webkitten comments on France Launches Government Linux Desktop Plan as Windows Exit Begins

With the resources they have -- and the goal of having security and control over their digital supply lines -- I don't see why they wouldn't roll their own distro. Maybe heavily based on an existing distro (looking at you, Debian) but something that's completely under their control, so they can choose for themselves exactly what packages are included, what security settings are used as defaults, when and if to update things, etc.

Edit: after (gasp) actually reading the article, it seems that each department within the French government will be responsible for their own implementation, which means they might all end up using different distros in different departments.

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[–] Archer@lemmy.world 25 points 6 months ago* (2 children)

That seems odd, that just means higher costs for support. Pick one distro then do custom packages or Ansible for your stuff that you want on top but don’t go a million different ways

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[–] FauxLiving@lemmy.world 25 points 6 months ago

Going a millions different ways is more in the FOSS spirit than starting off by saying 'everyone will use this list of software'. They can't know what will be the best fit for everyone so they're approaching it flexibly.

They can iterate in the future or come up with standards as they need, but in the beginning it's better to try a lot of different things to see what people discover.

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[–] starchylemming@lemmy.world 10 points 6 months ago

its smart for a start cause everyone cooks and then they can share the best parts

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[–] Wfh@lemmy.zip 24 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago)

It's either a political move (nobody wants to be responsible for and/or depend on another ministry), or 4D chess where they would prevent a single vulnerability to expose the entire user base.

Fun fact, Orange (former France Telecom) has developed its own distro for the best part of the last 25 years. It's.. very peculiar.

By who are we kidding. The actual work will be offloaded to the shittiest contractor available (Capgemini/Atos/SopraSteria), it will take 5 years of the planned 2 and will cost 3.5 times the initial budget, for something sensibly shittier than an uBlue script.

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