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

Worth mentionning is that France's National Gendarmerie (branch of the army in charge of countryside police), is running its own Ubuntu fork and has been for the past decade+. (82% adoption in 2018, 90% in 2019, 97% in 2024). So there is some real experience here. That is not to say that a custom OS will be developped, but rather that there is some level of past experience to draw from.

IT workers will be eating 💸

Could you imagine having to teach the entire French bureaucracy how to use a new operating system? Edit: This comment isn't about Linux or Windows. It's about PEOPLE. Imagine teaching a 60 year old office worker a whole new system, French or otherwise.

While the current political climate may have led to this decision, using Linux is better overall as a more stable and secure operating system. While there is a learning curve for everyone, it can be made easier by using user-friendly UIs.

Never thought this day would come. and all it takes is Trump of all people to switch from Windows to Linux 🤣

I recently downloaded Linux Mint XFCE on a old dead notebook and it literally brought it back to life; like I tried a fresh install of windows already but everything was just so slow, with Mint everything is quick and responsive!

Americans by voting for trump have collapsed their own empire

Everyone should ditch Windows for Linux anyway.

Windows 11 about to be renamed to Windows Freedom Fries

Good for them. But as someone in IT, this would both make me think 2 things: "Job security!" and "there is no way in HELL this is going to work." People of all ages already can't navigate simple shit on Windows and Apple users are even more helpless. I wouldn't be surprised if the rank and file are on Linux, but they give the oldest, most tenured employees their old working environment back. I mean, Europe seems to give a shit about their employees :D

This is gonna be a pain in the ass of epic proportions. I’ll be super impressed if they get this done.

90% of workers cant even use windows - all the do is open web browser and they have no idea about operating system.

I support everyone doing this. Microsoft sucks

I support the ideal but the reality is going to be a nightmare. As if the government is going to hire enough competent programmers to transition smoothly.

Ironically a large amount of the Linux developer base is in the US.

* **Munich, Germany (The "LiMux" Project):** Perhaps the most famous case. After 13 years of running a custom Ubuntu-based system, the city voted in 2017 to return to Windows 10, citing compatibility issues and user dissatisfaction. * **Vienna, Austria (Wienux):** Vienna launched "Wienux" in 2005. By 2009, the project was largely abandoned in favor of Windows because the migration was too difficult for non-technical staff and lacked essential specialized software. * **Lower Saxony, Germany:** The state’s tax office moved 13,000 workstations to Linux but decided in 2018 to return to Windows to align with federal standards and simplify IT management. * **Solothurn, Switzerland:** This Swiss canton moved to Linux in 2001 but reverted in 2010. They found the cost of maintaining a unique "special path" was higher than simply paying for Microsoft licenses. * **Extremadura, Spain (gnuLinEx):** An early leader in open source, the region began phasing out its custom Linux distro around 2011 after finding it difficult to maintain technical support and integrate with national government systems. * **Pesaro, Italy:** The city moved to OpenOffice and Linux to save on costs but eventually returned to the Microsoft ecosystem, claiming that the "hidden costs" of troubleshooting and document conversion were too high. * **Valencia, Spain (LliureX):** While schools in Valencia still use Linux, many administrative departments that initially moved to the open-source platform reverted to Windows for better compatibility with regional and national databases.

It’ll probably be a mess ngl, but I do hope it catches on. I hate Windows and would love Linux to become main stream enough that everything I use runs natively on it.

Imagine being the IT guy at the Ministry of Finance having to explain to a 60-year-old politician that they can't find Excel because it’s now called 'LibreOffice Calc'

There’s so many people in here claiming “it’ll be just as easy for them as Windows” I work in IT and the amount of calls I received for just adding a “ctl+alt+del” prompt on boot (when it literally tells you what to do) was insane. People are too comfortable in their routines and that includes work computers. It will be a literal nightmare for the helpsesk people managing this.

That is going to be a help desk nightmare. We tried this experiment in my company several times, for user endpoints, it never lasts. Servers? Sure.

Hahaha....news comes out right after I go balls deep in MSFT stock. Boy can I pick them...

The reason this will work, and work rather well, is that 99+% of all office work is just office + browser. That's it. It's probably even more than that in the browser now. We use Chromebooks at my work and frankly it doesn't need to hinder my work. Any modern linux can run Firefox and Libreoffice. That's most people's tasks. They'll keep running windows as needed for certain binary desktop apps. Like the Gendarmarie is likely using windows in their forensics labs to run stuff, but the files don't need to be sent around the building on windows machines, if there can be a web portal for viewing lab results, you don't need desktop software. Modern desktop development is all in the browser. Most of the apps we use everyday are really just electron apps which is a chrome browser that only opens the one application (along with some runtime stuff for storage and OS interfacing). The windows start menu is a browser or react native app lol. It's javascript all the way down. Linux is fine and good. The reason windows has held on is the turnkey deployment for administration, but now that governments are not so trusting in microsoft, they want control over their own central resources. Exchange is awful, it's an awful bit of software, and it's excellent to be an admin for. You can farm out the admin work to managed microsoft people. Linux requires more homework to administrate large fleets. It's a *lot* of freedom, and they just needed a *little* nudge to be pushed to upgrade the state IT infrastructure. This will work, microsoft will take a huge hit. Microsoft hasn't been anything too special now for 10-20 years, nobody noticed though, it's just been a monopoly. One day it will crumble from the everyday user's interface like IBM did. Microsoft survives solely because "nobody ever got fired for choosing Microsoft". (It used to be IBM's phrase)

I just wish we could do that entirely in Europe and all collaborate to develop our own solutions. There are too many redundancies in Europe, each country develops its own solution for itself, they should cooperate more.

I’ll take things that will never happen for $100. The government employees using computers will not have the slightest clue how to use Linux and I imagine there will be a million compatibility issues with their apps and programs.

Germany tried this back in the 2000s and abandoned it because of compatibility and productivity issues. Open source software like Libre Office are second rate garbage no matter what Linux zealots say.