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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

#181
post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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).

I was under the impression anticheat is the only thing stopping linux gaming from taking over

Anticheat and support for joysticks, steering wheels, VR, etc. is one factor for sure. I would say almost all games people play, which dont fall in the above categories, run out of the box with no or very minor tweaks needed (no terminal).

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

#182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I haven’t seen power point used professionally for over a decade. All google (though I’ve made the odd prezi)

Are you just hanging around California startups? I work in big consulting and am inside hundreds of the largest companies in the US, everyone of which is fully Microsoft and only ever seen PowerPoint. I’m in dozens of teams meetings a week across as many organizations and have been in 2 Google meets meeting in the last decade, both of which were California fintech startups.

Yes, most people use MS where I live, too. But most of them only scratch the surface. To this thread's point, 99% of PowerPoint presentations I've seen are just walls of text on a bunch of slides, with the occasional illegible graph.

Now I'm not saying I actually know my way around PPT or that I'm some presentation whiz, but this can probably be done with the browser version. Just like the "new" Outlook is simply a new Edge skin.

I work for a company that has drunk the MS Kool-Aid and then went back for a refill, yet I've never had any issue using the web version of the suite ever since it came out. I don't even run Windows on my work laptop. Teams is the only app that seems marginally better in its heavy version (heh), since it supports separate windows for the calls.

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

#183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, liberty comes at a cost. It seems that convenience is no longer the main motivator for many people.

[flagged]

Freedom from suddenly being cut off is potentially important.

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

#184
post #2

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

That's also what Microsoft 365 is, a webapp, even the latest Outlook is a webapp.

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.

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

#185
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 deskto…

> 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.

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

#186
post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

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.

I've been not betting on x86 in the long term since the PowerPC was announced ;)

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

#187
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's nuts Windows is still the go-to for anything these days despite everyone knowing what a parasitic Linux still doesn't have anywhere near as nice and cohesive as Group Policy, Active Directory etc. Plus you can pay Microsoft to host it all for you on Azure.

I've never understood the management thing. People manage fleets of Linux machines all the time. What does group policy do that e.g. nix or ansible don't?

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

#188
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's nuts Windows is still the go-to for anything these days despite everyone knowing what a parasitic Linux still doesn't have anywhere near as nice and cohesive as Group Policy, Active Directory etc. Plus you can pay Microsoft to host it all for you on Azure.

> Linux still doesn't have anywhere near as nice and cohesive as Group Policy, Active Directory etc.

Isn't it about time someone developed one?

The foundations are there; you can imagine an organization deploying laptops with, say, Ansible, and not giving users root on them. LDAP sort of matches the old capabilities of AD, but not completely. There's even a "SAMBA as fake domain controller" mode.

Ironically what it needs is a product or service which organizations can pay to take the problem off their hands. But then people get stuck in never paying for anything in the open source world.

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

#189
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.

a Windows license is only cheap if your time has negative value
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