to bypass it. EU developers may choose to use Apple App Store services and pay the Apple's fees or they may choose to bypass it. Apple may chose to make Xcode a paid software, developers may choose not to purchase Xcode and use other non-Apple tools and pay nothing to Apple. 2) Use credit against the frozen money to refund your users if they bring their devices to you. All the Apple devices will be locked out from EU mobile providers(technically very easy for iPhone, simply by blocking devices with Apple IMEI on EU networks) and any remaining devices of the users will be refunded with the Apple's money. After some grace period, any money remaining in Apple's account will be transferred to Apple and if Apple wants to do business in EU again will have to do the option 1. I'm bit on the doomer side of things, so I think that if Trump keeps his current course and power, at the end of the term American software industry will shrink by %90 as it will be expelled from most of the world and will be serving to 350M people instead of 8B people. Its amazing how US is screwing up its dominant position in this incredibly lucrative industry that lets them serve a market of 8B people and accumulate huge wealth in the process.
  • microtonal 6mo ago
    Open up iOS etc, bring all the servers to EU. How is that going to work? Apple will still be under the CLOUD Act, so Europe would still be vulnerable. The only solution would be for Apple to fork into two completely separate companies, which is unlikely to happen. Most likely there will initially just be a lot of chaos, because nobody is prepared for this scenario. There will be huge supply issues, COVID will look like nothing (both in terms of groceries, etc. and getting replacement hardware). Then Europe will on the short term rebase to Chinese/Korean/Taiwanese hardware, with probably an AOSP fork on the mobile side and Linux on the desktop/server side. But it will be terribly messy. Nobody seems to prepare, because everyone thinks this scenario is unthinkable or they just don't want to put in the effort. Even all the people that I know that are talking about digital sovereignty are still using their iPhones, MacBooks, or GMS Android phones. I am trying to tell tech people that the time to start switching is to alternatives is now, since tech people are usually early adopters and can help other people. But most switch from GMail to Proton Mail and proclaim victory. January 2026 (remember the good ol' days when the US wanted to take Greenland with force if necessary?) was already forgotten after 4 weeks or so.
• gib444 6mo ago
  Efforts like this are good for people to realise there is a lot of talent in Europe that just gets overshadowed by USA's dominance. USAians tend think everything is less popular in Europe simply because it is inferior and fails purely on its technical merits. I know nothing will ever change their minds, but at least non-European non-USAians might recognise the efforts a bit more. We are also willing to accept 'good but not perfect' and understand tradeoffs.
  • drstewart 6mo ago
    >USAians The word you're looking for is Americans, despite whatever preconceived notion you think the word "Americans" actually should mean in English. I know nothing will ever change European minds, but at least understand what the correct form is. >everything is less popular in Europe simply because it is inferior and fails purely on its technical merits So everything is less popular in Europe because it fails on many other points? Big applause to you, I guess. Are you looking for a participation award?
    • gib444 6mo ago
      As an Englishman, I don't need lectures on my language. English isn't controlled by a central authority. If a new word takes hold, it takes hold, that's it. The way the USA thinks it has an absolute right to decimate central and South America disgusts me to the core and I'm tired of those poor people being lumped in with the term "Americans". It's offensive to them. The USA does not own the continent as much as the CIA tries. Just as we received lectures on our declining power, it's time for the USA to suffer the same.
      • drstewart 6mo ago
        >As an Englishman, I don't need lectures on my language. An Englishman? You mean Englandian. English is a language, you can't lump everyone who speaks it into one category. >English isn't controlled by a central authority Exactly. And the Englandian usage has no superiority over any other. >The USA does not own the continent as much as the CIA tries. Maybe not, but we do own the UK (:
• apatheticonion 6mo ago
  Hopefully this results in investment in desktop environments and Wine!
  • master-lincoln 6mo ago
    Why? We have plenty of well working Desktop Managers and WINE is doing better than ever. I'd argue there are bigger issues in Linux like default process isolation and access authorization per program being behind other OSes
• haritha-j 6mo ago
  Ah Windows. The Temu wine.
• ngomez 6mo ago
  Interestingly, Microsoft has been trying to get ahead of this for a couple of years now with their National Partner Clouds program [0], which they describe as: > designed for scenarios where full ownership and operational independence from Microsoft is required In France's case, Capgemini and Orange have a joint venture to operate datacenters that Microsoft runs Azure and Office on top of [1]. Moving away from Windows and Teams would still reduce their dependence on Microsoft substantially. But if the core goal is to reduce dependence on non-European suppliers, I would be wary of the French government buying services from "Bleu" when it's mainly Microsoft and a couple of consultancies in a trenchcoat. [0] https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/azure-sovereign-clouds/partner/overview-national-partner-clouds https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/azure-sovereign-clou... [1] https://www.capgemini.com/news/press-releases/capgemini-and-orange-are-pleased-to-announce-the-launch-of-commercial-activities-of-bleu-their-future-cloud-de-confiance-platform/ https://www.capgemini.com/news/press-releases/capgemini-and-...
• w4yai 6mo ago
  Vive la France !
• looksjjhg 6mo ago
  It’s quite remarkable what the current administration have “achieved” in a year or so
• CalRobert 6mo ago
  But will they use azure?
  • sph 6mo ago
    I've been on a contract for a multinational European company that's in partnership with ESA for the past 18 months, and I've seen a lot of money and effort spent to move out of the US cloud to OVH. After the US decided to go rogue, this project became even more urgent. My job is basically recreating a small part of the infrastructure that was designed for AWS, while patching some shortcomings of the OVH offerings which are not as featureful.
• derfurth 6mo ago
  It would be great, however the title is misleading: the only announcement regarding linux desktop is that the DINUM - a relatively small but perhaps influential government agency pledges to leave Windows. I believe the largest Linux Desktop initiative in France is GendBuntu[1] for the National Gendarmerie [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GendBuntu https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GendBuntu
  • embedding-shape 6mo ago
    How is it misleading? While DINUM might be a smaller directorate, they're also asking all related ministries, including public operators, to put together a plan for how they'll migrate from Windows to Linux by autumn 2026. France has a relatively broad "digital sovereignty strategy" that this is a part of, but it's bigger than just DINUM moving to Linux.
• michaelashley29 6mo ago
  been a long time coming for windows. wonder who else will follow suit
• soggybread 6mo ago
  Honestly the only thing keeping me from bringing up the idea of moving to linux is that Windows has active directory and domain wide group policies - if linux had something similar that was easy to manage I'm sure a lot more corporations would move to linux. The ease at which I can adjust system settings throughout the company or within each department such as disabling/enabling features, mapping drives or printers. I haven't found a better alternative than active directory
• sneak 6mo ago
  Next up: governments rejecting use of AWS.
• lionkor 6mo ago
  All the comments about Linux gaming make me want to give my $0.02. I've been gaming on Linux, with no Windows installed anywhere, for around 6 years. In the first 3 years, it was a massive pain. Games like S.T.A.L.K.E.R. would consistently have issues with mouse input, weird acceleration, a lot of games wouldn't run at all. This is NO LONGER the case at all. Things run very well out of the box. All games I want to play run very well and mostly the process is just "install -> play". If a game has an aggressive anticheat, like Battlefield 6 or Valorant, it will not work and you can forget about it. Controllers work fine, so do some wheels and other peripherals, but a good number of wheels, pedals, joysticks, VR headsets, and other wild and wacky input devices might not work that well or not at all. It mostly depends on whether the software for them runs on Linux, runs in Wine, or is needed at all. Not sure about VR, but I know it was a bit dire 1-2 years ago. If you don't play hardcore simulator games, and don't play one of the competitive shooters with aggressive anticheat (e.g. CS2 and other competitive shooters run perfectly well), you can just install Linux, install Steam or one of the other launchers, and just hit play. If you're not sure, you can check the status on https://protondb.com https://protondb.com.
  • Levitating 6mo ago
    > Games like S.T.A.L.K.E.R. The old stalker games run on the X-Ray engine (the mods on a modified OSS version of it). In my experience they've always worked pretty well, though the games are quirky in general. Good hunting stalker.
    • lionkor 6mo ago
      Time is money, get talking! Yes, last time (recently) I tried, the original games ran very well, with no (Linux specific) issues!
    • oceansky 6mo ago
      No wonder it's classified informally as "eurojank".
      • konart 6mo ago
• sjdv1982 6mo ago
  I am actually a research engineer paid by the French government. They take digital sovereignty pretty serious over here, which is sometimes good, sometimes less so. Definitely the right call on Windows, though. Even my parents (in their mid-seventies) moved to Linux this year.
  • mickael-kerjean 6mo ago
    I am a counter example of that take. As a French citizen, I have spent a decade building an open alternative Dropbox [1] that is I believe miles ahead of even Dropbox itself. In practice, France represents about 1% of the customer base. I've tried reaching out to the people who talk loud about sovereignty. Turns out it's just something they say at conferences to entertain each other as they have no power to actually make it happen. [1] https://github.com/mickael-kerjean/filestash https://github.com/mickael-kerjean/filestash
• OtomotO 6mo ago
  France is doing many thinks way better than Germany. This is one of them.
• OtomotO 6mo ago
  I've been on Linux (I use Arch btw) since 2011. I've been dual booting the first couple of years, then dumped Windows completely in 2016. Since then I am on Linux only. Private and corporate. Yes, sometimes I need to access a Windows machine or do work in one (I am my own boss), but then the client pays a "pain tax" as I call it. There are some games I can't play I would've played in the past. Mostly competitive online games. Technically that's annoying, but for me personally it's not a problem as I am not in my teens of twenties anymore and I have other hobbies and obligations.
• xandrius 6mo ago
  My main reasons not to be able to fully switch 100% to Linux are the following: 1. Graphic design software is subpar (expecially when compared to mac) and very often under supported. And GIMP has absolutely the worst UX of any program I've ever seen for such a widely recommended software. 2. Gamedev (i.e. Unity) is much less stable and annoying to work with (mac is much better but Windows still wins) 3. Older hardware support, most of the times you can use a super old software (say a printer) and it works. Linux much better than mac for this, from my experience 4. Lots of things on Win are plug and play, Linux is a pain of custom drivers from dead githubs. Mac slightly better or worse, it might either exist as a stupidly expensive application or have to jump hoops to get a driver in. And I know people say "just use Wine" or "GIMP is actually great and free" but at the end of the day, I want my main driver to be stable and good to use. If anytime I save a project running via Wine has a non 0% chance of it crashing and bringing down my entire work, it's not going to happen. I do use and recommend Linux quite extensively but that's why I always have 3 different systems at any given time: 1. Win: gamedev, hardware stuff or bigger games, some design, GPU heavy work. 2. Mac: design, light GPU work, browsing and portability (battery life and cooling is fantastic) 3. Linux: everything else This hasn't changed in the past 10+ years, even though now I can see much more gaming happening on Linux, which is very nice.
• hereme888 6mo ago
  Hopefully the rest of the world can benefit from their efforts. I hope the whole EU starts moving to Linux.
  • dude250711 6mo ago
    One cautionary tale will be enough. No need to sacrifice the whole EU.
• throw88555 6mo ago
  Every nations should avoid US based products and services. USA, China and Russia are rogue states. they pose a great risk to every other nation
• fHr 6mo ago
  Holy based
• cicko 6mo ago
  About f'ing time.
• buttersicle 6mo ago
  Government is the perfect place to do this. It doesn't matter if it craters productivity because the organization's budget is not conditioned on delivering impact.
  • carlosjobim 6mo ago
    Why not go the full mile and put up cardboard panels with printed screenshots of MS Word glued on, which government workers can sit in front of to collect their salary?
• wslh 6mo ago
  I hope they also help in improving battery management on Linux notebooks, even pressing vendors via regulations.
• vfclists 6mo ago
  Will the French government view open source software as software which should be well-funded and well structured, ie Blender level quality and organization, or are they going to underfund it and thus have it succumb to the shenanigans of Redhat, aka IBM, the infamous pushers of Gnome and Wayland?
• socketcluster 6mo ago
  Great to see France purging itself of corruption. Why did they pay for an inferior product for so many decades when a superior free alternative was available? It was regulatory capture; corruption.
• guenthert 6mo ago
  I puzzles me to no end why the typical office clerk should care about the OS at all. I understand that secretaries will be trained on MS Word and will then have a strong preference to use such (or at least something which very closely resembles it). Same for accountants with Excel. But clerks in e.g. Revenue Service? Those I expect to interact (perhaps these days via a Web interface) with custom software. Why would those ever see a 'Start' button or somesuch?
  • booleandilemma 6mo ago
    That hasn't been my experience working in Corporate America at all. Everyone gets a company laptop and they use it for whatever they want. Whether that's Excel, Google Sheets, or Netflix at home. People think company hardware is their personal hardware and they have preferences. I had a company phone once (terrible experience) and I'd routinely get txts from random services and people outside our company thinking it was the previous owner. The last employee who had used it mixed company use and personal use.
  • LtWorf 6mo ago
    People just hate imposed changes.
• supliminal 6mo ago
  I think the commentary here is mostly in agreement, we are just debating the finer points. This should have happened already, is the general theme. I still have my Shrike CDs around and the modern-day Fedora (I think 44 is about to launch next week?) is more than sufficient for many, many use cases within the government, regardless of which distro they end up with. My hope is that the backing of EU software development teams to open source will lift all boats and in addition to Linux, BSD may get some fruits of labor out of it. 9front as always is to be strictly forbidden without a security clearance.
• 999900000999 6mo ago
  What are my options if I want an independent phone OS ? Can I go into a store in Paris and buy an independent phone ?
• greton7 6mo ago
  [dead]
• josefritzishere 6mo ago
  We're going to keep seeing this due to destabilization and political changes in the US. It drives nationalization elsewhere, even among allies.
  • _verandaguy 6mo ago
    It doesn't help that Microsoft seems to be doing everything in its power to alienate Windows users.
    • recursivegirth 6mo ago
      This, I've officially been off Windows for a few months and will not be looking back. Microsoft has put a bad taste in my mouth as a developer. By luck and happenstance, I tuned into the Omacon conference this morning and my perspective on personal computing very much aligns with theirs. Would encourage a least watch the kickoff keynote if the VODs drop.
  • htx80nerd 6mo ago
    this has been happening on and off for ~10+ yrs. MS cost are too high and you need more expensive computers to have the MS sub-par experience. the main thing that keeps people locked in is (a) "Im use to windows" and (b) MS gives them some special contract to keep them.
  • stldev 6mo ago
    This is exactly what I'm seeing in working with companies in Belgium, Germany and France. It's not just about costs- managers are actively seeking to distance themselves from everything US. We've stopped treating them like allies. Who's to blame them?
• shafiemoji 6mo ago
  Wish the Bangladeshi government did this instead of relying on pirated copies of Windows 7
  • BLKNSLVR 6mo ago
    At least they know enough to have stuck with the outright best version of Windows.
• BLKNSLVR 6mo ago
  I hope it succeeds and I hope they document the experience and invite interested parties to see how it was setup and how (well) it works in order to encourage as many governments and organisations as possible to do the same.
  • 1234letshaveatw 6mo ago
    For sure, I would love for this approach to spill over to the US and cause them to sever any contracts they have with the EU member nations
• Teever 6mo ago
  I’ve commented on this before but you’ll know France is serious when there are Linux ports of Solidworks and Catia. France has a real edge over American companies by being the dominant player in the CAD world, it’s always surprised me that they nerfed that advantage by tying to an American operating system.
  • carefree-bob 6mo ago
    Autocad has 39% market share in CAD, Solidworks has 14% market share, and Fusion 360 has 9%. None of this is a major national advantage for any side. It's bizarre to think that the US or France would treat this as some kind of mark of national influence, since if anything happens to these top three vendors, there are lots of other vendors waiting in the wings. It's not like a national oil reserve, where it's important that you have a reserve of CAD software available for your engineers.
    • Teever 6mo ago
      But what kind of projects are people using these different pieces of software for? Are people designing aircraft carriers in Fusion? Don't get me wrong, I understand that AutoCAD is extremely important for architecture and the death grip that AutoDesk has over that industry needs to be broken for the benefit of all of us, but from my understanding Dessault Systems makes software that is used for totally different purposes and is of vital strategic importance for a nation that wants an independent MIC which France obviously does. So it seems foolish to me for them to have their own CAD software that can and is used to design weapons but be dependent on an American operating system produced by a particularly unscrupulous company who is obsessed with tighter and tigher control and has definite ties to the US intelligence apparatus.
      • carefree-bob 6mo ago
        I doubt that the US military itself is using commercial CAD software, most likely they are using something in house. Again, CAD software is not Extreme Ultra Lithography, where it is a marvel of engineering and can only be produced by one firm. The netherlands can rightly be proud of ASML as a national achievement. But CAD software? Now that's just goofy. Check out: https://www.army.mil/article/249241/armys_powerful_open_source_solid_modeling_system_undergoes_modernization https://www.army.mil/article/249241/armys_powerful_open_sour... But I would assume defense contractors -- the private firms like Lockheed -- are probably using commercial software. The US military is pretty bureaucratic and is filled with bespoke stuff, whereas the contractors are basically businesses and would use whatever is common in commercial business world.
• otabdeveloper4 6mo ago
  What? Again? I lost count, it's how many attempts again? Fill me in.
  • icfly2 6mo ago
    The gendarmerie already switched. Only place I know that went back to MS is Munich city council. After MS put a big research office in the town.
  • forty 6mo ago
    As far as I know it was successful for the gendarmerie and assemblée nationale for exemple. There are many public entities and apparently each migration is news worthy
  • mrheosuper 6mo ago
    It needs just 1 successful attemp.
• moron4hire 6mo ago
  I wish the US Government would do the same
  • markhahn 6mo ago
    I wonder if anyone in trumpland has thought of a T-branded distro. Considering that most distros are basically just a new set of desktop backgrounds, this seems like a sure thing!
• heyflyguy 6mo ago
  man, that's great - but can you imagine some bureaucrat lifer having to adapt to this?
  • MegagramEnjoyer 6mo ago
    we need more tech literacy overall, so this might help with that also
  • deleted 6mo ago
    [deleted]
  • sometimes_all 6mo ago
    There are few things in life more satisfying than forcing bureaucrat lifers to expand their minds.
• yorwba 6mo ago
  Previous discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47716043 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47716043 (764 points 5 hours ago, 384 comments)
  • deleted 6mo ago
    [deleted]
• ChrisArchitect 6mo ago
  [dupe] Discussion on source: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47716043 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47716043
• sherburt3 6mo ago
  I'm sure there's a barely functioning business critical app that runs exclusively on Windows NT in their administration that would beg to differ
  • psychoslave 6mo ago
    It can be ported to React under a single prompt by now, don’t you know? But certainly we are already at stage where Windows NT can be regenerated on the fly from a prompt anyway, aren’t we? Otherwise, there is also ReactOS that could be leveraged on for that kind of scenario. I wonder where it would stand by now if all the money that governments around the world spent in Microsoft license would have been invested in it instead.
  • justinclift 6mo ago
    Sure. But if they can successfully convert 99% of their computers to non-Windows and non-Mac, that'd still be a massive win.
  • BLKNSLVR 6mo ago
    Ideology may actually be the best way to cut off legacy bullshit like this. There's passion-energy, which really gets the creative problem-solving juices flowing.
  • ang_cire 6mo ago
    If it only runs on NT, it'll work better under WINE than on Win10/11. Legacy app compat is actually an argument for moving to Linux.
• yibers 6mo ago
  I am saying this as a very long time Windows user, and it saddens me. Politics aside, from a pure technichal, functional, privacy and UX perspective, the case for changing over from Windows to Linux is getting stronger by the day.
  • lithos 6mo ago
    If you picked XFCE as your front end you get WinXP functionality, with the nice things from win10/11 (start menu search that's actually local only, multiple desktop workspaces, and graphical settings/updates I've only needed to go to command line twice in four years).
    • yibers 6mo ago
      How does XFCE compare to KDE and GNOME? Also, does it has all the nice window snapping features that I'm used to fron Windows?
      • lithos 6mo ago
        My personal PCs have enough screens that I haven't tried. Though I do really like Windows snapping features on my work laptop (can't change OS there). I haven't played with other windowing systems to judge too much. And just picked right from screen shots/gifs to not need to try.
      • cwillu 6mo ago
        I don't think all the same shortcuts exist out of the box, although win-drag/win-right-drag to move and resize windows (might be alt by default) is _so_ much more convenient than the usual border/title dragging that you might find you don't miss them.
      • mrj 6mo ago
        As a long time Linux user, this comment makes me sad since many of those features were copied from Linux (many from Unity) :)
        • 6mo ago
• lousken 6mo ago
  Now nextcloud and libreoffice should give up the stupid drama and focus on beating microsoft.
• dleslie 6mo ago
  Canada has been using and developing FOSS for a while now. 0: https://www.canada.ca/en/government/system/digital-government/digital-government-innovations/open-source-software.html https://www.canada.ca/en/government/system/digital-governmen... 1: https://events19.linuxfoundation.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/Open-Standards-and-Open-Source-Software-in-the-Government-of-Canada-S%C3%A9bastien-Lemay-Treasury-Board-of-Canada-Secretariat.pdf https://events19.linuxfoundation.org/wp-content/uploads/2017... 2: https://github.com/canada-ca/ https://github.com/canada-ca/ There's still a great deal of Windows usage, but hopefully that will phase out with the passage of time. Canada's bureaucracy moves slowly, at the pace of generational attrition. It won't be until the last GenX retires that they could even meaningfully begin transitioning the average office worker away from Windows.
  • realo 6mo ago
    Apparently not everyone got the memo... https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/ottawa/federal-phoenix-pay-system-10-year-anniversary-9.7093933 https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/ottawa/federal-phoenix-pay-sy...
    • dleslie 6mo ago
      The Phoenix contract predates the more recent efforts to switch to FOSS. But also, Canada loves to burn money on American suppliers. It's probably why the recent interest in _Buy Canadian_ has the American administration annoyed.
      • simlevesque 6mo ago
        Phoenix was a literal trap laid by the Conservative government just before leaving knowing it would be a shit show for the Liberals in the coming years.
  • unfocused 6mo ago
    I work in government. Link 1 (2018) is essentially a dream. All of government got forced to use MS Dynamics CRM. Basically, anybody with a software requirement for case management, had to use MS Dynamics. I recommended we use Drupal in 2011. That was killed because everything had to be MS. I'm kind of surprised that it is in there given that nobody was allowed to use. Link 0 and 2 are essentially from TBS and CDS. They coexist together. They are essentially working at the very top as entities that gather information from other departments. They can do whatever they want because they help write the rules. I'm not trying to discredit your post, just saying that as someone who has brought OSS tools to development at the government and tried to use OSS tools for client (I failed at that), it is nearly impossible at the moment. We are married to Microsoft and its cloud. I do agree, that it may take an entire generation because right now, 190+ departments are not exactly jumping to FOSS, and in many situations, they are down right told you are not allowed. In addition, the current de facto document management system is from OpenText. Although many just use Sharepoint Online. Ironically, as everything moves to the cloud, it would be easier to move to a solution that is FOSS based, and based in the cloud. Technology has matured enough that you don't need executables on a desktop, you just need a browser pointing to a website.
• AtlasBarfed 6mo ago
  The fact that open source is a national security concern should have been something that a crazy orange man should have triggered. Thus was obvious decades ago. And open source is the key model for collective development in a secure manner for disparate countries to secure their software base. Alas, I fear they will only concentrate on the server side. The securing of the desktop should be a parallel concern as well, to help prevent your citizenry from becoming DDOS slaves.
• 1970-01-01 6mo ago
  >The French government did not provide a specific timeline for the switchover, or which distributions it was considering. Do they realize they need to pick a LTS distro now? You can't mix and match distros without having a massive IT and user retraining budgets.
  • _blk 6mo ago
    They likely don't. It's a purely political move not a technical move. With the average length of the French work week, this will take a while to implement anyway. Don't get me wrong, I think it's a great thought but I don't think it's more than a short-sighted reaction. Munich unfortunately faltered after a few years.
    • hirako2000 6mo ago
      The french Gendarmerie already migrated to GendBunto, their own distribution. It took a while but it's now running on 97% of all workstations. I wouldn't call this just political fluff. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GendBuntu https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GendBuntu
    • yoyohello13 6mo ago
      > With the average length of the French work week, this will take a while to implement anyway. 35 instead of 40? I don't think an extra 5 hours a week is really going to move the needle in a meaningful way.
    • taskforcegemini 6mo ago
      microsoft bribed them to come back
  • ErroneousBosh 6mo ago
    Why would you need any user retraining? All distros are basically identical. The only real difference is whether you spell "package manager" as apt, yum, or dnf.
    • 6mo ago
• abetaha 6mo ago
  [dead]
• WaryByDesign 6mo ago
  It's... an admirable goal, but it pretty much remains to be seen if "France"[1] follows through. Previous attempts to "ditch Windows" have not ended that well. Munich in 2003, the entire Federal German government in 2009, Munich again in 2013, Munich again in 2021, and so on. Most common end-result: back to Windows. Breaking points are typically the lack of an "Office 2016" compatible suite, lack of "Adobe PDF" tooling, and a mishmash of legacy apps. The latter seems trivially addressable by a "Remote Desktop/RemoteApps" environment, but there are definitely issues, mostly surrounding printing and clipboard handling. All of that can be solved, but definitely requires more funding and, crucially, coordination, beyond "Open Source Cures All." [1] Oh, I just love it when an entire culturally-diverse region gets lumped in together, or, when, as in this case, ~6M French government employees are treated as a homogeneous group.
  • bornfreddy 6mo ago
    Motivation matters.
    • WaryByDesign 6mo ago
      [flagged]
  • mixmastamyk 6mo ago
    If they only diverted 10% of the budget from MS to solving issues they’d have had a solution a decade or two ago.
    • WaryByDesign 6mo ago
      I'm... not so sure? The French government has, widely seen, 6M employees. Given retail pricing of EUR200/seat/year (and they definitely have a better arrangement), that's 1.2B, and I'm not sure that's enough to provide an identity management plus office apps plus file storage solution? And at 10% of that? Absolutely forget it...
      • mixmastamyk 6mo ago
• MegagramEnjoyer 6mo ago
  I applaud France for this decision. Windows is basically legal spyware and adware at this point
  • tombert 6mo ago
    Like most Microsoft products, Windows is a tool that benefits mostly from aggressive early marketing and successfully convincing everyone that they need this product, and by the time everyone realizes how terrible the product is it's too late because everything already depends on it. They have done this everywhere; Microsoft Office is everywhere and terrible. Sharepoint used to be everywhere and is terrible. I know they bought it, but LinkedIn is nearly required everywhere and terrible. Teams seems to be increasingly used everywhere and terrible. And of course Windows is everywhere and terrible. As far as I can tell, there is not a single thing that Microsoft does not half-ass. They're not a software company, they're a marketing company that sells software.
    • hinata08 6mo ago
      Now they somehow got the management of large companies to also push to adopt Azure, with an aggressive "no capex" / "you pay for what you use" campaign when everyone knows their offering work terribly and are overpriced. if Home Depot were to make an exam to pass a certification over their catalog, that would seem ridiculous. But when Microsoft does this, management ppl are happy and feel like they manage when they sign up everyone for AZ900 "certification" Microsoft saw that users, power users and admins who are from the jobs are not making purchases, so you no longer need to design products for them
• somat 6mo ago
  I understand what they mean, linux offers freedom, enough that it divorces your tech stack from any one company. But isn't linux US tech? The blueprint, UNIX was a US project, torvolds works from the US. the original userland GNU was a US based project. The new userland systemd is a US based project.
  • benterix 6mo ago
    > But isn't linux US tech? If you want to discuss it on that level, it if Finnish tech imported to the USA, inspired by a Dutch implementation of a research OS. On a more serious note, Linux has been developed by many individuals all over the world, you can't put a nationality stamp on it.
  • nix0n 6mo ago
    Linux is a global project, and open source more broadly is also of course global. Linux Mint (the distro I use) was started and is led by French developer Clement Lefebvre. QEMU and FFmpeg are among the notable projects started by French developer Fabrice Bellard. VLC was started by students of École Centrale Paris. These are just the things that I know about as an American, so I'm sure there are more.
  • tensor 6mo ago
    The difference, of course, is that they can inspect the source, and should the US try to use it as leverage they can just fork and continue on.
  • markhahn 6mo ago
    GNU was never anything but a flag-of-convenience. The number of people who take RMS seriously was and is small.
• simonask 6mo ago
  Please tell me this also means that they are redirecting the expenses currently going to Microsoft into funding open source development?
• sega_sai 6mo ago
  I think France seem serious in actually switching to open source/EU software. I recently had a telecon on Visio (France's Teams/Zoom substitute) and it worked well in a browser with ~ 10 participants.
• charcircuit 6mo ago
  Desktop Linux's security and antimalware solutions are not ready for government usage. This is a cyber attack waiting to happen if they go through with this. They should at least switch to ChromeOS if they want to use Linux.
  • bornfreddy 6mo ago
    You mean switch Windows by Microsoft for ChromeOS by Google? Weird suggestion. As for "security" and "antimalware" solutions being ready, I don't think there is much difference between the OSs there. Windows is no candyland either. As always, they will need competent people in the right places to pull this through. Tech is just an enabler.
    • charcircuit 6mo ago
      Yes I do mean that. Google is one of the only companies in the Linux space who takes security seriously.
      • TRiG_Ireland 6mo ago
        And switching to Google achieves the aim of getting away from American tech giants?
        • charcircuit 6mo ago
          I don't think it's a wise thing to do at this point in time. There is more risk by not depending on America.
          • AAAAaccountAAAA 6mo ago
            If that really is the case, why not stay on Windows?
          • LtWorf 6mo ago
            We're talking about a country that is daily threatening to invade. You'd feel it was clever to run your entire infrastructure on an Iranian OS? It's the same for EU since USA is threatening to invade.
• Melatonic 6mo ago
  The age of the Linux desktop might actually finally be coming Personally I think we are at an interim period for a big player to emerge and take over this space. If enough governments in the EU start switching over to customized linux distros theres a big chance for someone like Nokia to come in and develop their own approved distro with proper MDM and GPO-like management functionality baked in . On top of that it could be great to see SteamOS continue to gain share and become more than just something people run on gaming purpose hardware. And thirdly would love to see a more simplistic but super lean and functional OS built on something like the BSD.
  • upcoming-sesame 6mo ago
    honestly since the browser has more or less become the real operating system the host OS doesn't matter so much anymore. most people do 90% of their work in the browser anyway
    • red_admiral 6mo ago
      There's an xkcd for that ;) https://xkcd.com/934/ https://xkcd.com/934/
  • jodrellblank 6mo ago
    > "theres a big chance for someone like Nokia to come in and develop their own approved distro" Microsoft bought Nokia's devices and services division for Windows Mobile in 2014. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Mobile https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Mobile
    • bostik 6mo ago
      They killed any Linux device development at Nokia in 2011. Still salty about Elop shooting down a project we had spent 5 years working towards. The holistic platform security for a combined phone/tablet base system would have been really interesting.
      • 6mo ago
• jaspanglia 6mo ago
  Wish it would succeed, other day was reading about stuff and figure out, how much European Tech is actually controlled by American/Israeli Hegemony.
• frugalmail 6mo ago
  Any closed source, centralized system is going to be higher risk than an open source distributed system that can be independently verified and audited by multiple parties. You just have to be willing to put in the investment to verify/review with parties that meet your needs.
• oscord 6mo ago
  Ditch iOS and Android for a Blackberry OS / Nokia ? Really, are there any alternatives?
  • amarant 6mo ago
    SailfishOS, Ubuntu touch, and postmarketOS to name a few from the top of my dome. Nokia isn't really an alternative at all since M$ bought it.
  • unethical_ban 6mo ago
    Motorola and grapheneos? If only the French government weren't attacking Graphene. As for desktop, I suppose the only major European options are Ubuntu and SUSE with corporate backing.
    • microtonal 6mo ago
      The French government and Murena (makers of /e/OS). They are spouting nonsense that security hardening is only for pedophiles and spies: https://mastodon.social/@GrapheneOS@grapheneos.social/116353977263200653 https://mastodon.social/@GrapheneOS@grapheneos.social/116353... https://www.clubic.com/actualite-604786-murena-e-os-interview.html https://www.clubic.com/actualite-604786-murena-e-os-intervie... It's ironic that a company that pretends to be for privacy is using the same think of the children argument as those pushing Chat Control, age verification, etc. Of course, their privacy is mostly a farce, since they have also been caught uploading data to OpenAI for text-to-speechi I hope that more European governments will start supporting GrapheneOS, since it can compete with Apple on security and is better than Apple and GMS Android when it comes to privacy.
• selectively 6mo ago
  Political posturing that will never actually occur.
• DeathArrow 6mo ago
  So did the Great Country of North Korea.
• idoubtit 6mo ago
  The title is very far from the actual public statement that is linked in the article. The French government announced that its digital agency will switch to Linux during this year. This is about a few hundreds of computers owned by the agency. The second statement is that this agency is expected to publish, by the end of the year, a plan to reduce the digital dependency on the US. It's not "France to ditch Windows", it should be "French government promises to plan soon for possible ways to decrease digital dependencies, but calendar unknown". Also note that the government (and president) will change next year, so even if the present drive was real, a political u-turn could come soon. Overall, this statement could be the presage of a major upturn in a few years, but I think it far more probable that the policy change will be minor. There's already a small tendency toward Linux and Free Software in the public sector.
  • PoignardAzur 6mo ago
    Uh, TIL the DINUM still used Windows. I wonder what held them, it's certainly not a lack of familiarity with Linux. I feel you're underselling the second statement a bit: > Each ministry (including operators) will be required to finalize its own [migration] plan by fall This sounds like there's actual pressure to start moving soon, especially for adopting existing DINUM solutions. (I agree the title is clickbait.)
  • aaron695 6mo ago
    [dead]
• Chance-Device 6mo ago
  Who do they think writes Linux? The European Commission? They’re on the US tech stack whether they want to be or not, and nobody in Europe has the will or resources to pull a China and make their own alternative. More’s the pity.
  • alecsm 6mo ago
    Linux was created by an European. And there are many European distros. Even Canonical is European. But that's besides the point. The point is no company owns linux so you're not tied to big tech even if they are the biggest contributors to the kernel.
    • pragma_x 6mo ago
      Moreover for the folks in the back row... We may see Canonical or other commercial Linux vendors come forward with a government or enterprise-flavored solution for all this. But the important thing to keep in mind is that they're not selling Linux per-se. As the GPL prohibits this, these companies sell support for their Linux distro instead. That revenue goes into improving Linux and maintaining their distro (e.g. Ubuntu). But even with all that money changing hands, that they do not own Linux, the Linux kernel, or any other shred of GPL licensed stuff.
      • TRiG_Ireland 6mo ago
        The GPL doesn't actually prohibit selling software. It's just hard to do because anyone you sell it to can redistribute it.
  • dismalaf 6mo ago
    2/3 major commercial Linux vendors are European, the author and BDFL of the Kernel is European and a ton of contributors of many projects are European (Qt and KDE come to mind). Yes IBM Hat has a lot of influence but they're not the only ones developing Linux.
• afewquarks 6mo ago
  I know this might be a controversial take but nevertheless I will state my opinion: I do not think "the year of the Linux desktop" is the good idea that most people seem to think. Everything that gets the eye of Sauron on it proceeds to become a complete mess. Resources always win. All that is needed to ruin an open project is dump money into heavy development up to the point where it becomes impossible to do without it. Plenty such cases already. This also ruins the development of the project akin to feeding wild life, you get them dependent on you, and if you stop feeding them they lose the ability to feed themselves in the wild. Such is the Linux ecosystem, based on a type of work that so far made a great project for people who have a bit of technical skills. Making it more accessible to the masses only brings that kind of bullshit into it. Inevitably. There is no way something of such importance, to the masses, won't get corrupted in one way or another. That never happens, if there is too much interest there will be funds dumped into corrupting it, one way or another. The best path forward for Linux was as before, to fly just under the radar, to bee a bit too complicated for most people. This is what protects it. Most, if anyone, don't seem to understand this very simple fact. No older Linux user gets anything worthwhile out of this deal, nothing relevant, just inevitable enshitification of it. Historically proven over and over again. I find "the year of the Linux desktop" to be a childish take in a world that functions on completely different principles. edit: To add a bit more context, Windows is not the mess that it is today because of evil Microsoft, it is a reflection of its user-base. Same with Linux. They did that to Windows, with their behavior, with accepting all that nonsense. You want to bring the very same type of people, with that kind of attitude, in Linux, what exactly do you thing is going to happen? They will adapt to Linux mentality or they'll proceed to ruin Linux with their behavior? I can take a good guess on what will happen. People will people, and corpos will corpo to milk them.
  • phainopepla2 6mo ago
    Linux is already integral to the tech and enterprise worlds, which have a lot more money to throw around the consumer desktop space. I'm having trouble seeing how Linux becoming a more popular consumer OS would lead to the types of problems you're talking about, if being a leader in the server space hasn't already led to them. Also, Linux has a built-in mechanism against enshittification, which is its open source and multiple flavors. Ubuntu becomes enshittified? Move to Fedora. You can have a dumbed down consumer-friendly distro without affecting Arch.
• korix 6mo ago
  [flagged]
• hackerbeat 6mo ago
  Good. The US is gone.
• hacktivity 6mo ago
  [dead]
• tsoukase 6mo ago
  It's extremely difficult to compete with the US SW companies. Their products are so engaging and attractive that anyone till up to the leaders are tempted to use. It's not surprising that EU's attempt to de-USAisation happens with Linux/OSS and not with an in-house prop SW because it's unable to write one. Also it doesn't happen without cries and pain. We speak for an endeavour to bring a 90% share of a beloved product to 3% and vice versa for a nerdy "cold" one. I keep a long lasting pop corn bag to follow the numbers.
  • LtWorf 6mo ago
    It's not the products, it's the army threatening you if you don't use them. But France has nukes so if anyone can pull it off in Europe it's them.
• aucisson_masque 6mo ago
  Side note but I had absolutely no idea that the USA sanctioned international justice court judges because they had put an arrest warrant on Benjamin Netanyahu. Its not a surprise from Russia but the USA. I guess we’re right to cut all bridges as fast as possible with the USA.
• liendolucas 6mo ago
  All countries should follow suit. Nations and individuals can't depend or be held hostages of a handful of companies on the other side of the Atlantic that have the will to do whatever they want with their customers data. This is the right path to follow and wish that in upcoming years this initiative becomes a reality across the globe. Long success for Linux and all BSDs!
• tedggh 6mo ago
  I think this has been attempted many times before by other nations including Brazil without success. It’s one thing to replace a few hundred workstations in a non critical governmental office, another to replace the entire infrastructure of a government which also collaborates with the private sector. Usually these projects start with a lot of passion then die off when can’t justify the investment.
  • Refreeze5224 6mo ago
    This time there are serious national security and sovereignty issues driving the change though, which are much more powerful motivations to succeed.
• diogenes_atx 6mo ago
  From the perspective of systems administration for large enterprise networks, it seems unlikely that Linux desktops could replace Windows PC's without a domain controller like Microsoft Active Directory. Am I missing something here? How is it possible to manage a large enterprise network with hundreds, or even thousands, of desktop workstations without a domain controller?
• gengstrand 6mo ago
  From the article. The French government did not provide a specific timeline for the switchover, or which distributions it was considering. Got to be Mandrake right?
• laughing_man 6mo ago
  I don't know why any state or large company would tie itself to Windows. All the applications that used to justify just getting whatever Microsoft produced next are web based now.
• ksec 6mo ago
  Rust + Linux. It is brewing, and that is what Government around the world wants. But not FreeBSD, C, Go, or others. Basically Government doesn't want MIT / BSD, they want GPL and AGPL.