France to ditch Windows for Linux

[jack action]

TL;DR

France is trying to move on from Microsoft Windows. The country said it plans to move some of its government computers currently running Windows to the open source operating system Linux to further reduce its reliance on U.S. technology.

France is trying to move on from Microsoft Windows. The country said it plans to move some of its government computers currently running Windows to the open source operating system Linux to further reduce its reliance on U.S. technology.

[...]

In a statement, French minister David Amiel said (translated) that the effort was to “regain control of our digital destiny” by relying less on U.S. tech companies. Amiel said that the French government can no longer accept that it doesn’t have control over its data and digital infrastructure.

[...]

Lawmakers and government leaders across Europe are growing more aware of the looming threat facing them at home, and their over-reliance on U.S. technology. In January, the European Parliament voted to adopt a report directing the European Commission to identify areas where the EU can reduce its reliance on foreign providers.

[...]

France’s decision to ditch Windows comes months after the government announced it would stop using Microsoft Teams for video conferencing in favor of French-made Visio, a tool based on the open source end-to-end encrypted video meeting tool Jitsi.

The French government said it also plans to migrate its health data platform to a new trusted platform by the end of the year.

source: https://techcrunch.com/2026/04/10/france-to-ditch-windows-for-linux-to-reduce-reliance-on-us-tech/

 

[jedishrfu]

Not a good sign for MS Windows desire to dominate the World's computers. MS was always afraid of Linux and then embraced it when they developed WSL (Windows Subsystem for Linux).

There was the battle for the desktop when MS stopped using Sun's Java after Sun accused them of a contract breach when they installed an MS versions of Sun modules favoring Windows only.

MS also fought with Netscape because Netscape's vision was a web desktop and they didn't like losing the desktop. They gave away iExplorer to undermine Netscape's revenue stream. Pressured vendors to favor MS iExplorer and not install Netscape. Made it difficult to install Netscape.

I wonder how MS will respond to this latest action.

 

[FactChecker]

this makes it sound more serious than some of its government computers. And as the government goes, so goes a lot of civilian computers. "France just handed Microsoft a termination notice for 2.5 million government devices. Every ministry must submit a Linux migration plan by autumn 2026."