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France's government is ditching Windows for Linux, says US tech a strategic risk

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Re: France's government is ditching Windows for Linux, says US tech a strategic risk

#251

Post by oaiey »

petre wrote: post #242
YZF wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Curious where you are. I am in Canada and it's certainly mixed feelings but I think there are plenty of Canadians that understand that despite the current craziness we're in this together for the long term. Similarly in the US there are plenty that understand this. In relation to Europe vs. the US. Even before the current administration Europe has been at odds with American companies: "The European Union Renews Its O…

Everything went South after the US listened to Merkel's phone. That happened during the Obama administration. If the EU or France are not capable of adopting Linux instead of M$ on the desktop, how are they going to switch phones over to something else that is not US based? By something else I don't mean Huawei.

Oh Android OS is quite workable. The hardware is the problem. And there the whole world goes to South Asia / China. Same with laptops.

But yeah, a missing agenda item. I guess desktop first. Have not said that for a while

Re: France's government is ditching Windows for Linux, says US tech a strategic risk

#252

Post by oaiey »

coliveira wrote: post #169
stephen_g wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean it’s not just that, the current administration have destroyed a bunch of the US’s oldest and most important alliances… I’m not in Europe but in another allied country, the feeling amongst people here is that the US is not able to be trusted as a partner anymore. And with ways the Government can apply pressure to US companies (CLOUD Act etc.) that extends to IS companies too.

It's not the current administration that started this process. The US has for decades gone against the Europeans, step after step, asserting policies that only favor US companies. In the past however, the US administrations sugarcoated this fact with the language of cooperation. The current US government is now laying bare the fact that they're creating a political system where all technology and resources are contro…

This. This is something which the current administration does not understand. We Europeans have done what Washington says for 80 years. We are behaving like a colony. We let the US have bases here, we follow their economical model, the petro dollar and let them suck the wealth out of Europe. You want military bases on Greenland: ask friendly, we already said yes in the 50s. You want overflight rights for your wars: we give them to you since 80 years. You wanted access to our fibers. Oh let us help you with that.

It is the deal and the tone. You gave us security and let us participate in prosperity. You acted friendly. Trust, security and tone is replaced by bullying. Why should we continue to bend over?

Re: France's government is ditching Windows for Linux, says US tech a strategic risk

#253

Post by rippeltippel »

YZF wrote: post #197
sveme wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interestingly, China is succeeding because it isolated itself partially from US big tech. That enabled them to build their domestic companies. If you give free reign to US companies, they‘re going to swoop up any competition early on. The US relies on being attractive for smart people. There are still smart people going to the US, but the general mood seems to be that it‘s increasingly less attractive. Mid term, litt…

Top 3 CS programs still seem to be in the US. MIT, Stanford, CMU. The US has its geography, weather, etc. which are not going away. China has massive scale industrial espionage and learnt a lot by being the cheap place where things are made and stealing western companies processes. They also invested a lot in education and naturally they have a lot of smart people. I still think that as long as they have an oppressiv…

> the US has a culture of innovation going back maybe hundreds of years

Not many hundred, considering the US declaration of independence was in 1776 and there were some adjustment after that. Perhaps some decades?

Re: France's government is ditching Windows for Linux, says US tech a strategic risk

#256

Post by pvaldes »

MaxPock wrote: post #193
znnajdla wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The US or Trump can’t switch off your chips or your networking equipment on a whim - and if they ever designed hardware that could do that, no one would buy such hardware as soon as that capability became known. Using cloud software is a much bigger risk - your access can be turned off anytime and data access is part of the deal. Sovereignty is not about building everything yourself. Division of labor advances civili…

Trump just needs to ask them to jump and they will ask how high.

What you are missing is that, unlike US citizens, Europeans don't hesitate to fire their political parties. New parties will appear and take the power. The republicans from Sarkozy were swiftly replaced by Rennaisance by Macron, a party with just ten years of life.

Even more, Sarcozy was jailed later by corruption, a symptom of a healthy democracy that US should try sometime (It would fix a lot of the current and future US problems).

Jumping in the Trump circus in Europe one year ago, maybe could work; now it equals to political suicide after Greenland, the Middle East mess and the more and more obvious symptoms of Trump's dementia and disgusting behaviour. Definitely didn't worked for Elon in the past Germany elections. European politicians are very aware of this, currently.

The elections in Hungary are probably ultra-rigged at this point, but we will see if Vance performing as guest comedian for the pro-Russian party Fidesz will help Orban (or Vance) in the long term.

Re: France's government is ditching Windows for Linux, says US tech a strategic risk

#257

Post by blitzar »

drstewart wrote: post #33
e2le wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Astroturfing around this is getting suspicious. It's perfectly possible for people to be passionate about the subject.

I've never met a real human that was passionate about what OS a government worker in some local French commune uses, but it's the hottest topic on HN behind AI

Let me introduce you to a meme ... 2026: The Year of the Linux Desktop

Re: France's government is ditching Windows for Linux, says US tech a strategic risk

#258

Post by Ales375 »

Aerroon wrote: post #81
pseudony wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Definitely. And then one could start wondering if the direction might reverse.

It would take something miraculous for the direction to reverse towards Europe. People have been complaining about European tech, economy, and freedoms (as in free speech) for decades now. Things have become worse on all of these fronts. I think the AI act is a great example here. The EU came up with regulation for an emerging technology that basically killed the chance for Europe to compete. Lots of people disagreed…

[dead]

Re: France's government is ditching Windows for Linux, says US tech a strategic risk

#259

Post by Ygg2 »

slibhb wrote: post #232
sveme wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interestingly, China is succeeding because it isolated itself partially from US big tech. That enabled them to build their domestic companies. If you give free reign to US companies, they‘re going to swoop up any competition early on. The US relies on being attractive for smart people. There are still smart people going to the US, but the general mood seems to be that it‘s increasingly less attractive. Mid term, litt…

> Mid term, little will change, long term the cultural hegemony of the US will be replaced by multipolar influences. Everyone's been saying this for like 20 years. It just hasn't happened. At some point you realize that the people constantly pushing "multipolarity" just really don't like the US. It's wishful thinking

Past performance doesn't guarantee future performance. Otherwise xkcd https://xkcd.com/605/ would be true.

Re: France's government is ditching Windows for Linux, says US tech a strategic risk

#260

Post by the_why_of_y »

YZF wrote: post #213
mullingitover wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> and crazy people which was always true The experiment with giving the crazy people unchecked power over every lever of government is new, however. This is perhaps a shrewd move against China: they can't steal technology and scientific advances from the US if there aren't any to steal.

Trump's power is not unchecked. He probably doesn't even win the craziest president award. Historical US presidents: Andrew Jackson -> threatened to hang his VP. https://history.stackexchange.com/questions/41212/did-andrew... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lyndon_B._Johnson had meetings while sitting on the toilet: https://historyfacts.com/famous-figures/fact/lyndon-b-johnso... Richard Nixon - needs no introductions?…

There are now "loyalty tests" for those who apply to positions at the FBI, to be hired you have to state that the "patriots" on Jan. 6 2021 were the rioters attempting a coup, not the Capitol Police defending the constitutional transfer of government power.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2025/02/08/...

But technically you are correct, of course. Trump never demanded that VP Mike Pence be hanged, the rioters he sent to Congress did.

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