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

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

#51

Post by jmclnx »

AussieWog93 wrote: post #10
sgt wrote: post #2

That might work for government employees using webapps all day. But for power users it is unlikely to be friction free.

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!

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.

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

#52

Post by kergonath »

Latitude7973 wrote: post #3

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.

France is funding a lot of open source projects. They may not be very sexy or trendy, but they are there.

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

#54

Post by schnitzelstoat »

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.

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

#55

Post by ghaff »

esskay wrote: post #30
Jyaif wrote: post #19

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.

> Unless you need some windows-only software In many cases even if you do though, its possible to run it on WINE pretty well these days. It's insane how good it's become in the last few years (partly thanks to proton and Valves investment in it all really)

"Pretty well" is doing a lot of work. I have no horse in the race. I just run native on MacOS or Linux. Haven't run any Windows in a number of years. (I don't really game much and would just use my Xbox if I really wanted to--though that mostly functions as a DVD player these days.)

But if "pretty well" causes the random administrative person to have issues with doing their job or increases IT support costs, it will be off the menu pretty quickly. We'll see. A lot of things are different from the last round of we're going to Linux in Europe.

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

#56

Post by faccacta »

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?

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

#57

Post by polski-g »

esskay wrote: post #12

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.

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.

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

#58

Post by palata »

edg5000 wrote: post #43
carlosjobim wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Like last time, I ask again: Which are the European made computers?

Interestingly, there are zero non-US powerful laptops. The closest option is the Moore Threads MTT AI Book (12-core 2.65Ghz, 32GB DDR5, 1TB SSD, 14 inch). It cannot reach a modern Ryzen in performance though. It's fascinating that only the US can make good computers. I'm not from/in the US so I'm not saying that from a patriotic point of view. How hard can it be to pop a good ARM chip in a laptop and compete with HP,…

> It's fascinating that only the US can make good computers.

Lenovo is Chinese, right? Xiaomi, Samsung... can you really not name one non-US company making computers?

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

#59

Post by schnitzelstoat »

carlosjobim wrote: post #28
Jyaif wrote: post #19

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.

You forget about MacOS. And Apple are making some very aggressive moves as of lately to capture users.

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.

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

#60

Post by embedding-shape »

polski-g wrote: post #57
esskay wrote: post #12

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.

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.

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.

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