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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

#91

Post by DrBazza »

carlosjobim wrote: post #26
spiderfarmer wrote: post #17

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.

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

Which are the US made computers? Start by excluding all the ones with Korean LCD panels, and Taiwanese motherboards, and Chinese parts.

If you mean assembled then there are lots of very small European companies that make custom build PCs.

Economies of scale in the US, a single language, and cheap transport, mean that the US companies grow very big internally, very easily. And then go international without much effort. The same is not true in Europe, so there's not a huge Dell, HP, or IBM equivalent.

In 2026, the only country on the entire planet that can likely make their own computer with 100% their parts and labour, and is actively trying, is China.

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

#93

Post by klabb3 »

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.

1. total abandonment of desktop as a platform, and the massive hurdles to distribute desktop software

2. move to Cloud and use electron wrappers because not even MS can bother making native apps on their shitty platform

3. Make Windows so shit that even hardcore power users can’t debloat it.

The moat of Windows is gone. Games, office work, all the classic arguments, have basically vanished in the last 5-10 years. The only surprise is why more people don’t get in the life rafts, when the ship is listing at 45 degrees. Is it because there’s still an army of workers and institutional inertia trained in Active Directory?

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

#94

Post by embedding-shape »

lunar_rover wrote: post #64
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.

> To win, all Linux had to do is stand still, and that's exactly what it did! It is moving? Red Hat has been investing in containised apps and image based distros for years, Valve single handedly made Linux gaming viable. HDR development is mostly driven by Valve and Red Hat customers. And no Linux isn't good enough yet. UX is all over the place.

> And no Linux isn't good enough yet. UX is all over the place.

Of course you'd think the UX is messy if you only look at the kernel ;)

It's up to the distributions and desktop/window managers to handle the UX, and the experience varies as much as there are desktop/window managers. Some of them are fairly internally consistent, like KDE and Gnome, and at least they're currently more internally consistent than Windows and macOS. I use macOS, Windows and Gnome daily, and the only one that doesn't give me daily grief in some manner, is Gnome.

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

#96

Post by shevy-java »

morog wrote: post #83

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 boo…

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).

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

#97

Post by lonelyasacloud »

newqer wrote: post #40
JaggerJo wrote: post #13

Hope we’ll do the same in germany.

They tried it a long time ago, but it seems to be rolled back to Windows again. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LiMux I hope our French friends can learn from this initiative during the adoption phase.

> I hope our French friends can learn from this initiative during the adoption phase.

The apps are available now, so reasons to be optimistic.

When LiMux and similar efforts happened around 2004 most business applications were Windows only. Even the ones that purported to be web used windows only technology and required IE and Windows.

Now with years of business budget controlling types using their Macs and smart phones and wanting access to the their apps the majority - even MS's stuff - can be run well in a browser on almost any OS.

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

#98

Post by self_awareness »

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.

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

#99

Post by ghaff »

hootz wrote: post #89
ghaff wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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…

Nowadays, pretty well a lot of times means really well, maybe even better than on Windows. See Windows games running faster on Linux through Wine.

As I say no dog in hunt and don't actually have a Linux laptop any longer since I had to send it back to my company--from whence I'm sure it went straight to recycling. Maybe I'll buy an older refurb Thinkpad at some point.

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

#100

Post by bergheim »

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.

This comment was wildly invalid even years ago.

See proton, heroic launcher, etc, etc.

Cyberpunks own benchmarking suite runs 30% faster (for whatever reason; my wintendo install is stock and nothing but nvidia drivers) on the ntfs windows partition on Arch.

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