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.

  • CameronDev@programming.dev
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    1 day ago

    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?

    • Andromxda 🇺🇦🇵🇸🇹🇼@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      14 hours ago

      From memory, Germany did this many years ago, and ended up rolling it back?

      The city of Munich deployed their own custom Linux systems many years ago. But since it wasn’t really maintained and updated, the user experience was pretty bad and the city’s employees were unhappy. Then Micro$oft lobbyists also came in and made them switch - by threatening to move their German headquarters out of Munich, which would cost the city lots of tax revenue.

      https://itsfoss.com/munich-linux-failure/

      • Honytawk@lemmy.zip
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        14 hours ago

        You think that Microsoft lobbyist would have had any traction if the user experience was any decent?

        Of course not. They wouldn’t have had any reason to switch.

        That is the biggest issue with Linux at the moment. It takes more maintenance than Windows. And there are a lot less people with the knowledge to setup and maintain those environments.

        At the end of the day, the point of those environments is to allow the user to work in them. But if the user is unable to work properly because of the environment, then that environment must be changed. It is as simple as that.

        • Andromxda 🇺🇦🇵🇸🇹🇼@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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          12 hours ago

          Of course not. They wouldn’t have had any reason to switch.

          Of course they would? Millions of euros of tax revenue sounds like a pretty compelling reason to me. This is why Micro$oft’s “lobby efforts” should be labeled as what they are: Nothing more and nothing less than corruption.

          It takes more maintenance than Windows.

          If you create your own distro, yes. But there are countless noob-friendly distros like Mint, Ubuntu and Fedora that they could use with practically 0 maintenance required. Also, compare the 2004 desktop Linux experience to now. Having used Gentoo Linux compiled from a stage 1 tarball back in 2002, I can tell you: the differences are tremendous. Many of the issues they had can be directly attributed to OpenOffice and it’s bad compatibility with Microsoft Office file formats, which has long been replaced by LibreOffice. It still worked out pretty well for them, over a period of 13 years. And it saved the tax payer millions of euros of Microsoft’s stupid licensing fee for their crappy proprietary garbage.

    • raspberriesareyummy@lemmy.world
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      22 hours ago

      Nope, not Germany. The city of Munich, and it was rolled back because a politician took Microsoft bribes and drank the Microsoft snake oil.

    • orcrist@lemm.ee
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      1 day ago

      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.

      • CameronDev@programming.dev
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        23 hours ago

        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.

          • CameronDev@programming.dev
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            11 hours ago

            Maybe. I suspect most of the government apps will be webapps, and not particularly relevant to the rest of us.

            Maybe Firefox will get some funding :D

          • CameronDev@programming.dev
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            22 hours ago

            Just like windows, except that the misdirected hate when the SOE environment gets in the way will be aimed at “Linux” instead of “Microsoft”.

        • erin@social.sidh.bzhOP
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          22 hours ago

          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

      • CameronDev@programming.dev
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        23 hours ago

        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.

    • fuzzy_feeling@programming.dev
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      1 day ago

      https://www.techspot.com/news/102518-windows-microsoft-office-replaced-linux-libreoffice-german-state.html

      The 30,000 employees of Schleswig-Holstein’s local government will be moving to Linux and LibreOffice as the state pushes for what it calls “digital sovereignty,” a reference to non-EU companies not gathering troves of user data so European firms can compete with these foreign rivals.

      Munich, the capital of German state Bavaria, switched from Windows to Linux-based LiMux in 2004, though it switched back in 2017 as part of an IT overhaul. Wanting Microsoft to move its headquarters to Munich likely played a part in returning to Windows, too.

    • hellofriend@lemmy.world
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      1 day ago

      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.

      • Honytawk@lemmy.zip
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        14 hours ago

        That argument would be fine, if only the Linux community could actually agree on what is a good distro.

        • hellofriend@lemmy.world
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          4 hours ago

          Personally, I think it depends on the sitch. Something immutable would probably be the better go for people coming from Windows and would help with IT costs since all systems would be, at their base, the same. No one is going to accidentally install something that breaks their system. And the main drawback of immutability (less control over the system) wouldn’t be a problem because people shouldn’t be installing things on government systems that are outside the scope of their job.

          EDIT: In a sentence: a good distro is one that’s good for your organization.

        • Andromxda 🇺🇦🇵🇸🇹🇼@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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          12 hours ago

          Basically everyone in the community agrees that Mint, Ubuntu and Fedora are the best choices for new users. Mint and Ubuntu are pretty similar, so they don’t require separate maintenance effort, and supporting Fedora is not that hard, if you already support RHEL, CentOS or another rpm-based distro (which are pretty common in the enterprise space). For all the desktop applications, Flatpak exists and is agreed on as the standard format by most of the desktop Linux community.

      • CameronDev@programming.dev
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        1 day ago

        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.

        • orcrist@lemm.ee
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          1 day ago

          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.

          • pearsaltchocolatebar@discuss.online
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            1 day ago

            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)

    • Possibly linux@lemmy.zip
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      1 day ago

      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.