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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

#571

Post by skydhash »

kklimonda wrote: post #282
xorcist wrote: post #254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know. What's the Windows equivalent of dpkg (from 1993) and ssh (from 1995)? Still nothing, three decades later. Not because Microsoft engineers couldn't do it, of course, but becasue they didn't want to. It doesn't fit the Windows model. They did recently adopt SSH, but that was because they want to use Windows in cloud-like environments, where expectations are set by Linux-style tools. By the time Windows g…

Isn't WinRM/PowerShell/RDP equivalent of SSH, and dpdk/apt-get is basically .msi with group policies for installation? This has been there for decades probably? Group Policies also allow you to enforce things like browser configuration (proxy, homepage, search engine etc.) wallpapers, screen locks etc. Can this be done on Linux? Honestly, I have no idea - I think gnome with gsettings/dconf can do that, but can KDE?

> Group Policies also allow you to enforce things like browser configuration (proxy, homepage, search engine etc.) wallpapers, screen locks etc.

Unix has always be about treating users like adults. The administration tools are more about the whole system and the hardware. You can always provide default or sample config, or prevent anything in HOME for being executed, but enforcing wallpapers is silly. But you can still do it by patching the software.

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

#572

Post by markhahn »

ErroneousBosh wrote: post #470
1970-01-01 wrote: post #416

>The French government did not provide a specific timeline for the switchover, or which distributions it was considering. 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.

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.

Yes. Noting that yum and dnf are basically the same.

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

#573

Post by psadauskas »

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…

I've been using Linux on the desktop off-and-on for 20 years. I used OSX for awhile 2008-2015 when they clearly had the best hardware, and the OS was pretty nice. I've been using KDE since then, and I recently installed Bazzite (Fedora+KDE-based) on my sans-windows gaming PC. I also started a new job this year, where I have to use the company-provided MBP for compliance reasons, after having not used MacOS since 2015. So all this is pretty fresh in my mind, and I'll say that 2025+ KDE is by far the best out-of-box experience for power users. It mostly just works, and anything you want to tweak is easy to find in the settings. Setting up modern MacOS with things like more keyboard shortcuts for window management, focus-follows-mouse or even remembering where windows where after waking up from sleep requires you to buy an app or pay a subscription.

Linux may break more often, but you can almost always fix it with a quick google search. If it doesn't do what you want, there's certainly a setting or config or free app you can install that does.

MacOS may break less often, but when it does you're mostly out of luck. It may do what you want more often, but if it doesn't you have to buy an app, if its even possible at all.

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

#575

Post by Garlef »

fluoridation wrote: post #553
himata4113 wrote: post #259

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well actually I've been technically playing all the games that are protected by these aggressive anticheats on linux since I've decided to switch. My setup is a custom version of the linux kernel that 'backdoors' itself and exposes host information to the windows vm making all the anticheats happy enough to work out of the box. Have not gotten banned in any of the games either. Custom VMM and EDK builds are required…

If you have to run a Windows VM anyway, why not just reboot into Windows?

I guess installing windows is more work than running a VM

... and more invasive

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

#577

Post by markhahn »

somat wrote: post #455

I understand what they mean, linux offers freedom, enough that it divorces your tech stack from any one company. But isn't linux US tech? The blueprint, UNIX was a US project, torvolds works from the US. the original userland GNU was a US based project. The new userland systemd is a US based project.

GNU was never anything but a flag-of-convenience. The number of people who take RMS seriously was and is small.

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

#578

Post by estimator7292 »

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.

They also "can't" screengrab your credit card numbers or upload all your private data to their cloud for inspection, or steal your email password and download all your mail to a Microsoft server, or send fake emails about full OneDrive to trick you into subscribing.

"Can't" only applies when someone is willing to stop them, and nobody is. Microsoft can do pretty much anything they want and there's basically nothing you can do about it.

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

#580

Post by skydhash »

kklimonda wrote: post #337
xorcist wrote: post #315

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's the point I want to convey is that while there are tools like MSI on Windows, many years after Linux had dpkg, it's not the same thing. On Linux the package manager rules the filsystem and keeps a complete database of which package owns which file. There are no exceptions, not on the parts of the filesystem where the package manager rules. Even the operating system itself and all patches is handled by the pack…

I mean, Linux package managers are so great that we have at least 2 different ways of delivering software (especially GUI software) to Linux distributions that depends on "app images". To me that shows that none of those approaches are solving 100% of problems that you encounter in the wild. > This means installing software at scale (any number of systems), or the question how to cleanly uninstall software it not a q…

> To me that shows that none of those approaches are solving 100% of problems that you encounter in the wild.

The problem is a self-enforced one by developers. They chase the newest updates instead of focusing on stability. And bundling security and feature changes. And they want to push those updates instead of people pulling it in.

> And yet this is a problem that so many third-party vendors who try to support multiple Linux distributions have been struggling for years?

Are those complaints done in good faith? Most repos allow for custom repositories. And writing a build script are not that difficult. If Calibre, VLC, Firefox, and Blender can be everywhere, so can those applications.

> A problem we may not care about, but some companies do.

Do they? Or is just IT playing with the knobs?

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