France's government is ditching Windows for Linux, says US tech a strategic risk
xda-developers.com369 points by pabs3 11 hours ago
369 points by pabs3 11 hours ago
The chain of facts makes me sad:
1. The French government announces its digital agency is to write a plan, by the end of the year, so that France could reduce its extra-European dependencies. The communiqué is wrapped up with minor facts (e.g. the digital agency is to switch to Linux on dozens of computers) and big promises from Ministers.
2. Various news sites state that "France is ditching Windows", at least in their titles.
3. On new aggregators, most people react to the titles. Some do read the articles. Very few realize it's about promises to act toward a vague goal, with an unknown calendar, and many political uncertainties.
I would have hoped for more cautious reactions. It's not a leading act, not a reason to be proud, not a example to follow. It's just words.
The French government already made similar promises in the past. Sometimes, it did happen, like the Gendarmerie (rural police) switching to a Linux distribution. Sometimes, it didn't, like the pact signed by the Army Ministry with Microsoft in 2022: many clauses are still secret, even the prices.
This is EU, what else do you expect? European officials saying they're ditching Windows has become a ritual:
https://www.linuxjournal.com/content/german-open-source-expe...:
> The German Foreign Office first moved over to Linux as a server platform in 2001... the Foreign Office of Germany made the announcement (translated news report) that it is migrating away from Linux back to Windows as its desktop solution.
https://interoperable-europe.ec.europa.eu/collection/open-so...:
> By December 2013, the city concluded the migration, with over 14,800 desktops running on LiMux... In November 2017, nearly four years after the conclusion of the migration, the Munich city council adopted a decision overhauling the move. All equipment was to be refitted with Windows 10 counterparts by 2020
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wienux:
> WIENUX[2] is a Debian-based Linux distribution developed by the City of Vienna in Austria... until 2008 when the download page was taken offline.
https://researchbriefings.files.parliament.uk/documents/POST...:
> Birmingham City Council piloted OSS on hundreds of desktops in its public libraries in 2005-6. It originally planned to install Linux ... but this was over-ambitious for the time frame of the project and compatibility problems meant that the open source OpenOffice (office suite) and Firefox (web browser) were eventually run on Windows XP
The LiMux/Munich saga was actually successful to a large degree. What happened is that Microsoft put enormous efforts into killing it. High level people like Steve ballmer and Bill Gates made personal visits to Munich officials to win them back, Microsoft put a headquarters in Bavaria, and there were huge concessions. It's about as far as you can get from the image of empty promises and no action.
Those attempts happened before the US really made such a concrete demonstration it was a security and strategic risk though. That was back in the good old days where they at least pretended to be strategic partners.
It's good to be sceptical, but the US really does present a clear danger to the EU and UK now (and the rest of the world). I'm hopeful that this will actually materialise this time, and that Munich and Birmingham and the others will have paved the way and built some expertise.
You could be more pointed than that. French secret service "leveraging" Palantir is a disgrace , we all know who is leveraging who and its a plain shame.
It shouldn't make you sad, it should make you curious.
Broadly, I've observed that there's way way way too little discussion of the extent to which money and power, somewhat behind the scenes, can be thrown at what feels like "tech decisions."
A while back, here in Florida, a state representative had a relative who was kind of into open source and had it explained to him. Representative was like "oh interesting idea, Florida should look into doing more of this"
And the suits from Microsoft came down swiftly to "correct" matters.
It is always easy to make big announcements but harder to follow through.
They'd need a strong software and tech industry and ecosystem but in general business and economic policy, especially in France, is as hostile as possible and harder to change politically.
Performative anti-Americanism has become one of the major features of European culture (and especially French culture).
What's performative about not wanting to go down with a sinking ship? Or are you under the illusion that the U.S. is doing particularly well right now? It appears that the "we have the bigger stick" strategy is finally meeting some resistance, and I am happy to see it.
I mean it’s not just that, the current administration have destroyed a bunch of the US’s oldest and most important alliances…
I’m not in Europe but in another allied country, the feeling amongst people here is that the US is not able to be trusted as a partner anymore.
And with ways the Government can apply pressure to US companies (CLOUD Act etc.) that extends to IS companies too.
Curious where you are. I am in Canada and it's certainly mixed feelings but I think there are plenty of Canadians that understand that despite the current craziness we're in this together for the long term. Similarly in the US there are plenty that understand this.
In relation to Europe vs. the US. Even before the current administration Europe has been at odds with American companies: "The European Union Renews Its Offensive Against US Technology Firms" (2022) - https://www.piie.com/sites/default/files/documents/pb22-2.pd...
The framing that this started now with the current administration is not correct. The current administration certainly heated things up so to speak and brought things to the surface but the tension has been there for a long while. Europe is not capable of competing with US tech in general for various structural reasons. Europeans tend to argue this is because of US power but we see countries like China and India succeeding where Europe fails.
The more interesting question is whether there is a large enough lasting change in the US that takes away its structural advantages. I don't think this is the case. If you look at AI the hub of world economic activity and innovation is still in the US including startups and incumbents. s/AI/anything/ . China is certainly trying, and arguably succeeding, in taking some of that but it's still not at the same level. Europe is not even a player.
Interestingly, China is succeeding because it isolated itself partially from US big tech. That enabled them to build their domestic companies. If you give free reign to US companies, they‘re going to swoop up any competition early on.
The US relies on being attractive for smart people. There are still smart people going to the US, but the general mood seems to be that it‘s increasingly less attractive. Mid term, little will change, long term the cultural hegemony of the US will be replaced by multipolar influences.
Top 3 CS programs still seem to be in the US. MIT, Stanford, CMU.
The US has its geography, weather, etc. which are not going away.
China has massive scale industrial espionage and learnt a lot by being the cheap place where things are made and stealing western companies processes. They also invested a lot in education and naturally they have a lot of smart people. I still think that as long as they have an oppressive regime the really smart people will prefer not to be there since the second you become successful you also become a threat to the regime. Their work culture is also pretty toxic.
https://monitor.icef.com/2025/11/there-were-more-internation...
It's hard to predict long term but the US has a culture of innovation going back maybe hundreds of years, it has relative freedom, it has capital to invest, land and resources, and overall it has good people (and crazy people which was always true). Most of the conditions that made the US what it is are still there and most of the conditions that made places like Europe unable to compete are also still there. The US is a lot more diverse than it used to be as well.
> and crazy people which was always true
The experiment with giving the crazy people unchecked power over every lever of government is new, however.
This is perhaps a shrewd move against China: they can't steal technology and scientific advances from the US if there aren't any to steal.
> It's hard to predict long term...
It's not hard at all if you can interpret charts and can observe trends. You do yourself no favors by intentionally misunderestimating an adversary, to borrow a Bushism.
It's not the current administration that started this process. The US has for decades gone against the Europeans, step after step, asserting policies that only favor US companies. In the past however, the US administrations sugarcoated this fact with the language of cooperation. The current US government is now laying bare the fact that they're creating a political system where all technology and resources are controlled by the US and their "allies" are mere observers that should not do anything about it.
France deciding, in principle, to come up with a plan for not using Microsoft is performative. It stops being performative when they actually do it. At any rate, is there a good reason for France to stop using Microsoft? I'm doubtful. It's a bit like the DoD declaring Anthropic a "supply chain risk"; basically performative.
To respond to the rest of your post: while the Trump administration's behavior has diminished US standing in the world, the US is doing well compared to Europe in many important dimensions (e.g. economic growth). Also, far-right parties in Europe seem much more dangerous than the right in the US.
But all of that is a side show. European skepticism of the US has its roots in the postwar era. It's fundamentally about resentment. Europe is geopolitically weak and depends on the US for defense which is galling, especially for France with its history as a global power.
> European skepticism of the US has its roots in the postwar era.
This is crazy. The Europeans fell hook line and sinker for the line that the US could be trusted to manage security for Europe and would always be a dependable ally. That suited everyone — Europe because we could focus spending on post war reconstruction, and the US because you made a shit tonne of money by being the world's arms dealer and policeman.
There was no resentment of the US. Europe was in love with US culture (weird French cinema rules aside). And especially Eastern Europe... who have now had the hardest of all disillusionments.
This administration has destroyed the goodwill and trust built up over 80 years, and the economic foundation which made you rich and powerful. Let's check back in 30 years and see if that was a good idea. I'm hopeful that French nukes and Ukrainian ingenuity (and MAGA incompetence) will see us through the next 10-15 years of transition as re right the past mistake of trusting the US.
> The Europeans fell hook line and sinker for the line that the US could be trusted to manage security for Europe and would always be a dependable ally.
Charles de Gaulle didn't fall for it! I used to think he was an arrogant crank, but Trump has proven he was right all along to be critical of the US.
You must live in a different reality from me. The EU has closed trade deals with India and Mercosur this year alone, recentering the global economy around itself.
Meanwhile, the resentment seems to radiate from the White House as they increasingly realize how their moves are making them irrelevant on the global stage.
We're not upset. We just don't think you matter anymore.
> recentering the global economy around itself.
Wishful thinking.
Wishful to the point of delusion. Europe is a stagnant backwater in a deep energy crisis that's about to get significantly deeper, and comforts itself on an completely unearned sense of moral superiority that it can't feed itself with.
This is also a self-inflicted wound. There's no reason that Europe should be in the situation that it is in other than it is run by elites that are, like everyone else, invested in the success of US companies, and have no particular loyalty to Europe. When they retire, they move to the US and get board seats, advisory positions, lobbyist jobs, and cushy university spots.
Europeans need to start engaging in rational thinking and to stop letting their politics revolve around zombie US institutions (like NATO) and electing functionaries from tiny little countries who have made an industry of covertly advocating for US interests in Europe. They also need to seriously rethink their relationships with Russia and China, and realize that when it comes to Russia, they were the bad guys so destroying their economies and futures over manufactured grudges and fantasies of invasion is an indulgence that their children can't afford.
Independence from the US means getting rid of their elites that work for the US, and getting rid of victimhood narratives about Russia (who at least occupied part of Europe) and China (who have never done a thing to them.) They should make BRICS EBRICS. If Europe doesn't wise up, they're just going to start killing each other. Thank God that France has nukes and can't be invaded again.
Well said on the site of Y-Combinator. A US company ran by Americans that mostly funds startups in the US. Clearly the US, the home of Apple, nVidia, Anthropic, Open AI, SpaceX, Google, Meta, Amazon, Tesla etc. is sinking while the EU the home of (? ... well, there is ASML) is going to be running the world.
Linus works on Linux from ... Portland, Oregon. And oh, look at where Linux contributions are coming from:
https://insights.linuxfoundation.org/project/korg/contributo...
EU's GDP is so catching up with the US:
https://econofact.org/factbrief/fact-check-has-the-economic-...
NOT
Yes exactly, just like the.. uhm.. the British Empire could not have possibly declined? Your point is that, because the U.S. has big companies and wealth, it can't be a sinking ship? Because to me this seems like a straw-man.
What I'm saying is that the U.S. is currently in decline, and many will agree with me. Where this leads your (I'm assuming) country, nobody knows. But to me, it doesn't look great.
I'm not American. But I guess I feel part of the US led western world order.
The US has big companies and wealth because it has the right ecosystem to create those.
The US is in decline is a meme. Decline can't be measured over short intervals. Maybe it is maybe it isn't. We'll see in 5 decades.
One thing I'm pretty sure about is that this decline of the US that many seem to be excited for and wishing here, if or when it happens, is not going to end well for most of those people. Another way of saying this is that most of the people commenting here have benefited and still benefit from the dominance of the US and the technology and innovation coming out of it, including Y Combinator. What is the long term strategic thinking behind "let's attack the US and make it fail" -> the answer is none. It should be in the interest of most of us to see more US success. We whine as everything around us is an outcome of that success.
Warren Buffet's "Never bet against America" still very much holds in my opinion.
It is admittedly pretty goofy to get exactly what you want—an army of people making rules for everything under the sun—and come on here and complain about what we’re doing.
Even TFA, which is about yet another rule, has a goofy quote from the Minister of something or other about breaking free from American tools. Linux seems pretty American to me [1]. Maybe they’ll fork. Would be cool.
[1]: https://insights.linuxfoundation.org/project/korg/contributo...
The French are just (wonderfully) arrogant enough to say what everyone else is thinking. The UK will likely be too spineless to actually follow through, but the Germans and Eastern Europeans are not going to tolerate the level of exposure we all have to US craziness any longer.
As a European, the Anti-Americanism is not performative.
It's a deep disconnect in values, brought to the forefront by the current administration and the oligarchs running wild.
America used to be seen as an example, the big brother watching out for us.
Now it's a cautionary tale of greed, hubris and societal decay, as well as an increasingly antagonistic actor of global instability.
Y'all ruined your reputation and the fact you're trying to pin that on us is just another example of said hubris. Until you at least own up to it, there's no viable path to recovery.
It's mostly performative, and posts like this prove the point.
Meanwhile, I believe your post proves my point. Funny how perspective works, isn't it?
It feels like the last tantrum of a dying empire from our vantage point.
Sad, but ultimately irrelevant.
I see one person having a tantrum in this thread (and it's not me).
No, you were having a discussion, and now you're the one who just had a tantrum. If you're going to be personally offended when somebody says that the US looks like it is throwing a tantrum, nobody worthwhile is going to think it's worth talking to you.
Yet again, you are vocalizing my exact thoughts.
Feels like the disconnect I described is real, doesn't it?
Might not be performative after all then...
> It's a deep disconnect in values
So, it's performative. While they complain about American hegemony, Europeans buy iPhones (or Android), drink Coke, scroll Instagram, and listen to Taylor Swift. And while they might object to NATO spending, decades of inadequate military spending have left Europe with no real alternative to buying protection from America.
Some big moneyed interests are trying to split Europe and the US.
The current US administration is definitely not helping, but every ad I see on the Reddit main feed is a blatant attack on the relation, from brand new subreddits, pointing at magazines I’ve never heard about before. I’ve been reporting them, but it keeps coming, from constantly different sources, different names, subreddits, but always the same vague but incredible incredibly provocative titles
I suspect that some social-media-addled senior US officials are being fed the same crap because their reactions to non-existent European reaction are not grounded in reality.
> Some big moneyed interests are trying to split Europe and the US. The current US administration is definitely not helping
Did you listen/read Vance's recent speeches in Hungary? Or read the US policy document put out months back? It goes way beyond merely "not helping" - the US administration is in turns provoking, alienating and separating itself from center/center-left European governments in pursuit of exporting extremist partisan politics in the hopes of getting far-right governments elected across Europe.
European citizens and politicians everywhere can see the actions for what they are. What was that about Greenland and annexing Canada? There's no big-money conspiracy, just a bully administration with no sense of second-and third-order effects.
Trump is all that‘s needed for that. The Greenland saga alone was sufficient. And then he attacked Iran.
Really proud as a French, I think the government has had some success with moving to something matrix based for the public sector too. https://tchap.numerique.gouv.fr
I just hope we end up having more wins at the EU-level, instead of massive fails like GAIA-X...
Also GendBuntu, a custom version of Ubuntu used by 100 000 stations (almost all) of the national gendarmerie.
"As a French" ne veut rien dire en anglais. Il faut rajouter man, person ou quelquechose. Frenchman, French person, French citizen.
Pedantry attracts dislike. One may be right to state something, yet wrong to call it out in public.
> Pedantry attracts dislike. One may be right to state something, yet wrong to call it out in public.
Ironically most French people I know would be perfectly receptive and happy to receive corrections in grammar, English or otherwise.
The French tend to be particularly pedantic about the teaching of their own grammar. Most native French speakers are quite used to being swiftly and firmly corrected on grammar from an early age.
there is a time and place for everything. "Les règles de bienséance" matter more to me than the safekeeping of the exactness of English grammar, which as others have been keen to point out is hardly as strict as you seem to imply.
And no, no French person likes to receive corrections in grammar. Giving lectures on proper english grammar/pronounciation is generally a mark of (classist) pedantry since speaking proper english is generally the preserve of those lucky few that have had the opportunity of spending time in the Anglosphere, a tiny minority of the french population in fact, who are always eager to put their one upmanship on display, in a very crude, almost vulgar fashion.
I have been travelling through Japan for the past week, the grammatical and orthographical error would likely give you a nosebleed. Meanwhile, I just smile and move on, I got the meaning, it is what matters. Same for the OP.
I cannot tell you the number of times I’ve been in France and had people correct my pronunciation (which btw, it’s really not so bad — the best complement I got was that they could tell I was foreign, but not sure where from).
I'm not sure how happy they actually are about it though. I think most people have a bit of Stockholm-syndrome relationship with it, the highest tier of argument refutation in France might honestly be grammar-based :P
(And it did motivate me to go abroad.)
The demonym for France is "French," so it's not wrong (even if it doesn't sound right.)
It's not completely wrong, it will be understood, but it is ungrammatical and a clear marker that the speaker is not native, similar to getting adjectives in the 'wrong' order ('a big tasty sandwich' sounds more natural to a native speaker than 'a tasty big sandwich', even though the latter makes sense and will be understood).
Demonyms for historical neighbours of England have irregular forms when speaking of a particular person from there. Scotland has 'Scot' and 'Scotsman'; Wales has 'Welshman'; Spain has 'Spaniard'. Other countries indeed need a second word, such as 'person' or 'citizen' ('a Chinese' sounds offensive to me; I would say 'a Chinese person' in all cases). The only country I can think of where using a bare demonym is grammatical when speaking of a single person from there is Germany with 'a German' - probably because it has the suffix -man.
Edit: A sibling comment pointed out that 'an American' is grammatical, and thinking about it, I think the suffix -an is what makes bare demonyms grammatical - you can say 'an Angolan', 'a Laotian', 'a Peruvian', 'a Moroccan', etc, but wouldn't say 'a Thai', 'a Swedish', 'a Sudanese', etc.
> but it is ungrammatical and a clear marker that the speaker is not native
You mean a native speaker might be ungrammatical when using their non-native language? That makes sense to me.
> Spain has 'Spaniard'.
Even so, you'll hear a ton of native Spanish people saying "As a Spanish person" or "As person from Spain" instead of simply "As a Spaniard", I'm not sure this is very surprising. If anything, that mistake makes it more likely they're a native than not, in the case of Spain, as the level of English outside of metropolitan areas is lacking at best, compared to other European countries.
I'm using the words 'grammatical' and 'ungrammatical' in a linguistic sense; human languages are subtle and fluid, and one doesn't have to be far along the sliding scale between 'doesn't speak a word' and 'well-educated native speaker' to be understood. We speak of 'broken' English when somebody is able to be understood but hasn't fully grasped the language yet; using demonyms incorrectly is a subtler flavor of the same thing. For example 'no come here' -> 'no entering' -> 'no entry'
> but wouldn't say 'a Thai', 'a Swedish', 'a Sudanese'
You also don't say 'a Japanese' but that is an extremely common error with Japanese English speakers when they are first learning.
I am looking for a citation, but I seem to recall the casual rule of thumb is something to do with the ending of the nationality (so '-ish', '-ese','-ch' etc. you can't put 'a' in front). I think the more formal explanation likely centers around rules relating to indefinite articles.
There are some suffixed with "-i" which sound natural to my (American) ears too: "an Israeli", "a Somali", "a Pakistani", "an Omani", etc.
When speaking English, the French side of my family refers to themselves like that often, however, they're from Bretagne, so exactly how French they are is up for debate.
No.
"French" is adjective or a collective noun, but don't use it as a countable noun.
Trying to say "as a French" makes about as much sense as thinking "as a American" is correct.
As has already been said ... "a French (wo)man","a French person","a French citizen" is the correct way to go.
The reason you can say "an American" is because America starts with a vowel.
Same reason why you would not say "a British" but you could say "a Brit".
Demonyms don’t use the same rules as countable nouns. Both “French” and “British” are acceptable demonyms, they’re just not particularly idiomatic in American English (which likes to overcorrect with “person” like you’ve noted).
(There’s no particularly consistency with this, it’s just what sounds “good” to American ears. We’re perfectly fine with “as a German” or “as a Lithuanian.”)
> Both “French” and “British” are acceptable demonyms
No they are not.
The Oxford English Dictionary, for example makes it quite clear re. 'French':
"With plural agreement, and frequently with 'the' French people regarded collectively ..."
It is explicitly telling you that "French" is a collective plural noun and hence cannot be used as a singular countable noun.
I think we’re past OED being a normative arbiter of what does or doesn’t pass for acceptable English usage.
a French; an American; a Brit, or a British
sounds casual but correct to me
> sounds casual but correct to me
I don't care if it "sounds ok to me".
If you're going to make statements like that to go against what I've written then at least come up with some viable citations to grammar literature.
Honestly, in all my years on this earth I have never, ever heard anybody in any English speaking country I've spent time in say "a French" "a American" "a British".
And that amounts to a lot of time surrounded by people speaking VERY "casual" English.
P.S. I said "an American" was ok if you re-read.. an NOT a
The reason you can say "an American" has nothing to do with a vowel or not, there are just some demonyms that for some reason can be used like this, and some that can't.
For example:
* German is countable: https://www.oxfordlearnersdictionaries.com/definition/englis... * French is uncountable: https://www.oxfordlearnersdictionaries.com/definition/englis... * American is countable: https://www.oxfordlearnersdictionaries.com/definition/englis... * Spanish is uncountable: https://www.oxfordlearnersdictionaries.com/definition/englis...
But your explanation about why it is correct is bullshit, has nothing to do with "an" vs "a", the English language is just inconsistent as fuck and some demonyms can be used like this and some can't.
Technically yes the demonym is "French", but "I'm a French" just doesn't work in English. The word 'French' is almost exclusively used in English as an adjective or the name of the language. It is never used as a noun for anything else. So in context, it reads as an adjective without a paired noun.
In English, you have to disambiguate be adding a noun: French person, French citizen, or Frenchman if you're old and inconsiderate.
Similarly, we don't call people "a Chinese". That construction is considered derogatory, if not outright racist. Demonyms typically cannot be used as nouns alone without a suffix. "A Brazilian" or "a Spaniard" are acceptable.
As usual for English, the rules are vague and inconsistent.
> "A Brazilian" or "a Spaniard" are acceptable.
Well, context is important on the Brazilian front. ;)
"I had a brazilian at my house" could have other connotations.
> or Frenchman if you're old and inconsiderate.
Or talking about a man that is French. Neither of which would be considered 'old', or 'inconsiderate".
"Frenchman" (one word) is always... "old and inconsiderate" is a good description. "French man" (two words) is at times still appropriate.
Nor "Frenchie" while we're on the topic. It sounds really weird. It's also commonly used to refer to a french bulldog !
I would think of using 'Frenchie' to refer to a person as being affectionate banter. Like 'Yank' for Americans or 'Canuck' for Canadians. It's not incorrect, but would be inappropriate outside of an informal context.
French people have 'rosbif' to refer to the English and Australians have 'pom' or 'pommie'. You wouldn't call the prime minister that at a diplomatic event, but it's not offensive to call your friends that.
The difference between this and Munich's attempt is that France has been building up gradually. They already run Tchap (Matrix-based) for government messaging, and the gendarmerie switched to Linux years ago with over 70k desktops. Munich tried a big-bang migration without enough internal expertise and caved under political pressure when MS moved their HQ there. Schleswig-Holstein in Germany is taking the same incremental approach now and seeing better results. The pattern is pretty clear: governments that treat it as a multi-year capability build succeed, those that treat it as a licensing swap don't.
> Munich tried a big-bang migration without enough internal expertise and caved under political pressure
Almost sounds planned to fail...
If anything, the lesson to learn from the LiMux failure has nothing to do with technology or with project planning + execution, but with politics. If you extort millions from government as a for-profit business, most of which ends up as pure profit, there is an “emperor's new clothes” dynamic. It aligns the interests of government officials with yours in driving a narrative that there was good value generated for the taxpayer from that taxpayer money you got. Also: You now have those millions in a war fund, which you can use as negotiation mass. (In the case of LiMux and Munich, Microsoft relocated their corporate HQ to Munich as a quid pro quo for the City of Munich abandoning the LiMux project, which directly benefitted the City of Munich because it now got to tax Microsoft in a way that it didn't previously get to do). … these kinds of strategies game theoretically dominate any kind of play that's possible through open source.
Microsoft is a strategic risk for the US, too
Exactly. I have been thinking about using this migration articles as a way to convince my customers to switch.
Microsoft is a strategic risk for everybody, looking at their track records the last few years.. I don't love Linux, but I like it. It's no-bullshit. It doesn't always do everything perfectly, but it has the right mindset. It doesn't want to screw me over.
I don't see how this strategy can work without the EU basically having a counterpart to Microsoft. You can't beat Windows just uniting around the Linux kernel, it needs to be a whole OS plus an entire ecosystem including cloud.
Has anyone noticed an increased of one-liner controversial commentary, usually assertions, with a bunch of replies, sometimes, "No and no" or something like "this is the right answer" or a bunch of greyed comments?
HN is not Reddit, and that's a Reddit pattern. It's an anti-intellectual pattern because it's a popularity/anger contest and there's nothing of substance.
I'd love to hear the pros and cons and even likelihood of Linux in government, but I'm having trouble finding the smart commentary from the grey noise.
Help!
They’re still going the almost certainly end up running this on US designed chips, with US designed networking equipment and a bunch of other assets tied back to US companies. They should do what they want, but it’s “sovereignty theater” at best.
I wouldn't say that. I think it's a proportional response to US tarriffs/changes in foreign policy under the current administration, just like the cancellation of defence contracts/orders.
It's unrealistic for any nation to do everything themselves, but they can make some changes in response to the US starting trade wars, ditching foreign policy/climate objectives, etc...
You always have to start somewhere. Whether this will succeed or not is not known, but you do have to start somewhere.
Start with not antagonizing China, and you'll have other vendors to chose from.
The US or Trump can’t switch off your chips or your networking equipment on a whim - and if they ever designed hardware that could do that, no one would buy such hardware as soon as that capability became known. Using cloud software is a much bigger risk - your access can be turned off anytime and data access is part of the deal.
Sovereignty is not about building everything yourself. Division of labor advances civilization, but it doesn’t have to come at the cost of sovereignty. Sovereignty is about designing the work contract such that you don’t become entirely beholden to another party. You build hardware for me, but after that it’s mine, not yours. I trust you to build the hardware to fulfill that contract, and if you ever break that trust I’ll find someone else to build that hardware. That’s sovereignty. I don’t have to build everything myself.
Maybe, but chips cannot hold you hostage during work. I don't care where things are built (except when they are built somewhere where human rights are being treated like shit), software is what locks you into whatever bullshit the company decides on, not chips. So it is a good step I think. We don't have to be all "we don't use anything from outside the EU" - why? Some countries are better than others at stuff. Fair enough. The movement is about moving away from software monopolies that decide on what you can and can't do, not about having everything inside a certain geographical location.
This sounds interesting on paper but I wonder how likely it is they actually pull it off. Even putting aside the logistics of installing new oses across a bunch of workstations, migrating from legacy Active Directory domains is something even small enterprises struggle with.
AI finding vulnerabilities in open source software is going to make it super unpleasant for a time. I expect there to be a shift back to closed source until we get through that period.
Is there any evidence that GenAI is incapable of redteam'ing proprietary software? This seems like the sort of thing an agent with suitable tooling would be quite good at - I see someone already made an MCP for ghidra...
That's also a benefit to some degree. Closed source likely has as many vulnerabilities and bugs, but if AI can't find them it'll progressively become less secure.
Fair. But also I look at it as a chance. We get to fix lots of bugs. Bugs that bad actors can't use anymore.
A million eyes makes no difference when it comes to AI, they're all going to find the same vulnerabilities. Which means that one guy running AI against your closed source software is just about the same as 1000 guys running AI against your FOSS, but most of the people running against your FOSS are going to be doing it to help you, and the people who ran against your closed codebase are never going to tell you about it.
AI finding vulnerabilities and cleaning them up is going to be a budget problem for closed-source software, who have gotten used to ignoring vulnerabilities until somebody screams at them.
Closed source software isn't kept in a magical safe in a cavern deep beneath the earth, guarded by dragons. Half the people in your company touch it every day, and probably plenty of contractors.
Glad that France takes the lead, that Germany fumbled. Allez Les Blues!
France hasn't taken the lead. They haven't done anything. This will be abandoned by this time next year.
I totally agree, this was long time coming.
Finally Europe grew a spine
still growing, you mean. France is, however significant, just one country. and then there is broader push to FOSS inside Europe, as well as Europe's own sovereign solutions. some attempts were failed, some were successful, but everything is still in progress
EDIT: on a second read, this sounded too diminishing of this achievement than I intended. the point is that it's not fully done yet, although it is remarkable that there is, finally, a political will for such actions
Sadly back in the day the city of Munich caved in (hosting Germany's MS headquarter). They had a good good run with their Linux. But the state of Schleswig-Holstein is pushing for more open source and switching to Libre Office (80% or so done). They talk about that on their Open Source Initiative page [1].
[1]: https://www.schleswig-holstein.de/DE/landesregierung/themen/... (German only)
They have a committee to decide whether to plan to grow one. Maybe once they're done funding the war in Ukraine, they'll make a decision.
Less so against China or Iran, presumably Europe will find itself on the "right side of history" yet again soon enough
At least so against Israel and other countries actively engaging in open warfare against sovereign nations, as a European I'm very happy we're not getting pulled into those senseless conflicts.
Europe does not need to join war of the Trumps whim just because king demands it.
I am talking about actively hindering the war effort while getting closer to Iran, a country that repeatedly kidnapped europeans, or caving in for China again and again.
Europe has always managed to make the wrong choice historically, and that's how it still continues
How has Europe actively hindered the war effort? Not volunteering for demining duties under fire in a very narrow straight, and preferring diplomatic solutions seems eminently sensible, and not at all the same as 'getting closer to Iran'. Why doesn't the US send frigates and destroyers into the straight to open it and escort ships out? The answer is that it's pretty high risk, and not one worth taking (unless you are Trump and looking to save face).
Europe as a whole doesn't have or not have a spine.. it'a a huge, complicated accumulation of interests with an insane bureaucratic apparatus behind it.
The bureaucratic apparatus in the EU has a reputation for being complex, but a lot of that seems to be bullshit stories written by people like Johnson in the 20 years leading up to Brexit. I've yet to see much evidence it's more complex or corrupt than Federal government in the US, for example.
Nice! Now moving from Windows to Linux is the "easy", visible part. Replacing US cloud + US AI dependence end to end is much harder, and that’s the real deal today.
I think you're right. Even though France might not have done much yet, it's a sign many people will read about and maybe think Linux is a good alternative. That's a win in my book.
AI and cloud are another thing altogether. Mistral is alright, open-source AI models are alright, but overall I think they can't compete yet. And I don't think there are fully capable cloud alternatives to AWS, Azure and Google Cloud yet. EU pushing Nextcloud-based alternatives really doesn't fuel confidence honestly. I mean Nextcloud is fine, but that's not the big alternative push we need here.
Really though, how many companies actually need Azure, AWS? In my experience in SME's there is _so_ much overcomplication, over-provisioning and overspending going on because there has been a default assumption that US cloud==lower risk.
Governments properly mandating that data be held in the EU, or even in orgs with proper EU entities and checks and balances against US interference in time of conflict would change the game. This is what the EU should be working on... a data residency regime that allows us to use AWS but creates a firewall that allows us to take operational control of the servers if the US continues on it's current path.
Linus Torvalds. Richard Stallman. GNU and the GPL.
As a bit of an old-timer, I literally don't know exactly where to start a new conversation on this in a place like this; for me the obviousness of the theoretical and practical superiority of free and open source software principles are just always there for me; and it's quite obvious here that it's different for younger people.
So I'm dropping the names and the concepts. Perhaps someone else knows how to get this going?
should be done at EU level and make it mandatory for all members
France has been doing this in parts of its government functions for years, building expertise and learning what works. What do you imagine the EU institutions would bring to the table?
Good on France for doing that work.
More countries and/or EU involvement could bring economies of scale: apart from translation, a lot of work on fixing bugs and adding features to the relevant open source projects can be done once and benefit all. So either get the same results faster, more cheaply per country, or both. Sure, that adds some bureaucracy and coordination cost too, but should be worth it overall.
It sounds actually nutts that governments are allowed to run unknown and uncheckable binaries as their(our?) infrastructure.
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You forgot the part where the countries voluntarily join the organisation. By the way, the commission is subject to a vote of confidence by the parliament, which is directly elected. I'm pretty sure you don't get to directly vote for your cabinet members either, wherever you are.
> You forgot the part where the countries voluntarily join the organisation.
It might be worth examining the word “countries” there.
Both France and the Netherlands rejected the proposed EU Constitution by referendum in 2005. It was then regurgitated as the Lisbon Treaty (with only superficial changes) in 2007, which was ratified with no public vote.
The Irish people initially rejected both the EU-empowering treaties of Nice and Lisbon, and a followup vote was considered necessary. You get two bites of the democratic cherry if you have enough power.
A majority of the British people voted to leave in 2016, and in the three years that followed everything possible was done to reverse the decision.
You might be spotting here a difference in desires and power between the governors and the governed.
> and in the three years that followed everything possible was done to reverse the decision
News to me (as a Brit). Maybe my memory is hazy. Got any detail?
Again? what was wrong with the previous two discussions about this OP? with 1400+ upvotes
[dupe]
They're not wrong.
I fear this might be just license costs cutting and not something that Linux and FOSS will benefit from.
Why wouldnt linux and FOSS benefit from usage? At the least it result in social validation, if not bug reports
Social validation brings incompetent users expecting something like Windows that "just works".
Even if they could bring some bug reports... We have lots of those already! We have decades of ignored bug reports.
Wait, do we not want incompetent users on Linux? That's a weird take. Linux is not for elite technologically profound users, it's for everybody. If things don't work for non-technical users, we should strive to make it better?
> I fear this might be just license costs cutting and not something that Linux and FOSS will benefit from.
yup, at this point, nothing but cobwebs and IOU's left in the coffers over there and every little bit of saving helps.
Linux is also written by American companies at the end of the day. Most linux devs are supported by American companies and Linux's benevolent dictator for life, Linus Torvalds, lives in Portland, Oregon and is an American citizen.
There's literally no non-American general-purpose operating system.
But Linux is US tech? Isn't the main guy American?
Linus Torvalds created Linux as a student in Helsinki, Finnland. He later took U.S. citizenship and lives in Portland, Oregon, TTBOMK.
Now on some level, the question makes less sense, because Linux as we know it now is an international proejct that thousands of developers from dozens of countries collaborated on. But perhaps most would agree that Torvalds, who serves as main integrator, has more say than others regarding the directions of Linux, as long as he is alive.
The open source property of Linux is more important to the question which OS a country's government should adopt: corporate systems are hard to scrutinize, whereas open source systems you can inspect and compile yourself, and it is a wise move of the French government to go in that direction. It will also save a lot of money, but that should not be the primary motive.
It is open source. Many companies which contribute to it are American, but nobody from America can tell you what you can or cannot do with it - unlike Microsoft or Apple with their proprietary OS being forced by US government.
Funnily enough there is some level of control that can be exerted by the US gov via the distros (at least the major ones - see legalese restrictions on Redhat/Ubuntu etc when you want to download , stating the various US gov laws/sanctions that they follow) and also via the kernel - i think some time back Russian kernel maintainers were removed.
So Open source it may be , however there are still pressure points that can be used. I believe this is one of the main reasons RISCV foundation moved to Europe.
Europe has a major distro in the form of SUSE, so that’s not too worrying.
Even if upstream linux banned european contributors, there are enough european contributors that a fork would just emerge. So I’m really not too worried about that happening.
The “main guy” is Finnish. He also got American citizenship recently, but given the US has increased attacks on naturalised citizens [0] and has a history of this [1] it’s not a solid foundation.
[0] https://www.npr.org/2026/01/16/nx-s1-5677685/as-focus-shifts...
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internment_of_Japanese_America...
If Japanese internment worried you, you should see Europe's treatment of perceived outsiders [0] and get reallyyyy worried about the ongoing attacks [1] and rhetoric [2]. I would urge extreme caution to anyone in Europe that is at risk.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Expulsion_of_Jews_from_Spain
[1] https://www.ein.org.uk/news/home-office-remove-euss-pre-sett...
[2] https://www.ft.com/content/0e29224f-9d06-4315-a89f-e334ffbc6...
Also, what nationality do you say Elon Musk is, out of curiosity? Let's test your consistency :)
> Expulsion of Jews from Spain [...] On 31 March 1492, the Catholic Monarchs of Spain, King Ferdinand II of Aragon and Queen Isabella I of Castile, issued the Alhambra Decree, ordering all unconverted Jews to leave their kingdoms and territories by the end of July that year, unless they converted to Christianity
Someone correct me if I'm wrong, but we (I live in Spain) have come a long way since 1492 (534 years ago) and if that's the most recent example you can find of "Europe's treatment of perceived outsiders" I think you yourself know that stuff like that doesn't happen today, in Europe.
In the UK two decades ago (admittedly not the shortest time) I heard plenty of terrible words and treatment of Pakistanis (which seemed to be used as a good enough bucket for all brown skinned people) and people with red hair. A general disdain for Continentals was a little more subdued. When I was younger France was famous for it's poor treatment of foreigners and non-francophiles. Consider all the politics and anger towards those that continue to try to cross the Mediterranean on makeshift boats or the constant complaints about "benefit thieves" who emigrate from the Eastern bloc. There are many examples and some of them are not without basis but while things have gotten less stabby-stabby there's some fairly brutal attitudes and behaviors.
I'm not defending racism against immigrants to Europe, but let's get this in proportion. It wasn't long ago that the US had _state mandated segregation_ and regular lynchings. All racism is abhorrent, but I really don't see Europe a specifically problematic in this regard.
I didn't make the claim that Europe is specifically problematic. I was noting that between extremes the GP was talking about
> Europe's treatment of perceived outsiders
Who'd've thunk it, people be tribal?
> There are many examples and some of them are not without basis but while things have gotten less stabby-stabby there's some fairly brutal attitudes and behaviors.
Yeah, I won't claim that everyone is treated equally or even fairly in Europe, and some places are absolutely worse than others, in many different ways.
I'd still claim we no longer do "expulsions" of entire ethnoreligious groups anymore in the 21st century though, which was the initial example of why Europe today is terrible.
I agree things have improved but the GP to my first post set context to:
> Europe's treatment of perceived outsiders
You seemed to be picking a rather narrow slice of the scope.
Well, to be fair, GP did use the "Expulsion of Jews from Spain" as the example for that, so I don't think they were trying to say "Some people in Europe have bad thoughts about perceived outsiders" but rather hinting to some larger events still happening today.
That's fair. To continue being fair, there's a lot of rough behavior happening throughout the world these days. We've forgotten how bad we can make things.
I'd suggest that in Europe also there's more than just bad thoughts for outsiders but bad words, bad treatment, and exclusion from thriving. Extreme cases include bodily harm and I'm fairly certain death but these extreme occur at a lower scale.
Tbf theres a much more recent example of legitimate antisemitism in europe. One around the same time as us interment of japanese people
A more relevant recent example would be the shameful stripping of British citizenship from a girl who had been trafficked to the Middle East
They got radicalized and went there voluntarly
In a civilised society, we don't typically regard 15 year olds as responsible for their own radicalisation at the hands of adults
There is no civilized society that treats 15 years old not responsible for joining terrorist groups and for actively working with them.
15 year old being radicalised into terrorism is a societal and parental failure, not the moral failure of an individual child. We don’t treat 15 year olds as adults in other legal proceedings, we should not do here either
Musk collects citizenships like they’re going out of fashion. He fled South’s Africa due to not wanting to be drafted.
Lieutenant Torvalds on the other hand fulfilled his service duties.
Should the US and South Africa go to war it seems clear where musks loyalties would lie. Should the US and Finland go to war I suspect that Torvalds wouldn’t be as clear cut.
Didn't have "Europe is antisemitic because of the Spanish Inquisition" on my bingo card today. No one expects it, indeed.
The other two are ok-ish (though notably Reform is not in government and the elections are 4 years away) but yeah leading with a source from the 15th century really doesn’t support the argument.
The UK Home Office decision about settled status is the fault of the UK, not the EU.
The FT piece is paywalled. But two prominent members of Reform are currently in jail - one for domestic abuse, and one for treason (!) - so the party is not famous for a steely dedication to the moral high ground.
I have more evidence of European xenophobia if that isn't sufficient for you
I dont think you travel much, it would help you get more... objective opinions. But yes please show us that mighty evidence
How will we cope when all of your precious knife-wielding savages are deported?
Oh, the terror.
Just Wiki Linus Torvalds my friend:
> Torvalds was born in Helsinki, Finland
> In 2004, Torvalds moved with his family from Silicon Valley to Portland, Oregon.
Yeah, he became American, just like Einstein, Fermi, Von Neumann, etc.
There's a big lesson for Europe there, everyone super productive and able to move to the US does so at the first opportunity.
You might want to do a bit more reading on why European intellectuals migrated en masse to the US in the 1930s.
Definitely. And then one could start wondering if the direction might reverse.
It would take something miraculous for the direction to reverse towards Europe. People have been complaining about European tech, economy, and freedoms (as in free speech) for decades now. Things have become worse on all of these fronts.
I think the AI act is a great example here. The EU came up with regulation for an emerging technology that basically killed the chance for Europe to compete. Lots of people disagreed with this criticism when the act was debated, but it turns out the critics were right. Europe will be buying AI services from elsewhere because Europe wasn't able to compete.
This entire way of thinking in Europe would need to reverse for there to be a chance that the brain drain changes course.
On the flip side, with the US cutting funding for scientific research, and increasing persecution of minorities within the US, I know a whole bunch of qualified scientists/researchers who are either moving to or actively hunting for a position in the EU
Really not many people outside far right proponents of hate speech (and more recently MAGA shills) have been complaining about free speech in Europe. Yes, there are laws against holocaust denial for specific historical reasons. The UK also had regulations on some Irish republican organisations access to TV, but not other forms of expression. And yes most European jurisdictions accept that speech can cause harm and try to balance this against free speech. But there is really no case that nonviolent political speech is -- in practice -- discriminated against in EU and UK.
On the IT and AI services: Europe hasn't really failed to compete in innovation, as much as scale of operation. That might change if we have a security imperative to protect our own markets for these things against an increasingly hostile US.
When the US is being run by relatively sane people, it's great.
That is not the situation at the moment.
Is this the daily thread on this topic?
Astroturfing around this is getting suspicious.
> Astroturfing around this is getting suspicious.
It's perfectly possible for people to be passionate about the subject.
I've never met a real human that was passionate about what OS a government worker in some local French commune uses, but it's the hottest topic on HN behind AI
Most of the passion is around being felt exploited my american tech giants and feeling hopeful at seeing large respectable institutions divest from them. Thats legit, not astroturfed
Right, what about FOSS developers who care about what guidelines the entire country has regarding OS usage? Maybe I'm living in a bubble, but everyone (mostly Europeans to be fair) seems excited about moving away from US technologies.
This move isn't just "Local French commune thinks about Linux", it's "French government agency that can mandate what others do, set hard guideline for agencies and magistrates to come up with a concrete plan for how to move to Linux", which is worlds beyond what we've seen before.
I don't believe we've met, but I've long been convinced that governments should not be reliant on commercial software and proprietary formats and protocols. It just seems obvious that relying on Microsoft this and that is a blinkered, short-term view.
> Astroturfing around this is getting suspicious.
Nah, linux and "$curreant_year is the year of the linux desktop" is just something the hacker / maker / nerd scene is passionate about.
I remember similar articles being posted 20+ years ago on Slashdot. And as we’ve seen, it’s often less of a “use Linux” and more of a “we have an alternate vendor” and there’s often suspicious lock-in (see the case in the EU or some similar country where the vendor was reading emails).
At least in some cases, it's actually using Linux and open document format, e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GendBuntu
Even the US government should be considering this.
It is a step into the right direction.
Over time, more and more work is going to be done by AI though. At some point, it will be unthinkably slow and expensive to let humans work on anything.
To do *that* locally, you need GPUs and LLMs.
How will Europe solve these two?
The EU chips act is subsidizing new fab construction in Europe.
Meanwhile the french Mistral is partnering with Nvidia to build an AI data center near Paris on which their LLMs will run.
But I agree this is not enough to make the EU a contender in the race with the US and China. The EU still has not seriously considered decoupling from American big tech.
Not all AI uses LLM, and for some common LLM applications like summarization and translation you can already use CPU only models. The government, or even your average employer, is not going to need a lot of AI video generation or other really GPU intensive tasks. Prompt processing is currently more GPU oriented, but I don't see it as an impossible challenge given, say, 10-15 years.
Also, CPU-only doesn't necessarily mean "on your own computer". You can easily have 100 TB RAM in a couple of racks.
I think it depends on how strong the compression advancements are going to be, such that much can be done locally in the future. I'd be interested in experiences of others here in using Gemma4, which is at the forefront of "intelligence per gigabyte" atm. (according to benches).
No-one needs LLMs.
AI has no value.
At this point in the broader dialogue your position is roughly as interesting as flat earth. Only bored people are going to bother replying and no one is taking you seriously. Don't do yourself a disservice by clinging to this.
Okay, give me one example of what AI might be useful for.
As a learning tool to quiz you.
Okay, and what value would that provide?
I'm not interested in games.
The value is that you can have an effective tool to learn something new. I'm not quite sure I understand your question.
Okay, I don't think it would be all that effective and I don't see how it could be.
I learn things by doing them, not by playing guessing games.
That's fine. We all learn different. But it's still effective for other people :) So it's useful for them.