The petition is open to all EU resident. The goal is to replace all Windows in all public institution in Europe with a sovereign GNU/Linux.
If the petition is successful it would be a huge step forward for GNU/Linux adoption.
The petition is open to all EU resident. The goal is to replace all Windows in all public institution in Europe with a sovereign GNU/Linux.
If the petition is successful it would be a huge step forward for GNU/Linux adoption.
Double edged sword. Forced adoption of a shitty distro, or a really locked down/limited system might not be a step forward at all.
From memory, Germany did this many years ago, and ended up rolling it back?
They then switched back to Linux
Nope, not Germany. The city of Munich, and it was rolled back because a politician took Microsoft bribes and drank the Microsoft snake oil.
National governments should be harder to bribe than local ones, at least. Also harder to get them to adopt it in the first place though.
Apparently they are back on the Linux train as of 2020, so thats good news.
Until the next corrupt politician… but yeah, let’s hope Linux stays, this time around.
Government systems should be locked down and limited.
Yup, exactly, which is kinda my point. The OS given to users is gonna be heavily restricted, so no one is going to use it and then run home to install it on a home PC. Government OSs are just not good ambassadors.
No one was discussing users transitioning on their home computers.
No, it isn’t a double edged sword. Even a mediocre distro would be better than Windows, any distro would be cheaper than Windows, and there’s no reason to choose a bad distro anyway.
No one wants to choose a bad OS environment, it will become one due to security or other non-negotiable requirements.
They aren’t going to just toss Ubuntu on a box and call it done. Itll be locked down, limited, and horrible to use. And users who dont know any better will blame “Linux”.
A government SOE Linux just isnt going to be a good ambassador for general desktop usage.
No, but it will mean apps get written for Linux, due to market share
You mean just like Windows?
Just like windows, except that the misdirected hate when the SOE environment gets in the way will be aimed at “Linux” instead of “Microsoft”.
if you read the petition, it’s not for a security reason that it has been created but RGPD one… So with privacy in mind, it can be a not great but good distro
afaik Bayern rolled back to Windows after some Microsoft “lobbying”
Precisely the city of Munich had its LiMux system.
https://www.techspot.com/news/102518-windows-microsoft-office-replaced-linux-libreoffice-german-state.html
Then they went back to Linux a few years pater
Yeah, that’s the one. Gnome 2 in 2017 would have felt pretty dated. And the political reasons can’t have helped either.
Solution: don’t ship a shitty distro. This is the sort of issue that actual IT professionals need final say in. Not the MBAs. Not the politicals. The people who actually know what they’re doing. Additionally, years ago Linux was in a much different place. It’s really matured into something more suitable for both the average end user as well as professional adoption.
Thats the problem though, there are near infinite ways for someone along the way to completely fuck it up, and very few ways to get it right. And security concerns are almost always going to make the distro worse for the users.
And even if it was left to IT professionals, they are just as capable of making it a mess on their own.
We could say that about every single general decision that anyone in the world has ever made. It’s a truism which tells us almost nothing about this situation.
IT professionals only get a say when the C-suite accepts that IT is a necessity, not a burden. This is extremely uncommon.
Working in enterprise IT sucks. I’ve had jobs where we had to have CFO approval to buy a bag of zipties (the request was denied, BTW)
Linux isn’t a platform but rather a general ecosystem. The hard part is making a base system that means the requirements and is rock solid.