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France's Government Is Ditching Windows For Linux (techcrunch.com) 119

Posted by BeauHD from the tech-independence dept.
France says it plans to move some government computers from Windows to Linux as part of a broader push for digital sovereignty and reduced dependence on U.S. technology. TechCrunch reports: In a statement, French minister David Amiel said (translated) that the effort was to "regain control of our digital destiny" by relying less on U.S. tech companies. Amiel said that the French government can no longer accept that it doesn't have control over its data and digital infrastructure. The French government did not provide a specific timeline for the switchover, or which distributions it was considering. Microsoft did not immediately comment on the news.

[...] France's decision to ditch Windows comes months after the government announced it would stop using Microsoft Teams for video conferencing in favor of French-made Visio, a tool based on the open source end-to-end encrypted video meeting tool Jitsi. The French government said it also plans to migrate its health data platform to a new trusted platform by the end of the year.

France's Government Is Ditching Windows For Linux More | Reply

France's Government Is Ditching Windows For Linux

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  • gotta catch 'em all (Score:3, Insightful)

    by drinkypoo ( 153816 ) <drink@hyperlogos.org> on Friday April 10, 2026 @12:06PM (#66087222) Homepage Journal

    France says it plans to move some government computers from Windows to Linux as part of a broader push for digital sovereignty and reduced dependence on U.S. technology. TechCrunch reports:
    In a statement, French minister David Amiel said (translated) that the effort was to "regain control of our digital destiny"

    He forgot the word "partial"

    If they want that control they need to at least divest from ALL use of Microsoft "solutions" and possibly also build their own Linux distribution.

    • Re:gotta catch 'em all (Score:5, Interesting)

      by echo123 ( 1266692 ) on Friday April 10, 2026 @12:15PM (#66087242)

      France says it plans to move some government computers from Windows to Linux as part of a broader push for digital sovereignty and reduced dependence on U.S. technology. TechCrunch reports:
      In a statement, French minister David Amiel said (translated) that the effort was to "regain control of our digital destiny"

      He forgot the word "partial"

      If they want that control they need to at least divest from ALL use of Microsoft "solutions" and possibly also build their own Linux distribution.

      In 2026, given the current state of Linux software and distributions, I don't see what is so hard about switching the vast majority of common office computers.

      • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

        by logjon ( 1411219 )
        In a lot of cases, the challenge isn't much beyond just training. For the most part, you get to assume basic Windows competence where you can't do that with even the friendliest Linux distro.Specialized software for fields such as accounting, healthcare, transportation, tend to run only on Windows (and sometimes only on a badly outdated version at that.) Until you can get companies like Siemens and Wolters Kluwer to prioritize Linux support and development, or otherwise develop Linux alternatives there rem

        • Re:gotta catch 'em all (Score:5, Insightful)

          by Murdoch5 ( 1563847 ) on Friday April 10, 2026 @12:54PM (#66087352) Homepage
          It's true, but, it's a bad reason. If you can honestly tell me that the Windows UX / UI is easier, friendlier, simpler, and more inviting than KDE, or Gnome, why? In my opinion, KDE and Gnome as vastly more usable than the thing Windows uses as a desktop. How long would the training really take? 10-minutes?

          • Odd that you never hear these kind of remarks about people switching to MacOS. It's just handwaved away under the assumption "Apple did it, so it's super easy". The fact is, users will very likely figure it out, even the dumber ones. The determination to set your own wallpaper goes a long way.

            • Thanks for that! Comments that manage to be both insightful and funny are rare.

            • On the early 2000 I was managing several family computers, regularly full of Windows viruses and got fed up. I installed Kubuntu on them and told the users "it's just a new windows update, things might be a bit different" ! There were absolutely no issues except for a few "I can't find this program" "let me ssh in and install this out that". Still ongoing.

          • Re:gotta catch 'em all (Score:5, Interesting)

            by Locke2005 ( 849178 ) on Friday April 10, 2026 @01:31PM (#66087438)
            Windows isn't easier, but it costs about $2000 per seat to train people to use an new operating system. Once you are past that expense, Linux is cheaper because it doesn't require retraining every time Microsoft obsoletes it's old UI. Google Docs does a fairly good job of handling Microsoft Office file formats now, so document backwards compatibility is no longer an issue.

            • This is an issue of national importance to France, Costs don't matter.

            • I have no idea if that number is right or wrong, but I'll assume it's accurate. If it's takes $2000 to learn a generic workflow, the generic workflow is bad. I could understand specialty software, that is very complicated taking major investment for training, but your operating system, that should be fairly easy.

              • Re: (Score:2)

                by Hadlock ( 143607 )

                Everyone has to stop what they're doing for an entire day, travel to the training center, which costs money, they have to rent the training center, which costs money, they have to pay the training person to present the training materials, which costs money, and they have to develop the training materials/course, which costs money.

                And then the next day is going to be complete chaos, because the training materials were developed against v0.7 of the software, and everyone is using v1.3 of the software,

                • You described how a Fortune 500 company would do it. For a public administration the costs are minimal. Workers will get a 2 hour Teams/Zoom meeting with training materials from their own IT department. The reduced productivity will translate into delayed administrative processes. All is done internally and there is no revenue to lose, so quantifiable costs will be minimal.

                  (on top of your argument that whatever costs don't matter in this case.)

                • I understand about the old lady, that's an outlier, but most people, unless they're being willingly ignorant and incompetent, can get up to speed pretty quick.

                  Take modern KDE and Gnome, if you honestly can come up with a list of ways people would have trouble adapting to it, please do! My mother came over recently, needed to check her email, and figured out how to do it almost instantly in KDE. Her computing competence is somewhere around the "What is the "any" key". It's no longer an impasse to use mo

                • Payroll is definitely a very common case for Windows use. I was a sysadmin at a small company where the only Windows systems were in HR/Payroll, everything else was SunOS except the one SGI machine.

            • If the idea is to get more INdependent of tech giants, then Google Docs isn't goong to be the replacement.

          • Re:gotta catch 'em all (Score:4, Insightful)

            by taustin ( 171655 ) on Friday April 10, 2026 @01:48PM (#66087474) Homepage Journal

            Easier, friendlier, simpler, and more inviting than KDE, or Gnome? No.

            But more familiar, certainly. And that matters at lot when you have people with little or not technical aptitude trying to get their job done so they won't get fired. Most users rely on motor memory, with little to no conscious awareness of what they're doing in terms of interacting with the user interface.

            If you worked in tech support, you'd know that.

            • I support users ranging from paste eaters, through to fairly competent IT professionals. I'm on KDE right now, if you tell me that you didn't know the little blue folder went to your drive, that's on you, Windows has that folder in yellow. The settings are clear and clean, the menus are clear and clean, applications don't change if you use the same platforms, so I don't buy it.

              I used to build test platforms for products that came off the assembly line, test fixtures. We'd get emails from the testers be

              • Re: (Score:2)

                by taustin ( 171655 )

                When people are too stupid to figure out something with some effort, basic effort, I don't care. I gave up years ago, either your trying to be an incompetent idiot, or, you're special needs.

                Which makes you like the IT guy supporting a store we bought a few years back. Everyone in the store wanted to light him on fire. The first visit, I could have literally punched an employee in the face and the would have liked me more than they liked him.

                Which is to say, he doesn't work for us any more.

                Welcome to grown up land, where "I don't care" means "I'd rather collect unemployment."

                • No, I don't care if you don't care. If you call over and point to the computer and say "box thing, nothing", then what do you want me to do? If you sport no competence, intelligence, or ability to communicate, what do you want me to do?

                  The screen tells you to call someone else, and even with that message, you call me? What do you expect me to do? I was nice at first, and changed the message, and you still screwed it up, and was still nice, until everyone did it.

                  That's when I don't care, and won't car

                  • Re: (Score:2)

                    by taustin ( 171655 )

                    No, I don't care if you don't care. If you call over and point to the computer and say "box thing, nothing", then what do you want me to do?

                    Your job, but that's apparently to much to ask.

                    • Your job, but that's apparently to much to ask.

                      He literally explained how and why it wasn't his job, but reading comprehension is too much to expect from you.

                    • No, you don't want me to do my job, you want me to do some other person's job, even when I try to sort the mess out.

                      There was another case with a different plant, where the IT team for that plant changed a firewall rule to block access to SQL. The issue, that test fixture would call out to our SQL Server to get a serial number, it was two UUIDv4's merged. After 6+ months of running, they called me that the boards started failing with an error regarding serial numbers. Weird, since I had nearly a trilli
                    • Exactly, I love my job, it's enjoyable, but when you present a problem that I can't help with, not because I'm lazy and don't want to because the computer is a plant I can't access, and I'm not authorized to work at, what do you expect?

                      I even tried in that one example, I really tried. I changed the messaging, I took their calls and emails, and I found the IT person, Geoff, and provided him the information. He talked to the production manager, and told the production manager to call him, and they still s

            • Most people don't care. They don'tb understand Linux, they don't understand Windows either.

              The only "training" they ever need is someone to tell them where to find their LibreOffice icon this tine. If it's obvious, youbcan skip yhe training and they'll cope.

              And yes, I did this professionally -- switch an entire company end device system from Windows to Linux, in my role as head of IT, and deal with the (latgely nonexistent) support "fallout".

          • Than Plasma? Maybe not. Than classic KDE, lxqt, Mate, or Gnome... absolutely. I found them to be unpleasant, harder to use, and just a bit wrong in a way that makes me ill.

            And while plasma is generally decent, it suffers from the same awful system controls as the rest. Not better than the new Windows settings, far worse than the classic Control Panel. I suspect that is because the design ethos is still has, at its heart, "well, just open a terminal and type nano /etc/...". Or, maybe it's because li

            • Curious.

              I get not liking an interface for whatever reasons. But usually, someone with a valid complaint (from THEIR point of view) points whatever it is that springs to mind when they say they don't like said interface. But you just go on calling everything you can think of as garbage without giving one single reason it is so.

              So, at a guess, I'll venture you're either one of those two : a troll, or somebody for whom the simple lack of a big corp logo is enough to be called trash.

          • Not used KDE. GNOME... possibly. Every time I try to sit down with GNOME and see if I can work with it, I end up giving up in disgust and switching back to MATE.

            Honestly, GNOME is the major failure in the GNU/Linux ecosystem. I don't in any way criticize them for trying, I think it was a good idea to try out new things, but they threw the baby out with the bathwater.

            The differences between Windows 7 and Windows 10/11 are such that I think they can graft a windows-like UI over a standard desktop API and it'l

        • Until you can get companies like Siemens and Wolters Kluwer to prioritize Linux support and development, or otherwise develop Linux alternatives there remain massive impediments in government and enterprise.

          The current plan is to move central administration where there is a pool of over a several million office computers that don't need any specialized software.

          Migrating hospitals, public transit companies, where specialized software is needed, is a problem for another day.

      • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

        by JaredOfEuropa ( 526365 )
        What is the state of Linux enterprise software these days? For most personal desktop activities, there are solid Linux options. But are there good options for ERP, Mail/ Calendar, Learning Management Systems, (video)conferencing, Knowledge Management? These days a lot of that kind of software runs in the browser on the client machine, but the server is still Windows.

        • Umm...

          Pretty much every single web-based enterprise software as a service is already running in Linux isn't it?

          The entirety of Gmail and all it's tools as the primary example.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by rta ( 559125 )

          What is the state of Linux enterprise software these days? ....

          a LOT of stuff is now "cloud" / web interface anyway.

          what I still don't know is what the state is of the equivalent of "group policy" and automated remote management and monitoring.

          Doing it for dev servers with like 20 accounts total in Google cloud platform was "so so"... and a lot of power user things still required sudo or were a bit insecure (i.e. of they were in the docker group. and yes that non privileged docker is a thing but was still finicky even a year ago)

          So idk how you'd manage 1k or 10k accou

          • Re: (Score:3)

            by tlhIngan ( 30335 )

            what I still don't know is what the state is of the equivalent of "group policy" and automated remote management and monitoring.

            There are many solutions for managing group policies and remote management tools nowadays. There's a few open source solutions like foreman and such, and many many many commercial solutions like ninja.

            Honestly, any commercial 3rd party system will have Linux support because it's so mainstream it's expected.

            • Re: (Score:2)

              by ksw_92 ( 5249207 )

              Louis: "Ah, we have zunk ze last of ze cursed Windows machine in the depths of the Siene, Capitaine!"
              Jacques: "Very well. What do you use to look after our mighty fleet of Manchot?"
              Louis: "Why, Intune, of course."
              Jacques: "Sacre bleu!"

        • The French state have sponsored a project to replace all of those applicaitions with their own in house developed open source solutions: https://github.com/suitenumerique/ [github.com]
      • The challenge is special purpose administrative systems integrated hard with MS office. And all the MS minions in the IT departments.
      • Basically turnkey with Debian. But that's also the point with Debian.
      • Okay, take a windows computer loaded with sensitive information that must be retained, and install Linux on it without losing anything. Takes some time and effort for one, and they'll have thousands. It's doable, but it won't be cheap or fast.

        • Okay, take a windows computer loaded with sensitive information that must be retained, and install Linux on it without losing anything. Takes some time and effort for one, and they'll have thousands. It's doable, but it won't be cheap or fast.

          Isn't everything managed on servers for a long time already, even with 'personal folders', and ACL's are a thing too. Again, in 2026, any motivated organization should be able to overcome whatever obstacles that might lay in their path, even given their previous investments in microsoft.

      • In 2026, given the current state of Linux software and distributions, I don't see what is so hard about switching the vast majority of common office computers.

        Long time Linux user here: that's a silly question.

        It's not just about deploying a different OS to tens of thousands of machines. Which in itself is hardly a trivial exercise.

        It's not just about having them use LibreOffice instead of MS Office.

        It's about a coherent ecosystem. Not perfect, not shiny: coherent. Flawed it might be, but it scales - not brilliantly, but reliably enough across tens of thousands of endpoints, thousands of servers, with existing data bases, custom software, established processe

      • I don't see what is so hard about switching the vast majority of common office computers

        The basic problem is that you are likely throwing away decades of experience on average per user. For example, I have been using MS Word since the late 1980s (ok, I am older than average; average is probably about 20-25 years). Yes, it has changed over time, but many concepts remain the same and I've had continuous re-training. Could I use another word processor? Yes. Will I be as effective using it? No, not for 4-5 years of using the new program. Knowing the new way to use styles, format pages, etc, just t

    • France says it plans to move some government computers from Windows to Linux as part of a broader push for digital sovereignty and reduced dependence on U.S. technology.

      The French are very good at expressing support without committing. This is not a commitment.

      • I agree the headline misleading and incomplete.

        * the commitment related to linux right now seems to be the 250 workers of the "Digital" agency DINUM which a FOSS source ( https://april.org/logiciel-lib... [april.org] ) speculates is based on Securix, their own hardened derivative of NixOS https://github.com/cloud-gouv/... [github.com]

        * In the broader push, the Social Security agency just completed the move of 80,000 public agents out of Teams.

        The current plan is:
        * by next Autumn, every Ministry has to map their current use of extra

  • We've heard this before (Score:4)

    by haruchai ( 17472 ) on Friday April 10, 2026 @12:08PM (#66087224)

    from Munich, i believe?
    how did that turn out?

    • Re:We've heard this before (Score:5, Insightful)

      by RamenMan ( 7301402 ) on Friday April 10, 2026 @12:21PM (#66087248)

      Munich was a bit ahead of its time with their efforts.

      In 2026, it doesn't really matter what OS you run- most of what people do is through the browser. The OS as an app platform is no longer consequential.

      After 30+ years of relying on Windows, I moved to Ubuntu about 6 months ago. The amount of regret I've had is zero. When I need to work on a Microsoft Office document, the online versions are completely fine. Even Adobe products, which used to be some of the most important 'heavy' apps have tons of online tools.

      Linux has gotten to a really good place now and is a completely capable replacement for Windows for users at any level. Even non-technical users could move over without any problems. I think that France is doing this at a time where it really make sense, while Munich was more at the cutting edge.

      The time really is finally here.

      • Re:We've heard this before (Score:4, Interesting)

        by znrt ( 2424692 ) on Friday April 10, 2026 @12:52PM (#66087344)

        Munich was a bit ahead of its time with their efforts.

        In 2026, it doesn't really matter what OS you run- most of what people do is through the browser. The OS as an app platform is no longer consequential.

        that's quite true but sadly not for public administrative work which tends to rely heavily on legacy sw, specific document templates and workflows, etc. it's a lot of fine detail with devils in it. today such a transition could probably be easier, but still not straightforward. i would guess the far stronger success factor today would be motivation: munich was ahead of its time and purely based on the ideal of achieving a clean open administration standard which is a good thing per-se, with the concern just being that ms is a private corporation, not as much that it is a private corporation controlled by a rogue or sometimes directly hostile state. anyway, let's see.

        • that's quite true but sadly not for public administrative work which tends to rely heavily on legacy sw, specific document templates and workflows, etc.

          I'm not in France, but I work for and have also previously worked for government. The specific document templates are all in PDF now. If a word document isn't exactly the right format it doesn't matter. We do use forms like that, but it's completely inconsequential if the formatting is a bit wrong as long as the data is on it. Where the formatting matters, it's always a PDF. More and more of our work is done via web, many of the PDFs are generated from software on the web. There is absolutely zero reason wh

      • After 30+ years of relying on Windows, I moved to Ubuntu about 6 months ago. The amount of regret I've had is zero. When I need to work on a Microsoft Office document, the online versions are completely fine.

        The online version might be absolutely fine but it's also still a data sovereignty issue: it is provided and hosted by Microsoft, "your" data included. If the OS becomes so irrelevant that we use web versions of everything, then the questions and issues about data sovereignty that were raised regarding local apps need to be raised regarding these web apps (and I believe they are).

    • Well, it didn't turn out well.

      We'll see how how it'd go in Paris.

      Context:

      Munich hosts Germany's MS HQ. And merely few visits (no gifts or rebates!) from them to the local govt was enough. ... But MS's main European HQ is located in *drum roll* Paris. Good luck to all participating in the migration.

    • We, uhh... We don't talk about Munich.

    • Perfectly until a new Mayor that was sponsored by Microsoft took office and switched everything back with the promise that Microsoft would move their German HQ to Munich. Aka the switch back was not technical, it was political.
    • Trump made this completely different. This isn't France trying to get a better deal from Microsoft like usual. America can no longer be trusted.

      Donald Trump has a giant list of reasons why he never should have been president once let alone twice. It's so bad I'm not even going to waste time listing the points out here.

      And somehow he is still rocking a 35 to 40% approval rating.

      America is completely insane. You cannot rely on us anymore and you absolutely cannot have critical infrastructure depe

    • There is a vast difference between city-level and country-level resources. There is also a different motivation: fear that the US will abuse its power. This isn't an abstract fear. The US sanctioned members of the International Criminal Court - forcing them to lose access to their e-mail, credit cards (Visa/MasterCard), social media, app stores, ability to transfer money abroad, etc. In principle they could sanction a whole country. Trump has shown himself to use whatever tools he can use as leverage in neg

  • Wrong Topic (Score:4, Informative)

    by coaxial ( 28297 ) on Friday April 10, 2026 @12:13PM (#66087238) Homepage

    ahh these young kids donâ(TM)t remember Digitial Electronic Corporation, makers of legendary DEC Alpha CPU.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by abulafia ( 7826 )
      Or the brief period in the 90s when they hosted the most popular web search engine as a demo of the Alpha.

    • I was a VAX fan. Running VMS with uptimes in years. After I left the last job that used VAX system I toyed with the hobbyist VMS license on some VAXstations for a while, but alas it's all memories now.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by bn-7bc ( 909819 )
      And neither do you it seam , I presume you're referering to "Digital Equipment Corporation" famous for their PDP range of minicomputers later VAX (not to mention the VT100 which is stil emulated by most linux terminal apps)

  • Sounds good.

    Sounds familiar.

    Sounds like the article is being misinterpreted by the zealots.

    We'll see how it turns out. Someone remind me to check if there is any progress in 2027 or 2028.

  • "Oh shit, here we go again".

  • Are the MS-MiB still operating (Score:3)

    by Locutus ( 9039 ) on Friday April 10, 2026 @05:50PM (#66087858)
    Does anyone remember when the US State of Massachusetts went to switch to OpenOffice and the ODF file formats? The MS-MiBs were all over the place making sure MA senators got trips to One Microsoft Way for a bit of the 'flashy thing'. Then the MS-MiB sent out worldwide to MS-ISVs with checks and scripts in hand to flood the ISO in order to vote MS-OOMXL( MS-Office Open XML ) format as an international standard so the Massachusetts government could vote it as their open standards format for public documents.

    The MS-MiB were sent out worldwide to shut down the One Laptop Per Child initiative so that poor children around the world wouldn't be forced to use a Linux based laptop which could operate for 8 hours on a charge, be charged with a hand crank and was readable in full sun besides having built-in mesh networking. The MS-MiB have been instrumental in other things too. Like when school districts across the US were getting notices of required district wide licensing audits costing many $10s of thousands of dollars or sign new license agreements with the MS-MiB folks. When a couple of districts rescinded their licenses and switched everything over to Linux and started to show other school districts how they too could do it. Did the MS-MiB get recalled back to One Microsoft Way.

    Tucked neatly under the MS-Marketing department lives the MS-MiB offices and if they've been reduced over the recent years, surely France has given them reason to throw a few hundreds of millions of dollars into upgrading the offices.

    LoB

  • France has been doing this since the 80s whenever they are negotiating for a better price out of Microsoft. Nothing to see here.

  • I began a "sovereign AI system" using Ollama in July of 2025. The core concept is a domain-constrained AI for specialized knowledge, resistant to external influence and memetic sabotage. The idea is driven by Law of Demeter and I think the Iranian War is a pretty good example of why.

    https://www.scry.llc/2026/04/0... [scry.llc] Sovereign trend lines

    https://www.scry.llc/2025/08/0... [scry.llc]

  • They don't define what "some" means, nor are they providing any specific timelines. Sounds like just another empty political posturing statement, with no plan nor budget behind it.
  • It's amazing how people focus on how usability and training is such a big deal. People made great and effective use of Windows 20 years ago, and the current Linux desktop is more modern and useable than that. It's not a matter of usability, but rather the fear of change that is an obstacle. People will quickly come around when they realise that use of a different system is rewarded by an ongoing pay check. It's also worth considering that if people want to step away form US built/supported technology,

    • but rather the fear of change that is an obstacle

      Remember, a user's goal isn't to learn a new piece of software, it is to do the task at hand.

      I don't think it is so much fear of change as annoyance in having to learn something new which has no direct relation to the task at hand (e.g. writing a document). Why spend time retraining when you can just get your work done? This is especially true of power users who have been using the software for decades, who know every little trick on how to format a document, how to get nice looking tables, get the page num

  • The longevity of Windows isn't the end user experience. People can learn a new GUI and get stuff done in hours/days/weeks time frame typically.

    But being able to hook up the entire org fleet to centralized authentication, comply with all the various compliance regulations for that authentication, and overall quickly control the configuration of the endpoints with centralized management - that is where the Windows still has strength for consideration for use by organizational entities. A ton of 3rd party to

    • "now that the GUIs are typically on par with the Windows experience" - agree to your main point, but this is a delusion. Linux has had GUI way above not just on par for past 15 years. I could agree, it has matured, got more consistency, but then again Windows lost that after XP. What Linux now, recent years has on par is gaming, though that does not apply to typical office.

  • Gendarmerie Nationale:

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]

    They are happy about it.

    "June 2024 - 97% of workstations running GendBuntu (103,164 stations)"

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