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A petition has been created by an Austrian EU rep. to replace Windows with GNU/Linux in all Europe (www.europarl.europa.eu)

submitted 2 days ago by erin@social.sidh.bzh to c/linux@programming.dev

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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.

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[-] reddig33@lemmy.world 145 points 2 days ago

It’s ridiculous that governments don’t use customized Unix/Linux builds.

[+] FizzyOrange@programming.dev -17 points 1 day ago

Why? I've worked in two companies where IT allows Linux as an option and people are constantly having issues (including me). And these are highly technical people. Two people who are not stupid managed to break their laptops by uninstalling Python 2 which Gnome depended on.

Yes that's technically a UX issue, but there are plenty of good old bugs too, e.g. if you remove a VPN connection that a WiFi network autoconnects to then that WiFi network will entirely stop working with no error messages to speak of. Took me a long time to figure that out. Or how about the fact that 4k only works at 30fps over HDMI, but it works fine over DisplayPort or Thunderbolt3. The hardware fully supports it and it works for other people with the same OS and laptop. I never figured that out.

That's just a taster... I almost never have issues like that on Windows or Mac.

Windows may cost more than "free" but the additional support costs for Linux are very far from free too.

Maybe something like Chromebooks makes sense if everything is in the cloud.

[-] domi@lemmy.secnd.me 24 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

Why?

It makes no sense for a government/military to use a proprietary system made in another country when there's a very strong movement inside of said government for an open system. They have incredibly smart people at SUSE, Manjaro and KDE right on the inside and you are telling me they can't do better than hitting subscribe on Office365?

Assume the EU and US have a conflict, now the EU is stuck with an entire ecosystem made in the US. Assuming they don't already have all your internal data, they can just get it with a single click.