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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

#121

Post by kombine »

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.

Actually, it's the exact opposite. There is really no alternative to PowerPoint on Linux, unfortunately. I'm saying this as someone who's used Linux for 20 years now.

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

#123

Post by stunseed »

Gud wrote: post #86
polski-g wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

No it makes no sense at all. I do my gaming on Arch. Windows sucks and I hope to see the demise of Microsoft during my lifetime(crosses fingers).

Most of their revenue is tied to other stuff though

1. Productivity / Business (~43%)

Includes:

Microsoft 365 (Office, Teams) - these can be likely ported to Linux if they're not already since they also work on MacOS? LinkedIn Dynamics (ERP/CRM)

~$120.8B

2. Cloud (~38%)

Includes:

Azure (runs on mostly linux, and moving cloud provider as a big corp is expensive, I don't see massive companies stuck in azure infra moving from it) Server products (Windows Server, SQL Server, etc.)

~$106.3B

I fully support the demise of Windows as an OS

But microsoft as a company has shifted away from Windows as their source of revenue, and will probably not be impacted too badly if it were to die completely.

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

#124

Post by sublinear »

klabb3 wrote: post #93
polski-g wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Most consumers are primarily on mobile devices.

Windows persists in the workplace where the cost to replace it is significantly higher than keeping it, and keeping it doesn't cost much to begin with. Part of that cost would be training, yes.

The other part is finding compliant equivalents for the rest of the software they use. If the MFA, VPN, chat, email, etc. are all already vetted and designed to be compatible, there's no way they'd want to switch. Many policies regarding proprietary information disclosure are also built off this ecosystem and the certifications Microsoft's cloud already has.

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

#125

Post by dotcoma »

kombine wrote: post #121
polski-g wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Actually, it's the exact opposite. There is really no alternative to PowerPoint on Linux, unfortunately. I'm saying this as someone who's used Linux for 20 years now.

If there’s no alternative to PowerPoint, that should be treated as a plus, not as a problem.

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

#126

Post by mickael-kerjean »

mrjay42 wrote: post #70
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.

There's been some 'back and forth' or "progress and regress' about this. Adoption of Free Software: 2012 Prime Minister circular — the most important formal turning point: Orientations pour l'usage des logiciels libres dans l'administration, signed on 19 September 2012. It explicitly gave guidance to public administrations on free software use. 2016 Digital Republic Law — reinforced the direction by encouraging publi…

As a French citizen who spent almost a decade building an alternative to Dropbox that's libre software [1] I was very disappointed my own country decided to build a product competing with mine when French companies are about 1% of the existing customer base. I would have never thought my own government would be competing on my niche

[1] https://github.com/mickael-kerjean/filestash

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

#127

Post by mrtksn »

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.

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

#128

Post by kombine »

vrganj wrote: post #29
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 and Germany are actually cooperating on most of these, like the word processor: https://www.techspot.com/news/107225-france-germany-unveil-d... Plus, it's all open source, so the rest of the world is free to use it as well!

This is great! Any plans to add spreadsheets to the suite?

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

#129

Post by perarneng »

HumblyTossed wrote: post #122

This is traditionally how you renegotiate with MS. But seriously, how long before MS offers them a deal they would rather not refuse?

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.

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

#130

Post by samus »

notrealyme123 wrote: post #101
samus wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It is controlled by Google so it not. As long as Google is setting the roadmap for android it is not a viable option.

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.
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