411–420 of 729 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> to browser-based alternatives And many of those tool providers could see for 10-20 years now that if they didn't provide a web based version sometime soon, they would go out of business sooner or later. There are almost no applications that a government employee should be running natively on their machine anyway.
Except for any application you want a government employee to use efficiently
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I don't really see any issues with it that would want to make me move away If you don't care about privacy issues or ads in your face, then yeah Windows is pretty good. I care a lot about that (and open source in general) so for me it's way worth it. But everyone is different and that's ok
I don't, no (otherwise I wouldn't use Google and their ecosystem either). I also don't see any ads people talk about either, I run ad blockers everywhere so maybe that's why. Vague concerns about privacy are not strong enough reasons for me and most others, based on OS market share, to move away when the concrete reality is we can simply play more games on Windows. The only reason Linux gaming is getting good is beca…
If you play older games, particularly DOS/Win95 era titles, the concrete reality is that DOSBox and Wine have better compatibility.
Even some recent games, eg. Elden Ring, have unfixed stuttering issues on Windows that were fixed on-release in Proton. I'm willing to give Windows it's due because I don't think it's a terrible gaming environment, but it's a direct downgrade for a lot of the games I enjoy playing.
Thus was obvious decades ago. And open source is the key model for collective development in a secure manner for disparate countries to secure their software base.
Alas, I fear they will only concentrate on the server side. The securing of the desktop should be a parallel concern as well, to help prevent your citizenry from becoming DDOS slaves.
Many government orgs have spent the last decade and a half slowly transitioning old legacy applications and platforms to browser-based alternatives. That old ERP software that used to require a thick client? Now it runs in Chrome. Microsoft recognized this and smartly moved to keep these customers locked in via an ever growing Microsoft Office bundle - subscription based, with Teams for their chat and then building u…
> to browser-based alternatives And many of those tool providers could see for 10-20 years now that if they didn't provide a web based version sometime soon, they would go out of business sooner or later. There are almost no applications that a government employee should be running natively on their machine anyway.
I’ve commented on this before but you’ll know France is serious when there are Linux ports of Solidworks and Catia. France has a real edge over American companies by being the dominant player in the CAD world, it’s always surprised me that they nerfed that advantage by tying to an American operating system.
None of this is a major national advantage for any side. It's bizarre to think that the US or France would treat this as some kind of mark of national influence, since if anything happens to these top three vendors, there are lots of other vendors waiting in the wings. It's not like a national oil reserve, where it's important that you have a reserve of CAD software available for your engineers.
Do they realize they need to pick a LTS distro now? You can't mix and match distros without having a massive IT and user retraining budgets.
I am saying this as a very long time Windows user, and it saddens me. Politics aside, from a pure technichal, functional, privacy and UX perspective, the case for changing over from Windows to Linux is getting stronger by the day.
I find fascinating how so many people are moving away from Microsoft decades after they should have because of simply the inertia that large organizations have on adoption. Above all, I'm also surprised on how those same organization are using Anthropic or OpenAI or other close source solutions for their agent harnesses instead of going for Open Source. Malte just yesterday showed how powerful innovation with small t…
Previous attempts to "ditch Windows" have not ended that well. Munich in 2003, the entire Federal German government in 2009, Munich again in 2013, Munich again in 2021, and so on. Most common end-result: back to Windows.
Breaking points are typically the lack of an "Office 2016" compatible suite, lack of "Adobe PDF" tooling, and a mishmash of legacy apps. The latter seems trivially addressable by a "Remote Desktop/RemoteApps" environment, but there are definitely issues, mostly surrounding printing and clipboard handling.
All of that can be solved, but definitely requires more funding and, crucially, coordination, beyond "Open Source Cures All."
[1] Oh, I just love it when an entire culturally-diverse region gets lumped in together, or, when, as in this case, ~6M French government employees are treated as a homogeneous group.