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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

#221

Post by Zigurd »

ChocolateGod wrote: post #120
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'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.

Personal computers were used in office environments long before the technologies to make them administer-able as if they were a mainframe. Before blindly jumping in and reproducing those technologies, better to ask why they emerged in the first place.

Most workplaces don't have strict bans on personal mobile devices, and some of the ones that do, don't have the kind of physical perimeter defense that can detect people getting lazy about whether or not they carry their personal mobile devices into the workplace. That makes perimeter defense into security theater anyway. We need a rethink about what we are guarding against and how we're doing it.

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

#222

Post by ethbr1 »

xorcist wrote: post #210
pjc50 wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 n…

> Isn't it about time someone developed one? Honest question: Why? If you want a Windows-like environment, run Windows. I get this all the time when people ask about a Linux equivalent for something, and aren't really satistied when it doesn't work or look the same. Linux isn't a clone of Windows. Linux comes from an older heritage, and has a unique culture. You are in for a hard time if you want to use Linux like yo…

What's the Linux version of AD and group policies? (honestly curious; linux sysadmin at scale not my day job)

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

#223

Post by LorenDB »

lionkor wrote: post #191

All the comments about Linux gaming make me want to give my $0.02. I've been gaming on Linux, with no Windows installed anywhere, for around 6 years. In the first 3 years, it was a massive pain. Games like S.T.A.L.K.E.R. would consistently have issues with mouse input, weird acceleration, a lot of games wouldn't run at all. This is NO LONGER the case at all. Things run very well out of the box. All games I want to pl…

VR works quite well these days.

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

#224

Post by oneplane »

ChocolateGod wrote: post #120
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'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.

It does, it's called FreeIPA (or RedHat IdM). The only GPO parts it doesn't do are those that are not related to policy in the IAM sense (i.e. configuring some application related thing). There's other systems for that, just like on Windows you practically never run GPO without anything else. On top of that, you can pay RedHat or Canonical to host it all for you on any cloud or non-cloud.

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

#225

Post by kalaksi »

morog wrote: post #205
kalaksi wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 sus…

yes the flaky sleep is what did it for me - laptop would randomly boot up at 2am, bright lights and whirring fans. Thought it was a virus! Seems like Fedora has cracked the hibernate/sleep issue, possibly due to good intel driver support for my Dell and finally Linux has better hibernate, sleep and wake than Windows 11 (ymmv!)

I actually have been lucky since even my laptop from 15 years ago already worked well with Linux and suspend while Windows didn't (wasn't OEM Windows anymore). I have also had multiple desktops that have _mostly_ had no issues with suspend either: only nvidia has given me grief on some setups when sometimes the screen would be blank when waking up, but I figured out workarounds for that.

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

#226

Post by otikik »

lionkor wrote: post #191

All the comments about Linux gaming make me want to give my $0.02. I've been gaming on Linux, with no Windows installed anywhere, for around 6 years. In the first 3 years, it was a massive pain. Games like S.T.A.L.K.E.R. would consistently have issues with mouse input, weird acceleration, a lot of games wouldn't run at all. This is NO LONGER the case at all. Things run very well out of the box. All games I want to pl…

I have been a happy user of the Bazzite distro (which used proton) for several years at this point. Very happy as well.

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

#227

Post by OtomotO »

I've been on Linux (I use Arch btw) since 2011.

I've been dual booting the first couple of years, then dumped Windows completely in 2016.

Since then I am on Linux only. Private and corporate.

Yes, sometimes I need to access a Windows machine or do work in one (I am my own boss), but then the client pays a "pain tax" as I call it.

There are some games I can't play I would've played in the past. Mostly competitive online games.

Technically that's annoying, but for me personally it's not a problem as I am not in my teens of twenties anymore and I have other hobbies and obligations.

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

#228

Post by pbhjpbhj »

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.

Libre Office Impress does all the things that PowerPoint is used for at my workplace.

I'm guessing it's not compatible with Teams and that MS make sure it doesn't work properly with LO produced PPT files.

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

#229

Post by mechoblast »

veber-alex wrote: post #180
forinti wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

[flagged]

If your email was forcefully terminated would you call that an infringement on your freedoms.

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

#230

Post by mbreese »

pjc50 wrote: post #188
ChocolateGod wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 n…

Well AD is just a really opinionated LDAP/Kerberos setup, so you’d think that there would be something that Linux could do.

But when you’re talking about enterprise management of thousands of devices, you need some kind of consistent security policy management. That requires running OS software that accepts remote policy management, which is a very specialized configuration and not just “vanilla Linux”.

You can get really far with LDAP, but I’ve only used it for remote accounts, file shares, and sudoer config. I’m sure there are more policy configurations that would be possible with a more advanced tool.

I suspect the RHEL world has something to offer here, but I’d love to see a more general and commonly supported solution developed. It would make Linux more of an option for enterprise managed endpoints.

But, I agree with you - for an enterprise customer, this really needs to be some kind of paid/supported product. I wouldn’t want the French government to rely on some scripts that worked on my small cluster.

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