France Is Ditching Windows for Linux

France is switching to Linux, not just because somebody in the government watched PewDiePie's videos and thought that it looked cool. They're switching because the desktop has become a geopolitical issue. If your operating system, your office suite, your collaboration stack, your meeting platform, and your update pipeline all belong to foreign vendors like Microsoft, then your state does not fully control its own computing environment. So, on April 8th, 2026, France's DINSIC, which is kind of like the government's central IT agency, formally announced that the French state is moving away from Windows towards Linux desktops as part of a broader push to reduce extra-European digital dependencies. And it's not just a single government department that's making this switch. Every ministry, including operators, has to produce its own migration plan by autumn of 2026, covering desktops, collaboration tools, antivirus, AI, databases, virtualization, and network equipment. So, they're not just casually switching over to Linux. They're really looking to have a fully independent software stack that they can control themselves. And this pursuit of digital sovereignty is not a new thing for France. They've actually been working on this for decades. So, in 2005, the National Gendarmerie, which is kind of like a federal police {slash} military force, started replacing Microsoft Office with OpenOffice, and they made the Open Document Format, or {dot} ODF, the national standard for office documents. Then, in 2008, that same department started migrating towards a customized Ubuntu distro called GendBuntu in order to replace the Windows XP workstations that were falling out of support. And that's another one of the things that you have to consider when you're relying on Windows, or really just proprietary software in general, is that if Microsoft decides to stop maintaining that OS or that particular version of the software, you're basically forced to upgrade and more of your money, or in this case tax dollars, to buy those new licenses for software that you don't really need just because Microsoft no longer wants to support the old product. Canonical actually released a case study in 2010 backing up these claims by saying that the switch to Ubuntu-based distros was saving the national police force 2 million euros per year in licensing fees and maintenance costs, and those savings have likely increased in the years following because by June of 2024, GendBuntu was reportedly running on over 103,000 workstations, which represented 97% of the force's computing estate. So, the French really aren't playing around. They already have at least one state department, one major state department, that has migrated away from Windows and Microsoft Office at scale and has saved a ton of money and a ton of maintenance time as well as a result. This is a really great example of an open-source deployment in a government system, and a big reason for the success was the slow, methodical deployment rather than just surprising all of the employees on Monday morning with a new operating system and new office suite. Another thing to think about here is that the switch probably created some more jobs for France because instead of having to outsource your support to Microsoft at some level. I mean, I'm sure that you can get Microsoft certified and things like that, and you know, you could provide that type of support within France, but again, at some level Microsoft is going to be involved with that. But a French-developed OS is most likely going to have a completely grassroots local support team and be developed for the end users in mind rather than whatever some big American tech company just forces on them. The users are finally able to control the software instead of the software controlling the users. And what's really interesting is France isn't just trying to be a one-hit wonder with GendBuntu. They're also developing Secure-OS, which is a secure PC model built on NixOS and designed to be customized for multiple use cases, including multi-agent environments, multi-level environments, and intranet-only setups. So, obviously, NixOS is an excellent base for building something like this because you can define how you want these machines or these groups of machines to work in a config- uration file and then deploy them and maintain them with minimal effort. France is also working on its own cloud-based office suite called Le Suite, which is going to be kind of like a, I guess, self-hosted French version of Google Workspace or Office 365. Uh so, you've got all the different tools in Le Suite, but some of the more interesting ones are Visio, which is a video conferencing platform which officially supports transcription, recording, live captions, and meetings

for up to 150 participants, and it is operated in France in a SecNumCloud environment to keep the content of those meetings highly secure. And Grist, which is their spreadsheet application and is probably going to be the major workhorse of the government considering how often spreadsheets are used in their workflows. So again, this is a huge opportunity for France to save a bunch of money because the office cloud accounts probably cost something like 5 euros per employee per month. I mean, maybe the governments get some kind of discount, although I doubt it since again, Microsoft, Google, uh Zoom, you know, all of these companies that people normally go to for these services are based in the United States. And I would expect this digital sovereignty to also start creeping its way into the private sector because if you think about it, if you're a French business owner and you have the option to choose between Microsoft, Google, Zoom, or your own government software stack, you're probably going to go with that last option, even if it's a little bit more expensive because in theory, some of that money would go towards building up infrastructure within your own country. Like I could imagine if France is going to be maintaining, you know, their own IT infrastructure, they would also want to invest on the lower levels like their internet service and things like that. So, just like how France has spearheaded individual sovereignty in Europe many, many years ago, they are at the forefront of digital sovereignty in Europe today. Now again, the most important factor is going to be the methodical transition rather than just ripping out Microsoft like the face hugger that it really is. There's likely still a lot of legacy Windows-only applications that are in use throughout the government, custom macros, old document templates, line of business software, smart card middleware, printer nonsense, and vendor products that only officially support Windows can all turn a neat migration plan into a support nightmare. Announcements that a government body is going to be switching to Linux have often had disappointing results in the past. Most of the past efforts were quietly reversed under the weight of compatibility problems, vendor pressure, and the dependency on proprietary legacy software. There's also the human factor, which is usually less glamorous but more decisive really than the distro choice. Governments do not migrate successfully because Linux is philosophically superior to Windows. They migrate successfully when packaging is consistent, support channels are competent, training is good, documentation is clear, and the users don't feel like every routine task has to become an IT ticket. That is why France's mixed model actually makes a lot more sense to me. You can use GendBuntu for broad deployment where familiarity and scale matter, and then Secure-OS for specialized hardened roles where security and reproducibility outweigh convenience. Different classes of workstation are going to need different operating assumptions. So, I really hope that they have as much success as possible with this switch and that they share the blueprint with the rest of Europe so that they can also stop funneling billions of dollars to American big tech companies. If you enjoyed this video, please like and share it to hack the algorithm, and check out my online store, base. win, where you can buy my awesome merch and accessories for your phone or laptop. 10% storewide discount when you pay with Monero XMR at checkout. Have a great rest of your day.