It's... an admirable goal, but it pretty much remains to be seen if "France" follows through.
Previous attempts to "ditch Windows" have not ended that well. Munich in 2003, the entire Federal German government in 2009, Munich again in 2013, Munich again in 2021, and so on. Most common end-result: back to Windows.
Breaking points are typically the lack of an "Office 2016" compatible suite, lack of "Adobe PDF" tooling, and a mishmash of legacy apps. The latter seems trivially addressable by a "Remote Desktop/RemoteApps" environment, but there are definitely issues, mostly surrounding printing and clipboard handling.
All of that can be solved, but definitely requires more funding and, crucially, coordination, beyond "Open Source Cures All."
mixmastamyk 3 minutes ago [-]
If they only diverted 10% of the budget from MS to solving issues they’d have had a solution a decade or two ago.
BLKNSLVR 19 minutes ago [-]
I hope it succeeds and I hope they document the experience and invite interested parties to see how it was setup and how (well) it works in order to encourage as many governments and organisations as possible to do the same.
yibers 12 minutes ago [-]
I am saying this as a very long time Windows user, and it saddens me. Politics aside, from a pure technichal, functional, privacy and UX perspective, the case for changing over from Windows to Linux is getting stronger by the day.
lithos 6 minutes ago [-]
If you picked XFCE as your front end you get WinXP functionality, with the nice things from win10/11 (start menu search that's actually local only, multiple desktop workspaces, and graphical settings/updates I've only needed to go to command line twice in four years).
1970-01-01 8 minutes ago [-]
>The French government did not provide a specific timeline for the switchover, or which distributions it was considering.
Do they realize they need to pick a LTS distro now? You can't mix and match distros without having a massive IT and user retraining budgets.
I'm sure there's a barely functioning business critical app that runs exclusively on Windows NT in their administration that would beg to differ
BLKNSLVR 44 seconds ago [-]
Ideology may actually be the best way to cut off legacy bullshit like this. There's passion-energy, which really gets the creative problem-solving juices flowing.
psychoslave 4 minutes ago [-]
It can be ported to React under a single prompt by now, don’t you know?
But certainly we are already at stage where Windows NT can be regenerated on the fly from a prompt anyway, aren’t we?
Otherwise, there is also ReactOS that could be leveraged on for that kind of scenario. I wonder where it would stand by now if all the money that governments around the world spent in Microsoft license would have been invested in it instead.
justinclift 2 minutes ago [-]
Sure. But if can can successfully convert 99% of their computers to non-Windows and non-Mac, that'd still be a massive win.
dleslie 11 minutes ago [-]
Canada has been using and developing FOSS for a while now.
There's still a great deal of Windows usage, but hopefully that will phase out with the passage of time. Canada's bureaucracy moves slowly, at the pace of generational attrition. It won't be until the last GenX retires that they could even meaningfully begin transitioning the average office worker away from Windows.
Wish the Bangladeshi government did this instead of relying on pirated copies of Windows 7
BLKNSLVR 17 minutes ago [-]
At least they know enough to have stuck with the outright best version of Windows.
heyflyguy 15 minutes ago [-]
man, that's great - but can you imagine some bureaucrat lifer having to adapt to this?
Teever 17 minutes ago [-]
I’ve commented on this before but you’ll know France is serious when there are Linux ports of Solidworks and Catia.
France has a real edge over American companies by being the dominant player in the CAD world, it’s always surprised me that they nerfed that advantage by tying to an American operating system.
carefree-bob 8 minutes ago [-]
Autocad has 39% market share in CAD, Solidworks has 14% market share, and Fusion 360 has 9%.
None of this is a major national advantage for any side. It's bizarre to think that the US or France would treat this as some kind of mark of national influence, since if anything happens to these top three vendors, there are lots of other vendors waiting in the wings. It's not like a national oil reserve, where it's important that you have a reserve of CAD software available for your engineers.
We're going to keep seeing this due to destabilization and political changes in the US. It drives nationalization elsewhere, even among allies.
_verandaguy 24 minutes ago [-]
It doesn't help that Microsoft seems to be doing everything in its power to alienate Windows users.
recursivegirth 12 minutes ago [-]
This, I've officially been off Windows for a few months and will not be looking back. Microsoft has put a bad taste in my mouth as a developer.
By luck and happenstance, I tuned into the Omacon conference this morning and my perspective on personal computing very much aligns with theirs. Would encourage a least watch the kickoff keynote if the VODs drop.
htx80nerd 14 minutes ago [-]
this has been happening on and off for ~10+ yrs. MS cost are too high and you need more expensive computers to have the MS sub-par experience.
the main thing that keeps people locked in is (a) "Im use to windows" and (b) MS gives them some special contract to keep them.
moron4hire 16 minutes ago [-]
I wish the US Government would do the same
lousken 11 minutes ago [-]
Now nextcloud and libreoffice should give up the stupid drama and focus on beating microsoft.
AtlasBarfed 9 minutes ago [-]
The fact that open source is a national security concern should have been something that a crazy orange man should have triggered.
Thus was obvious decades ago. And open source is the key model for collective development in a secure manner for disparate countries to secure their software base.
Alas, I fear they will only concentrate on the server side. The securing of the desktop should be a parallel concern as well, to help prevent your citizenry from becoming DDOS slaves.
otabdeveloper4 16 minutes ago [-]
What? Again?
I lost count, it's how many attempts again? Fill me in.
icfly2 13 minutes ago [-]
The gendarmerie already switched.
Only place I know that went back to MS is Munich city council. After MS put a big research office in the town.
forty 11 minutes ago [-]
As far as I know it was successful for the gendarmerie and assemblée nationale for exemple. There are many public entities and apparently each migration is news worthy
abetaha 8 minutes ago [-]
[dead]
greton7 35 minutes ago [-]
[dead]
Rendered at 16:02:43 GMT+0000 (Coordinated Universal Time) with Vercel.
Previous attempts to "ditch Windows" have not ended that well. Munich in 2003, the entire Federal German government in 2009, Munich again in 2013, Munich again in 2021, and so on. Most common end-result: back to Windows.
Breaking points are typically the lack of an "Office 2016" compatible suite, lack of "Adobe PDF" tooling, and a mishmash of legacy apps. The latter seems trivially addressable by a "Remote Desktop/RemoteApps" environment, but there are definitely issues, mostly surrounding printing and clipboard handling.
All of that can be solved, but definitely requires more funding and, crucially, coordination, beyond "Open Source Cures All."
Do they realize they need to pick a LTS distro now? You can't mix and match distros without having a massive IT and user retraining budgets.
But certainly we are already at stage where Windows NT can be regenerated on the fly from a prompt anyway, aren’t we?
Otherwise, there is also ReactOS that could be leveraged on for that kind of scenario. I wonder where it would stand by now if all the money that governments around the world spent in Microsoft license would have been invested in it instead.
0: https://www.canada.ca/en/government/system/digital-governmen...
1: https://events19.linuxfoundation.org/wp-content/uploads/2017...
2: https://github.com/canada-ca/
There's still a great deal of Windows usage, but hopefully that will phase out with the passage of time. Canada's bureaucracy moves slowly, at the pace of generational attrition. It won't be until the last GenX retires that they could even meaningfully begin transitioning the average office worker away from Windows.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/ottawa/federal-phoenix-pay-sy...
France has a real edge over American companies by being the dominant player in the CAD world, it’s always surprised me that they nerfed that advantage by tying to an American operating system.
None of this is a major national advantage for any side. It's bizarre to think that the US or France would treat this as some kind of mark of national influence, since if anything happens to these top three vendors, there are lots of other vendors waiting in the wings. It's not like a national oil reserve, where it's important that you have a reserve of CAD software available for your engineers.
By luck and happenstance, I tuned into the Omacon conference this morning and my perspective on personal computing very much aligns with theirs. Would encourage a least watch the kickoff keynote if the VODs drop.
the main thing that keeps people locked in is (a) "Im use to windows" and (b) MS gives them some special contract to keep them.
Thus was obvious decades ago. And open source is the key model for collective development in a secure manner for disparate countries to secure their software base.
Alas, I fear they will only concentrate on the server side. The securing of the desktop should be a parallel concern as well, to help prevent your citizenry from becoming DDOS slaves.
I lost count, it's how many attempts again? Fill me in.
Only place I know that went back to MS is Munich city council. After MS put a big research office in the town.