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.
It’s ridiculous that governments don’t use customized Unix/Linux builds.
Why? I’ve worked in two companies where IT allows Linux as an option and people are constantly having issues (including me). And these are highly technical people. Two people who are not stupid managed to break their laptops by uninstalling Python 2 which Gnome depended on.
Yes that’s technically a UX issue, but there are plenty of good old bugs too, e.g. if you remove a VPN connection that a WiFi network autoconnects to then that WiFi network will entirely stop working with no error messages to speak of. Took me a long time to figure that out. Or how about the fact that 4k only works at 30fps over HDMI, but it works fine over DisplayPort or Thunderbolt3. The hardware fully supports it and it works for other people with the same OS and laptop. I never figured that out.
That’s just a taster… I almost never have issues like that on Windows or Mac.
Windows may cost more than “free” but the additional support costs for Linux are very far from free too.
Maybe something like Chromebooks makes sense if everything is in the cloud.
That uninstalling python2 bit reminds me of stories of users deleting their system32 folder to free up disk space.
Yeah except that uninstalling Python 2 is a perfectly reasonable thing to want to do.
Since Gnome depended on it, they would have had to intentionally push past warnings to force the uninstall, assuming they’re using a distro with a dependency mapping package manager… So, no, that’s not a perfectly reasonable thing to do
they would have had to intentionally push past warnings to force the uninstall
Go and learn some basics about UX. Two different very smart people made this mistake.
IIRC there are no warnings. It will just list gnome in the list of packages to uninstall that you often get when uninstalling things, and can easily ignore.
Again to reinforce the point because many people do not understand it. Just because it was possible to avoid the issue if you were careful does not mean that it is not an issue. People make mistakes. Seatbelts exist.
No OS idiot proof. You can delete critical files on Windows as well. Next up you will be complaining registry edits break Windows. You straight up removed a dependency of the desktop.
In the future you can run software in containers so you don’t have to care. Just install distrobox and podman.
Windows will actually stop you from deleting
Program Files.Nobody is asking for idiot-proof, just mistake-resistant. It’s ok, most people don’t understand this point.
Why?
It makes no sense for a government/military to use a proprietary system made in another country when there’s a very strong movement inside of said government for an open system. They have incredibly smart people at SUSE, Manjaro and KDE right on the inside and you are telling me they can’t do better than hitting subscribe on Office365?
Assume the EU and US have a conflict, now the EU is stuck with an entire ecosystem made in the US. Assuming they don’t already have all your internal data, they can just get it with a single click.
you are telling me they can’t do better than hitting subscribe on Office365?
Yes I am absolutely telling you that.
Or how about the fact that 4k only works at 30fps over HDMI, but it works fine over DisplayPort or Thunderbolt3
Blame HDMI forum for that. They objected to AMD releasing open source driver for HDMI 2.0+ that lets you do higher modes like 4k60 or 5k etc due to patent reasons. DisplayPort folks on the other hand, had no objections. DP is quite a superior technology too, so if you could, use it instead of HDMI please.
I don’t think that’s the reason. It works for other people.
It’s literally the reason
So why does it work for other people with the same laptop and OS?
If you were having issues why did you stay on Linux? It sounds like you were constantly fighting it. It is best not to waste work time trying something new.
Because my current company is too cheap to buy Macs, and the project I work on is full of Docker and bash scripts and obscure EDA tools. Would be a nightmare on Windows. WSL is a possibility I suppose.
