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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

#561

Post by microtonal »

unethical_ban wrote: post #549
oscord wrote: post #505

Ditch iOS and Android for a Blackberry OS / Nokia ? Really, are there any alternatives?

Motorola and grapheneos? If only the French government weren't attacking Graphene. As for desktop, I suppose the only major European options are Ubuntu and SUSE with corporate backing.

The French government and Murena (makers of /e/OS). They are spouting nonsense that security hardening is only for pedophiles and spies:

https://mastodon.social/@GrapheneOS@grapheneos.social/116353...

https://www.clubic.com/actualite-604786-murena-e-os-intervie...

It's ironic that a company that pretends to be for privacy is using the same think of the children argument as those pushing Chat Control, age verification, etc. Of course, their privacy is mostly a farce, since they have also been caught uploading data to OpenAI for text-to-speechi

I hope that more European governments will start supporting GrapheneOS, since it can compete with Apple on security and is better than Apple and GMS Android when it comes to privacy.

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

#562

Post by phainopepla2 »

ErroneousBosh wrote: post #529
zahlman wrote: post #507

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For people with a level of technical literacy that has them interested in posting on HN, sure. But for typical government workers? I imagine the differences are going to be pretty significant. They're not programmers or "devops" people. We're talking about users who are going to do almost everything through the GUI, and who will associate the "distro" with the default choice of DE/WM/etc. stack in whichever flavour o…

> But for typical government workers? I imagine the differences are going to be pretty significant. They're not programmers or "devops" people. How much retraining do you need for "click on the orange and blue spinny fox thingy and wait for your email to come up"? > because the GUI has its own file manager program and no matter which one you choose (and they will choose exactly one) it is not Explorer Nobody is ever…

I get the sense you haven't worked with many non-technical people in government or enterprise contexts. I've seen people struggle with their workflows after upgrading to a newer version of Windows, to the point where company wide training sessions have had to be held.

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

#563

Post by rbanffy »

olivierestsage wrote: post #533
jjcm wrote: post #512

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been using linux as a daily driver since the start of the year. There's still a long ways to go before things "just work". It's about equivalent to windows right now in terms of frustrations, it's just that frustrations are more along the lines of "this is a bit wonky" instead of "this is malicious / was their intended behavior". It's gotten a LOT better, don't get me wrong, but it's still far off from what a ty…

Do typical users care that much about a bit of jank, though? All the “typical users” I know are on spyware infested Windows laptops and just interpret the horrible shabbiness of the whole experience as being normal.

This is the saddest part - they actually think computers suck that much and don't know their lives could be a lot easier.

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

#564

Post by rbanffy »

sn wrote: post #559
bostik wrote: post #542

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They killed any Linux device development at Nokia in 2011. Still salty about Elop shooting down a project we had spent 5 years working towards. The holistic platform security for a combined phone/tablet base system would have been really interesting.

I'm not sure if I would have started using Linux but for buying an n800, so thanks for that. We never did get around to our funeral for Nokia, sadly.

I'll make sure I toast Nokia at Elop's funeral.

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

#565

Post by alecsm »

Chance-Device wrote: post #543

Who do they think writes Linux? The European Commission? They’re on the US tech stack whether they want to be or not, and nobody in Europe has the will or resources to pull a China and make their own alternative. More’s the pity.

Linux was created by an European. And there are many European distros. Even Canonical is European.

But that's besides the point. The point is no company owns linux so you're not tied to big tech even if they are the biggest contributors to the kernel.

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

#566

Post by boznz »

jjcm wrote: post #512
Melatonic wrote: post #472

The age of the Linux desktop might actually finally be coming Personally I think we are at an interim period for a big player to emerge and take over this space. If enough governments in the EU start switching over to customized linux distros theres a big chance for someone like Nokia to come in and develop their own approved distro with proper MDM and GPO-like management functionality baked in . On top of that it co…

I've been using linux as a daily driver since the start of the year. There's still a long ways to go before things "just work". It's about equivalent to windows right now in terms of frustrations, it's just that frustrations are more along the lines of "this is a bit wonky" instead of "this is malicious / was their intended behavior". It's gotten a LOT better, don't get me wrong, but it's still far off from what a ty…

Me too, I was a 30 year Windows developer and Electronics Engineer so I went pretty conservative with Kubuntu LTS and it's been a pretty slick experience. Gemini has been great tech support for all the CLI stuff and getting all of my weirder hardware projects interfaced (100% success rate to date). Just considering whether to delete my windows partition to put my MP3's on, as realistically I'm not going to get any more Windows Programming gigs.

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

#567

Post by easyKL »

tosti wrote: post #384
microtonal wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why not? GrapheneOS and others show that it is possible to make viable operating systems on top of AOSP, which also have their own useful extensions. It seems like a waste not to use an existing, well-developed, hardened, open source base, that at the same time provides great compatibility with most existing apps. Since it is open source, it would always be possible to fork if AOSP goes off the rails. I think the pri…

AOSP is NOT "open source" by any definition. It's "some sources available"

AOSP = Android Open Source (Partially)

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

#568

Post by boznz »

wolvoleo wrote: post #545
krsw wrote: post #541

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, I think if Windows 11 is going subscription based (plus all the copilot pushing garbage and even more baked in ads) that will be a strong incentive to switch to Linux or SteamOS. I barely even play games enough anymore to make a desktop worthwhile. Might just jump to Mac only.

They can't do that, when they've already sold you lifetime licenses. They could however introduce a subscription-only windows 12 and have harsh cut-off requirements like they did with windows 11.

A subscription-only OS would effectively kill Windows, but MS have made enough pretty weird decisions to cripple the product I wouldn't put it past them.

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

#569

Post by [deleted] »

olivierestsage wrote: post #533
jjcm wrote: post #512

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been using linux as a daily driver since the start of the year. There's still a long ways to go before things "just work". It's about equivalent to windows right now in terms of frustrations, it's just that frustrations are more along the lines of "this is a bit wonky" instead of "this is malicious / was their intended behavior". It's gotten a LOT better, don't get me wrong, but it's still far off from what a ty…

Do typical users care that much about a bit of jank, though? All the “typical users” I know are on spyware infested Windows laptops and just interpret the horrible shabbiness of the whole experience as being normal.

[deleted]

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

#570

Post by markhahn »

1970-01-01 wrote: post #506
ErroneousBosh wrote: post #470

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would you need any user retraining? All distros are basically identical. The only real difference is whether you spell "package manager" as apt, yum, or dnf.

>All distros are basically identical. Have you ever used the Linux OS??

Let me guess, you're impressed by desktop decorations and which file-browser is the default.

Ubuntu differs from Fedora only in newbie stuff, for instance.

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