France Launches Government Linux Desktop Plan as Windows Exit Begins
Posted by cdoublejj@reddit | sysadmin | View on Reddit | 360 comments
https://linuxiac.com/france-launches-government-linux-desktop-plan-as-windows-exit-begins/
original cross post: https://www.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/1shj7c3/france_launches_government_linux_desktop_plan_as/
- Part article: The government’s statement is notably direct. The section on workstation evolution confirms that DINUM will replace Windows with Linux systems. The press release also requires each ministry, including public operators, to develop a plan by autumn 2026 addressing desktop systems, collaboration tools, antivirus software, AI, databases, virtualization, and network equipment.
mat-ferland@reddit
The hard part is never installing Linux, it’s replacing the habits, workflows, and support assumptions wrapped around Windows. The licensing pain is real, but the migration bill usually shows up somewhere else.
cdoublejj@reddit (OP)
or adobe. i'm fighting that fight right now but when i explain the big picture i've had employees at least humor me and play around. so far Libre Office and one other pay for proprietary app do fillable PDFs not too unlike adobe. people keep asking for an automatic converter and i'm like the closest to that IS adobe and you still have to manually go over the entire document because the formatting isn't right anyways so it's just like our 2 other options.
honestly it's phukd that Microslop doesn't have fillable PDF export in word or excel like Libre does. Well it does in developer mode if you like experimental alpha things.
19610taw3@reddit
I've always liked the idea of seeing this happen on a large scale ... but I think for ease of managing that many desktops, Microsoft still probably has the best solutions available.
Would be interesting to see where this goes. I believe another European government (Germany?) tried it at another point in time and switched back.
I support moving away from MS on all levels.
bobmlord1@reddit
Well the cool thing is if it happens at scale there's suddenly a large financial incentive for existing tools to start supporting Linux. Action1 just started rolling out more robust linux implementation for example.
Centimane@reddit
Speaking as someone who spent the first 10 or so years of their career automating Linux deployments - the Linux tools are leagues ahead of the windows tools. I always hated when I needed to automate a windows VM for some software to run, because kickstart files/ansible were so much better (at the time ansible for windows wasn't really a thing).
Linux is absolutely geared toward deployment at scale, the real problems IMO
In most cases application support isn't an issue for Linux these days, wine has progressed enough to handle almost anything. In a corporate environment the admin team is figuring out what needs to happen to get an app working, sheltering the end users from that problem.
MoocowR@reddit
How?
Windows has zero touch deployment, how can linux be "leagues ahead" having a device shipped from a warehouse to an employee and work without ever needing a technician to touch it.
Centimane@reddit
You can also do 0 touch with Linux if course, the tools give you much more control.
MoocowR@reddit
Elaborate
Centimane@reddit
What do you want to know more about?
MoocowR@reddit
Litteraly anything, you said it's leagues ahead.
Right now I can buy a fleet of microsoft devices, have them shipped to multiple sites, and those devices will get every configuration and application I need them too without ever having touch a single one of them. In what ways is linux better?
cdoublejj@reddit (OP)
OH HEY! I GOT ONE! But, it's not deployment, it's management. We we were never able to build a script to purge user accounts of workstations from deleted employees or aged accounts with windows. However thats a thing on linux cause you can script anything. unless i'm wrong and were idiots which is possible. but we kept finding a solution and then find out why that solution wouldn't work.
nelmaloc@reddit
PXE.
MoocowR@reddit
What?
PXE is a lan service, that windows also utilized before autopilot.
nelmaloc@reddit
As the link says, you can use PXE to automatically install Ubuntu on the target computers. Or use cloning software like FOG to load a prepared image.
MoocowR@reddit
Again, PXE is a lan service.
What question do you think you are answering? I specifically asked how Linux deployment tools are leagues ahead of Microsoft, when Microsoft has 100% zero touch deployment anywhere with an internet connected.
nelmaloc@reddit
You said
And I answered with the alternative, PXE.
Does Windows have a declarative, free software, automatic configuration tool? If no, then there's your answer.
MoocowR@reddit
No you didn't, you completely ignore the above context.
For the third time, PXE is a LAN service, it needs to be on your network. It is not the same as autopilot which can be done ANYWHERE.
Lol, that's not the answer. The claim "the Linux tools are leagues ahead of the windows tools", not linux tools are free.
Learn how to read.
nelmaloc@reddit
Wait, you send your computers to the employee's house? In your special case yes, Windows might have better tooling.
Read it again. It has three conditionals: * Declarative * Free software * Automatic
Those are things GNU/Linux can provide out-of-the-box.
MoocowR@reddit
I cannot for the life of me understand why you would bother arguing something when you can't even be bothered to read the comment you're replying too. I literally wrote multiple times that windows is capable of zero touch directly from vendor to anywhere with an internet connection.
Either you have terrible reading comprehension or you are just arguing for the sake of arguing. Clearly the comment "the Linux tools are leagues ahead of the windows tools" had nothing to do with cost.
Not gonna waste anymore time here.
nelmaloc@reddit
I read that as «any office». I've never seen anyone ship directly to the user's house, even if they're on different continents. It always passes through IT first.
Yes? They're better because they're open, not vendor-locked. You should still pay the developers of the tools you use.
cdoublejj@reddit (OP)
autopilot is like an auto pxe that can traverse the entire internet, like MDM on iPhones.
cdoublejj@reddit (OP)
yeah but isn't autopilot cloud based too? like part of the switch to FOSS in security and privacy. auto pilot reminds of MDM on iPhone. it utlimatley has to talk the device weather the device phones home or not.
what i see is Typically when people talk about linux tools being better for large deployment it's software pushing. check out chocolatey. one thing linux has going for it is it can update all the software, not just the OS.
i suspect you indeed do have a point Microslop does have features right now that are quite nice but, at what long term and freedom cost?
MoocowR@reddit
I'm assuming you mean autonomously?
Because windows can push updates to software, if it's software that's directly from the Microsoft store then it can auto-update as versions are released. If they are manually created packages then you would have to package the newest version and mark it to superseded previous installations.
cdoublejj@reddit (OP)
yeah thats a pain compared to linux, it updates all packages weather or not it's from that distros app store or gotten else where as long as the repo is in the list it's good. usually it's added during or at software install.
check out chocolatey, something MS could have done years ago.
typically linux is mass manged server side, i'd expect examples would be for numerous configs and software stack updates/installs like LAMP or something like that.
it may be more apt to say they are comparable. it usually comes down to ..........style??? and what you're used to. usually folks are versed in one or the other, not both....usually....
we'd need someone with experience using automation tools to automate mass linux desktop deployments to really give us some concrete examples.
maybe Wendel from Level1Techs would know.
cdoublejj@reddit (OP)
does windows ZTP not require an image sent to a vendor? i also suspect supply chain security may play a role in how possible that is like HIPPA or Gov.
MoocowR@reddit
No, that's the entire point of autopilot.
cdoublejj@reddit (OP)
ah! in my case my, vendor told me i'd provide them an image. but i don't think there utilizing autopilot. it could be done though. you're not gonna get apples to apples though. MS has cemented their monopoly over the years. MS is the org the manages Secure boot and TPM like Intel is the company manages the Intel Management Engine.
Microsfop is deeply ingrained with hardware companies and OEMs just like Apple with... Apple and iPhone MDM autoenrollment. it's done at a hardware and sales level via phone home.
i am curious how ZTP does zero touch if the devices has to be online to to receive the autopilot, perhaps thats one step pedantic and it's assumes user unboxed and joined to wifi or a cellular sim.
but, yeah hardware and uefi level on up. i doubt Tuxedo and System 76 push enough sales to have that. it's a catch 22 and people use comfort and convenience over freedom. not to say you even mentioned that, just me putting in my 2 cents.
Centimane@reddit
Depends what you need of course, and what the vendors are willing to do.
I assume the vendors are doing a certain amount to windows installs to get them ready in advance, which isn't really reducing the amount of work, just changing who does it.
But in a contrasting case, if you had the configuration you wanted implemented in ansible, and asked the vendors to install Linux and add a public key to the authorized keys and allow inbound SSH (preferably from your known IP), you wouldn't need to do anything other than let your ansible run to configure every machine in your inventory to be correct.
You could also pass the vendor a cloud init config. Or a kickstart file. Or a dozen other options, depending on what you need to do.
MoocowR@reddit
That's not how modern deployments work. When you buy a windows/apple device from certified vendor those serial numbers get registered into your Microsoft tenant. Once those devices are booted and touch the internet your tenant automatically pushes down all configurations, policies, and applications.
CharcoalGreyWolf@reddit
There’s also incentive to train good technical support and build a real stack, methods, and documentation.
IBM went all Mac internally at one point and literally did this with their support staff; because they actually designed the solution and structure before switching, they actually set themselves up for success.
cdoublejj@reddit (OP)
damn! please ...go on....
CharcoalGreyWolf@reddit
A long time ago, IBM went all-Mac. I’m not sure they’re 100% Mac now but they invested heavily.
https://www.applemust.com/7-reasons-ibm-says-every-enterprise-should-support-macs/
cdoublejj@reddit (OP)
oooh nice, i'll have a read! I raise your article, with an article!
https://www.cnet.com/tech/tech-industry/rockin-on-without-microsoft/
man__i__love__frogs@reddit
The thing that intrigues me most about Linux is the configuration as code.
You can deploy your configuration, apps, etc... with some lines of code that deploy. I wonder if the OEMs like Lenovo, Dell, HP can offer a way for you to load a config file that is ingested on bootup kind of thing. So you can still do things like ship straight to the user.
cdoublejj@reddit (OP)
it may take some time. i do know Dell has offered ubuntu for a while.
cdoublejj@reddit (OP)
well what is it...proxmox is gaining market share as people leave vmware broadcom
BrainWaveCC@reddit
Sure, but that's a much easier transition than a desktop transition.
pdp10@reddit
People never seemed to have a problem using new computers, before Wintel.
Apple ][, Acorn, Commodore 64, DOS, Amiga, MacOS. Millions of people used those as their first desktop computer, and then left for something different.
Then came this idea that nobody should be taught anything but Microsoft Word and Microsoft Excel, on a Microsoft computer. The OLPC project came under harsh criticism because it wasn't teaching developing-world students how to use Microsoft Excel and Microsoft Word -- apparently what they're supposed to do with their lives. Perhaps that criticism was synthetic.
Today, it turns out that when users feel like spending their own money on an iPhone, Chromebook, or Macbook, that they have no such compunctions. Perhaps all that Wintelism was synthetic.
RCTID1975@reddit
Well, people left those systems because better and easier things came along.
The same with Word and Excel. When they came on the market, they were just superior to other options at the time.
The auto industry and standard/automatics is a similar story here.
Once autos came around, people realized it was far easier to learn how to drive with less opportunities for a user caused failure. Now, the majority of the population can't drive anything else, so most of the money is being spent in developing automatic cars and not manual.
Trying to switch back, even on a small scale involves a large learning curve, more money, and more time making it difficult and requiring a very specific reason to do so.
pdp10@reddit
Excel was very good; Word was generally adequate. But that's not why you were exposed to them. You were using them because they all came bundled with a new consumer machine for $99, versus WordPerfect still trying to get $495 for a new copy with a keyboard template, doorstopper manual, and toll-free unlimited tech support.
RCTID1975@reddit
I understand that.
But the office suite, including word, was far superior to any options at the time.
Including word perfect.
That eee machine was not hyped as some sort of second coming. At least not outside of tech biased circles.
By 2007, we were firmly entrenched in on-prem client/server software that just simply wouldn't run reliably on those machines.
And as for home use, it was a similar response because there was no good office alternative, and it simply wouldn't run the majority of popular PC games at the time.
Those were the main use cases for home PCs.
The failure of that device running Linux had far less to do with anything Microsoft did, and everything to do with Linuxs useablity for the general populace. And that's still the hurdle today.
That eee PC was also horribly under powered and slow which didn't add to the appeal. It was marketed as a cheap discount device, and it performed exactly like that.
pdp10@reddit
My point is that Microsoft was much, much, cheaper, and very, very heavily bundled, and that those were the only things that actually mattered.
I happened to have felt in the early 1990s that Excel was excellent, but Windows 3 was horrid. I was waiting for the promised port of Excel to SunOS Unix, which turned into vaporware. I mostly say this to support my contemporary assertion that Word was forgettable, at best. WordPerfect I already had on SunOS. I barely needed one word processor, and certainly not a second, worse one.
But back to much, much, cheaper, and very, very heavily bundled, as key factors in the rise and fall of the EeePC.
It had great battery life and fast solid-state storage, inextricably linked to one another. Only after Microsoft convinced Asus to bundle Windows XP, did the EeePC netbook concept first get diluted with spinning disk. Note that we've just talked about a great little laptop that was much, much cheaper, that competitors yet still had solid-state storage, until they changed it so it could be very heavily bundled with Windows.
Much, much, cheaper, and very heavily bundled as success factors. Like the Steam Deck, which is much, much cheaper than competitors, and very, very, heavily bundled with Linux.
RCTID1975@reddit
Being cheaper and bundled was a marketing strategy. Being a superior product is what propelled it to mainstream use.
If being cheaper were the sole requirement for adoption, we wouldn't be in this thread because Linux would be the default OS.
cdoublejj@reddit (OP)
they weren't the only game in town, many still used lotus back then. even if it was top dog, they had already cemented the wintel licensing contracts with IBM and probably others by that time, you're talking early 90s.
cdoublejj@reddit (OP)
but, far far more expensive to get your auto trans rebuilt. i remember my dad and his friends talking about finding planned obsolescence in the GM auto trans in the 70s. like cheap or crappy clips or retainers or poor machining in critical spots.
still don't see as many people switching back to manuals :( though the fed did say the average car on the road in the US is not 20-25 something years old.
BrainWaveCC@reddit
A. It wasn't millions of people using those computers you spoke of. And it's hundreds of millions using Wintel today. The magnitude of usage is very different.
B. More importantly, they were using them in a stand alone configuration. We're discussing networked environments here, with business applications -- not mere personal usage.
C. It's not a Wintel vs not-Wintel scenario at all. Desktop migrations even with Wintel were easy up through the mid 1990s. I did several of them before and after that time. It's about integration with other stuff.
catherder9000@reddit
12.5 million people used C64, 5 million used Amigas. What on Earth are you on about?
Amiga were networked and cranking out TV shows in the 80s and 90s (all CGI in Babylon 5, etc.). My three Amigas were networked in the 80s and the early 90s... I think the real answer is that you grw up in the 90s only knowing about PCs?
BrainWaveCC@reddit
And the generally accepted estimates for current Windows usage is some 1.5 BILLION devices. I think we can agree that there is a significant difference between 5 million, 12.5 million and 1.5 billion, right? Especially with a huge percentage of that 1.5B being networked vs the 12.5M
And you think that this is the same as thousands or 10s of thousands of Windows PCs running dozens or more applications across multiple networks, being migrated to a different platform?
Really?
cdoublejj@reddit (OP)
does it scale with population growth? don't get me wrong with a strong monopoly and marketing i'm sure it still outpaces.
catherder9000@reddit
Where did I say any of the bullshit you're saying I said? Do you even understand how to have a conversation or it is just "I said this now I will make up shit about what you said to make myself seem smarter."
Original post: Nobody sold millions of those computers, none of those computers were networked. I responded with some facts showing how utterly wrong those two statements were. That was the entire discussion up to that point.
MidnightBlue5002@reddit
well, your point was dumb, in that the total numbers were infinitessimal compared to Windows
cdoublejj@reddit (OP)
that is some high level addiction!!! hundreds of millions!!! thats a hell of a ...."monopoly" for lack of better words !!!
lordjedi@reddit
This is laughable at best. Especially considering your following statement. Literally every person that bought a computer ended up having to relearn things when they bought something new.
"Used" is used loosely here, right? We had Compuserv on our Commodore and BBSes and AOL on DOS/Windows. Those are not the same and in fact, each time we got a new computer, we had to leave for something different. Everyone that bought one of these had to do the same thing. Beyond that, we had very few programs outside of Office on DOS/Windows.
Business adopted them because they were easier to use. So people learned them because they needed it for work. The only sector that didn't adopt Word is the legal sector because Words wordcount feature was inaccurate for words like "the" and "of". A legal document needed every single word counted, so the legal profession stuck with WordPerfect, but even that had the ability to output to Word (because everyone else was using Word).
Users on those systems install apps for what they need. Beyond that, they don't do a lot of document editing (other than the Macbook). I'm sure Chromebooks are much better with Google Docs, but they can also use Word. People want whatever works, but they'll get pissed when they start running into compatibility problems.
pdp10@reddit
Before the users had to learn how to use a mouse to use Macs or Windows, businesses had less-flexible but easier to use menu systems on their LAN PCs or terminals.
A menu-centric graphical style that many would recognize from DOS-based machines was Borland Turbo Vision.
MidnightBlue5002@reddit
... which was galactically easier to do, for 95% of the business worker population. Hence why Windows took off like a rocket and never looked back. And backward compatibility for apps, which is why macOS stalled on the business end.
cdoublejj@reddit (OP)
apple also dropped osx server and and various video meeting softwares and other stuff that were popular in higher education sectors....dropped it dead. THOUGH that was in the 2000s/2010s WAY LATER than the era yall are talking about.
donjulioanejo@reddit
Disagree. For one, the only people using computers in the Commodore era were either computer nerds, or those who literally had to for the fairly small number of jobs that needed one.
They simply weren't common back then, and even using a computer was a fairly advanced skillset in the general labour market.
Many companies literally employed computer operators, whose job was... take stuff that was done on pen and paper, and input it into computers. Or held courses for their industry/company specific software like inventory management or accounting systems.
The same type of people who had no trouble switching between a dozen computers way back when likely have no trouble now, if they don't already run some form of Linux.
What's different now is that hundreds of millions of boomers (I mean the mindset, not the generation) have gotten used to a very specific workflow. Like, "click the blue circle button and click on big blue E to get internet" and if any part of that breaks, they real-life BSOD and call helpdesk.
TheRealLazloFalconi@reddit
This is only true if you're not an ESXi admin. The depth of abilities that ESXi has, and how trivial it makes them is why the broadcomm deal is such a problem. Nothing even comes close. It's sort of like Group Policy, MDMs are starting to catch up, but there are still configurations that are easier to do on GP, even compared to Intune.
There's a reason people paid for ESXi, even though they get HyperV for free. It's just that much better. Luckily, since the Dell purchase, VMware stopped being an innovator and other hypervisors are starting to catch up, and now with the Broadcomm deal, it's getting even closer.
cdoublejj@reddit (OP)
that is why i chose esxi over other proxmox styles when i built my home lab years ago, ESXI had vGPU first and it was and may still be point and click vs going through config files punching in PCIe addresses. but, now with Intel GPUs being vGPU friendly for my home lab that may change.
for advanced vGPU i'm sure ESXi still has leaps and bounds over FOSS.
i also wonder about CXL support
BrainWaveCC@reddit
You're arguing a different thing than I am.
I am not saying that these are equivalent solutions. I am discussing the ability to migrate from one platform to the other. For one, the size and scale are immediately different.
MidnightBlue5002@reddit
... and VMWare is linux underneath anyway, so dumb point ...
ouatedephoque@reddit
So much stuff is web-based now though. Much easier than used to be. Not exactly a walk in the park, don't get me wrong.
m4tic@reddit
it's still going from a relatively easy OS to operate to Linux.
Centimane@reddit
ESXi (the OS installed on the server that vSphere is talking to) is Unix based. It's even worse to deal with than Linux IMO - if you've ever SSHed to the ESXi server or connected to the text console you'll know the pain.
vSphere is just a graphical UI for a Unix system already. I suspect there are many GUI options for managing VMs on other hypervisors (though admittedly I'm not managing hypervisors these days so I could be wrong).
m4tic@reddit
symantics
esxi = setup infrastructure in my sleep with hands tied behind my back
pve = linux
axonxorz@reddit
fuckingggg rsync and vim
(yeah I can use
vi, but fuck you vmware, I'll take my bitching where I can get it)BrainWaveCC@reddit
Changing out a turnkey, and mostly self-contained solution to a different turnkey/self-contained solution is always going to be easier than changing out a hub of interactivity that also needs a whole separate subsystem of management.
cdoublejj@reddit (OP)
oh for sure!!! i guess i'm just trying to point out the distaste for big tech and it's greed.
StochasticLife@reddit
I literally but the last bullet in my ESXI build and switched to Proxmox. Fuck (the new) VM Ware
cdoublejj@reddit (OP)
.....go on...... :)
alphagatorsoup@reddit
My org and many others in my local region are switching
Broadcom bought, drove licensing fees through the ceiling and many orgs are now reconsidering. Such as my own
For us it was either proxmox or hyper v and considering how… wonderful Microsoft has been lately we went with the other option
lazyhustlermusic@reddit
All you need is critical mass of market share and the dev dollars start pouring in
RCTID1975@reddit
Hard to get that market share though when the development is behind
ashimbo@reddit
Sounds like the French government needs to pay for the development of better management tools.
pizzacake15@reddit
They probably would if they decide to pay an organization that develops distros like Canonical or Red Hat.
lazyhustlermusic@reddit
Sounds like a real chicken and egg sitch, eh?
lordjedi@reddit
Literally. It's been true for Linux entire existence too.
lazyhustlermusic@reddit
That’s so wild that we’re coincidentally talking about it right now
Vengeful111@reddit
Veeam started really expanding their linux support recently (as far as I have noticed)
Firecracker048@reddit
Could also have the added benefit of MS trying to de-shitify itself
stetze88@reddit
Yes, i‘m waiting for Zorin Grid. Maybe this is the Alternative we waiting for. :D
cdoublejj@reddit (OP)
whats Zorin Grid?
stetze88@reddit
https://zorin.com/grid/
19610taw3@reddit
Isn't Zorin paid?
cdoublejj@reddit (OP)
BOTH, free and paid. your choice. paid has niceties.
timbotheny26@reddit
The base version is free but they have higher tiers you have to pay for. I'm actually not sure if they offer any kind of enterprise-grade solutions actually.
cccanterbury@reddit
it appears to be free
Avas_Accumulator@reddit
Yes. Entra ID, Intune, Conditional Access policies, policies in general, things like Autopatch, scale, Email, Windows Hello (easy FIDO2 compliance, not to speak of Passkeys coming up), you name it. A lot of things we take for granted is going to be hard to replace from a meta perspective when running Linux.
I'm all for running whatever device the user needs, but take Mac for example, which has not been great to manage until just now recently because Apple and Microsoft worked more closely together. Now introduce Linux, where Ubuntu is the only distro with some resemblance of supporting Intune. And I understand the idea is to get away from Intune and Microsoft specifically, I just fail to see how for now.
The USA is one country even if devided, and here in Europe one has to wait years for translation of new laws into amongst other things French because we don't even have a unified language
cdoublejj@reddit (OP)
having used manage engine before it support mac and linux management there are also foss options if you piece and architect some of it your self. at scale it should get better over time.
also there are folks here in /r/syadmin that run hybrid environments tied to the same LDAP/AD, AD is just a cool GUI AND EXTRA SAUCE on yeolde Unix LDAP/kerberos if my fuzzy memory is not conflating too many things together.
thortgot@reddit
Manage Engine's stack is pretty mediocre.
Is there an actually good RMM for Linux?
floydiandroid@reddit
Fleet is an excellent Linux management solution. Also works with all other platforms.
cdoublejj@reddit (OP)
yeah i wont say it's amazing but, i don't dislike it, i'd say i like it.
i'm not sure how to compute your question, possibly because the answer MAY be "no" but, i know you can leverage multi foss tools like SALT and stuff. i plan to try out parts of M.E. where possible.
alraffa218@reddit
Agree on ManageEngine Endpoint Central Part, as i used to implement in my past SI Role. Only issue came Linux closed envieonment patching as it required internet access or subscription ID's for all the linux machines (redhat) to be patched. There was a workaround which was proposed - did not get to test it. Did you use Endpoint Central On Premise or Saas version?
cdoublejj@reddit (OP)
is saas fully cloud? it had an on prem server when i used it.
alraffa218@reddit
The on premise server is the local distribution point( which acts as a patch repository).. yes so you are right.
Cooleb09@reddit
If you side by side Puppet and Intune for reliability, reporting, functionality etc you will find MS to be severly lacking. + so much easier to Git-Ops.
pizzacake15@reddit
A lot of desktop management platforms such as ManageEngine's Endpoint Central have Linux support already.
When it comes to EDR, it might get tricky though as most of them price servers and workstations differently. Windows and Mac are automatically considered user workstations (except ofcourse Windows Server) and Linux as servers.
As it is today, a linux being used as a workstation has no clear delineation from a linux being used as a server. Would be interesting how the industry would adjust to this should this de-Microsofting (for the lack of a better word) gains more traction.
In any case, i hope Linux will gain significant traction this time on the desktop market.
TheLexoPlexx@reddit
Munich had a project going but coincidentally when the Microsoft Headquarters moved there, the project was killed off.
antaran@reddit
The project was killed off because user's were revolting, the migration process was a total shit-show, costs were exploding and many specicalied software products were incompatible with Linux, meaning they still had to retain many Windows clients.
rot26encrypt@reddit
Microsoft German headquarters has always been in Munich, they moved from an old building to a new building.
Joe-Cool@reddit
Unterschleißheim is not Munich.
rot26encrypt@reddit
Hmm, I visited the old one and everyone called it Munich but seems it is a regional Munich area (Landkreis Munchen) not within the actual city area. Thanks for the correction.
Joe-Cool@reddit
It's basically what people call "Speckgürtel" (Munich's belly fat). It's full of Munich residents and commuters but technically not Munich.
Biggest joke is Ryanair calling Memmingen Airport (a 1.5h 120km drive from Munich) "Munich South".
rot26encrypt@reddit
Ryanair does that everywhere.
cdoublejj@reddit (OP)
they restarted it like last year again
pdp10@reddit
Nothing actually changed.
cdoublejj@reddit (OP)
it says they have or are making a plan. weather or not that accounts as real change??? i would seem you don't think thats really any indicator and i'm not even meaning argue that but, curious to what indicators i might keep my eyes on or maybe it's just a matter of waiting and seeing what news drops if any.
pdp10@reddit
There's scarcely ever news, and when there is, it doesn't normally make its way into the anglosphere.
Munich software engineers have presented at tech conferences before, but I'm not aware of anything recent. Much of their product is here, but there's little if anything that has directly to do with Linux. It's predominantly civic line-of-business webapps in Java, and a few mobile apps.
Haar_an_der_Bar@reddit
Do you have a link or smth?
cdoublejj@reddit (OP)
sorry not right now i gotta jet for the weeken PDP10 is puhsing back but i think he linked wiki ?
https://www.reddit.com/r/sysadmin/comments/1shmzwu/france_launches_government_linux_desktop_plan_as/ofe4p3a/?context=3
the news dropped like 2024 or 2025, i never saved a link. coudl probably google munich linux 2024
TheLexoPlexx@reddit
Oh didn't know that, cool
SlyCooperKing_OG@reddit
Schleswig-Holstein is currently undergoing the same project. https://www.schleswig-holstein.de/DE/landesregierung/themen/digitalisierung/linux-plus1/Projekt
Japjer@reddit
Pricey as it is, $36/month per user for an E3 license is a fucking steal for what it gives you. Even better if you just stick with Business Premium.
I don't like Microsoft any more or less than the next tech, but their offering is undeniably good
badaccount99@reddit
It's already happened at a larger scale. Azure runs way more Linux machines than Windows Server ones. Kids are growing up with ChromeOS.
And my dev team is now almost 100% on Mac which is BSD (Not Linux, but Unix like if you didn't know, and that's where I started on OSX/1, Cray Unicos, Irix and others) based except me on the DevOps team who wanted WSL because I could do Linux with cut & paste to Windows so best of both worlds. But all the Mac people also use Docker for Linux images we build for them.
My old roommate was a sales guy at a company we both used to work at and kept telling me if I didn't learn more Windows NT things I'd be left in the dust. LOL.
maximus459@reddit
I would actually love to see some kind of active directory style management for large-scale Linux deployments It would go so long towards convincing my own to adopt Linux
Zorin OS has been teasing something like this for years, but that's all it has been so far
pdp10@reddit
NIS, LDAP, and FreeIPA were on-premises directory services, but offline-first and cloud-centric options have been far eclipsing those for a long time.
jmbpiano@reddit
I've never been particularly anti-MS, but the more pressure on them to actually deliver products that have to compete with alternatives on quality and support, the better.
For that reason alone, I hope this snowballs.
19610taw3@reddit
That's the thing ... when you've spent the past 40 years buying up all the competition ... you don't really have to work all that hard
pdp10@reddit
Digital Research, Apple, IBM, Sun, Novell, Linux, RIM/Blackberry/QNX, and Google, come to mind as a few notable competitors with their own desktop, server, embedded, and/or mobile operating systems, that Microsoft didn't buy.
What Microsoft bought were Hotmail (webservice), LinkedIn (social networking), Skype (VoIP and messenging service), Zenimax (desktop games), Mixer (game streaming), Github (codeforge service), Nuance (speech to text), Activision-Blizzard (desktop and mobile games).
another_mouse@reddit
I think it still is but Active Directory isn’t the only real option anymore so it should be easier now.
HotTakes4HotCakes@reddit
The whole point of this is to encourage developing that space so this is no longer true.
The problem, for the last 20 or more years, is that people have continued to lazily fall back to the player with the most money that makes things the easiest, and that has had a massive detrimental effect on a lot of things. There should be more competition in this area, Microsoft should not be as dominant as it is. It is a failure of the market and frankly a failure of regulation that it's taken this long for things to finally move
Effective_Piccolo866@reddit
kinda wild how countries are ditching windows for linux fr
patmorgan235@reddit
I think there just been a bit of a catch 22, without a big fleet of Linux desktops, why would you built a robust tool to manage a big fleet of Linux desktops?
So while it probably is easier to manage windows today, I think there will be solutions developed over the next couple of years to fill this gap.
DeifniteProfessional@reddit
Yeah this'll never work. As much as I love Linux for both daily use and server use, Microsoft stuff kinda just works...
pdp10@reddit
You may be more familiar with a few highly marketed Microsoft products like Intune and Apple-ecosystem products like Jamf, than you are with open-source management infrastructure like Ansible.
If you weren't, then the marketing budget of those companies would be totally wasted. ;)
Apparently there are a lot of people who believe that this vague thing happened. Mostly they think it about Munich, Germany, because the new mayor and vice-mayor claimed upon election in 2014 that they were going to make it happen and their claims were widely publicized in tech media. But they never actually made any changes of note, and aren't in office any more anyway.
Seemingly more people have heard about this thing that didn't happen, than know the truth. Perhaps that's why European governments are so adamant about exerting control over social media...
deefop@reddit
Governments are incapable of doing anything with even a modicum of competence, so there's not much point in using this as a gauge. It'll probably go horrendously bad and that has nothing to do with linux.
40513786934@reddit
The problem with previous attempts in Europe was never replacing Windows with Linux, it's always with replacing MS Office (especially Excel) with anything else.
Will be interesting to see how this goes
Creshal@reddit
Office on the front end and especially MS Exchange on the back end. There's no free email solution that has soooo much crap built in, ready to use.
cdoublejj@reddit (OP)
what about Zimbra? it costs but it's FOSS based?
Creshal@reddit
Oops All Postfix, just like all their competitors. It's slightly more coherent than most, but it's still a patchwork mess of independently developed open source components that tolerate each other, rather than cooperate.
cdoublejj@reddit (OP)
You've been listening to Count Exchange again, he spreads lies!
40513786934@reddit
Yeah a lot of people don't understand how complicated email in a large organization is. Its way more than simply reading and sending messages. You have compliance requirements for retention, DLP, eDiscovery/audit stuff, security requirements that extend to the client etc. 365 provides all of these things, its got a massive amount of functionality behind the scenes that your average user will never see.
cdoublejj@reddit (OP)
i remember some guys that used to run Zimbra at ...smaller..enterprise scale. it wasn't perfect but, it worked. then again i've seen less....tenured...teams struggle with exchange well.
rmeman@reddit
Yeah, those are not complicated. You already have them in Zimbra, Icewarp, Smartermail, etc
Creshal@reddit
"You can do the same in cyrus/dovecot/postfix!" [which is all the other solutions use in the background]
Yeah just spend five years writing bespoke perl/sieve scripts against undocumented APIs, ez pz
Or set it up in Exchange with like five lines of Powershell.
GolemancerVekk@reddit
Which are also undocumented. 😉
I get your argument but nowadays it has become a distinction without a difference, considering the pace at which Microsoft services switch APIs and UIs, deprecate documentation without replacing it and so on.
pdp10@reddit
Yes, now you've got the idea. Each email is a separate file with Maildir. Things are incredibly simple when you let filesystems handle the files, instead of trying to call a filesystem a database.
LMTP is documented in RFC 2033. Way fewer lines than RFC 1939, that I implemented in a long afternoon.
Frothyleet@reddit
I'm not a proponent of this idea, but all of those integrations and functions (which are indeed a major selling point of the M365 ecosystem) also exist as robust third party products. Plenty of folks happy to ingest your journaling for archiving or put a smarthost in front of you to handle security and DLP and so on.
You could put all that on top of your happy little postfix/dovecot setup, and you'd have an email solution that is up to industry standards. It'd just, you know, be a lot shittier to use in most respects.
40513786934@reddit
yep. i love postfix, its rock solid and powerful as an MTA. I use it wherever its appropriate but I wouldn't dream of using it as a large organizations internal email system
JesradSeraph@reddit
Yes there is, lol. I worked on/with it.
The Equipment Department in charge of a large part of the french gov’s IT had an inbrew platform of opensource components forming an email+contact+calendar alternative to Outlook and Exchange (including mobile integration), which I see from a quick search is still very much deployed widely and active nowadays (melanie2). I think they had plans to extend the method to the rest of the usual office solutions, already back then (12+ years ago).
pdp10@reddit
Microsoft Exchange only does two things, and email it does quite badly. Vibe-coded webapps are competitive with Exchange.
It makes more sense when you realize that Exchange was built on X.400 because that was a requirement of the U.S. Department of Defense at the time, and of other large institutional customers.
sofixa11@reddit
Libre Office, and La Suite fix that gap.
segagamer@reddit
Libre Office doesn't import or worth with CSVs very well, and is lacking in the VLookup functions.
You're likely to want me to elaborate but it's been a few months now and I can't remember specifics lol
KnowZeroX@reddit
How could it not work with csv very well? I've never had a csv fail in libreoffice. Do you have any examples?
Also, where do you get the idea that Libre Office has no VLookup function?
https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Documentation/Calc_Functions/VLOOKUP
Maybe you are confusing Libre Office with something else?
segagamer@reddit
You need to read my comment again
RCTID1975@reddit
Not when you're interacting with 99% office users.
Sometimes its as simple as formatting being off, but it's still not uncommon for excel formulas and macros to be completely useless.
If you can't interact with your customers, you'll cease to exist.
ltobo123@reddit
It's genuinely upsetting how many critical processes somehow involve excel macros.
KnowZeroX@reddit
In part because people are using excel where they shouldn't be. Though there have been tools to port the excel macros to python.
ltobo123@reddit
Absolutely and for sure - the big issue is when the person who built it is no longer on this mortal plane, and no one else really knows what it does but when it turns off it breaks a critical function, and it's not worth the money/risk to refactor 🙃
KnowZeroX@reddit
That is why you convert it into python, then you can do a fuzz test to be sure everything is working fine. Technology has come a long way.
ltobo123@reddit
It really has, but apparently the success rate hasn't been high enough to make leadership comfortable a
KnowZeroX@reddit
When you run in the cloud, it stops mattering as they just open your cloud files in the browser, what they have installed locally doesn't matter.
That said, we aren't talking about a company here, we are talking about government. And as you know, in government, it is the opposite. If your company can't interact with the government, you'll cease to exist.
pdp10@reddit
On the web in Google Sheets, or trying to use email attachments as version control for spreadsheets?
A couple of times I got tired of it and used a nice library to spit out read-only
.xlsxfiles from the single-source-of-truth.sofixa11@reddit
A minority of uses on the scale of the French public administration. If it's that impossible, they can be left as one off Windows devices.
Warrangota@reddit
That's the big difference between the German and French attempts compared to the historically failed attempts. The other migration concepts were focused on shifting the current processes to Linux, with Linux as the end goal.
The recent projects focus on the processes themselves, migrating everything to a modern and well integrated platform, where OS independent design is one of the many requirements. Only when everything is built on that new platform, then it does not matter which OS you use so you can happily get rid of Windows. And then it's easy because itnsoes not give you anything.
phillymjs@reddit
I've seen lots of articles and YouTube videos about their current efforts to replace MS Office in recent weeks.
FatBook-Air@reddit
I think now that both the U.S. and Microsoft itself have shown themselves to be enemies, other countries would rather these projects go imperfectly than continuing to fund a regime that actively hates them. It's like Ukraine buying oil from Russia.
Frothyleet@reddit
Which it does. Kinda. Not oil, but gas. And not directly from Russia, but the massive amounts of Russian gas that transit Ukraine into Europe get resold, in part, back to Ukraine.
FatBook-Air@reddit
Yeah, and they're doing it for the same reason that Europe is still buying technology from the U.S.: it takes a while to ween yourself from your enemies.
cdoublejj@reddit (OP)
365 has a web app version, i have been able to install office 2016 on PopOs with PlayOnLinux. i've also noticed more and more business software is now web as well, stuff like ERP.
GroundPepper@reddit
I hope they end up using a standard distribution.
Frothyleet@reddit
God bless 'em, if there were any country that would decide they absolutely need their own special solution, it'd be France.
I, for one, look forward to trying LeBuntu.
alochmar@reddit
Take my upvote damn you
syntaxerror53@reddit
Looks like got it all SUSEd out there.
Going to get RedHat and see self out.
raymond_w@reddit
Don't think Lebron has time to create his own Linux distro with both Luka and Austin Reaves out.
Drakoolya@reddit
Bron and Wemby long overdue french collab incoming.
Frothyleet@reddit
I think I heard on ESPN that he handed the effort off to Bronny.
sofixa11@reddit
The French Gendermerie is using bog standard Debian, so it will probably be the same.
GolemancerVekk@reddit
Ubuntu, not Debian. But yeah, it's the standard LTS.
scandii@reddit
there already is one - GendBuntu. used by the Gendarmerie deployed to like 100k workstations.
Frothyleet@reddit
That's interesting, is it publicly available?
GolemancerVekk@reddit
It's basically Ubuntu LTS plus their specific setup, and the associated workstation management.
AforAnonymous@reddit
And there's another one called EOLE, used by their ministry of education
ManLikeMeee@reddit
Sir,
Take my goddamn upvote!
TheSaucepanMan@reddit
Oo la la linux around the corner as well.
Nu-Hir@reddit
But that can only come from the LeBuntu region in France. Otherwise it's just Sparkling Debian.
cccanterbury@reddit
i would run the Sparkling Debian distro
Kuipyr@reddit
I think their Federal Police already use a custom in-house distro.
Frothyleet@reddit
Someone else mentioned that, and it appears that's correct, the Gendarmes have what is probably just a slightly customized Ubuntu.
Brandhor@reddit
it's gonna take some time to rewrite the whole kernel in french
not-at-all-unique@reddit
Use a ‘standard distribution’ can end up as a way to tie your government to an alternative expensive American supplier (RH) A project that is suddenly stopped and turned into beta testers for commercial projects (centos) Or a distribution that suddenly ceases development. (Any number of distros)
I wonder if a better idea is to increase funding for untitled like CERN and restart development on Scientific Linux.
KnowZeroX@reddit
They plan to use NixOS for the declarative immutable benefit with KDE desktop envrionment.
pizzacake15@reddit
Any stable distro out there would be the way to go like Debian, Ubuntu, maybe even RHEL.
Actually, RHEL might be a better choice here unless they don't want to spend too much money on support/maintenance contracts.
mdug@reddit
RHEL bring an IBM product would also be a bit too American. Canonical are at least headquartered outside the US
GolemancerVekk@reddit
The 2009 Ars Technica article specifically notes a preference for avoiding commercial distros:
https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2009/03/french-police-saves-millions-of-euros-by-adopting-ubuntu/
alphagatorsoup@reddit
On-boarding will be installing compiling and configuring gentoo
psilent_p@reddit
Gentèu
DisappointedSpectre@reddit
Not enough letters
Gentèaux
nefarious_bumpps@reddit
I think it would depend on whether Linux is considered feminine or masculine?
psilent_p@reddit
that'd sound like Gentoh
timbotheny26@reddit
Wouldn't be surprised if they just went with Ubuntu. Does RHEL have a desktop version or is it exclusively a server OS?
GroundPepper@reddit
Yes, from my understanding SUSE and RedHat offer enterprise grade desktop solutions.
SlyCooperKing_OG@reddit
Their police force already has its own distribution.
pdp10@reddit
Munich took a lot of criticism for branding their internal version of Debian Linux with the name of the broader effort (including business applications): LiMux.
It was, even then, a very shallow criticism. For a time, Google branded their internal version of Ubuntu as "Gobuntu", but stopped when rebrands went out of fashion.
TravelingNightOwl@reddit
Munich has been at the forefront of moving to open source software for quite some time:
https://itsfoss.com/munich-linux-failure/
It will be interesting to see how the geopolitical situation affects any migrations away from American tech companies, and how far it goes.
cyberentomology@reddit
Wild, since the OG defenestration was in Prague…
cdoublejj@reddit (OP)
whats that?
cdoublejj@reddit (OP)
other smaller countries are pushing degoogling on TV news, i saw it on like /r/degoogle or something a few months or several weeks ago.
https://www.reddit.com/r/degoogle/comments/1qoby1a/when_the_tv_talk_about_degoogling_you_know_its/
HotTakes4HotCakes@reddit
Regardless of how feasible any of this is, or what the outcome ends up being, I am very excited to finally see a large scale effort to break Microsoft and Google's dominance over so much.
There will be trade-offs, buggy software, and years of expensive work. It will be hard and messy, and at every step of the way there will be people complaining.
But ultimately, it has been our collective resistance to getting messy and engaging with less established, less polished products that has created the current situation. Inertia and resistance to making things more difficult for ourselves in the short term is what got us here.
cdoublejj@reddit (OP)
have you ever heard of Microslop winblows? i heard the airports shut down for 2 days last year :-P
you aren't wrong! that has been my experience switching my family. one got to a breaking point with Office Libre Calc. i ended up using Play On Linux to install office 2016 somewhat easily and other than it launching slowly on their 10+ year old laptop it's smooth enough once everything is loaded up.
agent-squirrel@reddit
The airport shutdowns were because of Crowdstrike. You could argue that Windows enables things like Crowdstrike to cause the issues it did but what most people forget is that it happened to RHEL a few months earlier on a specific kernel.
cdoublejj@reddit (OP)
MS had tried to to make an API before but gave up after the EU anti trusted them. you'd think in 15 years they could have tried again. was interesting meeting with C.S. the day after the outage.
agent-squirrel@reddit
Yes I’m aware. They need an eBPF type interface really. I’m a Linux admin but spent a solid 14 hours remediating the Windows server fleet with my colleagues.
cdoublejj@reddit (OP)
ooofffffff!
sofixa11@reddit
The French Gendermerie has been full on Debian, successfully, before Munich flip flopped.
whythehellnote@reddit
If I recall right, Munich first started around 2003, using it as a stick to lower their microsoft funding. France didn't start until 2007
cccanterbury@reddit
you're all pretty special flowers saying fuck off to MS
Firecracker048@reddit
tbh, almost all militaries should be running their own distros, controlled exclusively by their cyber teams
AforAnonymous@reddit
The French have a French-only fork of OPNsense called "Amon 3" as I recently learned after tracing the nightmare of ntopng integration for OPNsense (the maintainer of OPNsense's own "community" plugin appears to have gone AWOL a long while ago, which OPNsense doesn't bother to point out, and the ntopng guys don't seem to entirely grok how the FreeBSD ecosystem works, recommending inappropriate workarounds in their install docs), one which probably works better than OPNsense itself, and which forms part of their EOLE distro project (https://pcll.ac-dijon.fr/eole/, not available in English)
They'll probably do quite fine, albeit I'd wish they'd send way more of their stuff back upstream.
MyUshanka@reddit
Alright guys! ~~1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 2018 2019 2020 2021 2022 2023 2024 2025 2026~~ 2027 is SURELY going to be the Year of the Linux Desktop!
cdoublejj@reddit (OP)
have an upvote. i think it will be low and slow no sudden flip. i could be wrong maybe some key market players drop something new and exciting and drives a big push.
boomhaeur@reddit
Yeah, this is a years long program - the desktop image is the easy part it’s everything that sits on it, interacts with it or manages it that is the nightmare fuel in this kind of project. Not to mention the change management/reskilling of the workforce to use it.
cdoublejj@reddit (OP)
having worked with all sorts of orgs it will only get easier as time moves on as more and more business software move to web app in the browser or run in the cloud. dont get me wrong the IRS got windows xp support and updates till 2019 due to legacy software. though these days wine can at times run legacy software that windows can not.
boomhaeur@reddit
Yeah I don’t disagree but realistically that’s still a decade plus off for any large institution, especially a large government institution. My previous role was running a desktop platform with 100K+ devices on it.
Honestly, I would have started looking for a new role the moment they asked me to do something like this. It’s not a technology challenge, it’s a change management challenge, and an incredibly steep one at that. This will be atrociously painful and seeing they’re starting at the desktops tells me everything I need to know about this project - it will fail. I expect the moment the political landscape changes they’ll lose all interest in it.
This kind of initiative needs to start with the infrastructure, then the enterprise applications, then end user productivity applications. finally at the very very end, you start moving the desktops over once, as you said, the majority of the apps are web-based or otherwise OS agnostic and the user base understands the new tools.
Starting desktops first means the desktop teams will be stuck fighting with everyone to try and get them to change a million little prerequisites before they can even move.
cdoublejj@reddit (OP)
fair assessment! if my ask you this with the improvements and changes in foss over the last say 6 years or so. i know some AD alternatives have cropped up a few years ago.
...well for the first 2 if you had to give a poor soul advice who was doing such a project STARTING at infrastructure and then enterprise apps. what would you look at? would you go with an AD/LDAP alternative or style or go with something newer / totally different?
semi related, i was reading last year that some of Fracne's LEO has used linux desktop for years but, no idea if that was domain joined stuff or specialty like forensics.
also this could be all rah-rah due to political tensions
boomhaeur@reddit
I think where you start is at the target state from a shared services perspective… identity, management and monitoring platforms etc. - basically what are you going to ask everyone to hang off of/interact with.
Then you set firm standards and timelines that EVERYONE must follow and every major change going forward (refreshes, major version updates etc.) must move everyone towards that target state - No special cases, no sob stories, every deviation you make from target is a problem you’re creating for the future.
Then you start figuring out the billion dependencies and when exactly you begin cutting over/cutting out applications and services etc. and finally figure out when it will be possible to start switching desktops over etc.
Big Rocks > Pebbles > Sand
cdoublejj@reddit (OP)
HOLY HELL! this thread took off. i'm seeing a report that may have done some back end work already, or at least one shop out of a 1000 https://www.reddit.com/r/sysadmin/comments/1shmzwu/france_launches_government_linux_desktop_plan_as/ofjpx1i/
HotTakes4HotCakes@reddit
Yeah the year of the Linux desktop is just a meme. Truth is it'll it's just been a slow ramp, and we're only just starting to really notice the incline.
And not just in Enterprise space. I general, the desire to escape a Microsoft/Google/Apple has been getting progressively louder and more desperate and the first signs true potential escape vectors for the average consumer are starting to appear more viable.
cdoublejj@reddit (OP)
i have office 2016 running on PopOs for that family member who does advanced excel
sebf@reddit
France is so bad at anything IT, they will surely fail that one too. Signed: a French person.
GolemancerVekk@reddit
But you have Linux migrations that have happened and have been working well for years. The Gendarmerie switch started in 2009 with a pilot of 5,000 workstations, then trialed 15,000 for a year, then converted their entire 90,000 fleet in the next 5 years. They've been fully using Ubuntu for over 10 years now.
You also have other smaller government organizations (by an order of magnitude) that have switched to Linux. I understand the Ministry of Agriculture and the Assembly are among them.
lynsix@reddit
I really want France to succeed. However I’ve had to work with French IT staff to coordinate and my biggest issue wasn’t skill just culture issues. Can’t do anything that requires them being available after hours. Don’t try reaching anyone Friday. When I get online siesta just started. The pro was at 5:01 their time we would get free rein to do whatever so long as it was online by ~6am next business day.
Truly wish we were closer to that culture in North America.
Leather-Arachnid-417@reddit
What's the driver of this?Privacy? Security?
cdoublejj@reddit (OP)
politics and the orange man, also big tech is now the era of rent and never own. i also suspect privacy. i have to advise on on co-pilot data collection for various orgs. it can be problem like say HIPPA
Leather-Arachnid-417@reddit
lol Thats so funny to read.....the orange man.....Like the Tall Man in Phantasm
cdoublejj@reddit (OP)
don't get me wrong they all suck, there are a few way way back that i might say did an alright job.
RyeonToast@reddit
I think the umbrella term is digital sovereignty. A while back the US sanctioned the International Criminal Court and caused Microsoft to cut off their M365. Worsening relations between the US and everyone else along with all the anti-privacy shenanigans are making non-US locations start to think about who actually controls their data.
Leather-Arachnid-417@reddit
Ewwwwww....yeah that would do it.
alphagatorsoup@reddit
I installed cachyOS on a business grade laptop the other week as an experiment.
Performance blew my mind
Couldn’t print or use my scanner but man was my laptop fast and the battery life good!
pdp10@reddit
CUPS. It's the same subsystem that Apple uses.
Which kind? NAPS2 is open source, for documents. Vuescan is commercial and specializes and supporting a huge array of scanners, but probably overkill if you're not scanning media.
alphagatorsoup@reddit
Thanks I’ll take another crack at it this weekend. I just wanted to quickly print and scan something and couldn’t lol. I wound up printing off my phone and scanning with the iOS scanner app.
I did try cups I think but it kept crashing
Scanner is a ScanSnap. I’m concerned I won’t be able to get that working as it needs an app to configure profiles and shit.
agent-squirrel@reddit
If your printer supports AirPrint then the auto discovery system in the printer settings should just work as long as Avahi is installed. (Avahi is an implementation of an mDNS responder that the Apple protocol Bonjour is based on)
007Ati@reddit
Working in a windows environment sadly for nearly 12 years now….
Got a MacBook Pro at home and a gaming pc with cachyos.
And what should I say…. I hate using windows more and more by the day.
segagamer@reddit
I find people who ditch Windows for MacOS fascinating.
007Ati@reddit
Thanks! The Mac is for personal use only. Sometimes I use Citrix to do some remote work. Wouldn’t use it as my main working laptop in our environment at least.
segagamer@reddit
I mean it in an "out of a fire and into the oven" way. You're not escaping a monopoly, closed source American operating system at all that isn't shoving bloatware into the OS. Just... Sidestepping.
Like if you want to stick it to the Mega Corps, then you'd go Linux or BSD, not Apple lol
007Ati@reddit
Like I said. My gaming pc (which is my main device) is on Cachyos. I don’t use the MacBook that often. But it works well with my iPhone and iPad for many things.
segagamer@reddit
Still a side step, Tahoe isn't exactly what I call a good OS, but anyway. You do you! I'd have just used Debian everywhere.
alphagatorsoup@reddit
Same to be honest! I still get frustrated with some things just not natively working - like printing but I’ll figure it out
007Ati@reddit
There are so many workarounds it’s fantastic. The open source community is just amazing.
cybermind@reddit
I've heard this one before!
cdoublejj@reddit (OP)
i've used PopOs and had plug and play printer support in SOHO/Home but, it's tough spot COSMIC just dropped and it's still teething and 22.04 LTS is long in tooth.
alphagatorsoup@reddit
I haven’t touched pop os. But maybe I’ll spin up a VM to try it out.
Still happy with cachy. Though some things seem iffy sometimes - like printing and scanner support. Or I’m just a moron, which I wouldn’t doubt lol
StromboliNotCalzone@reddit
This has been tried and failed before.
It has better enterprise management tools, support, and is the only supported OS for some legacy business applications.
Nice in theory, but there are reasons why Linux has like 3% of the enterprise market share and they aren't political.
KnowZeroX@reddit
Almost 20 years ago, France moved their federal police 100,000+ users to linux. They continue to use linux to this day.
So since they succeeded once, why do you think they will fail a second time?
cdoublejj@reddit (OP)
sometimes failure is an option. you can't blaze a trail without slashing some brush. also things are always changing, we have a new and improved wine, linux desktop can join AD now, we have Winboat, with Web apps now. several of the environments i've worked in the last 10 years had at least some of the ERP as web apps now.
i have one family member running office 2016 for advanced excel formulas on PopOS.
YES THATS A FAR CRY! but, windows is only getting worse and linux is getting better. i'll also point out GPO switch for telemetry in windows is tracked like CVEs because they constantly changes the switches cause they keep trying stuff in telemetry and AI and recall. something has to give.
StromboliNotCalzone@reddit
I'm sure the taxpayers will love financing the inevitable switch back to Windows.
cdoublejj@reddit (OP)
or the paying out the law suite for invetible AI/ windows recall data leaks of everyones data or the data of minors
davy_crockett_slayer@reddit
I remember when Munich did this a decade or so ago. More countries should adopt Linux and FOSS.
jmnugent@reddit
As I recall,. several cities in Germany have basically gone back and forth flip-flopping between Linux and Windows multiple times now. Not terribly reassuring outcomes.
KnowZeroX@reddit
There were I think 2 cities, Munich and another. But the problem at city level is that MS interfered in elections going as far as replacing the mayor. At federal level, they don't have the power to influence an entire country, especially when the population as a whole isn't happy with what happened with the ICC.
cdoublejj@reddit (OP)
when that happened, steve balmer flew over and promised to build a MS Germany head quarters in munich, and they did, that was key part of them reversing the decision back then. in 2024 and munich re-newed thier pledge to switch again
speedeep@reddit
Didn't someone try this in Europe somewhere 20 or 25 years ago? I'd still like to see this happen and have time to develop...
KnowZeroX@reddit
Yes, France did this for their federal police, 100,000+ pcs and almost 20 years later, they continue to use linux desktop.
Sai_Wolf@reddit
It was Munich, Germany, IIRC.
leaflock7@reddit
"reduce reliance on non-European digital technologies "
is it not funny when the top 5 companies that provide/submit the code for Linux are non-European companies ?
pdp10@reddit
Well, most of the corporate contributions are hardware drivers, coming from hardware makers. On a line by line basis, most of the Linux kernel is built-in drivers.
That one year when Microsoft was a top Linux contributor, was for Hyper-V paravirtual drivers. It was widely publicized in the mainstream press when that happened.
leaflock7@reddit
1st is Meta
3rd is RHEL
5th Google and then oracle, MS etc.
and al those commits from Intel or Nvidia etc are not just drivers.
but hey if that makes you sleep better at night to not be able to admit that the development of linux is been heavily supported by US companies do that
nelmaloc@reddit
According to this the top ten are
Which gives 6 from the US and 3 European.
Who cares about that? The issue here is about control, and GNU/Linux gives you freedom from US control.
leaflock7@reddit
well that is heavily misguided .
You have All time, which is not that much relevant. Comparing what was happening in 2006 with 2026 is a lot different.
Considering that Arm although European is heavily influenced by a lot companies is not a per se European influenced lead.
So my point still stands 2 fully european and 2 (Arm , LF) that are heavily influenced by US companies.
The state for the past year is :
Meta Platforms, Inc.
Intel Corporation
Red Hat
Linux Foundation
Google LLC
-SUSE - European
Arm Limited (Kind of European heavily lead by US companies)
-Linaro - European
Advanced Micro Devices, Inc
Oracle America Inc
for the past 5 years
Red Hat
Intel Corporation
Meta Platforms, Inc.
Linux Foundation
Google LLC
Arm Limited
-SUSE
-Linaro
Advanced Micro Devices, Inc
Oracle America Inc
InsaneNutter@reddit
Its a polite way of saying reduce reliance on an unstable country. It doesn't really matter where past contributions have come from when its open source.
The last few years have been a major wakeup call for quite a few countries in my opinion.
leaflock7@reddit
you can check which companies commit to LInux int shri webpage .
out of the 15th on the top there are only 2 european. Then you have the LF and the kernel devs (which again consist of a majority of people working on the companies).
the rest are all US
DeifniteProfessional@reddit
There's a level of "other people could pick it up" if it's open source that weighs in, but I get your point, it's a funny statement.
That said, Canonical is British, and Britain is still European
leaflock7@reddit
i never said that there are no european companies contributing but according to the linux kernel stats Suse is in the top 10 and canonical is way dow to 50 or something .
but you got the point io try to make
Anlarb@reddit
There was a book I stumbled across probably here, that was a lengthy dialog about how linux is like a power saw, in that it will do exactly what you want it to, and also that leaving windows for linux was like finding a dealership where they were just giving away ferraris for free. Anyone have a link to it?
giffengrabber@reddit
I think the book you’re looking for is In the Beginning... Was the Command Line by Neal Stephenson.
Anlarb@reddit
Good read, much too short.
https://web.stanford.edu/class/cs81n/command.txt
cdoublejj@reddit (OP)
circa 1994, a bit has changed back then. probably still worth some skimming. nice find, it's always a challenge to find stuff you remember from long ago.
Pristine_Curve@reddit
"Where there is a will, there is a way."
It's certainly possible to make this happen, but it will take a durable commitment to the process. The problem with most of these initiatives is that they are a top down plan to replace X, Y, and Z. The actual path looks more like growing an ecosystem rather than planning a product. It is rare to see government action producing this sort of outcome.
cdoublejj@reddit (OP)
i'd love to say NUH-UH but, you and i know your right. the one thing they have going for them is every day windows gets worse and linux gets better
ilyas-inthe-cloud@reddit
The desktop OS is the easy part to announce. The ugly part is identity, packaging, endpoint management, printer nonsense, document compatibility, and every ministry's random Excel macro that somehow became critical infrastructure.
If they standardize on something boring and budget the support side, it can work. If every agency improvises, bon courage.
cdoublejj@reddit (OP)
linux desktop can join AD now but, it's not tit for tat, there are other softwares out there. also AD is showing its age these days. i helped one org migrate from office 2010 to 365 and 365 couldn't handel 2010 documents correctly, we had to use office libre to convert to newer formats.
ALSO libre writer can export fillable PDFs forms and microslop word can only do it in developer mode with alpha settings enabled.
that could mean massive cost in document conversion though i find document compatibility is better these days. you can also run 365 on linux via web or web app. Excel is still kind of advanced forumlas
for one family memeber i used PlayOnLinux to install office 2016 on PopOs for thier advanced excel files. its been working for a while now, a tad slow but, it's 10 year old laptop too
r0ndr4s@reddit
Great job from Satya Nadella now making countries switch to Linux. Best CEO. I'm sure the trillionare overvaluated stock price at some point will be useful for something.
Can't believe that dude still has a job with how awful he is.
cdoublejj@reddit (OP)
the POTUS of the US is also helping
AhrimTheBelighted@reddit
Im pretty interested in this transition, do they find new vendors for all the apps they use? Or do they just leverage a SaaS provider to give them access to whatever Windows apps they need? Internal VDI infra for specific apps? Its pretty cool, maybe we'll get new tooling n all out of it.
cdoublejj@reddit (OP)
so far in environments i've been some legacy apps are already in cloud VDI and other business software or ERP is web based now. hell even 365 can be used in the web browser. i've even seen unofficial Lectron ports to appify the web apps to linux desktop a year or 2 ago.
cube8021@reddit
This is SUSE big play
cdoublejj@reddit (OP)
i like to play with suse from time to time
TwilightKeystroker@reddit
Theoretical, joke-only "nuke Windows" command
(does nothing in real life, calm down, Clippy)
sudo apt-get install --purge windows-exorcism -y sudo systemctl stop windows.service sudo systemctl disable windows.service sudo rm -rf /mnt/windows /dev/windows /var/log/windows
echo "Windows has been banished to the Shadow Realm." echo "All hail the Tux."
cdoublejj@reddit (OP)
ALL HAIL!!!
Secret_Account07@reddit
Really anytime something like this happens one of 2 things happens.
1) it demonstrates there are alternatives. Helps innovate and can push other countries/orgs to consider doing the same
2) its a disaster. Lots of money wasted, nothing but issues, and just cements that the big options we have now are it. Now anyone else will use this is an example to not deviate.
I’m hoping it’s option 1 because any chance of making OS companies, talking to you Microsoft!, reconsider their virtual monopoly and how safe it is is a good thing. MS gets away with murder because what are you going to do? Not like you have a choice! Or do you….
cdoublejj@reddit (OP)
Why not both? ¯\(ツ)/¯
decrisp1252@reddit
I can’t help but feel like something’s going to go wrong.
Don’t get me wrong, it’s a great initiative and I’m all for using Linux, but I think people are vastly underestimating how much work this would need. I work for local government in the UK and we have about 10000 full time employees, and moving to Linux would be a nightmare. It’s not as simple as just installing Ubuntu on our laptops. We have about 200 applications (roughly) that people use. No chance they’re all going to run smoothly with Linux, even with Wine’s improvements.
What about Active Directory, keeping all of our user accounts, OUs, groups, policies etc. synced up in one place? There are other solutions that Linux uses but if an organisation is massive, moving it over and configuring it would be a massive task. And that’s assuming the staff installing Linux know about how to reimplement something when they’ve used AD their entire career.
What about employees who have used Windows their entire life. Some are not particularly tech literate. Do you want them to completely drop everything and relearn how to do basic tasks like send an email?
As much as I hate to say it, but part of the reason companies and governments use big tech companies is because they have the capacity to provide training, documentation, troubleshooting and all sorts of services that would just disappear if they move over.
And how much is this going to cost? Sure, Linux itself is free but moving your entire infrastructure, which has been evolving in one ecosystem for 30-40 years, retraining staff, finding alternative applications that work on Linux or troubleshooting when things break, these all cost money. At least here in the UK, local government is already over budget.
Don’t get me wrong, it’s an awesome initiative, and we definitely need to reduce our reliance on companies like microslop, because they are completely unpredictable and actively making their products worse. Also I appreciate that in the long run, we could save a lot of money by using FOSS instead of proprietary solutions, and the contributions the French government can make to FOSS could be incredible, but these are things that have to be considered.
cdoublejj@reddit (OP)
interesting! i've never thought of it as installing unbuntu to laptops, hence there being an initiative, i see that as panning a head and looking client server relations.
for brevity i'm copy pasting my last response
having worked with all sorts of orgs it will only get easier as time moves on as more and more business software move to web app in the browser or run in the cloud. dont get me wrong the IRS got windows xp support and updates till 2019 due to legacy software. though these days wine can at times run legacy software that windows can not. also we will see where Winboat goes in coming years. some mad lad got Photoshop working in a test build of wine a month ago. obviously i'm hopeful
So too engage you, a lot of gov,law,enterprise i've dealt with especially the prior, most don't even know windows!!! IN FACT I WILL ADD THIS!!!! Have you SEEN WINDOWS LATELY!!?? sorry i'm fired up! WINDOWS DOESN'T EVEN LOOK LIKE WINDOWS!!!!!
I have to show life long windows user how to use 11. have you seen the removal and copy past!!!?? THEY FINALLY added the words "copy" and "paste" back to the right click menu cause no could figure out their damn hieroglyphs!!!!! Microslops UI has been down hill since win8, at least as far as life long windows users go. they use IMPLICIT UI, as in hidden and implied you know the current "in thing" vs EXPLICIT where there is obviously outlined buttons with shading, ugly but accessible to all
/microslop rant (NOT AIMED AT YOU JUST VENTING)
also they have pretty good windows style UIs for linux, also checkout Zorin OS and KDE!
My questions for you if i haven't offended you with my crappy rants. Are you orgs/clinets still using windows executable or have they switched to web app in the past 10 years? if win exe, is it XP era stuff?
yes cost!!! it certinaly wouldn't be an instant savings there would be a investment and in the next decade, a savings in the long term. migrations, dev time, user training, etc etc (IMHOmeet are either UI literate or "self proclaimed technology dumb") and need training anyways
linux desktop can be joined to AD these days, infact AD is based on unix LDAP and kerbos anyways! MS just put cool GUI and extra features in it and build windows to follow GPO. in the linux world you'd use scripts or something like SALT to make up for GPO policy push for software and printers.
I hope i haven't been too much of an ass, i actually do enjoy the debate and push back, i think it's the only to bring up conversation on real challenges. i think uhh....stroinator,.....45 drives is hosting ay early meet up with industry people and youtube titans to have yearly talks aobut the short falls of FOSS software now that linux desktop and proxmox/linux KVM are moving to replace VMware and windows in the gaming/creators spaces and SMB/SOHO spaces
man i'd love to pick your brain on the environments you've seen you probably have good bead on what the situation/battle field is like!!!
segagamer@reddit
I never understood why they would fuck around with Linux and not just use FreeBSD
cdoublejj@reddit (OP)
hard core
walkalongtheriver@reddit
For....endpoints? When's the last time you ran BSD on a laptop? Linux is so, so much more supported in terms of drivers and everything for endpoints it's not funny.
Hell FreeBSD I think it was only recently announced an initiative to improve on that front (just this year) because they know how awful it is.
Not to mention Linux has many immutable distros and I'm not sure BSD has anything like that.
segagamer@reddit
Sounds like something France could join in on!
That's because Linux for endpoints is "messier" than FreeBSD, with lots of things glued together in ways that don't necessarily work well - and is why there's lots of duplication with included software with many distros. It just feels really "home labby" as opposed to a production OS.
Not all of them mind - like Red Hat of course and distros higher up the chain like Debian/Fedora etc feel less like this but there's a lot of "crap" distros out there.
macrohard_certified@reddit
Instead of Linux, they could try migrating to ReactOS, it's an open-source OS compatible with Windows programs. The user friction would be lower.
segagamer@reddit
I don't understand why they're wasting time with Linux distro's and instead focus on a BSD OS.
Wasn't the saying "BSD is for people who like Unix, Linux is for kids who hate Windows"?
nelmaloc@reddit
The *BSD have a tenth of the support GNU/Linux has. You might be able to use them as a UNIX workstation, but not as a Windows substitute.
tnoy@reddit
ReactOS isn't a viable option. It's primary target is XP-era Windows and doesn't support what would be expected from a modern Windows system. It doesn't even support .NET 4.6.
RCTID1975@reddit
This is like back in the 90s and early 2000s when "just run wine. It'll allow you to run windows programs" was the Linux "solution"
This conversation is 30 years old, and although the names change, the reality doesn't.
mirrax@reddit
And honestly just run Windows apps on Wine is still a more pragmatically functional solution than ReactOS over 20 years later.
RCTID1975@reddit
Agreed. My point however is that there's always a "solution" to windows apps on Linux, but none of them are actually feasible or sensical in a business environment.
mirrax@reddit
Right but the comparison is between completely unmanagable and clunky, distasteful, but possible. Linux desktop can be an enterprise managed device with identity / policy and the a "Windows" app deployable on Wine through the config management tool of choice.
KAugsburger@reddit
Even the developers of ReactOS describe it as in ALPHA ... and therefore NOT ready for every day use. They just don't have the resources to get it to a level of compatibility where it a viable replacement for most orgs. It is hard to see them ever getting to that point unless they can get sustained sponsorship of many millions of dollars over years to dramatically accelerate the development.
cdoublejj@reddit (OP)
lol, react os is a fancy but, impressive development alpha, it lacks most major subsystems.
AHrubik@reddit
I wish them the best of luck. If they've got buy in at the highest levels they might very well succeed.
Romano16@reddit
Besides France, is this what most governments are leaning on doing? Even the U.S.?
RyeonToast@reddit
US gov has giant contracts with MS, not just for Windows, but for M365 and some management tools. US gov, as a whole, isn't going to flip anytime soon.
KAugsburger@reddit
I haven't heard of much interest in using Linux in US government agencies outside of some scientific research agencies where open source software is common. There is a lot of institutional inertia from staff who have spent decades using MS Office and other Windows applications. You would have to spend a lot of time and money getting staff up to speed on the new software.
pdp10@reddit
Apparently the U.S. Department of Defense is Red Hat's single largest customer. But that's more server than desktop.
nerdyviking88@reddit
for a lot of workloads linux won the server spaces a decade or more ago. Desktop tho is a shit show
LeakyAssFire@reddit
Not in the U.S.. Microsoft has their GCC space for Gov and supporting industries; civilian and defense.
Windows will never go away here.
jmnugent@reddit
I can tell you as someone who has worked in IT since 1996,. and spent the last 20 years or so working in "small city gov" (in the USA).
.. there's no way in hell pretty much any US city is going to wholesale "move to Linux". Just not going to happen.
The last place I worked,.. our "software repository" (basically a network folder where we kept all our Install packages and various App documentation etc.. counted over 3,000 unique pieces of software. And many of those were Windows-only,.. and or relied on things that were Windows only.
Even setting that aside,. most organizations are going to standardize on certain hardware (most place I've worked standardized on DELL,. but whatever).. so whatever "hardware standards" you land on.. need to meet certain supportability. There's really no way to navigate that without Windows.
cdoublejj@reddit (OP)
most lean on US tech, except china
DeifniteProfessional@reddit
Like Germany and nobody else.
scandii@reddit
it is political, the US and by proxy American companies is currently unstable, actively endorsing dictatorships and open but unfair elections.
add to the mix the openly hostile public foreign policy of the US towards the EU and it is even more fuel to the flame.
Xerxero@reddit
Are there proper AD replacements? All I hear is that Samba is just not up to the task
srekkas@reddit
FreeIPA is very good for linux user management. It doesnt have gpo, but have selinux, sudo, ssh keys managamenent, etc. Good certificate authority, i SSLed my homelab with it automagicaly. Used certmonger, acme companion, proxmox too suport acme client for certs.
I dont particulary like AD GPO tough.
browngray@reddit
We run a 20/40/40 split of Windows/Mac/Linux laptops. We primarily use Google Workspace with 365 licenses handed out on a strict as-needed basis.
It doesn't even have to be a straight up replacement. You can bridge IPA with a trust to your existing domain so Linux machines can join and login with AD creds. Basically leaving DCs to be swapped out last.
And that's not counting the heaps of cloud identity services that bundle in endpoint management that are already cross platform (search term to find these is "workforce identity"). Many just need a small agent installed on the device or work with the existing device MDM enforcement for work phones/tablets.
Mrhiddenlotus@reddit
Go France go
hugolini@reddit
I'm all down to detach from MS, but this is potentially a horrible idea
cyberentomology@reddit
I don’t think the French quite understood how defenestration is supposed to work.
hadrabap@reddit
The problem with Windows is that when you throw them out of a window they return back by a backdoor. 🫢
cdoublejj@reddit (OP)
de-WhatWhat?
Material-Water-9610@reddit
The only issue is really the 30+ bracket who like Ms Word. The office suite is all that keeps my clients from the switch, sure there is alternatives but people like what they know and switching them is a pain but it will get easier as tech savvy age into work
twotonsosalt@reddit
The reality is that Office and particularly Excel have been one of Microsoft’s killer apps for decades. Excel is still by a mile the gold standard for spreadsheet apps. Open source has tried, but still hasn’t created an office suite that is effectively competes against Office.
amw3000@reddit
Google Sheets is very powerful. Excel is only a golden standard as people refuse to learn Sheets but from a technical standpoint, Sheets blows away Excel.
netsysllc@reddit
there may be places sheets is better, but saying it is better than Desktop Excel is pretty short sighted and ignorant.
amw3000@reddit
Give me some examples.
If your company forced you to ditch Excel and use Sheets, what would be your biggest issue? (ie I can't do this in Sheets)
twotonsosalt@reddit
Excel is much better at data analysis. Power Query is fantastic. As far as I know there’s nothing in sheets that pulls data from external sources natively. Add in Power Pivot to that and you have an excellent modeling tool. Again, nothing in Sheets that compares to it.
Excel can handle much larger datasets.
There are a lot of specialized functions in Excel that Sheets doesn’t have. Aggregate is a good example of this.
For basic users Sheets is fine, for advanced users that need to work with large datasets, do complex financial calculations or data modeling, Excel is far superior.
crackanape@reddit
Google Sheets can definitely pull in data from external sources, we have many workflows built around that.
twotonsosalt@reddit
You can but not always natively. The source support in Power Query is crazy. Many sources like SQL, SAP, or Oracle require either scripts or third party plugins with Sheets. These things are built in to Power Query, at most you need to add a local ODBC connector for the source.
redstarduggan@reddit
Integration with ERP and other software/services etc (itself another issue).
Power Query as mentioned.
Excel is a masterpiece and while it's not always the best or even appropriate tool for the job it's doing, getting people off it and on to another spreadsheet application is simply not an option in most cases I suspect.
Maximum_Bandicoot_94@reddit
Going to sheets takes you off MS dependency and puts you in Google dependency. Defeats the entire point.
I moved off G Sheets for home stuff to Libra Calc and have not really had problems with the basic stuff.
ZippySLC@reddit
I get your point about MS and Google dependency with Excel and Sheets, but you're now working in Libra Calc's dependency. If something happens to that you can move to another product but you easily just do the same from Excel and Sheets.
.xls and .xlsx are open enough file formats that you're not beholden to any of those programs to open and work with them.
xelivous@reddit
power query is extremely important for doing anything even moderately complex. more often than not I don't even bother with formulas at all and do everything inside of powerquery instead for most non-destructive data manipulation, then later pull the data out using xlookup or otherwise into "report" pages if i need to. being able to pull in data from everywhere (including random folders on a network drive, ldap, random json apis) and multiplex it together in a structured way is powerful. in google sheets you're stuck manually importing everything, trying to script up javascript extensions to import something, and then forced to use gigantic formulas everywhere and possibly solidifying the data later on so it's not easily repeatable.
table support finally landed in sheets "recently" but it doesn't propagate formulas down the columns so you still have to use incredibly jank arrayformula everywhere or similar, and still can't easily reference columns/rows by their names. This makes them incredibly cumbersome to work with and prone to errors that would never happen otherwise.
i use desktop excel constantly at work (when i'm not shoving stuff into sql/powerbi or other custom programs), and google sheets almost exclusively at home (+ looker studio). if they figure out a way to improve tables to not be jank, and some way to actually implement something like power query I could see it being equivalent enough at least. but it's not there yet.
Nu-Hir@reddit
It's been a while since I've checked, but aren't some commands different or work differently in Sheets vs Excel? Last I remember Sheets and Libre Calc are based off of Corel Calc commands instead of off of Excel.
twotonsosalt@reddit
There are functions in excel that simply don’t have equivalents in sheets. Most of these are used in the finance world or are for data modeling.
Nu-Hir@reddit
That's what I though. I've had spreadsheets that would work in Excel but wouldn't work in Sheets or Calc. They weren't from the Finance world, they were damage calculators for a game.
twotonsosalt@reddit
Math is math right :)
muh_cloud@reddit
On big business it's typically it's legacy VBA code written in 2005 that is central to a critical business workflow that can only run on desktop excel. Refactoring and redoing that workflow is a business cost and introduces risk, vs just sticking with the Office suite.
"no one ever got fired for buying IBM" type mindset
amw3000@reddit
I agree, those people fall under the category of people not wanting to learn Google Sheets / Apps Scripts.
I'm talking from a technical standpoint, not so much a business reason (ie costs too much to refactor, retain, etc)
twotonsosalt@reddit
Like I said in my other post. Excel is far ahead of sheets for data modeling and financial calculations. It’s not just legacy VBA or not wanting to learn new software.
admh574@reddit
That's part of the problem with Excel usage in itself. If people were using the correct tools from the start then there wouldn't be such a reliance on Excel now
cdoublejj@reddit (OP)
for one family member i just installed office 2016 on to PopOS with the PlayOnLinux app's automated installer script and an office 2016 iso
randomman87@reddit
That's cute and all but not suitable for government or enterprise.
If you use something that frequently updates behind an OS compatibility layer you're probably gonna have a bad time
cdoublejj@reddit (OP)
not sure i'm reading this right, (i went to American public school) what do you mean by compatibility layer and updates behind a compatibility layer?
ZippySLC@reddit
They mean that there are a lot of moving parts to make Office 2016 think that it's running on a Windows machine so that it will run in Pop_OS.
That said, I don't think you have to worry about Office 2016 updating (it's end of life software so it's not getting updates) so you only have to worry about whatever the PlayOnLinux installer did to make Office think it was running on Windows. If that changes it could potentially stop office from running.
That said, my personal feeling is that it's probably only a small risk.
randomman87@reddit
The application is not designed to run on Linux and Linux is not designed to run it. There is a software compatibility lately between the application and Linux that translates the applications requests from Windows > Linux and vice versa.
Any update to any component in that chain (application, compatibility layer, Linux) could introduce a bug. For Office 2016 that's not likely, it's EOL and fixed version now. But for enterprise software that is patched on monthly cadence it's possible and if it's a handful of users using it fine, but your whole company? Fuck that.
netsysllc@reddit
Excel still runs the world and there is nothing that even comes close as an alternative.
TiredButEnthusiastic@reddit
I suspect MS will solve that problem by themselves, since they seem dead set on abandoning all of the legacy desktop applications. They’re plucking up the courage to force new outlook - if that goes well, I could see them starting on the Crown Jewels like word and excel.
Itchy_Journalist_175@reddit
The french administration has been using LibreOffice for years. That drastically lowers the barrier to entry as most usage is LibreOffice, web browser, internal tools which will need to be Linux friendly and/or web based.
Lonely-Abalone-5104@reddit
I think could still use Linux desktops and use Microsoft online for those tools
bigredsun@reddit
The EU crusade against USA is only going to hurt Linux even more, it's the best way to coerce Canonical / other distros devs to implement ID verifications, age checks etc.
VeryRareHuman@reddit
Haven't they tried this for like 15 years ago? I hope they stick to this time. Users are going to hate it.
cdoublejj@reddit (OP)
MS head flew over and promised to build MS office in Munich whihc they did and they went back to MS, and then recently in 2024 they said they plan to go to Linux again.
pdp10@reddit
Technically there are only details, not obstacles.
Microsoft used to invest, literally, in making sure there were no high-profile uses of operating systems other than Windows, on PC-compatible hardware. IBM had even effectively killed off its own OS/2 in an infamous 1995 deal, and wasn't using OS/2 internally except for embedded purposes like AS/400 consoles.
Most notoriously, the mayor of Munich, Germany, was allegedly subject to strenuous lobbying after the city accidentally became a cause celebre over its choice of computing products:
Commenters should bear in mind that Munich mostly originally chose against the Microsoft stack for the simple business reason that upgrading to the new version of Windows would have required a very large concurrent investment to update their desktop hardware. Observers usually choose to cast these things as highly philosophical choices, but they're just really not. They're business decisions with a longer time horizon than some other business decisions.
cdoublejj@reddit (OP)
well if they are doing it to be cheap thats PROBABLY a no go cause you'll need invest for developer time for apps and training and migration etc etc it could be cheaper in the long with the funds and investment in the beginning.
there is still the issue of Microslop shitting the bed and them selves every other week atm.
Firecracker048@reddit
This is gonna be fun see how they deal with legacy systems that are running in a damp basement on windows XP and can run on nothing else
cdoublejj@reddit (OP)
that MAY be more doable these days, wine has advanced leaps and bounds now that Valve software has been pumping both developer man hours and money in to wine for several years now.
also Code Weavers can port stuff over if you can afford it and it's not toooo difficult.
i know it's not as easy as installing office 2016 in wine but, in theory if you have the right libraries.
also in then ear future options like WinBoat may be viable options. Hell maybe even L1T forums Looking Glass.
FatBook-Air@reddit
They'll probably be there a while longer. This is not a vanity project where they want to be off American technology for no reason. A Windows XP device that is running fine and not getting updates is not much of a threat to a European country in the short-term.
Europe wants to get off American technology for new devices and services, in case the Americans attack them. They also don't want to send new money to the Americans, since the Americans may use that cash to attack Europe both militarily and virtually. So an existing device isn't much of a problem; new devices are.
SoggyGrayDuck@reddit
Personally I expected Chromebooks or something since everything is cloud based now
FatBook-Air@reddit
Chromebooks are at least as American as Windows.
scandii@reddit
they're doing it to detatch from American technology, so quite weird expectation.
genericuser642@reddit
Conservatives will never grasp the damage they have done to this country. What a disaster.
CollegeFootballGood@reddit
Year of Linux
sonicc_boom@reddit
Worth a shot