- All the comments about Linux gaming make me want to give my $0.02. I've been gaming on Linux, with no Windows installed anywhere, for around 6 years. In the first 3 years, it was a massive pain. Games like S.T.A.L.K.E.R. would consistently have issues with mouse input, weird acceleration, a lot of games wouldn't run at all. This is NO LONGER the case at all. Things run very well out of the box.
All games I want to play run very well and mostly the process is just "install -> play".
If a game has an aggressive anticheat, like Battlefield 6 or Valorant, it will not work and you can forget about it.
Controllers work fine, so do some wheels and other peripherals, but a good number of wheels, pedals, joysticks, VR headsets, and other wild and wacky input devices might not work that well or not at all. It mostly depends on whether the software for them runs on Linux, runs in Wine, or is needed at all. Not sure about VR, but I know it was a bit dire 1-2 years ago.
If you don't play hardcore simulator games, and don't play one of the competitive shooters with aggressive anticheat (e.g. CS2 and other competitive shooters run perfectly well), you can just install Linux, install Steam or one of the other launchers, and just hit play.
If you're not sure, you can check the status on https://protondb.com.
- Yeah good on them, everyone needs to do this. It's nuts Windows is still the go-to for anything these days despite everyone knowing what a parasitic, buggy mess it is. "Easy" shouldn't be the excuse in this day and age. Big orgs and especially government entities should be hiring the people that know what they're doing and get off that crummy platform.
by Melatonic
9 subcomments
- The age of the Linux desktop might actually finally be coming
Personally I think we are at an interim period for a big player to emerge and take over this space. If enough governments in the EU start switching over to customized linux distros theres a big chance for someone like Nokia to come in and develop their own approved distro with proper MDM and GPO-like management functionality baked in .
On top of that it could be great to see SteamOS continue to gain share and become more than just something people run on gaming purpose hardware.
And thirdly would love to see a more simplistic but super lean and functional OS built on something like the BSD.
- The title is very far from the actual public statement that is linked in the article.
The French government announced that its digital agency will switch to Linux during this year. This is about a few hundreds of computers owned by the agency.
The second statement is that this agency is expected to publish, by the end of the year, a plan to reduce the digital dependency on the US. It's not "France to ditch Windows", it should be "French government promises to plan soon for possible ways to decrease digital dependencies, but calendar unknown". Also note that the government (and president) will change next year, so even if the present drive was real, a political u-turn could come soon.
Overall, this statement could be the presage of a major upturn in a few years, but I think it far more probable that the policy change will be minor. There's already a small tendency toward Linux and Free Software in the public sector.
- Many government orgs have spent the last decade and a half slowly transitioning old legacy applications and platforms to browser-based alternatives. That old ERP software that used to require a thick client? Now it runs in Chrome. Microsoft recognized this and smartly moved to keep these customers locked in via an ever growing Microsoft Office bundle - subscription based, with Teams for their chat and then building up additional capabilities to extend the dependency, like InTune.
Where we are at now is that the pain of moving away from Windows is acceptable for many larger organizations and governments, especially those with flat or decreasing budgets. You can just swap out the OS layer and keep other processes the same - keep using Office with just the browser versions if you want, or move to an alternative (like EU-based). Teams works on Linux. There is no moat on Windows anymore
- Interestingly, Microsoft has been trying to get ahead of this for a couple of years now with their National Partner Clouds program [0], which they describe as:
> designed for scenarios where full ownership and operational independence from Microsoft is required
In France's case, Capgemini and Orange have a joint venture to operate datacenters that Microsoft runs Azure and Office on top of [1]. Moving away from Windows and Teams would still reduce their dependence on Microsoft substantially. But if the core goal is to reduce dependence on non-European suppliers, I would be wary of the French government buying services from "Bleu" when it's mainly Microsoft and a couple of consultancies in a trenchcoat.
[0] https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/azure-sovereign-clou...
[1] https://www.capgemini.com/news/press-releases/capgemini-and-...
by Latitude7973
6 subcomments
- France has been making good moves to achieve software independence from the US. It would be an even better move to allow those in Europe or indeed the rest of the world to also benefit.
- Canada has been using and developing FOSS for a while now.
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.
- It seems like what Europe really needs to do this is a viable mobile OS. It's been true for a while that Linux + LibreOffice is plenty to handle most government workers' needs on the desktop, but that's only good for when they are at their desks. Are there any viable alternatives to iOS and Android that are totally free of "dépendances extra-européennes"? What's the plan?
- I used Linux 10 years ago, but then due to job or corp. and needing Teams and Outlook I was forced to uses Windows. Now with corp job over I was finally able to switch to Linux this week (Fedora + KDE). Loving improvements made in the last 10 years, KDE will always have its quirks, but it is fast and smooth with no crashes yet. I got Claude to make me a migration script which worked brilliantly, haven't needed to boot Windows yet. Browser sessions and everything worked like nothing had changed. All my various ssh / putty configs migrated to Konsole, Thunderbird carries on like nothing has changed. Ahhhh freedom!
- 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.
- At this point I wouldn't be surprised if American companies started using it if the French get it right. The instability of the current administration is one thing, but Microsoft disregard for its user deserves an appropriate response that will actually hit them where they care.
- 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.
- I think France seem serious in actually switching to open source/EU software. I recently had a telecon on Visio (France's Teams/Zoom substitute) and it worked well in a browser with ~ 10 participants.
by harlequinetcie
2 subcomments
- I find fascinating how so many people are moving away from Microsoft decades after they should have because of simply the inertia that large organizations have on adoption.
Above all, I'm also surprised on how those same organization are using Anthropic or OpenAI or other close source solutions for their agent harnesses instead of going for Open Source.
Malte just yesterday showed how powerful innovation with small teams can be achieved particularly in EU.
I hope they start looking for those alternatives too for their agentic systems, beyond using pi-mono.
by MegagramEnjoyer
1 subcomments
- I applaud France for this decision. Windows is basically legal spyware and adware at this point
- It would be great, however the title is misleading: the only announcement regarding linux desktop is that the DINUM - a relatively small but perhaps influential government agency pledges to leave Windows.
I believe the largest Linux Desktop initiative in France is GendBuntu[1] for the National Gendarmerie
[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GendBuntu
- Anyone here familiar with the details of GendBuntu[1], the Ubuntu distro used by the French Gendarmerie? I'd love to hear what is working and what isn't on the ground.
[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GendBuntu?useskin=vector
by 21asdffdsa12
0 subcomment
- There should be a chapter in economic books on how entrenched monopoly companies become on the inside, like small states where little companies (called departments) play freemarket for promotion points, the outside forces completely suspended while the endoplasmic reticulum of the monopoly company lasts.
by aucisson_masque
0 subcomment
- Side note but I had absolutely no idea that the USA sanctioned international justice court judges because they had put an arrest warrant on Benjamin Netanyahu.
Its not a surprise from Russia but the USA. I guess we’re right to cut all bridges as fast as possible with the USA.
- Hope we’ll do the same in germany.
by sherburt3
4 subcomments
- 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
- I am actually a research engineer paid by the French government. They take digital sovereignty pretty serious over here, which is sometimes good, sometimes less so.
Definitely the right call on Windows, though. Even my parents (in their mid-seventies) moved to Linux this year.
- I think this has been attempted many times before by other nations including Brazil without success. It’s one thing to replace a few hundred workstations in a non critical governmental office, another to replace the entire infrastructure of a government which also collaborates with the private sector. Usually these projects start with a lot of passion then die off when can’t justify the investment.
by guenthert
2 subcomments
- I puzzles me to no end why the typical office clerk should care about the OS at all. I understand that secretaries will be trained on MS Word and will then have a strong preference to use such (or at least something which very closely resembles it). Same for accountants with Excel. But clerks in e.g. Revenue Service? Those I expect to interact (perhaps these days via a Web interface) with custom software. Why would those ever see a 'Start' button or somesuch?
by jaspanglia
0 subcomment
- Wish it would succeed, other day was reading about stuff and figure out, how much European Tech is actually controlled by American/Israeli Hegemony.
by liendolucas
0 subcomment
- All countries should follow suit.
Nations and individuals can't depend or be held hostages of a handful of companies on the other side of the Atlantic that have the will to do whatever they want with their customers data.
This is the right path to follow and wish that in upcoming years this initiative becomes a reality across the globe. Long success for Linux and all BSDs!
- It’s quite remarkable what the current administration have “achieved” in a year or so
by hereme888
1 subcomments
- Hopefully the rest of the world can benefit from their efforts. I hope the whole EU starts moving to Linux.
- Europe in general have great software engineers. What it lacks is investment. To see the goverment serving its own country instead of foreign billionaire interests is good change of pace.
And Linux development and adoption helps everybody not just France. A win win.
by diogenes_atx
0 subcomment
- From the perspective of systems administration for large enterprise networks, it seems unlikely that Linux desktops could replace Windows PC's without a domain controller like Microsoft Active Directory. Am I missing something here? How is it possible to manage a large enterprise network with hundreds, or even thousands, of desktop workstations without a domain controller?
by apatheticonion
1 subcomments
- Hopefully this results in investment in desktop environments and Wine!
- Rust + Linux. It is brewing, and that is what Government around the world wants.
But not FreeBSD, C, Go, or others.
Basically Government doesn't want MIT / BSD, they want GPL and AGPL.
- Got my full support, go go go!!!
by laughing_man
0 subcomment
- I don't know why any state or large company would tie itself to Windows. All the applications that used to justify just getting whatever Microsoft produced next are web based now.
by spiderfarmer
3 subcomments
- Being dependent on US tech feels the same as when we were dependent on Russian energy: strategically unwise and avoidable. We have alternatives, they just need work.
- This should have been done years ago.
This will certainly drive bad actors to harm Linux too unfortunately
by shafiemoji
1 subcomments
- Wish the Bangladeshi government did this instead of relying on pirated copies of Windows 7
by schnitzelstoat
0 subcomment
- It's a good move. Hopefully, they stick with it. I remember some cases in Germany where they switched and then later switched back.
It's a shame that we have no equivalent to Google or AWS in Europe and now that it seems LLMs might eat search, we don't have any of those either.
- hmm. hoping that all the weird business requirements get confined to a specific distro with careful gating prior to upstreaming. it would be bad if they were allowed to pollute the ecosystem more generally (which one could argue is why windows is the way it is).
by gengstrand
0 subcomment
- From the article.
The French government did not provide a specific timeline for the switchover, or which distributions it was considering.
Got to be Mandrake right?
- 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.
by socketcluster
0 subcomment
- Great to see France purging itself of corruption. Why did they pay for an inferior product for so many decades when a superior free alternative was available? It was regulatory capture; corruption.
- It's extremely difficult to compete with the US SW companies. Their products are so engaging and attractive that anyone till up to the leaders are tempted to use. It's not surprising that EU's attempt to de-USAisation happens with Linux/OSS and not with an in-house prop SW because it's unable to write one. Also it doesn't happen without cries and pain. We speak for an endeavour to bring a 90% share of a beloved product to 3% and vice versa for a nerdy "cold" one. I keep a long lasting pop corn bag to follow the numbers.
- French administration is about to become even more inefficient it was!
- My main reasons not to be able to fully switch 100% to Linux are the following:
1. Graphic design software is subpar (expecially when compared to mac) and very often under supported. And GIMP has absolutely the worst UX of any program I've ever seen for such a widely recommended software.
2. Gamedev (i.e. Unity) is much less stable and annoying to work with (mac is much better but Windows still wins)
3. Older hardware support, most of the times you can use a super old software (say a printer) and it works. Linux much better than mac for this, from my experience
4. Lots of things on Win are plug and play, Linux is a pain of custom drivers from dead githubs. Mac slightly better or worse, it might either exist as a stupidly expensive application or have to jump hoops to get a driver in.
And I know people say "just use Wine" or "GIMP is actually great and free" but at the end of the day, I want my main driver to be stable and good to use. If anytime I save a project running via Wine has a non 0% chance of it crashing and bringing down my entire work, it's not going to happen.
I do use and recommend Linux quite extensively but that's why I always have 3 different systems at any given time:
1. Win: gamedev, hardware stuff or bigger games, some design, GPU heavy work.
2. Mac: design, light GPU work, browsing and portability (battery life and cooling is fantastic)
3. Linux: everything else
This hasn't changed in the past 10+ years, even though now I can see much more gaming happening on Linux, which is very nice.
by throw88555
0 subcomment
- Every nations should avoid US based products and services. USA, China and Russia are rogue states. they pose a great risk to every other nation
- What they should launch is an abuse of dominant position on the desktop/laptop market, with appropriate remedies such as fines.
by 999900000999
0 subcomment
- What are my options if I want an independent phone OS ? Can I go into a store in Paris and buy an independent phone ?
- Switched to Nobara after getting fed up with one too many Windows bugs. Been a really pleasant experience to be honest
- Ditch iOS and Android for a Blackberry OS / Nokia ?
Really, are there any alternatives?
- Prediction: If USA ends up attacking EU, EU will freeze all the US tech company money and compel them to open their platforms and move all the backend services to EU soil in exchange of unfreezing it and continue operating in a free but regulated market.
For example locked communication devices are huge national security risk, so Apple will have their money frozen and given two options:
1) Open up iOS etc, bring all the servers to EU. Continue business as usual, EU financial institutions may choose to use Apple services as Apple pay but they may choose to bypass it. EU developers may choose to use Apple App Store services and pay the Apple's fees or they may choose to bypass it. Apple may chose to make Xcode a paid software, developers may choose not to purchase Xcode and use other non-Apple tools and pay nothing to Apple.
2) Use credit against the frozen money to refund your users if they bring their devices to you. All the Apple devices will be locked out from EU mobile providers(technically very easy for iPhone, simply by blocking devices with Apple IMEI on EU networks) and any remaining devices of the users will be refunded with the Apple's money. After some grace period, any money remaining in Apple's account will be transferred to Apple and if Apple wants to do business in EU again will have to do the option 1.
I'm bit on the doomer side of things, so I think that if Trump keeps his current course and power, at the end of the term American software industry will shrink by %90 as it will be expelled from most of the world and will be serving to 350M people instead of 8B people. Its amazing how US is screwing up its dominant position in this incredibly lucrative industry that lets them serve a market of 8B people and accumulate huge wealth in the process.
by moron4hire
1 subcomments
- I wish the US Government would do the same
by 1970-01-01
3 subcomments
- >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.
- These are almost always negation strategies rather than serious initiatives.
- Efforts like this are good for people to realise there is a lot of talent in Europe that just gets overshadowed by USA's dominance.
USAians tend think everything is less popular in Europe simply because it is inferior and fails purely on its technical merits. I know nothing will ever change their minds, but at least non-European non-USAians might recognise the efforts a bit more.
We are also willing to accept 'good but not perfect' and understand tradeoffs.
- Ah Windows. The Temu wine.
by michaelashley29
0 subcomment
- been a long time coming for windows. wonder who else will follow suit
- About f'ing time.
- Now nextcloud and libreoffice should give up the stupid drama and focus on beating microsoft.
by heyflyguy
3 subcomments
- man, that's great - but can you imagine some bureaucrat lifer having to adapt to this?
by hackerbeat
0 subcomment
- Good. The US is gone.
by CalRobert
1 subcomments
- But will they use azure?
by soggybread
0 subcomment
- Honestly the only thing keeping me from bringing up the idea of moving to linux is that Windows has active directory and domain wide group policies - if linux had something similar that was easy to manage I'm sure a lot more corporations would move to linux. The ease at which I can adjust system settings throughout the company or within each department such as disabling/enabling features, mapping drives or printers. I haven't found a better alternative than active directory
by selectively
0 subcomment
- Political posturing that will never actually occur.
- Vive la France !
- Fantastic news
by frugalmail
0 subcomment
- Any closed source, centralized system is going to be higher risk than an open source distributed system that can be independently verified and audited by multiple parties.
You just have to be willing to put in the investment to verify/review with parties that meet your needs.
- Unless you need some windows-only software, using windows at this point is masochism.
I was never a fan of Linux, but the Microsoft driven enshitification is so strong that Linux is now a better option. To win, all Linux had to do is stand still, and that's exactly what it did! Ubuntu in 2026 is pretty much the same as Ubuntu from 2006.
by ChrisArchitect
0 subcomment
- [dupe] Discussion on source: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47716043
by supliminal
0 subcomment
- I think the commentary here is mostly in agreement, we are just debating the finer points.
This should have happened already, is the general theme. I still have my Shrike CDs around and the modern-day Fedora (I think 44 is about to launch next week?) is more than sufficient for many, many use cases within the government, regardless of which distro they end up with.
My hope is that the backing of EU software development teams to open source will lift all boats and in addition to Linux, BSD may get some fruits of labor out of it.
9front as always is to be strictly forbidden without a security clearance.
- Will the French government view open source software as software which should be well-funded and well structured, ie Blender level quality and organization, or are they going to underfund it and thus have it succumb to the shenanigans of Redhat, aka IBM, the infamous pushers of Gnome and Wayland?
- I hope they also help in improving battery management on Linux notebooks, even pressing vendors via regulations.
- I've been on Linux (I use Arch btw) since 2011.
I've been dual booting the first couple of years, then dumped Windows completely in 2016.
Since then I am on Linux only. Private and corporate.
Yes, sometimes I need to access a Windows machine or do work in one (I am my own boss), but then the client pays a "pain tax" as I call it.
There are some games I can't play I would've played in the past.
Mostly competitive online games.
Technically that's annoying, but for me personally it's not a problem as I am not in my teens of twenties anymore and I have other hobbies and obligations.
- France is doing many thinks way better than Germany.
This is one of them.
- Excellent move. Hopefully these moves continue the trend spreading through Europe.
With another 3 or so years with the Orange Dildo in charge, there's a decent chance the momentum will turn into something tangible.
by cynicalsecurity
0 subcomment
- Vive la France !
- Please tell me this also means that they are redirecting the expenses currently going to Microsoft into funding open source development?
- de Gaule v2.0 :)
by josefritzishere
3 subcomments
- We're going to keep seeing this due to destabilization and political changes in the US. It drives nationalization elsewhere, even among allies.
- Holy based
by self_awareness
1 subcomments
- It's kind of good news, but it's also bad news -- with Linux popularity, crapware will be more popular. I kind of liked times when Linux was used only by power users. Today it's slightly different, and with more popularity... we get things like age verification in systemd.
But well, I can always switch to FreeBSD I guess. And that's my plan B.
by HumblyTossed
1 subcomments
- This is traditionally how you renegotiate with MS.
But seriously, how long before MS offers them a deal they would rather not refuse?
by shevy-java
0 subcomment
- At the least the french government has a plan. Now please have a look at Germany - the current leading guy is absolutely clueless as to what he wants to do. From appeasing Trump to ... actually doing what else? Germany with regards to its politicians is a problem for the EU. Yes, we also have Hungary etc... but it's a small country that is over-hyped by the media due to its intrinsic corruption in the leadership; the real problem really is Germany. In the past it always was "too much bureaucracy" - the problem goes much deeper. The THINKING process in Germany is broken. France, Sweden, Denmark, Netherlands, Finland, Norway (not EU but clever nonetheless) and so forth, are much better at THINKING. Something is broken in Germany and Merz is the showcase of cluenessness here.
by otabdeveloper4
3 subcomments
- What? Again?
I lost count, it's how many attempts again? Fill me in.
- Next up: governments rejecting use of AWS.
- Previous discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47716043 (764 points 5 hours ago, 384 comments)
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by hacktivity
0 subcomment
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by WaryByDesign
7 subcomments
- It's... an admirable goal, but it pretty much remains to be seen if "France"[1] 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."
[1] Oh, I just love it when an entire culturally-diverse region gets lumped in together, or, when, as in this case, ~6M French government employees are treated as a homogeneous group.
by charcircuit
2 subcomments
- Desktop Linux's security and antimalware solutions are not ready for government usage. This is a cyber attack waiting to happen if they go through with this. They should at least switch to ChromeOS if they want to use Linux.
by DeathArrow
0 subcomment
- So did the Great Country of North Korea.
by AtlasBarfed
0 subcomment
- 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.
by afewquarks
2 subcomments
- I know this might be a controversial take but nevertheless I will state my opinion: I do not think "the year of the Linux desktop" is the good idea that most people seem to think. Everything that gets the eye of Sauron on it proceeds to become a complete mess.
Resources always win. All that is needed to ruin an open project is dump money into heavy development up to the point where it becomes impossible to do without it. Plenty such cases already.
This also ruins the development of the project akin to feeding wild life, you get them dependent on you, and if you stop feeding them they lose the ability to feed themselves in the wild. Such is the Linux ecosystem, based on a type of work that so far made a great project for people who have a bit of technical skills. Making it more accessible to the masses only brings that kind of bullshit into it. Inevitably. There is no way something of such importance, to the masses, won't get corrupted in one way or another. That never happens, if there is too much interest there will be funds dumped into corrupting it, one way or another.
The best path forward for Linux was as before, to fly just under the radar, to bee a bit too complicated for most people. This is what protects it. Most, if anyone, don't seem to understand this very simple fact. No older Linux user gets anything worthwhile out of this deal, nothing relevant, just inevitable enshitification of it. Historically proven over and over again. I find "the year of the Linux desktop" to be a childish take in a world that functions on completely different principles.
edit: To add a bit more context, Windows is not the mess that it is today because of evil Microsoft, it is a reflection of its user-base. Same with Linux.
They did that to Windows, with their behavior, with accepting all that nonsense.
You want to bring the very same type of people, with that kind of attitude, in Linux, what exactly do you thing is going to happen? They will adapt to Linux mentality or they'll proceed to ruin Linux with their behavior? I can take a good guess on what will happen. People will people, and corpos will corpo to milk them.
by buttersicle
1 subcomments
- Government is the perfect place to do this. It doesn't matter if it craters productivity because the organization's budget is not conditioned on delivering impact.
by Chance-Device
2 subcomments
- Who do they think writes Linux? The European Commission? They’re on the US tech stack whether they want to be or not, and nobody in Europe has the will or resources to pull a China and make their own alternative. More’s the pity.
- That might work for government employees using webapps all day. But for power users it is unlikely to be friction free.
- I understand what they mean, linux offers freedom, enough that it divorces your tech stack from any one company.
But isn't linux US tech? The blueprint, UNIX was a US project, torvolds works from the US. the original userland GNU was a US based project. The new userland systemd is a US based project.