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.
jodrellblank 20 minutes ago [-]
> "theres a big chance for someone like Nokia to come in and develop their own approved distro"
> Personally I think we are at an interim period for a big player to emerge and take over this space...
And even without a big player, the number of people who are entirely operational with just a browser at work is huge.
Many SMEs already realized they can switch seamlessly between Windows and OS X / MacOS and I see people working on either one or the other. For example a desktop PC running Windows and a Mac laptop is not uncommon.
I switched an employee at my wife's SME to... Debian! And the transition has been more than fine: they live in the browser (Google Workspace, paid company subscription). Unattended-upgrades, a user account that cannot sudo, and that's it.
The number of desktop PC running Windows that are actually glorified browsers has to be through the roof.
Once people realize there's no need to pay the double-whammy Microsoft tax (pay for a new Windows / also pay for a new PC), suddenly installing Linux becomes an option.
Now I know: using Linux and Google is not "getting rid of US tech". But it's "getting of Microsoft" and that is fine with me. I'll never ever forgive the mediocrity this company has brought onto the world.
upcoming-sesame 22 minutes ago [-]
honestly since the browser has more or less become the real operating system the host OS doesn't matter so much anymore. most people do 90% of their work in the browser anyway
oscord 2 minutes ago [-]
Ditch iOS and Android for a Blackberry OS / Nokia ?
Really, are there any alternatives?
BLKNSLVR 2 hours 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 2 hours 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.
PaulDavisThe1st 38 minutes ago [-]
I am saying this as a very long time Linux user, and it saddens me. Politics aside, from a pure technical, functional, privacy and UX perspective, the case for changing over from Windows has been apparent for several decades.
lithos 2 hours 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).
yibers 1 hours ago [-]
How does XFCE compare to KDE and GNOME? Also, does it has all the nice window snapping features that I'm used to fron Windows?
mrj 21 minutes ago [-]
As a long time Linux user, this comment makes me sad since many of those features were copied from Linux (many from Unity) :)
cwillu 46 minutes ago [-]
I don't think all the same shortcuts exist out of the box, although win-drag/win-right-drag to move and resize windows (might be alt by default) is _so_ much more convenient than the usual border/title dragging that you might find you don't miss them.
lithos 1 hours ago [-]
My personal PCs have enough screens that I haven't tried. Though I do really like Windows snapping features on my work laptop (can't change OS there).
I haven't played with other windowing systems to judge too much. And just picked right from screen shots/gifs to not need to try.
sega_sai 48 minutes ago [-]
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.
dleslie 2 hours 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.
unfocused 11 minutes ago [-]
I work in government. Link 1 (2018) is essentially a dream. All of government got forced to use MS Dynamics CRM. Basically, anybody with a software requirement for case management, had to use MS Dynamics. I recommended we use Drupal in 2011. That was killed because everything had to be MS. I'm kind of surprised that it is in there given that nobody was allowed to use.
Link 0 and 2 are essentially from TBS and CDS. They coexist together. They are essentially working at the very top as entities that gather information from other departments. They can do whatever they want because they help write the rules.
I'm not trying to discredit your post, just saying that as someone who has brought OSS tools to development at the government and tried to use OSS tools for client (I failed at that), it is nearly impossible at the moment. We are married to Microsoft and its cloud.
I do agree, that it may take an entire generation because right now, 190+ departments are not exactly jumping to FOSS, and in many situations, they are down right told you are not allowed.
In addition, the current de facto document management system is from OpenText. Although many just use Sharepoint Online.
Ironically, as everything moves to the cloud, it would be easier to move to a solution that is FOSS based, and based in the cloud. Technology has matured enough that you don't need executables on a desktop, you just need a browser pointing to a website.
The Phoenix contract predates the more recent efforts to switch to FOSS.
But also, Canada loves to burn money on American suppliers. It's probably why the recent interest in _Buy Canadian_ has the American administration annoyed.
I applaud France for this decision. Windows is basically legal spyware and adware at this point
frugalmail 3 minutes ago [-]
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.
jaspanglia 30 minutes ago [-]
Wish it would succeed, other day was reading about stuff and figure out, how much European Tech is actually controlled by American/Israeli Hegemony.
1970-01-01 2 hours 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.
ErroneousBosh 41 minutes ago [-]
Why would you need any user retraining?
All distros are basically identical. The only real difference is whether you spell "package manager" as apt, yum, or dnf.
soiltype 6 minutes ago [-]
This comment is completely out of touch with how typical office workers use their computers. "Package manager" is your feldspars. But it's even worse than that, because you don't train for the typical employee, you train for the least-technical employee lest they become completely useless overnight.
_blk 1 hours ago [-]
They likely don't. It's a purely political move not a technical move. With the average length of the French work week, this will take a while to implement anyway.
Don't get me wrong, I think it's a great thought but I don't think it's more than a short-sighted reaction. Munich unfortunately faltered after a few years.
hirako2000 15 minutes ago [-]
The french Gendarmerie already migrated to GendBunto, their own distribution. It took a while but it's now running on 97% of all workstations.
I wouldn't call this just political fluff.
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
ang_cire 1 hours ago [-]
If it only runs on NT, it'll work better under WINE than on Win10/11.
Legacy app compat is actually an argument for moving to Linux.
psychoslave 2 hours 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 hours ago [-]
Sure. But if they can successfully convert 99% of their computers to non-Windows and non-Mac, that'd still be a massive win.
BLKNSLVR 2 hours 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.
shafiemoji 2 hours ago [-]
Wish the Bangladeshi government did this instead of relying on pirated copies of Windows 7
BLKNSLVR 2 hours ago [-]
At least they know enough to have stuck with the outright best version of Windows.
simonask 56 minutes ago [-]
Please tell me this also means that they are redirecting the expenses currently going to Microsoft into funding open source development?
Teever 2 hours 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 2 hours 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.
Teever 1 hours ago [-]
But what kind of projects are people using these different pieces of software for?
Are people designing aircraft carriers in Fusion?
Don't get me wrong, I understand that AutoCAD is extremely important for architecture and the death grip that AutoDesk has over that industry needs to be broken for the benefit of all of us, but from my understanding Dessault Systems makes software that is used for totally different purposes and is of vital strategic importance for a nation that wants an independent MIC which France obviously does.
So it seems foolish to me for them to have their own CAD software that can and is used to design weapons but be dependent on an American operating system produced by a particularly unscrupulous company who is obsessed with tighter and tigher control and has definite ties to the US intelligence apparatus.
ThePowerOfFuet 55 minutes ago [-]
>Are people designing aircraft carriers in Fusion?
I don't know, but I have watched people designing high-speed trains in CATIA.
carefree-bob 1 hours ago [-]
I doubt that the US military itself is using commercial CAD software, most likely they are using something in house. Again, CAD software is not Extreme Ultra Lithography, where it is a marvel of engineering and can only be produced by one firm. The netherlands can rightly be proud of ASML as a national achievement. But CAD software? Now that's just goofy.
But I would assume defense contractors -- the private firms like Lockheed -- are probably using commercial software. The US military is pretty bureaucratic and is filled with bespoke stuff, whereas the contractors are basically businesses and would use whatever is common in commercial business world.
ezst 1 hours ago [-]
Wasn't CATIA running on unix even before it ran on Windows?
charcircuit 43 minutes ago [-]
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.
kpw94 11 minutes ago [-]
Some might be tempted to brush aside that Server Linux threat model is very different from Desktop Linux (to snarkily reply "we'll it's powering a vast majority of GDP via all of AWS, Azure, etc.").
However comparing apples to apples, what makes you say this isn't ready for government usage, when it's ready for trillion dollar big tech companies' majority of their workforce? (Aside from Microsoft, Apple obviously). Large employers like IBM etc also must be using red hat or some other distro
bornfreddy 27 minutes ago [-]
You mean switch Windows by Microsoft for ChromeOS by Google? Weird suggestion.
As for "security" and "antimalware" solutions being ready, I don't think there is much difference between the OSs there. Windows is no candyland either.
As always, they will need competent people in the right places to pull this through. Tech is just an enabler.
charcircuit 19 minutes ago [-]
Yes I do mean that. Google is one of the only companies in the Linux space who takes security seriously.
heyflyguy 2 hours ago [-]
man, that's great - but can you imagine some bureaucrat lifer having to adapt to this?
sometimes_all 3 minutes ago [-]
There are few things in life more satisfying than forcing bureaucrat lifers to expand their minds.
34 minutes ago [-]
MegagramEnjoyer 1 hours ago [-]
we need more tech literacy overall, so this might help with that also
Now nextcloud and libreoffice should give up the stupid drama and focus on beating microsoft.
AtlasBarfed 2 hours 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 2 hours ago [-]
What? Again?
I lost count, it's how many attempts again? Fill me in.
icfly2 2 hours 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 2 hours 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
mrheosuper 33 minutes ago [-]
It needs just 1 successful attemp.
abetaha 2 hours ago [-]
[dead]
greton7 2 hours ago [-]
[dead]
WaryByDesign 2 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
ricw 1 hours ago [-]
Munich is a bad example - they were effectively „bought out“ by Microsoft by investing hugely into the local economy in the form of offices and employees. It was also two parties that kept flip flopping with different priorities.
Linux itself had some hiccups but was fine from what I recall.
WaryByDesign 58 minutes ago [-]
[Yeah, if I'm just gonna be down-voted to oblivion regardless of my participation in the comments, good luck with your 'meaningful discussion'}
It doesn't matter if this or that doesn't work. Or if Microslop pressures to continue using Winslop.
Now the reasons are geopolitical.
WaryByDesign 25 minutes ago [-]
[Yeah, if I'm just gonna be down-voted to oblivion regardless of my participation in the comments, good luck with your 'meaningful discussion'}
atherton94027 49 minutes ago [-]
You must be German — the French state is a lot more top down than Germany with its regions, so generally these kinds of mandates get applied broadly
WaryByDesign 42 minutes ago [-]
[Yeah, if I'm just gonna be down-voted to oblivion regardless of my participation in the comments, good luck with your 'meaningful discussion'}
Akronymus 1 hours ago [-]
Werent the munich government employees quite happy with linux, but microsofts lobbying with their headquarters got them to switch back?
Slothrop99 28 minutes ago [-]
Were they? Sounded like they stuck with some terrible old version of OpenOffice ("brokenoffice"). Users don't really care about the OS, its the apps.
WaryByDesign 1 hours ago [-]
[Yeah, if I'm just gonna be down-voted to oblivion regardless of my participation in the comments, good luck with your 'meaningful discussion'}
LtWorf 35 minutes ago [-]
> I'm not aware of Microsoft's economic footprint in the Munich region, but I doubt it's significant.
Perhaps be aware before explaining everyone how things really are?
WaryByDesign 26 minutes ago [-]
[Yeah, if I'm just gonna be down-voted to oblivion regardless of my participation in the comments, good luck with your 'meaningful discussion'}
earthnail 5 minutes ago [-]
I've never seen a user replace all their comments with
"[Yeah, if I'm just gonna be down-voted to oblivion regardless of my participation in the comments, good luck with your 'meaningful discussion'}"
making it impossible for others to read their original comments. If this now becomes a trend I feel like there may be a need to change the rules around editing.
samsk 1 hours ago [-]
Earlier attempts were mostly about money and ideology. Now its a question of security, thanks to one 'clever' 'businessman'.
So thanks to his _great_ efforts, it might actually work out this time.
WaryByDesign 25 minutes ago [-]
[Yeah, if I'm just gonna be down-voted to oblivion regardless of my participation in the comments, good luck with your 'meaningful discussion'}
mixmastamyk 2 hours 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.
WaryByDesign 1 hours ago [-]
[Yeah, if I'm just gonna be down-voted to oblivion regardless of my participation in the comments, good luck with your 'meaningful discussion'}
danny_codes 55 minutes ago [-]
You’re saying a government couldn’t take open source building blocks and run.. office apps with basic security and.. file storage? For $100M a year? This could be done with a 30 person team
2000UltraDeluxe 18 minutes ago [-]
30 people managing the hardware? Sure, if you get good deals on the hardware itself, the employees stay healthy, and you have everything so centralised you don't need multiple people on call.
Centralising things to that level and supporting the users of the entire government structure of a country the size of France -- one of the countries the sun _never_ sets on -- while it's transitioning from decades of Microsoft dependency to an open source ecosystem? Heh, no.
WaryByDesign 47 minutes ago [-]
[Yeah, if I'm just gonna be down-voted to oblivion regardless of my participation in the comments, good luck with your 'meaningful discussion'}
mixmastamyk 1 hours ago [-]
All of that came about without them spending anything. So the extra is just to fix bugs and do integration work. StarOffice (LibreOffice ancestor) existed in the 90s—I used it and it was fine for government work.
File storage? Cheap by Y2K as well.
WaryByDesign 25 minutes ago [-]
[Yeah, if I'm just gonna be down-voted to oblivion regardless of my participation in the comments, good luck with your 'meaningful discussion'}
fxtentacle 1 hours ago [-]
Munich led to "all of Schleswig-Holstein" in Germany. 44,000 Exchange mailboxes replaced with Open-Xchange. 25,000 Windows+Office desktops replaced with Linux+OpenOffice.
WaryByDesign 34 minutes ago [-]
[Yeah, if I'm just gonna be down-voted to oblivion regardless of my participation in the comments, good luck with your 'meaningful discussion'}
bornfreddy 1 hours ago [-]
Motivation matters.
WaryByDesign 26 minutes ago [-]
[Yeah, if I'm just gonna be down-voted to oblivion regardless of my participation in the comments, good luck with your 'meaningful discussion'}
josefritzishere 2 hours ago [-]
We're going to keep seeing this due to destabilization and political changes in the US. It drives nationalization elsewhere, even among allies.
_verandaguy 2 hours ago [-]
It doesn't help that Microsoft seems to be doing everything in its power to alienate Windows users.
recursivegirth 2 hours 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 2 hours 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.
somat 1 hours ago [-]
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.
benterix 1 hours ago [-]
> But isn't linux US tech?
If you want to discuss it on that level, it if Finnish tech imported to the USA, inspired by a Dutch implementation of a research OS.
On a more serious note, Linux has been developed by many individuals all over the world, you can't put a nationality stamp on it.
nix0n 47 minutes ago [-]
Linux is a global project, and open source more broadly is also of course global.
Linux Mint (the distro I use) was started and is led by French developer Clement Lefebvre.
QEMU and FFmpeg are among the notable projects started by French developer Fabrice Bellard.
VLC was started by students of École Centrale Paris.
These are just the things that I know about as an American, so I'm sure there are more.
tensor 41 minutes ago [-]
The difference, of course, is that they can inspect the source, and should the US try to use it as leverage they can just fork and continue on.
Rendered at 17:32:19 GMT+0000 (Coordinated Universal Time) with Vercel.
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.
Microsoft bought Nokia's devices and services division for Windows Mobile in 2014. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Mobile
And even without a big player, the number of people who are entirely operational with just a browser at work is huge.
Many SMEs already realized they can switch seamlessly between Windows and OS X / MacOS and I see people working on either one or the other. For example a desktop PC running Windows and a Mac laptop is not uncommon.
I switched an employee at my wife's SME to... Debian! And the transition has been more than fine: they live in the browser (Google Workspace, paid company subscription). Unattended-upgrades, a user account that cannot sudo, and that's it.
The number of desktop PC running Windows that are actually glorified browsers has to be through the roof.
Once people realize there's no need to pay the double-whammy Microsoft tax (pay for a new Windows / also pay for a new PC), suddenly installing Linux becomes an option.
Now I know: using Linux and Google is not "getting rid of US tech". But it's "getting of Microsoft" and that is fine with me. I'll never ever forgive the mediocrity this company has brought onto the world.
I haven't played with other windowing systems to judge too much. And just picked right from screen shots/gifs to not need to try.
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.
Link 0 and 2 are essentially from TBS and CDS. They coexist together. They are essentially working at the very top as entities that gather information from other departments. They can do whatever they want because they help write the rules.
I'm not trying to discredit your post, just saying that as someone who has brought OSS tools to development at the government and tried to use OSS tools for client (I failed at that), it is nearly impossible at the moment. We are married to Microsoft and its cloud.
I do agree, that it may take an entire generation because right now, 190+ departments are not exactly jumping to FOSS, and in many situations, they are down right told you are not allowed.
In addition, the current de facto document management system is from OpenText. Although many just use Sharepoint Online.
Ironically, as everything moves to the cloud, it would be easier to move to a solution that is FOSS based, and based in the cloud. Technology has matured enough that you don't need executables on a desktop, you just need a browser pointing to a website.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/ottawa/federal-phoenix-pay-sy...
But also, Canada loves to burn money on American suppliers. It's probably why the recent interest in _Buy Canadian_ has the American administration annoyed.
You just have to be willing to put in the investment to verify/review with parties that meet your needs.
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.
All distros are basically identical. The only real difference is whether you spell "package manager" as apt, yum, or dnf.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GendBuntu
Legacy app compat is actually an argument for moving to Linux.
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.
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.
Are people designing aircraft carriers in Fusion?
Don't get me wrong, I understand that AutoCAD is extremely important for architecture and the death grip that AutoDesk has over that industry needs to be broken for the benefit of all of us, but from my understanding Dessault Systems makes software that is used for totally different purposes and is of vital strategic importance for a nation that wants an independent MIC which France obviously does.
So it seems foolish to me for them to have their own CAD software that can and is used to design weapons but be dependent on an American operating system produced by a particularly unscrupulous company who is obsessed with tighter and tigher control and has definite ties to the US intelligence apparatus.
I don't know, but I have watched people designing high-speed trains in CATIA.
Check out: https://www.army.mil/article/249241/armys_powerful_open_sour...
But I would assume defense contractors -- the private firms like Lockheed -- are probably using commercial software. The US military is pretty bureaucratic and is filled with bespoke stuff, whereas the contractors are basically businesses and would use whatever is common in commercial business world.
However comparing apples to apples, what makes you say this isn't ready for government usage, when it's ready for trillion dollar big tech companies' majority of their workforce? (Aside from Microsoft, Apple obviously). Large employers like IBM etc also must be using red hat or some other distro
As for "security" and "antimalware" solutions being ready, I don't think there is much difference between the OSs there. Windows is no candyland either.
As always, they will need competent people in the right places to pull this through. Tech is just an enabler.
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.
It doesn't matter if this or that doesn't work. Or if Microslop pressures to continue using Winslop.
Now the reasons are geopolitical.
Perhaps be aware before explaining everyone how things really are?
"[Yeah, if I'm just gonna be down-voted to oblivion regardless of my participation in the comments, good luck with your 'meaningful discussion'}"
making it impossible for others to read their original comments. If this now becomes a trend I feel like there may be a need to change the rules around editing.
Centralising things to that level and supporting the users of the entire government structure of a country the size of France -- one of the countries the sun _never_ sets on -- while it's transitioning from decades of Microsoft dependency to an open source ecosystem? Heh, no.
File storage? Cheap by Y2K as well.
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.
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.
If you want to discuss it on that level, it if Finnish tech imported to the USA, inspired by a Dutch implementation of a research OS.
On a more serious note, Linux has been developed by many individuals all over the world, you can't put a nationality stamp on it.
Linux Mint (the distro I use) was started and is led by French developer Clement Lefebvre.
QEMU and FFmpeg are among the notable projects started by French developer Fabrice Bellard.
VLC was started by students of École Centrale Paris.
These are just the things that I know about as an American, so I'm sure there are more.