A petition has been created by an Austrian EU rep. to replace Windows with GNU/Linux in all Europe
A petition has been created by an Austrian EU rep. to replace Windows with GNU/Linux in all Europe
Main page of the Petitions Portal. General information, most recently uploaded petitions and further links to procedural pages. Further links to the European Parliament website.
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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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?
a really locked down/limited system might not be a step forward at all
Depends what you mean. Locked down as in hidden from the public (I don't think that's legal anyways because of the GPL) would be bad. But locked down/limited from employees so that they can't bork the system is good, imo.
The latter, and it is good from an organisational perspective, but its never a nice experience, and for many, this will be their first real experience with a Linux.
Right now Linux is "That nerd OS", if this goes badly, for millions it could change to "That OS they forced on us at work, where I can't XYZ"
Edit: on the GPL front, GPL doesn't require that you publish your code to everyone, just to the recipients of your binaries. And you only have to give it upon request. So they definitely could keep it somewhat under wraps if they wanted to. If they are smart, they'll follow the Munich model and stick to upstreaming any changes they make.
Edit: on the GPL front, GPL doesn’t require that you publish your code to everyone, just to the recipients of your binaries. And you only have to give it upon request. So they definitely could keep it somewhat under wraps if they wanted to.
When I said "hidden from the public", I was meaning refusing to disclose the source code even when asked. I do wonder how the laws would apply to government organizations violating copyright 🤔. Like what if it was the OS for some defense system? I'm not sure a government would be too keen on disclosing that — even if it was requested though some sort of freedom of information request (if the respective country has that) — and would rather classify it and refuse to disclose regardless of the license. I'm not aware of any precedent of this.
Only the end-users would have rights to the source under GPL, and its unlikely that someone is going to risk their job by releasing the code.
I'm not sure how FOI would work, but I dont think they just automatically get approved.
I still expect it to be done in the open, one of the things Munich got right was upstreaming all their changes, which meant that even when it was cancelled, nothing was lost. Maintaining out of tree changes is just way to much work
I still expect it to be done in the open, one of the things Munich got right was upstreaming all their changes, which meant that even when it was cancelled, nothing was lost. Maintaining out of tree changes is just way to much work
Would you be able to cite a source for this Munich program? I'd like to read more about it.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/LiMux
Not a lot of sources, I did find a blog post from a 3rd party contractor who did some work to get stuff upstreamed, but I cant find it right now
Only the end-users would have rights to the source under GPL, and its unlikely that someone is going to risk their job by releasing the code.
Fair point. So I suppose that would be the employees using the distribution rather than the entire populace.
[...] but its never a nice experience [...]
Why's that?
Properly locking down a machine just heavily restricts what you can do with it, to the point that normal things that you or I do day-to-day on our own PCs become impossible. Every time you hit a restriction its very frustrating.
I am drawing from my experience as a developer, so it might be worse for me, but I've also heard accountants in the office complaining of similar gripes with their locked down windows systems.
Hm, but I'm not sure people would attribute that to the design of the underlying OS itself rather than just the employer. Like do those people with restrictions on Windows blame Microsoft? It'd be the same as someone blaming the Linux maintainers for employer placed restrictions on an OS running Linux. Don't get me wrong, I'm sure someone would still do that, but I'm not convinced that the majority would think that way — I think most people would be able to make the distinction.
Yeah, I could be wrong, maybe the blame will be attributed correctly, maybe not.
At least with Windows, most people know what its normally like at home, but thats less true for Linux.
At least with Windows, most people know what its normally like at home, but thats less true for Linux.
Yeah, that's a fair point that they wouldn't have a comparison, so they wouldn't know if it's always like that. One could perhaps make an educated guess, depending on circumstance, but, without any first-hand experience or exposure, it would be just that: a guess.
Nope, not Germany. The city of Munich, and it was rolled back because a politician took Microsoft bribes and drank the Microsoft snake oil.
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.
If it's done EU wide, it'll take a lot more than a corrupt politician to reverse it
yes. about three fiddy...
I don't know if I can spare that much... Wait a second! Nessy, when did you get a Lemmy account?!
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.
Should be, but I am afraid that our system encourages corrupt people to seek positions of power.
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$oft lobbyists also came in and made them switch - by threatening to move their German headquarters out of Munich, which would cost the city lots of tax revenue.
You think that Microsoft lobbyist would have had any traction if the user experience was any decent?
Of course not. They wouldn't have had any reason to switch.
That is the biggest issue with Linux at the moment. It takes more maintenance than Windows. And there are a lot less people with the knowledge to setup and maintain those environments.
At the end of the day, the point of those environments is to allow the user to work in them. But if the user is unable to work properly because of the environment, then that environment must be changed. It is as simple as that.
Of course not. They wouldn’t have had any reason to switch.
Of course they would? Millions of euros of tax revenue sounds like a pretty compelling reason to me. This is why Micro$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.
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.
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.
So, it didn't fail from a technical fault but a political one? I feel like you're arguing against it but I'm not following how that has anything to do with the viability of it (especially if it worked for 13 years)
Its not that I'm against it or don't think it can work, I just dont think its going to help drive adoption of desktop Linux. And I think there is a very real risk that it could negatively impact Linux mind share if the experience is particularly bad.
The Munich OS proves its possible. But I'm really curious about how the end users actually felt about it. Maybe I'm wrong and they love it, but I'm very skeptical.
Fwiw, I suspect the "Linux" that ends up being deployed will likely be a glorified thinclient/browser, and nothing like desktop Linux as most of us know and love.
That's fair
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.
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
No, but it will mean apps get written for Linux, due to market share
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
So they can blow it on functions they cancel :)
afaik Bayern rolled back to Windows after some Microsoft "lobbying"
Precisely the city of Munich had its LiMux system.
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.
Of course not, but if the first exposure someone has to Linux is a bad experience, thats not going to be good for mind share. Thats the double edge sword i am referring to.
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.
That argument would be fine, if only the Linux community could actually agree on what is a good distro.
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.
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.
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)
They then switched back to Linux
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.