David Amiel, budget minister, public accounts, and civil administration of France, has announced plans to transition some computers in government institutions from Windows to Linux. The migration is part of an initiative to ensure digital sovereignty and reduce dependence on non-European technology companies.
Amiel emphasized that the French government can no longer accept not controlling its data and digital infrastructure. The timeline for the transition and the specific Linux distribution to be implemented have not yet been specified. The first workstations to be transitioned to Linux will be those in the inter-ministerial digitalization management (DINUM). Ministries have been instructed to prepare their own plans to reduce dependence on non-European technologies by autumn, covering workstations, collaboration tools, antivirus software, AI systems, databases, virtualization platforms, and networking equipment.
The decision to replace Windows was made a few months after the announcement to switch the video conferencing system from Microsoft Teams to the French product Visio, based on the open-source Jitsi platform. By the end of the year, there are also plans to replace the healthcare information system with a new in-house developed product. Additionally, it has been announced that 80,000 employees of the health insurance system will migrate to their own interdepartmental document flow platform.
Additionally, the development of the Linux distribution EU OS, aimed at use in the European Union's public sector, can be noted. The distribution is being developed by enthusiasts who interact with EU governmental bodies and aim to achieve project status from the European Commission. The distribution is based on Fedora Linux, formed as an atomically updatable system image, and is supplied with the KDE desktop environment. Among other similar European distributions, we can mention: GendBuntu (an Ubuntu edition used by the French National Gendarmerie), Linux Plus 1 (implemented in the German region of Schleswig-Holstein), LiMux (used in Munich until 2029), and Linux Barcelona (an Ubuntu build used in public institutions in Barcelona).
Kilde: opennet.ru
