In my ZDNet Tech Today newsletter I,m reading an item named France is replacing 2.5 million Windows desktops with Linux - and I mapped out its new stack, and it suggests a larger migration from Windows across Europe! I think everyone may find this development very interesting going forward!
Ernie
Think what these events may have on the popularity of GNU/Linux for the average user, not only in the EU, but world-wide! When EU Nations succeed at migrating their tech services from M$ products to their own, community-based and open source products, the rest of the world will begin to recognize the true value of open source, regardless whether they’re running MS Windows or GNU/Linux! Even though I don’t really expect it, I’d love to be able to call 2027 or 2028 the year of Linux!
Ernie
We have been asking, suggesting, trying for this for a very long time. Perhaps with government funding cuts they may listen. The french is not yet fixed in they must , its only investigateur and prépare.
Interesting. The item I linked in my OP sounded as if the French government was going to use the OS their national police division was already using, because for them, it’s already a proven platform. While it may be true that additional task specific software may still be required, this is their projected path going forward. Did I read it wrong?
Ernie
Yes the police national are on linux and the tax office. But other départements only have to provide a plan on how they could go forward, and do it by a set date. But then they are not forced to go forward with the plan, it will be a government decission and next year we have a presidential elections so a new government and as usual in france they may not have power to carry it out, politics are interesting in france.
Not gonna name names, but my employer is a French owned company…
Linux desktop is not an option - although when I asked for a Mac - I got one…
I have worked with so many and 20 years down the line still dont understand how they make decissions in meetings, everyone talks, no one listens, they go on and on, then everyone leaves and does what he wanted to hear. Latest craze here is they publish minutes of the meeting then they are rewritten to suit what the president wants.
And they’re not here in the U.S.A.? All in all, the French people have my sympathy, because I thing that the French Government going all GNU/Linux would be a good thing for everyone there! Reduced cost of technology, Greater security of data and citizen’s information, and much more!
Ernie
Well said, we want more of that.
Will not get drawn into politics of which country is correct or not in Government
I understand, and my post was something of a rant because I’m seeing my country heading in a direction I believe to be wrong. It seems that the powers that be want to put the onus for protecting our young on OS developers, when the appropriate place should be on the parents. I have no issue with governmental requirements that OS developers include child protection functionality with their OS/distribution, but they should not be responsible for identifying a user’s age, and enabling protections based on the user’s age.
Ernie
Most phones and tablets come with parental control settings, for access sites and times. Yes education is down to parents but some need help, parents as well as kids
That is a nice piece of straight shooting, Ernie.
The ‘nanny state’ approach to government is misguided.
I cant see how putting age checking into an OS is going to stop what is basically an internet site access problem. It is like trying to prevent underage drinking by putting an age barrier onto access to public places. Too broad a brush.
For a while I taught computing in a hospital as we were trying to improve staff knowledge with the introduction of technology everywhere (going back some 25 years when computing was new, before tablets and phones everywhere) one of my courses i delivered was using the internet for research as we had an online database of knowledge. Part of the training was to demonstrate we had a firewall so they could not go to some sites
Demo way try play-boy.com bang firewall, superb. But I had a group one friday of nurses they said NO we want naked men, try play girl.com oups that had naked men we had forgotten to add it to the firewall ….. then did a group from sexualité transmitted infections and some words they wanted to use were ok for research not really porn stuff…. Difficult to control what and who. Not sure how it worked in tge end as I moved upwards not my problem
… so … shift the onus to the OS developers? If we find that parents need help in protecting their children, promote the creation of local or regional volunteer groups to help mitigate any issues.
All I meant to say above was that governments are choosing a privacy, child endangering path by requiring OS developers to get the age of every user, and store that data and in the process creating countless places where children
s data can be stolen/abused. Don’t you agree that parents already know the age of their children, and should be responsible to enable any available child protective functionality on each child’s user account/computer?
Ernie
Not to mention that responsibility is being placed on the wrong groups of people! Instead of protecting children, these legislative efforts will endanger them further if any or all the multitude of databases (one for each OS/distribution) that will crop up to store all required user information are compromised. Further, from what I understand, these new laws are requiring that OS/distribution developers must collect user’s age information, but not how to handle children’s data as opposed to that of adults, so will these databases become repositories of information for everyone, adults and children alike?
Ernie
Yes, which gate to shut is the issue.
Locking children out of all operating systems is an overkill.
Another way of saying the same thing.
It is avoiding the need to fine-tune what needs to be managed.
Another upside to this is if people are forced to use Linux at work, they will be familiar with it and may want it at home too, even if only because they take work home. If their employer trusts it, then they won’t be as afraid to try it.
They are pulling the wool over almost everyone’s eyes. They don’t care about child safety and that doesn’t help provide it because it’s already available in parental controls options.
Age verification is meaningless without user ID, so ths is a way to trick everyone into accepting one which will link everything you do on your computer directly back to you, eliminating privacy which is the foundation for all other rights. It’s the panopticon in disguise. It’s also great for adverizers.
If they were really serious about doing this right, they would work with the Decentralized Identity Foundation and the Midnight Network to provide everyone with decentralized IDs (DIDs) along with zero knowledge proofs (ZKPs). These DIDs would belong to each person and coud not be blocked/restricted/hacked/harvested because they’re protected with encryption on servers all over the world. Using them with ZKPs would allow you to prove things about yourself with selective disclosure. Are you over 21? can be answered with a proven yes or no without revealing your exact age or anything else.
Your DIDs can also be used for signing objects like posts and media files, eliminating (by identifying) bots, deep fakes and assuring that the objects have not been modified after creation.
DIDs also make identity theft orders of magnitude more difficult. All the honeypots of personal data stored all over the web are no longer needed.
There are people working on making this work just like HTTPS does now - almost frictionless/effortlessly by default.
This really protects people and remakes the whole digital landscape into a much friendlier place. It enhances privacy and self sovereignty instead of eliminating it as these current efforts aim to do.
That happened to me… only it was BSD not Linux.