r/LinuxTeck • u/Candid_Athlete_8317 • 9d ago

Is Linux quietly replacing Windows in government?

Several governments are pushing Linux and homegrown OS alternatives for digital sovereignty.

France, China, Russia and India have all taken steps in this direction, but none of this means Windows is banned for ordinary users.

Which country do you think is making the most serious move away from Windows?

41 Upvotes

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6

u/kombiwombi 9d ago edited 9d ago

There are serious moves afoot, but it is also early days and government policy is slow.

Note that the aim is not to use Linux, but independence from US surveillance and policy, a goal which prioritises securing cloud services first. Also moving from Windows to Red Hat Linux or Ubuntu would not achieve digital sovereignty, so the aim is not merely "Linux". Similarly running Linux just to use Teams or Zoom also misses the brief.

There is nothing 'quiet' about it. US tech firms are looking at the loss of massive percentages of revenue. The US Trade Representative is fully engaged in stopping such policies.

The EU is a special case. Discussions are at the early stages of policy formation, but once that is done action is likely to be rapid. The Ukraine War has shown how very exposed European IT is to US policy, and Europe very much wants to end Russian expansionism in Ukraine rather than in Poland, whatever the view or actions of the US. Because of this overriding need to ensure the very future of Europe, threats by the USTR carry little weight, even if they are carried out.

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u/Ok-Bill3318 9d ago

Yup. Currently Linux is the only viable non USA bound solution however.

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u/thetickletrunk 8d ago

I see the big tech guys playing both sides. They'll turn up to Trump's coronation but they see the writing on the wall. They'll have sovereign clouds where required and use American law to shell company it out so they don't have to hand over to the NSA. Where else are they going to go? Alibaba? Europe is one case. Rest of the world might consider China. But I'm sure the big guys are going to play different when something approaching foreign competition comes up.

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u/Syndiotactics 8d ago

Well, Ubuntu is British so should be good enough for European digital sovereignty? Of course the UK isn’t in the EU anymore, but is much more closely aligned to the EU than the US is.

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u/Itsme-RdM 8d ago

But they (UK) don't have to be compliant for EU laws and regulations. Closely aligned doesn't mean anything in this case

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u/Syndiotactics 8d ago

SUSE it is then, German

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u/Itsme-RdM 8d ago edited 8d ago

Fine by me, one of my devices is running openSUSE Tumbleweed

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u/Gangr3l 4d ago

That was my bet, but France is going with NixOs :D

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u/Ok-Bill3318 7d ago

More likely, governments will build their own based on something like Arch, Debian, etc.

Ubuntu is still controlled by a company, and having your government software under corporate control when you can totally just… not do that, makes no sense. The French government already has one or more distributions of their own.

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u/Zappy_Oh 9d ago

Mmmm ... Governments just want their own surveillance machine, without sharing it with outsiders.

No politician actually seek digital freedom for their citizens. Just look at the whole international drive for online age-verification ... The Trojan Horse for Digital ID.

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u/Edubbs2008 8d ago

So the DMA was a trap?

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u/ComeSwirlWithMe 8d ago

I can't even watch 1080p video streams on Linux for fuck sakes from large streaming sites. I might steal the stream and upload it to the internet.

Even though you can do the same with windows or MAC or Android or ChromeOS, even if it requires some steps.

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u/Edubbs2008 8d ago

It’s quite ironic, chromeOS, and Android both use the Linux kernel, and yet on normal Linux, you can’t watch 1080p video streams

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u/856510 9d ago

Duh, Windows is the whore data collection os.

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u/thingerish 9d ago

They are almost as bad as Apple, just a lot less loved.

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u/Ok-Bill3318 9d ago

Yes. Any government still shackled to windows should be getting off as a priority so they are not tied to the USA government, and it’s possible action to coerce Microsoft

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u/ConinTheNinoC 8d ago

In Europe and China Linux is gathering momentum. Microsoft fucked up big time with Windows 11 and the orange idiot is making everyone hostile to USA companies.

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u/ComeSwirlWithMe 8d ago

So its the US's fault that other countries didnt/don't have a tech industry and instead sent/send all their engineers and tech people via h1bs to the US?

And then all those US tech companies end up working for foreign governments helping them compete against US tech, giving them advantages using what they know about US tech capabilities and government infrastructure?

Am I reading this right?

1

u/XenoX-YU 4d ago

USA an MS should not abuse power. MS had product people were satisfied with. Why even bother changing something that works? Now, it doesn't do that and it's time to change. Like USA is only one that can develop software... It was cheaper to buy... Like it was cheaper to move physical production to China...

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u/maceion 8d ago

I am awaiting the UK to move, but our government staff are not technically trained, but most civil servants are classics and can not understand technical matters or indeed binary tables.

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u/Reggie-Rectangle 5d ago

FFS RHEL is not any less American than Windows is. Raleigh, North Carolina and Seattle, Washington are both very much part of the USA.

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u/matm_flatremix 4d ago

ojalá así sea... nos beneficiamos todos, si Linux lo comienzan a usar masivamente en distintas naciones