So y'all just won a whole country, huh?

yes, which got voted off because it's not a dictatorship. I'm not saying the EU only has sensible ideas, I am saying that ideas like these can't just be forced on people willy nilly.

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SheriffBartholomew@reddit

And age verification. Or was that just the UK?

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Felfedezni@reddit

The EU is increasingly hostile to human rights like free speech. What if they start requiring the use of specific approved distros for private businesses if they want to do government contracts?

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bikes-n-math@reddit

Your = requiring the use of specific approved distros for private businesses if they want to do government contracts

This happens all the time.

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FedRAMP, DISA STIG...plenty of government control on what OS, software, and configurations are to be used by companies to meet contractual obligations. This is the US side, but no doubt the EU has the equivalent on their side of the pond.

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armlessphelan@reddit

That's not a free speech issue.

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Antroz22@reddit

Do you even know what "free speech" means?

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LiahKnight@reddit

Then the private business can.... not do them. That isn't a violation of anything. You have the right to refuse, and the government contracts will go to someone who doesn't want to refuse. Being able to request your own terms in an agreement is not a free speech violation.

What matters is if they start pushing it on people as requirement to operate as a business at all. On personal users, etc.

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hornethacker97@reddit

You do not know what you’re taking about. There are already requirements like this for any government contract, all the way down to the size of county or parish contracts.

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Niru687@reddit

Suure, like the issues with GrapheneOS or Telegram on France.

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Vanillas_Guy@reddit

People will come up with other ways to share information with one another.

I find this question very interesting because we are seeing "free market" billionaires like elon musk or Larry Ellison buying platforms and censoring them to their liking.

No matter what, censorship is still a possibility. As long as people want to share information theyll figure out ways to do it. If a government restricting something were enough to stop it, there would be zero drug addicts in america and most 18 year olds would have never tasted alcohol or smoked cigarettes. If people want something badly enough they'll be creative enough to figure out a workaround.

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anotheridiot-@reddit

People in the US are blind to corporate abuse.

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LocalDry3740@reddit

People in the world are blind to this. You have those who are blind, called "normal" and those who are aware and society calls them "ridiculous" or "extremes"

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gdf8gdn8@reddit

Just call it Mandriva

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zabby39103@reddit

Nothing has its hooks in you like Windows does, the stuff IT departments can do that's just straight up 1st party Windows functionality is nuts. The 3rd party stuff, even worse.

But anyway, this is the government, not for home computers, and if large amounts of people start using Linux for desktop office work its office ecosystem becomes better and that's good for everyone.

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bionicjoey@reddit

It's for government computers. They want control. They aren't forcing citizens to use Linux

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jean_dudey@reddit

That’s an accurate description for Android

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CantankerousOrder@reddit

Bro tell me you don’t understand French people and their positions on liberte’ without telling me you don’t understand French people and their positions on liberte’.

They’d burn the government to ground if they tried that shit.

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LocalDry3740@reddit

I mean the local government of a country is using it. Unless it is somehow forced on every citizen, it can't censor anything. And if its being forced on citizens well I hope they rise up against it. Which I believe the French would because they are good at that.

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Taningia-danae@reddit

Already done

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SheriffBartholomew@reddit

It's crazy how many of us have gone from loving tech companies to hating them more than most things in the world. The amount of goodwill that Google was able to burn in less than a decade is absolutely amazing. They went from one of the most loved companies on the planet to one of the least trusted in a matter of years. Let's not even get into how Musk managed to become radioactive.

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ImpressiveHat4710@reddit

I always wonder just how much tax payer money is wasted on commercial licenses. Especially for operating system and general office. IMO this is poor stewardship of public funds.

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roundart@reddit

Have they disclosed what DE they are going to use?

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KnowZeroX@reddit

We have an answer, the DE they are going to use is KDE.

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Dejhavi@reddit

Nope...nothing is decided yet until late 2026:

The Interministerial Directorate for Digital Affairs (DINUM) will coordinate an interministerial plan to reduce dependence on non-European suppliers. Each ministry (including operators) must formalize its own plan before autumn, focusing on the following areas: workstations, collaboration tools, antivirus software, artificial intelligence, databases, virtualization, and network equipment. These action plans will provide a better understanding of the State's needs in the digital industry sector, which has significant strengths that should be leveraged through public procurement.

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DirectorDirect1569@reddit

that's what i wanted to post. Everyone is too optimistic.

Don't forget we will have another president, so a new government next year in france. In my opinion, they will do nothing until the elections. It's always like that.

And we have pro USA candidates.

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a_library_socialist@reddit

They will lose. Only the centrists are pro-US.

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DirectorDirect1569@reddit

The far right admires Trump too. They have lots of electors. I don't want to have a political debate, but I hope you are right, it's worrying.

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natheo972@reddit

I strongly hope Melenchon will be the next president, even if he have all of the classic media against him.

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Own-Replacement8@reddit

This doesn't seem like a big ticket item that the next president will try to stop.

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matt95110@reddit

Knowing how governments work they’ll pick the most obscure and least supported one they can.

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Dejhavi@reddit

I think Fedora is a strong candidate

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natheo972@reddit

The obvious choice would be OpenMandriva or Mageia.

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If_you_will@reddit

Aren't they trying to lessen reliance on American tech companies?

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nonaveris@reddit

Gentoo?

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matt95110@reddit

ChromeOS uses it so I guess it’s pretty widespread.

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breakerfall@reddit

The only end-user case for Gentoo is where you have unlimited resources to build it for specific known hardware ahead of time, so that makes sense.

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KnowZeroX@reddit

You don't need an unlimited amount of resources, it is a good option in general when you are selling hardware, because you have thousands of computers with same exact hardware. So you can optimize it for that hardware. Even android is similar where every rom is custom built for the hardware.

It just less useful for people downloading from the web with all kinds of hardware, because you have no clue what hardware they have so you give up optimization for general usability.

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breakerfall@reddit

I agree.

I honestly haven't tried Gentoo since the Pentium 3 days when it was actually feasible to compile and get a running system in less than a day. I have only heard anecdotally that that's not currently the case.

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KnowZeroX@reddit

Well Gentoo isn't how it used to be, now you can get precompiled binaries too if you want, or self compile.

Though I am not sure how long it takes to compile everything from scratch, it likely depends on your system. If anything it likely is faster as hardware has become much better to begin with. Processors got more powerful, ram is faster, nvme ssds instead of slow hdds. Not to mention optimizations in compilers, linkers and caching common libraries.

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monocasa@reddit

Watch them pick SUSE, then back out of the whole thing once they realize SUSE is German.

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DirectorDirect1569@reddit

I don't know if it's the truth, I read somewhere that it would be a nixos based distro.

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OverCategory6046@reddit

Just imagine French bureaucracy running on Hannah Montana Linux or Suicide Linux

Kafka would rise from his grave.

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imakycha@reddit

GendBuntu uses GNOME, so my guess is expanding GendBuntu to be FranBuntu and probably keeping GNOME.

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KnowZeroX@reddit

We don't know that yet, because at the time there were different goals. Here their goal is to maximize the tech stack in Europe. Another issue to consider is that when you are building for one agency it is one thing, but when you need changes for multiple agencies? Will gnome take their upstream patches or will they need to maintain extensions that break every update?

In that sense, they may choose to go with KDE or Cinnamon which are based in the Europe and are less my way or the highway.

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Desertcow@reddit

GNOME is pretty popular among organizations because you can't break it trying to customize it

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PezLuv@reddit

I'm putting money on xfce lol

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Potential_Penalty_31@reddit

The new field of battle

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tjorben123@reddit

1916: battle of verdun

2026: battle of distros

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rumblpak@reddit

Whatever reason you need is good enough but Linux is primarily supported by US tech companies at this point so… this feels more like they were gonna do it and an opportunity presented itself to be anti-American given the current world issues.

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KnowZeroX@reddit

You are confusing "not being dependent" with "isolationism", not the same thing.

open source is contribution to society, even countries like north korea that are sanctioned have RedStar Linux.

Their goal isn't about isolating themselves from anything american, their goal is if US cuts them off due to disagreement during negotiations, they can still continue to operate.

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scalareye@reddit

Not sure how it's anti American really then

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rumblpak@reddit

The messaging still exists, even if it’s untrue.

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meditonsin@reddit

The difference being that those companies supply code for Linux that anyone can use, no strings attached whatsoever. The ballpark of relying on those companies to contribute code and the one of being a direct customer of theirs are not even on the same continent.

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rumblpak@reddit

That’s not entirely true, they all offer service contracts to companies and governments alike. Unless they specifically selected a European distro (of which only Suse comes to mind and they’ve been trying to sell to an American company for years), they’d likely still fall under the umbrella of American oversight.

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mazarax@reddit

Overdue!

I believe the City of Munich is on Linux since the 1990s? Covered by what was then the tech-news: slashdot org.

EU should flat-out ban Microsoft.

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Kruug@reddit

Remember when Munich started going to Linux in 2004...and then went back to Windows in 2017?

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KnowZeroX@reddit

But how many European HQs can they move? And now EU is more sensitive to foreign election interference.

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pablocael@reddit

Linux is a miracle. Imagine if we would depend only on shitty big corps? Also, linux is better than windows.

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I_AM_GODDAMN_BATMAN@reddit

Please be a domino effect.

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SRTbobby@reddit

I'd like to be paid half a mil to help them transition. Not gonna happen but one can hope

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knowone1313@reddit

Moving away from MS is good considering Win 10 being the last major version of Windows was a lie in pretty short order.

The biggest issue with Linux is lack of support and drivers. Users are afraid of it because it's different.

Individuals need to stop using Social media, FB, Ig, X/twit, etc if it's owned by a billionaire jackass trying to mess with politics to get richer. If people stop using their sites and services, their stock will crash and they'll lose their power in politics.

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Kruug@reddit

That claim was only ever made by a single dev at a conference.

It was never Microsoft's official stance.

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TheWesternDevil@reddit

Kinda seems like a bad thing to me. That's a whole lot of lawmakers, and evil politicians switching to linux. Those kinds of people are bad for everything. I dont understand linux, or operating systems, but I do understand politicians, and they will do everything in their power to regulate, monetize, and control everything they can, and they will destroy everything they can't.

Hopefully something like that isn't possible, but they are going to try their hardest to destroy it.

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GoccuAU@reddit

A good choice but I would think government employees access large spreadsheets on the regular. Not great on open source spreadsheet apps. Large data sets seem to crash the apps every time. My continued frustration.

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KnifeNovice789@reddit

Is it me.or is that a Mac in the picture

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creamcolouredDog@reddit

Until Microsoft opens an office in Paris, and lobbies people in office to switch again, like they did in Germany.

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RizzKiller@reddit

They better have their own shit together to finally do something good with it

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Alert_Pipe_3232@reddit

Omg liberté?

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RedditJack888@reddit

Good. Windows have lost the plot for years

This is what happens when your ego and greed surpasses the value of your services (not the value of your brand or stock value) you get replaced immediately by something cheaper, more accessible, more efficient, but most importantly, legitimately useful without baggage.

Let freedom reign on the physical and digital front always ladies and gentlemen. If we have to make it happen, let's make it happen today.

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cutebluedragongirl@reddit

Freeeeeeeeeedooooommmm!1

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beankylla@reddit

Note that the French gendarmerie (sort of police that belongs to the army but also helps / assists / serves civilians) migrated to Linux in 2008. There are also isolated initiatives pushing Linux adoption. (as well as setbacks)

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OverCategory6046@reddit

Given the gendarmes are part of the army, I'd imagine it's a military wide thing?

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argh523@reddit

It's technically part of the army, but they're really the regional police force for places that are not big enough to have their own police force.

Its responsibilities include policing smaller towns, suburbs and rural areas (around 51% of the French population and 96% of its territory), crowd and riot control, and criminal investigation, including cybercrime. By contrast, the National Police is a civilian law enforcement agency that is in charge of policing cities and larger towns.

Their role in the military is mostly that of, well, more policing:

These missions include:

Maritime policing

Security of airports, civil nuclear sites and military installations

Provision of military police services to the French military

...

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pezezin@reddit

Similar to the Spanish Guardia Civil then, interesting to know.

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mr_doms_porn@reddit

Yeah similar to the Canadian RCMP except the RCMP isn't a part of the military.

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Appropriate_Ad5511@reddit

Brazil is a pioneer in this kind of implementation

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HighLowsNoNos@reddit

French government has had Linux since 2008, it’s now just government wide

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SeasonOfSpice@reddit

North Korea too with Red Star OS.

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Appropriate_Ad5511@reddit

And now France, these linux commies are winning. 👀

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BadYaka@reddit

Nothing to do with US , vibecoded MS is just unreliable

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scalareye@reddit

If it were another country I'd agree but France has its own aircraft carriers and designs its own fighter jets instead of buying them from the US to remain free of US influence

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OneInACrowd@reddit

Also nukes. Unlike the UK, France's nuke program are entirely independent of the US

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scalareye@reddit

Yes they are nuclear powered aircraft carriers after all

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ywaltjs@reddit

it’s not done yet, but underway

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zeanox@reddit

i wonder what they will use. Some institutions in denmark are using nix with cinnamon while our libraries use some form of rebranded ubuntu.

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thank_burdell@reddit

Hon hon hon!

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makhnovist_roman@reddit

Technically Cuba has its own distro for government computers called Nova...but this isn't little old Cuba hehehe

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Deadz459@reddit

This is a win for everyone IMO

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Cannot_Believe_This@reddit

Fuck france

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Four_Muffins@reddit

Linux wins while Microsoft dozes!

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scalareye@reddit

Meanwhile Microsoft contributing to Linux because they can't have garbage in control of their server hardware

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JollyGoodDaySr@reddit

Their business support number leads to an AI that cannot understand the difference between P and E and when you ask the thing to transfer to a human it says No and tells you to have a nice day.

I would gladly accept sleeping over them actively destroying their OS and entire company. When they are "awake" they "re-write" their OS without a basic feature like moving the Taskbar to the top.

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DangerousAd7433@reddit

How is it Fr*nce?

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nonoimsomeoneelse@reddit

Everyone wins when the French surrender.

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S7relok@reddit

Nah, it's Trump's USA who surrender to Iran

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armlessphelan@reddit

The Indian government has their own version of Linux, too. Also, the UN has declared Fedora a Digital Public Good which is an initiative to make FOSS alternatives available globally. It's how I found Peertube, which is okay but needs more users.

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BatonRougeSlayer@reddit

Won? Where's my reward then?

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Swimming-Bite-4184@reddit

It's honesy surprising that most countries haven't prioritized getting independent operating systems and computing solutions for a long time. But I guess doing what is easy is easy.

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TheKipperRipper@reddit

Yay for France, boo for Tom's Hardware using LLMs for journalism. They're on the blocklist now.

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grimacefry@reddit

We'll probably see more nationalised distributions as countries recognize the importance of digital sovereignty. Red Star OS was just the beginning

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j-kells@reddit

99% of the internet is Linux, Microsoft owns the layer 8 user layer. 😂

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-turtl-@reddit

Well, that's a win! Or should a call it a lin?

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EquivalentPlatform17@reddit

Ouin

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venkattalks@reddit

reminds me of when half my office in 2022 suddenly wanted Ubuntu install sticks after one procurement mess, and now your title saying Linux won a whole country doesn't even sound that wild. Fedora KDE on my desktop and Debian on the homelab here, and honestly once governments get tired of license drama the penguin keeps sneaking in through the back door.

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IAmNotOMGhixD@reddit

Denmark is also more or less ditching Windows for Linux in their government section. Great move!

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DmitriRussian@reddit

I am not going to celebrate this as a win for the people of France.

This was just 4 months ago.. https://www.reddit.com/r/linux/s/39p06vCCjd

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