Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

techcrunch.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

611–620 of 729 posts

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

#611

Post by paulryanrogers »

chopin wrote: post #603
Terr_ wrote: post #532

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, for example a bunch of my system updates began showing scary error notes because somehow there is a header inconsistency between the amdgpu driver and the kernel. I'm not regretting my choice, but it's also something where the average user can't just call Linux Support and get a "run X and it'll fix it" solution.

One can call Windows support? And get help?

Arguably there are more support options for Windows because it's got fewer derivatives than Linux, and was historically more common on desktop.

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

#612

Post by apatheticonion »

opan wrote: post #246
apatheticonion wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A big hurdle to this is hardware vendors locking bootloaders and making it impossible (or impractical) to write or use existing drivers. Manufacturers maintain long running forks of Android (often very old Linux kernels) with their drivers hidden in their fork's source. I'm a firm believer in the right to repair software - and the fact that it's illegal to reverse engineer binary blob drivers (or proprietary software…

>the fact that it's illegal to reverse engineer binary blob drivers (or proprietary software at all) is a shame Where? I don't think it's illegal in the US at least. The only things I'm aware of that may have legal issues are related to radios, specifically modem/baseband stuff, and maybe WLAN cards.

Sorry, I meant that decompilation is practically illegal.

You can look at a circuit board and figure things out and there are clean room techniques for decompilation - but neither of these are practical

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

#613

Post by aucisson_masque »

Side note but I had absolutely no idea that the USA sanctioned international justice court judges because they had put an arrest warrant on Benjamin Netanyahu.

Its not a surprise from Russia but the USA. I guess we’re right to cut all bridges as fast as possible with the USA.

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

#614

Post by aucisson_masque »

afewquarks wrote: post #550

I know this might be a controversial take but nevertheless I will state my opinion: I do not think "the year of the Linux desktop" is the good idea that most people seem to think. Everything that gets the eye of Sauron on it proceeds to become a complete mess. Resources always win. All that is needed to ruin an open project is dump money into heavy development up to the point where it becomes impossible to do without…

> The best path forward for Linux was as before, to fly just under the radar, to bee a bit too complicated for most people.

Obviously with people like you, Linux would never be popular. Personally I’m fine with that, Linux is just too damn buggy and inconsistent for my usage, but I’m pretty sure that it could benefits people. Think of students or people in low income countries.

And then, what prevents you from having a mainstream friendly distribution that just work, and another for the nerd who want to spend their day in the terminal ?

Linux isn’t just one distribution, one doesn’t prevent the other but currently it sure isn’t for mainstream usage.

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

#615

Post by liendolucas »

All countries should follow suit.

Nations and individuals can't depend or be held hostages of a handful of companies on the other side of the Atlantic that have the will to do whatever they want with their customers data.

This is the right path to follow and wish that in upcoming years this initiative becomes a reality across the globe. Long success for Linux and all BSDs!

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

#616

Post by bccdee »

estimator7292 wrote: post #578
wolvoleo wrote: post #545

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 y…

"Can't" means it would be bad for business. I think consumers are a lot less turned off by the idea of a OneDrive subscription than a Windows subscription. Better to stitch little services like OneDrive and Copilot into every part of the system and cajole people into paying for those instead.

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

#617

Post by ErroneousBosh »

markhahn wrote: post #570
1970-01-01 wrote: post #506

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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.

Fedora pisses me off more than Ubuntu does, and Ubuntu pisses me off least of all distros, except for Alpine which pisses me off in totally different directions for different reasons to all of the "proper desktop" distros.

All OSes are shit.

Even the ones you like.

Even the ones I like.

Especially the ones I like, I guess.

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

#618

Post by abe_m »

ezst wrote: post #442
Teever wrote: post #394

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.

Wasn't CATIA running on unix even before it ran on Windows?

Yes, all the way up to Version 5.

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

#619

Post by abe_m »

carefree-bob wrote: post #415
Teever wrote: post #394

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.

Autocad has 39% market share in CAD, Solidworks has 14% market share, and Fusion 360 has 9%. 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 importan…

I'm curious where those number come from. Within the mechanical CAD world where Solidworks is used, I suspect the AutoCAD market share is very close to 0%. I haven't seen any company from small tool shops to major US defense contractors and automotive companies using AutoCAD for any significant mechanical design work.

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

#620

Post by BobbyTables2 »

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…

If you’re using Fedora or Ubuntu, there may be some bumps.

Use Debian or AlmaLinux and the ride is smoother.

Post reply on HN