Really proud as a French, I think the government has had some success with moving to something matrix based for the public sector too.
https://tchap.numerique.gouv.fr
I just hope we end up having more wins at the EU-level, instead of massive fails like GAIA-X...
still growing, you mean. France is, however significant, just one country. and then there is broader push to FOSS inside Europe, as well as Europe's own sovereign solutions. some attempts were failed, some were successful, but everything is still in progress
EDIT: on a second read, this sounded too diminishing of this achievement than I intended. the point is that it's not fully done yet, although it is remarkable that there is, finally, a political will for such actions
Sadly back in the day the city of Munich caved in (hosting Germany's MS headquarter). They had a good good run with their Linux. But the state of Schleswig-Holstein is pushing for more open source and switching to Libre Office (80% or so done). They talk about that on their Open Source Initiative page [1].
At least so against Israel and other countries actively engaging in open warfare against sovereign nations, as a European I'm very happy we're not getting pulled into those senseless conflicts.
France has been doing this in parts of its government functions for years, building expertise and learning what works. What do you imagine the EU institutions would bring to the table?
More countries and/or EU involvement could bring economies of scale: apart from translation, a lot of work on fixing bugs and adding features to the relevant open source projects can be done once and benefit all. So either get the same results faster, more cheaply per country, or both. Sure, that adds some bureaucracy and coordination cost too, but should be worth it overall.
I remember similar articles being posted 20+ years ago on Slashdot. And as we’ve seen, it’s often less of a “use Linux” and more of a “we have an alternate vendor” and there’s often suspicious lock-in (see the case in the EU or some similar country where the vendor was reading emails).
I've never met a real human that was passionate about what OS a government worker in some local French commune uses, but it's the hottest topic on HN behind AI
Right, what about FOSS developers who care about what guidelines the entire country has regarding OS usage? Maybe I'm living in a bubble, but everyone (mostly Europeans to be fair) seems excited about moving away from US technologies.
This move isn't just "Local French commune thinks about Linux", it's "French government agency that can mandate what others do, set hard guideline for agencies and magistrates to come up with a concrete plan for how to move to Linux", which is worlds beyond what we've seen before.
Linus Torvalds created Linux as a student in Helsinki, Finnland. He later took U.S. citizenship and lives in Portland, Oregon, TTBOMK.
Now on some level, the question makes less sense, because Linux as we know it now is an international proejct that thousands of developers from dozens of countries collaborated on. But perhaps most would agree that Torvalds, who serves as main integrator, has more say than others regarding the directions of Linux, as long as he is alive.
The open source property of Linux is more important to the question which OS a country's government should adopt: corporate systems are hard to scrutinize, whereas open source systems you can inspect and compile yourself, and it is a wise move of the French government to go in that direction. It will also save a lot of money, but that should not be the primary motive.
It is open source. Many companies which contribute to it are American, but nobody from America can tell you what you can or cannot do with it - unlike Microsoft or Apple with their proprietary OS being forced by US government.
Funnily enough there is some level of control that can be exerted by the US gov via the distros (at least the major ones - see legalese restrictions on Redhat/Ubuntu etc when you want to download , stating the various US gov laws/sanctions that they follow) and also via the kernel - i think some time back Russian kernel maintainers were removed.
So Open source it may be , however there are still pressure points that can be used. I believe this is one of the main reasons RISCV foundation moved to Europe.
Europe has a major distro in the form of SUSE, so that’s not too worrying.
Even if upstream linux banned european contributors, there are enough european contributors that a fork would just emerge. So I’m really not too worried about that happening.
The “main guy” is Finnish. He also got American citizenship recently, but given the US has increased attacks on naturalised citizens [0] and has a history of this [1] it’s not a solid foundation.
If Japanese internment worried you, you should see Europe's treatment of perceived outsiders [0] and get reallyyyy worried about the ongoing attacks [1] and rhetoric [2]. I would urge extreme caution to anyone in Europe that is at risk.
The other two are ok-ish (though notably Reform is not in government and the elections are 4 years away) but yeah leading with a source from the 15th century really doesn’t support the argument.
Over time, more and more work is going to be done by AI though. At some point, it will be unthinkably slow and expensive to let humans work on anything.
The EU chips act is subsidizing new fab construction in Europe.
Meanwhile the french Mistral is partnering with Nvidia to build an AI data center near Paris on which their LLMs will run.
But I agree this is not enough to make the EU a contender in the race with the US and China. The EU still has not seriously considered decoupling from American big tech.
I think it depends on how strong the compression advancements are going to be, such that much can be done locally in the future. I'd be interested in experiences of others here in using Gemma4, which is at the forefront of "intelligence per gigabyte" atm. (according to benches).
At this point in the broader dialogue your position is roughly as interesting as flat earth. Only bored people are going to bother replying and no one is taking you seriously. Don't do yourself a disservice by clinging to this.
I, for one, have never needed AI for anything ever in my life.
AI has, however, made my life noticably worse. Especially when dealing with braindead robot driven customer "support". But also in making it financially impossible to buy more RAM or upgrade a GPU.
I think we'd be better off without yet another bubble.
Were you born yesterday? Phone AIs being dumb didn't take LLMs at all. They were always stupid and frustrating to deal with substitutes for customer support.
Really proud as a French, I think the government has had some success with moving to something matrix based for the public sector too. https://tchap.numerique.gouv.fr
I just hope we end up having more wins at the EU-level, instead of massive fails like GAIA-X...
Also GendBuntu, a custom version of Ubuntu used by 100 000 stations (almost all) of the national gendarmerie.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GendBuntu
"As a French" ne veut rien dire en anglais. Il faut rajouter man, person ou quelquechose. Frenchman, French person, French citizen.
The demonym for France is "French," so it's not wrong (even if it doesn't sound right.)
No.
"French" is adjective or a collective noun, but don't use it as a countable noun.
Trying to say "as a French" makes about as much sense as thinking "as a American" is correct.
As has already been said ... "a French (wo)man","a French person","a French citizen" is the correct way to go.
The reason you can say "an American" is because America starts with a vowel.
Same reason why you would not say "a British" but you could say "a Brit".
I fear this might be just license costs cutting and not something that Linux and FOSS will benefit from.
> I fear this might be just license costs cutting and not something that Linux and FOSS will benefit from.
yup, at this point, nothing but cobwebs and IOU's left in the coffers over there and every little bit of saving helps.
Microsoft is a strategic risk for the US, too
Exactly. I have been thinking about using this migration articles as a way to convince my customers to switch.
Glad that France takes the lead, that Germany fumbled. Allez Les Blues!
Dupe: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47719486
Even the US government should be considering this.
Finally Europe grew a spine
still growing, you mean. France is, however significant, just one country. and then there is broader push to FOSS inside Europe, as well as Europe's own sovereign solutions. some attempts were failed, some were successful, but everything is still in progress
EDIT: on a second read, this sounded too diminishing of this achievement than I intended. the point is that it's not fully done yet, although it is remarkable that there is, finally, a political will for such actions
Sadly back in the day the city of Munich caved in (hosting Germany's MS headquarter). They had a good good run with their Linux. But the state of Schleswig-Holstein is pushing for more open source and switching to Libre Office (80% or so done). They talk about that on their Open Source Initiative page [1].
[1]: https://www.schleswig-holstein.de/DE/landesregierung/themen/... (German only)
Less so against China or Iran, presumably Europe will find itself on the "right side of history" yet again soon enough
At least so against Israel and other countries actively engaging in open warfare against sovereign nations, as a European I'm very happy we're not getting pulled into those senseless conflicts.
should be done at EU level and make it mandatory for all members
France has been doing this in parts of its government functions for years, building expertise and learning what works. What do you imagine the EU institutions would bring to the table?
Good on France for doing that work.
More countries and/or EU involvement could bring economies of scale: apart from translation, a lot of work on fixing bugs and adding features to the relevant open source projects can be done once and benefit all. So either get the same results faster, more cheaply per country, or both. Sure, that adds some bureaucracy and coordination cost too, but should be worth it overall.
Is this the daily thread on this topic?
Astroturfing around this is getting suspicious.
I remember similar articles being posted 20+ years ago on Slashdot. And as we’ve seen, it’s often less of a “use Linux” and more of a “we have an alternate vendor” and there’s often suspicious lock-in (see the case in the EU or some similar country where the vendor was reading emails).
At least in some cases, it's actually using Linux and open document format, e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GendBuntu
> Astroturfing around this is getting suspicious.
It's perfectly possible for people to be passionate about the subject.
I've never met a real human that was passionate about what OS a government worker in some local French commune uses, but it's the hottest topic on HN behind AI
Right, what about FOSS developers who care about what guidelines the entire country has regarding OS usage? Maybe I'm living in a bubble, but everyone (mostly Europeans to be fair) seems excited about moving away from US technologies.
This move isn't just "Local French commune thinks about Linux", it's "French government agency that can mandate what others do, set hard guideline for agencies and magistrates to come up with a concrete plan for how to move to Linux", which is worlds beyond what we've seen before.
I do care for them setting an example for my local government.
> Astroturfing around this is getting suspicious.
Nah, linux and "$curreant_year is the year of the linux desktop" is just something the hacker / maker / nerd scene is passionate about.
But Linux is US tech? Isn't the main guy American?
Linus Torvalds created Linux as a student in Helsinki, Finnland. He later took U.S. citizenship and lives in Portland, Oregon, TTBOMK.
Now on some level, the question makes less sense, because Linux as we know it now is an international proejct that thousands of developers from dozens of countries collaborated on. But perhaps most would agree that Torvalds, who serves as main integrator, has more say than others regarding the directions of Linux, as long as he is alive.
The open source property of Linux is more important to the question which OS a country's government should adopt: corporate systems are hard to scrutinize, whereas open source systems you can inspect and compile yourself, and it is a wise move of the French government to go in that direction. It will also save a lot of money, but that should not be the primary motive.
It is open source. Many companies which contribute to it are American, but nobody from America can tell you what you can or cannot do with it - unlike Microsoft or Apple with their proprietary OS being forced by US government.
Funnily enough there is some level of control that can be exerted by the US gov via the distros (at least the major ones - see legalese restrictions on Redhat/Ubuntu etc when you want to download , stating the various US gov laws/sanctions that they follow) and also via the kernel - i think some time back Russian kernel maintainers were removed.
So Open source it may be , however there are still pressure points that can be used. I believe this is one of the main reasons RISCV foundation moved to Europe.
Europe has a major distro in the form of SUSE, so that’s not too worrying.
Even if upstream linux banned european contributors, there are enough european contributors that a fork would just emerge. So I’m really not too worried about that happening.
The “main guy” is Finnish. He also got American citizenship recently, but given the US has increased attacks on naturalised citizens [0] and has a history of this [1] it’s not a solid foundation.
[0] https://www.npr.org/2026/01/16/nx-s1-5677685/as-focus-shifts...
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internment_of_Japanese_America...
If Japanese internment worried you, you should see Europe's treatment of perceived outsiders [0] and get reallyyyy worried about the ongoing attacks [1] and rhetoric [2]. I would urge extreme caution to anyone in Europe that is at risk.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Expulsion_of_Jews_from_Spain
[1] https://www.ein.org.uk/news/home-office-remove-euss-pre-sett...
[2] https://www.ft.com/content/0e29224f-9d06-4315-a89f-e334ffbc6...
Also, what nationality do you say Elon Musk is, out of curiosity? Let's test your consistency :)
Didn't have "Europe is antisemitic because of the Spanish Inquisition" on my bingo card today. No one expects it, indeed.
The other two are ok-ish (though notably Reform is not in government and the elections are 4 years away) but yeah leading with a source from the 15th century really doesn’t support the argument.
I have more evidence of European xenophobia if that isn't sufficient for you
I dont think you travel much, it would help you get more... objective opinions. But yes please show us that mighty evidence
How will we cope when all of your precious knife-wielding savages are deported?
Oh, the terror.
Just Wiki Linus Torvalds my friend:
> Torvalds was born in Helsinki, Finland
> In 2004, Torvalds moved with his family from Silicon Valley to Portland, Oregon.
?
No, and no?
...what?
Yeah, he became American, just like Einstein, Fermi, Von Neumann, etc.
There's a big lesson for Europe there, everyone super productive and able to move to the US does so at the first opportunity.
You might want to do a bit more reading on why European intellectuals migrated en masse to the US in the 1930s.
Definitely. And then one could start wondering if the direction might reverse.
to europe? hardly. maybe to east asia ...
Yeah, um…
That might have changed somewhat, recently.
When the US is being run by relatively sane people, it's great.
That is not the situation at the moment.
It is a step into the right direction.
Over time, more and more work is going to be done by AI though. At some point, it will be unthinkably slow and expensive to let humans work on anything.
To do *that* locally, you need GPUs and LLMs.
How will Europe solve these two?
The EU chips act is subsidizing new fab construction in Europe.
Meanwhile the french Mistral is partnering with Nvidia to build an AI data center near Paris on which their LLMs will run.
But I agree this is not enough to make the EU a contender in the race with the US and China. The EU still has not seriously considered decoupling from American big tech.
Do you people have to squeeze a comment about AI into every post?
I think it depends on how strong the compression advancements are going to be, such that much can be done locally in the future. I'd be interested in experiences of others here in using Gemma4, which is at the forefront of "intelligence per gigabyte" atm. (according to benches).
No-one needs LLMs.
AI has no value.
At this point in the broader dialogue your position is roughly as interesting as flat earth. Only bored people are going to bother replying and no one is taking you seriously. Don't do yourself a disservice by clinging to this.
Okay, give me one example of what AI might be useful for.
As a learning tool to quiz you.
Okay, and what value would that provide?
I'm not interested in games.
The chariot was superior! Who needs them darn cars
My grandpa was doing just fine before those newfangled chariots became all the rage. What's wrong with walking?
I, for one, have never needed AI for anything ever in my life.
AI has, however, made my life noticably worse. Especially when dealing with braindead robot driven customer "support". But also in making it financially impossible to buy more RAM or upgrade a GPU.
I think we'd be better off without yet another bubble.
Were you born yesterday? Phone AIs being dumb didn't take LLMs at all. They were always stupid and frustrating to deal with substitutes for customer support.