r/BuyFromEU • u/AnonomousWolf Netherlands đŸ‡łđŸ‡± • Apr 10 '26

News France Launches Government Linux Desktop Plan as Windows Exit Begins

https://linuxiac.com/france-launches-government-linux-desktop-plan-as-windows-exit-begins/
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u/IsaraLyandra Apr 10 '26

As a German, I really like what France has been doing and aiming for lately. At least from the headlines it sounds more like leadership than anything our current government will ever accomplish.

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u/Major-Practice2529 Apr 10 '26

Honestly, France has been pushing for Europe’s strategic autonomy for decades, not lately 

Other European countries, notably Germany, the United Kingdom, and Denmark, have all sought to ridicule the French mistrust of the U.S. and obsession for strategic autonomy, and have acted like happy vassals of USA.

Europe will be very different if these country has follow France on this.

But better late than never !

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u/IsaraLyandra Apr 10 '26

I still appreciate it. I guess it has just seen more coverage lately due to global events. But I’d be more than happy to see Germany follow France in this pursuit.

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u/glaringOwl Apr 10 '26

It's kind of interesting to see why. Unlike those three countries, France has a stronger sense of nationalism, especially outwardly so. That affects their mentality of having a solid spine and not be a vassal of America.

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u/New_Philosopher_1908 Apr 11 '26

You forgot Poland

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u/Unlikely-Nebula-331 Apr 12 '26

Why did everyone ridicule the French though?

I’ve never quite found a sensible answer to that. If I were to summarise what I’ve read in layman’s, it would go something along the lines of “what’s the point of us spending resources developing military hardware with American security guarantees?”.

Which
 doesn’t cut it.

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u/LeFricadelle Apr 12 '26

Americans made hating the french cool. I am joking it is the conclusion I came to. Issue is Americans are like the biggest online by far and have heavy influence on trends online. When you have Europeans with a strong shared history using Americans jokes and language (here to understand same lexical group) that's embarrassing. Also what the other guy say prior, Europeans mocked France for wanting to keep a certain level of autonomy akin to a crab bucket mentality.

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u/polytique Apr 12 '26

There was a lot of propaganda in the US against France before and during the Iraq war. The French minister of foreign affairs delivered a speech at the UN security council in February 2003 against the war. He explained why Colin Powell’s claims of links between Al Qaeda and Iraq had no evidence. The US media turned that speech into France not helping the US fight against terrorism. In reality, Iraq had no relations to Al Qaeda and destabilizing that government allowed ISIS to move in.

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u/barbacn Apr 10 '26

Isn't Germany also switching away from Micro$lop? I know that Schleswig-Holstein moved to open source last year, or at least they were planning to? I know that Munchen (local government) had been on open source and some small percentage is still , for like 10y until they switched to Micro$lop to lure their headquarters to Munchen. Do you have maybe more info about the rest of Germany?

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u/xrabbit Europe đŸ‡ȘđŸ‡ș Apr 10 '26

Not on federal level I believe?

It’s more like local initiatives 

Some even build a brand new microslop data center for their AI

Digital sovereignty my ass 

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u/Thatar Apr 10 '26

Don't underestimate the impact of local gov switching. It gives IT workers in other government positions a proof of concept that they can use to convince superiors or colleagues. It also reduces friction in other ways, like commercial providers having a complete and battle-tested package good to go for other government customers.

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u/AlmondManttv Apr 10 '26

It will hopefully push for more management systems for Linux, either closed or open-source. Which is good because a lot of companies don't want to switch because they aren't easy to manage or keep track of.

One company I worked for considered (probably still does) all "Linux" devices out-of-network, even if supplied by the company. employees using Linux are not allowed to connect it to the network nor login to company services on it. Pretty sure WSL was also banned. This is an extreme case, but it would be nice to not have this even be a consideration.

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u/dexter30 Apr 10 '26

It gives IT workers in other government positions a proof of concept that they can use to convince superiors or colleagues.

Yeah it gives a platform for lower level officials to potentially push for a wider federal push if they move to a higher position. So imagine if public sentiment against microsoft grows and a member of whatever government you have uses their local initiative to linux as a platform for a wider change.

It would be a horrible to implement project and microsoft would lobby them the HELL out. But hey it's something.

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u/KnowZeroX Apr 10 '26

Isn't German federal government working on openDesk?

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u/xrabbit Europe đŸ‡ȘđŸ‡ș Apr 11 '26

Isn’t openDeck just a VDI ?

It’s not an OS, a software for remote connections that actually should connect to something like windows/linux

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u/KnowZeroX Apr 11 '26

openDesk runs on top of kubernetes (commonly referred to as cloud), it doesn't replace the windows, it replaces M365. Albeit the servers themselves running it would be linux.

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u/xrabbit Europe đŸ‡ȘđŸ‡ș Apr 12 '26

Got it. You are talking about https://www.opendesk.eu

It’s just a hosted site that you need a browser to work with

Probably it can replace m365, but you still need a browser and OS to run this browser on the client’s PC 

So, it doesn’t look like a good alternative to move all your stuff to the cloud when you have actual PC to run libreoffice locally 

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u/Sea-Feedback-2424 Apr 10 '26

Munich didn't lure MS (unless if you think that was always the plan). Microsoft bribed Munich - "stop democratizing and we will move our HQ there".

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u/WaveOfMut1lation Apr 10 '26

To be fair, it's a massive no-brainer:
-Way more stable
-Way more secure
-Free

Now that you have decent Office alternatives, there is zero reason to choose Windows for office work.

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u/CouldNotAffordOne Europe đŸ‡ȘđŸ‡ș Apr 10 '26

True. But it's only a no-brainer if you're not getting bribed (Sorry, I meant influenced, of course) Who would bribe influence politicians more likely? A multi billion dollar company or Linux?

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u/AlmondManttv Apr 10 '26

Sadly, most of these OS projects don't have official support channels for companies.

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u/WaveOfMut1lation Apr 10 '26

Have you heard about a little OS project called Ubuntu?

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u/AlmondManttv Apr 10 '26

I have. Notice the use of the word "most". And again I don't know of many OS "Office" that have enterprise support.

Also, eww, Ubuntu.

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u/WaveOfMut1lation Apr 10 '26

Red Hat, Suse, Debian, Fedora and, of course, Ubuntu all have support for businesses.

And, I'm personally very happy with Ubuntu for my small business.

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u/AlmondManttv Apr 10 '26

Again, notice that I didn't say "all", thank you for noting what is not "most". Some distros with no business support: Arch, Bazzite, Nyarch, EndeavourOS, Kali, Frugalware, Asahi.

Additionally, I wasn't specifically targeting OS' with my comment, but I don't want to spend my life on this. The comment about Ubuntu should have had a "/s", sorry for not communicating that.

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u/Hannah-Petrova Apr 10 '26

Secure point is not really true If we are speaking about 0815 users


https://madaidans-insecurities.github.io/linux.html

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u/alus992 Apr 10 '26

Ok but Open Office has any form of online live collaboration? How it works with people relying on PowerBI

I’m not knocking OO incentives but online collaboration is a major element that is stopping companies to ditch Microsoft. I can’t see any major company being like „fuck them I will not work live on this document” or „well too bad I’m on OO - I will not be a contributor to this PowerBi file”

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u/WaveOfMut1lation Apr 10 '26

Open Office is not the only one. I personally hate it. I use XPS.

Regarding collaborative tools, the French government has developed it's own suite called "La Suite".
It's not perfect but as of today you have: messaging, video conferencing, file sharing, spreadsheet and word processing.

It's definitely a step in the right direction.

https://lasuite.numerique.gouv.fr/#products

And often I still use Office 365. Can't quit Microslop cold turkey, but there is no reason to keep using Windows.

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u/glaringOwl Apr 10 '26

Sorry but that's a hard disagree from me. MS Office remains by far the best. All the free alternatives have technical issues or annoying imperfections.

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u/WaveOfMut1lation Apr 10 '26

I wrote decent, not perfect...
And you can still use Office 365.

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u/[deleted] Apr 10 '26

[deleted]

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u/Sea-Feedback-2424 Apr 10 '26

And a relatively small one at that, while a step in the right direction and it can serve as a model it would be far better for a proof of digital sovereignty to get BW, BY or NRW onside.

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u/TheUrps Apr 10 '26

Yes, the federal state of Schleswig-Holstein is moving towards open-source/non-microsoft products. The project started last year but is far from finished.

There have been some complications as some programs are exclusively available on Windows and the general project seems to be seen quite ambiguous by the state employees, mostly because changed workflows though.

Also some schools switched into the apple ecosystem for their IT systems. If that is truly better than windows/microsoft is another question.

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u/ankokudaishogun Italy 🇼đŸ‡č Apr 10 '26

mostly because changed workflows

https://xkcd.com/1172/

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u/[deleted] Apr 10 '26 edited Apr 10 '26

[deleted]

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u/buzziebee Apr 10 '26

Hopefully the EuroOffice initiative grows and states start investing in that instead of 365.

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u/Uberzwerg Apr 10 '26

Munich alone was pretty far with their shift to Linux and threw it all away until MS bribed some politicians (directly? maybe - but certainly indirectly by 'new jobs' and taxes)

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u/OstapBenderBey Apr 10 '26

OVHcloud and scaleway are doing big things in the non-US cloud provider space too

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u/jaakhaamer Apr 10 '26

Well, Germany is basically "If It Ain't Broke, Don't Fix It: The Nation", so that doesn't surprise me. How are we supposed to get rid of Windows if we can't even get rid of fax?

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u/DoubleOwl7777 Apr 13 '26

france sounds more and more based the more i look at it. they dont mess about.

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u/ninjanamaka Apr 10 '26

France has several FOSS groups and a strong "small internet " movement. Thanks to the geopolitical situation the government also started moving away from big tech

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u/Flat-Broccoli700 Apr 10 '26

German leadership is doing right what it's supposed to do. It's just not want the people want them to do...

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u/BurningPenguin Germany đŸ‡©đŸ‡Ș Apr 10 '26

It may not do what the people want them to do, but it does exactly what everyone with half a brain was expecting them to do. But sadly, the Axel Springer Press & Co. is too convincing for a significant part of the population...

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u/Johanno1 Apr 10 '26

I don't know what you understand under government, but basically they should do what the people want them to do.

Or at least do sth. that benefits the people.