1. The French government announces its digital agency is to write a plan, by the end of the year, so that France could reduce its extra-European dependencies. The communiqué is wrapped up with minor facts (e.g. the digital agency is to switch to Linux on dozens of computers) and big promises from Ministers.
2. Various news sites state that "France is ditching Windows", at least in their titles.
3. On new aggregators, most people react to the titles. Some do read the articles. Very few realize it's about promises to act toward a vague goal, with an unknown calendar, and many political uncertainties.
I would have hoped for more cautious reactions. It's not a leading act, not a reason to be proud, not a example to follow. It's just words.
The French government already made similar promises in the past. Sometimes, it did happen, like the Gendarmerie (rural police) switching to a Linux distribution. Sometimes, it didn't, like the pact signed by the Army Ministry with Microsoft in 2022: many clauses are still secret, even the prices.
> The German Foreign Office first moved over to Linux as a server platform in 2001... the Foreign Office of Germany made the announcement (translated news report) that it is migrating away from Linux back to Windows as its desktop solution.
> By December 2013, the city concluded the migration, with over 14,800 desktops running on LiMux... In November 2017, nearly four years after the conclusion of the migration, the Munich city council adopted a decision overhauling the move. All equipment was to be refitted with Windows 10 counterparts by 2020
> Birmingham City Council piloted OSS on hundreds of desktops
in its public libraries in 2005-6. It originally planned to install Linux ... but this was over-ambitious for
the time frame of the project and compatibility problems meant that
the open source OpenOffice (office suite) and Firefox (web
browser) were eventually run on Windows XP
The LiMux/Munich saga was actually successful to a large degree. What happened is that Microsoft put enormous efforts into killing it. High level people like Steve ballmer and Bill Gates made personal visits to Munich officials to win them back, Microsoft put a headquarters in Bavaria, and there were huge concessions. It's about as far as you can get from the image of empty promises and no action.
Those attempts happened before the US really made such a concrete demonstration it was a security and strategic risk though. That was back in the good old days where they at least pretended to be strategic partners.
It's good to be sceptical, but the US really does present a clear danger to the EU and UK now (and the rest of the world). I'm hopeful that this will actually materialise this time, and that Munich and Birmingham and the others will have paved the way and built some expertise.
The Reddit tier anti America FUD on this site never fails to get a chuckle out of me. Every single day the discussion here gets lower and lower quality.
I think you underestimate how much trump is undermining trust in the US.
Pulling out of agreements, unilaterally starting unnecessary wars (and then whining that nobody participates), screwing up the world economy and oil markets, threatening tariffs on a whim, threatening Greenland. Trying to push conservative values on the rest of the world (eg companies with inclusion policies get blacklisted)
And this distrust is not going to go away even when a sane government replaces him. The American people already elected Trump twice. It's very clear that another similar president can be elected at any moment. It's not just Trump, there's a whole movement behind him that's not going to go away, like the heritage Foundation. The long-term trust is gone. And it's not coming back unless something substantially changes in the US which is very doubtful.
What unnecessary wars did the US start so far? And what would you say is necessary to do when there is an extremely theocratic country with a goal of "wiping out" another country is getting close to create a nuclear weapon?
The second Iraq war was completely unnecessary. The fake WMD stories have been well documented. America then created the power vacuum that allowed ISIS to grow to an international problem.
Afghanistan too, the exuse was 9/11 but the Taliban was never proven to be involved, it was all Saudi Arabians. But SA is a "friendly" nation so they had to go after Afghanistan instead. Meanwhile Bin Laden was living comfortably in Pakistan.
Further back the Vietnam and Korea wars were unnecessary too, America had no business there. If they wanted to become communist that was their right. The only one I can consider justified in some way was the first gulf war, because Iraq did indeed invade Kuwait.
All Trump did was prove to Iran that they need a nuclear weapon to be safe. What would actually have worked (and did work) would have been guarantees. You know like the agreement Obama achieved and Trump trashed.
I'm an Australian and there isn't a single person I know that isn't anti-america at this point, that includes conservatives. This was reflected in the last election, where the party most aligned with the US got absolutely wrecked.
France'a Gendarmerie (one of two branch of law-enforcement) has switched to linux for more than a decade. There is little reason to think they are bluffing. Furthermore, the groundwork has been laid for months, with forks being worked on.
I understand your take generally, but here I don't understand the skepticism.
They are already part of the way. They use "la suite" pretty extensively, it's an office suite based on open source components.
Migrating from windows as an OS is a logical next step.
Also the gendarmerie has their own dedicated Linux distribution for all their workstations as you mentioned. The French certainly have put in the work. It's not just talk.
It shouldn't make you sad, it should make you curious.
Broadly, I've observed that there's way way way too little discussion of the extent to which money and power, somewhat behind the scenes, can be thrown at what feels like "tech decisions."
A while back, here in Florida, a state representative had a relative who was kind of into open source and had it explained to him. Representative was like "oh interesting idea, Florida should look into doing more of this"
And the suits from Microsoft came down swiftly to "correct" matters.
You could be more pointed than that. French secret service "leveraging" Palantir is a disgrace , we all know who is leveraging who and its a plain shame.
What's performative about not wanting to go down with a sinking ship? Or are you under the illusion that the U.S. is doing particularly well right now? It appears that the "we have the bigger stick" strategy is finally meeting some resistance, and I am happy to see it.
It's not the current administration that started this process. The US has for decades gone against the Europeans, step after step, asserting policies that only favor US companies. In the past however, the US administrations sugarcoated this fact with the language of cooperation. The current US government is now laying bare the fact that they're creating a political system where all technology and resources are controlled by the US and their "allies" are mere observers that should not do anything about it.
This. This is something which the current administration does not understand. We Europeans have done what Washington says for 80 years. We are behaving like a colony. We let the US have bases here, we follow their economical model, the petro dollar and let them suck the wealth out of Europe. You want military bases on Greenland: ask friendly, we already said yes in the 50s. You want overflight rights for your wars: we give them to you since 80 years. You wanted access to our fibers. Oh let us help you with that.
It is the deal and the tone. You gave us security and let us participate in prosperity. You acted friendly. Trust, security and tone is replaced by bullying. Why should we continue to bend over?
You guys have to bend over because you willfully sold out your constituents and dissolved competition in the name of anti racism gloablism. You guys could have had the same thriving tech sector anyone else does. There’s no conspiracy to keep you guys down. You do that to yourself, while simultaneously waxing poetic about how much better you are than Americans with your social programs. Well turns out you can either have your guaranteed social programs where no one ever has to truly work hard, or you can have economic growth. You guys made your choice 30+ years ago, you only have yourselves to blame.
California and Israel have an unparalleled tech sector. I don't think it's correct to imply that it is an easily achievable feat or that every country could attain that.
>Well turns out you can either have your guaranteed social programs where no one ever has to truly work hard, or you can have economic growth. You guys made your choice 30+ years ago, you only have yourselves to blame.
That is somewhat true. World Happiness Report has the US at 23rd place, only 7 countries higher than it are not European (despite most having lower GDP/capita). I think Europe is mostly contend with this outcome.
Curious where you are. I am in Canada and it's certainly mixed feelings but I think there are plenty of Canadians that understand that despite the current craziness we're in this together for the long term. Similarly in the US there are plenty that understand this.
In relation to Europe vs. the US. Even before the current administration Europe has been at odds with American companies:
"The European Union Renews Its Offensive Against US Technology Firms" (2022) - https://www.piie.com/sites/default/files/documents/pb22-2.pd...
The framing that this started now with the current administration is not correct. The current administration certainly heated things up so to speak and brought things to the surface but the tension has been there for a long while. Europe is not capable of competing with US tech in general for various structural reasons. Europeans tend to argue this is because of US power but we see countries like China and India succeeding where Europe fails.
The more interesting question is whether there is a large enough lasting change in the US that takes away its structural advantages. I don't think this is the case. If you look at AI the hub of world economic activity and innovation is still in the US including startups and incumbents. s/AI/anything/ . China is certainly trying, and arguably succeeding, in taking some of that but it's still not at the same level. Europe is not even a player.
Interestingly, China is succeeding because it isolated itself partially from US big tech. That enabled them to build their domestic companies.
If you give free reign to US companies, they‘re going to swoop up any competition early on.
The US relies on being attractive for smart people. There are still smart people going to the US, but the general mood seems to be that it‘s increasingly less attractive. Mid term, little will change, long term the cultural hegemony of the US will be replaced by multipolar influences.
You’ll never get an honest conversation on this topic from these people. They’ve been allowing themselves to steep in America bad doomer “news” content for decades to the point these people can’t tell up from down. Every year the discussions here get closer and closer to Reddit slop, with the same exact talking points and acceptable spectrum of ideas.
Why can't people understand this basic fact? China does not have a free press. The only information you're getting on public channels about China, unless you dig as deep as a financial analyst (i.e. getting trade data about China, but exclusively from non-Chinese sources. Other countries. Central Banks. Satellite images. Ship records. And so on) you are getting propaganda and nothing but propaganda.
So it doesn't matter what is going on with China, in the press you will always find "China is succeeding", with 1000 because's, usually "because" exactly what the last CCP meeting decided their economic plan is. It doesn't mean shit.
These same people also gobble up anti America and anti western headlines like fat kids at a buffet. They’re literally gluttonous for this kind of doomer porn. It’s hilarious, and also incredibly sad.
Top 3 CS programs still seem to be in the US. MIT, Stanford, CMU.
The US has its geography, weather, etc. which are not going away.
China has massive scale industrial espionage and learnt a lot by being the cheap place where things are made and stealing western companies processes. They also invested a lot in education and naturally they have a lot of smart people. I still think that as long as they have an oppressive regime the really smart people will prefer not to be there since the second you become successful you also become a threat to the regime. Their work culture is also pretty toxic.
It's hard to predict long term but the US has a culture of innovation going back maybe hundreds of years, it has relative freedom, it has capital to invest, land and resources, and overall it has good people (and crazy people which was always true). Most of the conditions that made the US what it is are still there and most of the conditions that made places like Europe unable to compete are also still there. The US is a lot more diverse than it used to be as well.
There are now "loyalty tests" for those who apply to positions at the FBI, to be hired you have to state that the "patriots" on Jan. 6 2021 were the rioters attempting a coup, not the Capitol Police defending the constitutional transfer of government power.
It's not hard at all if you can interpret charts and can observe trends. You do yourself no favors by intentionally misunderestimating an adversary, to borrow a Bushism.
> It's hard to predict long term but the US has a culture of innovation going back maybe hundreds of years, it has relative freedom, it has capital to invest, land and resources, and overall it has good people (and crazy people which was always true). Most of the conditions that made the US what it is are still there and most of the conditions that made places like Europe unable to compete are also still there. The US is a lot more diverse than it used to be as well..
It's not all about economy though. I'm much happier living in Southern Europe than I would be in the US with probably 3x the disposable income.
Everything went South after the US listened to Merkel's phone. That happened during the Obama administration.
If the EU or France are not capable of adopting Linux instead of M$ on the desktop, how are they going to switch phones over to something else that is not US based? By something else I don't mean Huawei.
France deciding, in principle, to come up with a plan for not using Microsoft is performative. It stops being performative when they actually do it. At any rate, is there a good reason for France to stop using Microsoft? I'm doubtful. It's a bit like the DoD declaring Anthropic a "supply chain risk"; basically performative.
To respond to the rest of your post: while the Trump administration's behavior has diminished US standing in the world, the US is doing well compared to Europe in many important dimensions (e.g. economic growth). Also, far-right parties in Europe seem much more dangerous than the right in the US.
But all of that is a side show. European skepticism of the US has its roots in the postwar era. It's fundamentally about resentment. Europe is geopolitically weak and depends on the US for defense which is galling, especially for France with its history as a global power.
> European skepticism of the US has its roots in the postwar era.
This is crazy. The Europeans fell hook line and sinker for the line that the US could be trusted to manage security for Europe and would always be a dependable ally. That suited everyone — Europe because we could focus spending on post war reconstruction, and the US because you made a shit tonne of money by being the world's arms dealer and policeman.
There was no resentment of the US. Europe was in love with US culture (weird French cinema rules aside). And especially Eastern Europe... who have now had the hardest of all disillusionments.
This administration has destroyed the goodwill and trust built up over 80 years, and the economic foundation which made you rich and powerful. Let's check back in 30 years and see if that was a good idea. I'm hopeful that French nukes and Ukrainian ingenuity (and MAGA incompetence) will see us through the next 10-15 years of transition as re right the past mistake of trusting the US.
You must live in a different reality from me. The EU has closed trade deals with India and Mercosur this year alone, recentering the global economy around itself.
Meanwhile, the resentment seems to radiate from the White House as they increasingly realize how their moves are making them irrelevant on the global stage.
We're not upset. We just don't think you matter anymore.
Well said on the site of Y-Combinator. A US company ran by Americans that mostly funds startups in the US. Clearly the US, the home of Apple, nVidia, Anthropic, Open AI, SpaceX, Google, Meta, Amazon, Tesla etc. is sinking while the EU the home of (? ... well, there is ASML) is going to be running the world.
Linus works on Linux from ... Portland, Oregon. And oh, look at where Linux contributions are coming from:
In 2025, USA GDP grew by 2.0%.
In 2025, EU GDP grew by 1.5%.
Government spending (a proxy for government power) is a fraction of GDP, usually between 10% of GDP and 30% of GDP.
So, while the US may not be doing particularly well right now, it's still doing better than Europe.
As a European, the Anti-Americanism is not performative.
It's a deep disconnect in values, brought to the forefront by the current administration and the oligarchs running wild.
America used to be seen as an example, the big brother watching out for us.
Now it's a cautionary tale of greed, hubris and societal decay, as well as an increasingly antagonistic actor of global instability.
Y'all ruined your reputation and the fact you're trying to pin that on us is just another example of said hubris. Until you at least own up to it, there's no viable path to recovery.
The French are just (wonderfully) arrogant enough to say what everyone else is thinking. The UK will likely be too spineless to actually follow through, but the Germans and Eastern Europeans are not going to tolerate the level of exposure we all have to US craziness any longer.
Some big moneyed interests are trying to split Europe and the US.
The current US administration is definitely not helping, but every ad I see on the Reddit main feed is a blatant attack on the relation, from brand new subreddits, pointing at magazines I’ve never heard about before. I’ve been reporting them, but it keeps coming, from constantly different sources, different names, subreddits, but always the same vague but incredible incredibly provocative titles
I suspect that some social-media-addled senior US officials are being fed the same crap because their reactions to non-existent European reaction are not grounded in reality.
It is always easy to make big announcements but harder to follow through.
They'd need a strong software and tech industry and ecosystem but in general business and economic policy, especially in France, is as hostile as possible and harder to change politically.
Really proud as a French, I think the government has had some success with moving to something matrix based for the public sector too.
https://tchap.numerique.gouv.fr
I just hope we end up having more wins at the EU-level, instead of massive fails like GAIA-X...
Has anyone noticed an increased of one-liner controversial commentary, usually assertions, with a bunch of replies, sometimes, "No and no" or something like "this is the right answer" or a bunch of greyed comments?
HN is not Reddit, and that's a Reddit pattern. It's an anti-intellectual pattern because it's a popularity/anger contest and there's nothing of substance.
I'd love to hear the pros and cons and even likelihood of Linux in government, but I'm having trouble finding the smart commentary from the grey noise.
This sounds interesting on paper but I wonder how likely it is they actually pull it off. Even putting aside the logistics of installing new oses across a bunch of workstations, migrating from legacy Active Directory domains is something even small enterprises struggle with.
We also migrated from AWS and Azure to European cloud.
But as you can see Mac is still from the USA so although the making things European sounds nice, it's only part of the reason.
Mac has greatly improved with the M chip line. Windows has greatly degraded over time.
AWS and Azure are by now something like 10x the price per year of just buying the hardware yourselves. They always compare the price to the salary of a senior engineer in San Francisco if you include vested stocks.
However installing a database with the correct security settings has also become a lot easier since AWS started.
The negative view of this and framing that it will be abandoned is interesting. France has already transitioned over 100,000 of their machines from Windows to Linux for their police force. They run a modified version of Ubuntu. Yes, it took them near a decade to do it.
There are roughly 80,000 more systems currently in transition at varying levels of complete.
Yes, this new directive is to move towards a goal of 2.5M systems. Yes, that's a lot more than their current number. They are making progress and now have a clear directive that guides them.
I prefer this reason, "risk", from the "cost savings" reasons we've seen in Germany, Russia, Germany (Munich at first) and Spain (Extremadura at first)
Linus Torvalds. Richard Stallman. GNU and the GPL.
As a bit of an old-timer, I literally don't know exactly where to start a new conversation on this in a place like this; for me the obviousness of the theoretical and practical superiority of free and open source software principles are just always there for me; and it's quite obvious here that it's different for younger people.
So I'm dropping the names and the concepts. Perhaps someone else knows how to get this going?
They’re still going the almost certainly end up running this on US designed chips, with US designed networking equipment and a bunch of other assets tied back to US companies. They should do what they want, but it’s “sovereignty theater” at best.
AI finding vulnerabilities in open source software is going to make it super unpleasant for a time. I expect there to be a shift back to closed source until we get through that period.
Nice! Now moving from Windows to Linux is the "easy", visible part. Replacing US cloud + US AI dependence end to end is much harder, and that’s the real deal today.
I don't see how this strategy can work without the EU basically having a counterpart to Microsoft. You can't beat Windows just uniting around the Linux kernel, it needs to be a whole OS plus an entire ecosystem including cloud.
Now that on-chip silicon radios have been invented, using anything but home-designed cpus, and in general all chips, is lunacy from a nation-state security standpoint.
Linux is also written by American companies at the end of the day. Most linux devs are supported by American companies and Linux's benevolent dictator for life, Linus Torvalds, lives in Portland, Oregon and is an American citizen.
There's literally no non-American general-purpose operating system.
Over time, more and more work is going to be done by AI though. At some point, it will be unthinkably slow and expensive to let humans work on anything.
305 comments
1. The French government announces its digital agency is to write a plan, by the end of the year, so that France could reduce its extra-European dependencies. The communiqué is wrapped up with minor facts (e.g. the digital agency is to switch to Linux on dozens of computers) and big promises from Ministers.
2. Various news sites state that "France is ditching Windows", at least in their titles.
3. On new aggregators, most people react to the titles. Some do read the articles. Very few realize it's about promises to act toward a vague goal, with an unknown calendar, and many political uncertainties.
I would have hoped for more cautious reactions. It's not a leading act, not a reason to be proud, not a example to follow. It's just words.
The French government already made similar promises in the past. Sometimes, it did happen, like the Gendarmerie (rural police) switching to a Linux distribution. Sometimes, it didn't, like the pact signed by the Army Ministry with Microsoft in 2022: many clauses are still secret, even the prices.
https://www.linuxjournal.com/content/german-open-source-expe...:
> The German Foreign Office first moved over to Linux as a server platform in 2001... the Foreign Office of Germany made the announcement (translated news report) that it is migrating away from Linux back to Windows as its desktop solution.
https://interoperable-europe.ec.europa.eu/collection/open-so...:
> By December 2013, the city concluded the migration, with over 14,800 desktops running on LiMux... In November 2017, nearly four years after the conclusion of the migration, the Munich city council adopted a decision overhauling the move. All equipment was to be refitted with Windows 10 counterparts by 2020
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wienux:
> WIENUX[2] is a Debian-based Linux distribution developed by the City of Vienna in Austria... until 2008 when the download page was taken offline.
https://researchbriefings.files.parliament.uk/documents/POST...:
> Birmingham City Council piloted OSS on hundreds of desktops in its public libraries in 2005-6. It originally planned to install Linux ... but this was over-ambitious for the time frame of the project and compatibility problems meant that the open source OpenOffice (office suite) and Firefox (web browser) were eventually run on Windows XP
It's good to be sceptical, but the US really does present a clear danger to the EU and UK now (and the rest of the world). I'm hopeful that this will actually materialise this time, and that Munich and Birmingham and the others will have paved the way and built some expertise.
Pulling out of agreements, unilaterally starting unnecessary wars (and then whining that nobody participates), screwing up the world economy and oil markets, threatening tariffs on a whim, threatening Greenland. Trying to push conservative values on the rest of the world (eg companies with inclusion policies get blacklisted)
And this distrust is not going to go away even when a sane government replaces him. The American people already elected Trump twice. It's very clear that another similar president can be elected at any moment. It's not just Trump, there's a whole movement behind him that's not going to go away, like the heritage Foundation. The long-term trust is gone. And it's not coming back unless something substantially changes in the US which is very doubtful.
Afghanistan too, the exuse was 9/11 but the Taliban was never proven to be involved, it was all Saudi Arabians. But SA is a "friendly" nation so they had to go after Afghanistan instead. Meanwhile Bin Laden was living comfortably in Pakistan.
And Iran was not close to a nuclear weapon. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/iran-was-nowhere-... . It was just that Netanyahu had destroyed all he could of Gaza and needed another war to be able to stay in power.
Further back the Vietnam and Korea wars were unnecessary too, America had no business there. If they wanted to become communist that was their right. The only one I can consider justified in some way was the first gulf war, because Iraq did indeed invade Kuwait.
All Trump did was prove to Iran that they need a nuclear weapon to be safe. What would actually have worked (and did work) would have been guarantees. You know like the agreement Obama achieved and Trump trashed.
I understand your take generally, but here I don't understand the skepticism.
Migrating from windows as an OS is a logical next step.
Also the gendarmerie has their own dedicated Linux distribution for all their workstations as you mentioned. The French certainly have put in the work. It's not just talk.
Broadly, I've observed that there's way way way too little discussion of the extent to which money and power, somewhat behind the scenes, can be thrown at what feels like "tech decisions."
A while back, here in Florida, a state representative had a relative who was kind of into open source and had it explained to him. Representative was like "oh interesting idea, Florida should look into doing more of this"
And the suits from Microsoft came down swiftly to "correct" matters.
I’m not in Europe but in another allied country, the feeling amongst people here is that the US is not able to be trusted as a partner anymore.
And with ways the Government can apply pressure to US companies (CLOUD Act etc.) that extends to IS companies too.
It is the deal and the tone. You gave us security and let us participate in prosperity. You acted friendly. Trust, security and tone is replaced by bullying. Why should we continue to bend over?
>Well turns out you can either have your guaranteed social programs where no one ever has to truly work hard, or you can have economic growth. You guys made your choice 30+ years ago, you only have yourselves to blame.
That is somewhat true. World Happiness Report has the US at 23rd place, only 7 countries higher than it are not European (despite most having lower GDP/capita). I think Europe is mostly contend with this outcome.
In relation to Europe vs. the US. Even before the current administration Europe has been at odds with American companies: "The European Union Renews Its Offensive Against US Technology Firms" (2022) - https://www.piie.com/sites/default/files/documents/pb22-2.pd...
The framing that this started now with the current administration is not correct. The current administration certainly heated things up so to speak and brought things to the surface but the tension has been there for a long while. Europe is not capable of competing with US tech in general for various structural reasons. Europeans tend to argue this is because of US power but we see countries like China and India succeeding where Europe fails.
The more interesting question is whether there is a large enough lasting change in the US that takes away its structural advantages. I don't think this is the case. If you look at AI the hub of world economic activity and innovation is still in the US including startups and incumbents. s/AI/anything/ . China is certainly trying, and arguably succeeding, in taking some of that but it's still not at the same level. Europe is not even a player.
The US relies on being attractive for smart people. There are still smart people going to the US, but the general mood seems to be that it‘s increasingly less attractive. Mid term, little will change, long term the cultural hegemony of the US will be replaced by multipolar influences.
> Mid term, little will change, long term the cultural hegemony of the US will be replaced by multipolar influences.
Everyone's been saying this for like 20 years. It just hasn't happened.
At some point you realize that the people constantly pushing "multipolarity" just really don't like the US. It's wishful thinking
Love it!
So it doesn't matter what is going on with China, in the press you will always find "China is succeeding", with 1000 because's, usually "because" exactly what the last CCP meeting decided their economic plan is. It doesn't mean shit.
The US has its geography, weather, etc. which are not going away.
China has massive scale industrial espionage and learnt a lot by being the cheap place where things are made and stealing western companies processes. They also invested a lot in education and naturally they have a lot of smart people. I still think that as long as they have an oppressive regime the really smart people will prefer not to be there since the second you become successful you also become a threat to the regime. Their work culture is also pretty toxic.
https://monitor.icef.com/2025/11/there-were-more-internation...
It's hard to predict long term but the US has a culture of innovation going back maybe hundreds of years, it has relative freedom, it has capital to invest, land and resources, and overall it has good people (and crazy people which was always true). Most of the conditions that made the US what it is are still there and most of the conditions that made places like Europe unable to compete are also still there. The US is a lot more diverse than it used to be as well.
> and crazy people which was always true
The experiment with giving the crazy people unchecked power over every lever of government is new, however.
This is perhaps a shrewd move against China: they can't steal technology and scientific advances from the US if there aren't any to steal.
Historical US presidents:
Andrew Jackson -> threatened to hang his VP. https://history.stackexchange.com/questions/41212/did-andrew...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lyndon_B._Johnson had meetings while sitting on the toilet: https://historyfacts.com/famous-figures/fact/lyndon-b-johnso...
Richard Nixon - needs no introductions?
https://www.reddit.com/r/Presidents/comments/13yplux/crazies...
Also remember we had: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McCarthyism and the requirement by Truman that all civil service employees be screened for "loyalty".
https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2025/02/08/...
But technically you are correct, of course. Trump never demanded that VP Mike Pence be hanged, the rioters he sent to Congress did.
> It's hard to predict long term...
It's not hard at all if you can interpret charts and can observe trends. You do yourself no favors by intentionally misunderestimating an adversary, to borrow a Bushism.
> It's hard to predict long term but the US has a culture of innovation going back maybe hundreds of years, it has relative freedom, it has capital to invest, land and resources, and overall it has good people (and crazy people which was always true). Most of the conditions that made the US what it is are still there and most of the conditions that made places like Europe unable to compete are also still there. The US is a lot more diverse than it used to be as well..
It's not all about economy though. I'm much happier living in Southern Europe than I would be in the US with probably 3x the disposable income.
I'd never consider living there, really.
> the US has a culture of innovation going back maybe hundreds of years
Not many hundred, considering the US declaration of independence was in 1776 and there were some adjustment after that. Perhaps some decades?
If the EU or France are not capable of adopting Linux instead of M$ on the desktop, how are they going to switch phones over to something else that is not US based? By something else I don't mean Huawei.
But yeah, a missing agenda item. I guess desktop first. Have not said that for a while
To respond to the rest of your post: while the Trump administration's behavior has diminished US standing in the world, the US is doing well compared to Europe in many important dimensions (e.g. economic growth). Also, far-right parties in Europe seem much more dangerous than the right in the US.
But all of that is a side show. European skepticism of the US has its roots in the postwar era. It's fundamentally about resentment. Europe is geopolitically weak and depends on the US for defense which is galling, especially for France with its history as a global power.
> European skepticism of the US has its roots in the postwar era.
This is crazy. The Europeans fell hook line and sinker for the line that the US could be trusted to manage security for Europe and would always be a dependable ally. That suited everyone — Europe because we could focus spending on post war reconstruction, and the US because you made a shit tonne of money by being the world's arms dealer and policeman.
There was no resentment of the US. Europe was in love with US culture (weird French cinema rules aside). And especially Eastern Europe... who have now had the hardest of all disillusionments.
This administration has destroyed the goodwill and trust built up over 80 years, and the economic foundation which made you rich and powerful. Let's check back in 30 years and see if that was a good idea. I'm hopeful that French nukes and Ukrainian ingenuity (and MAGA incompetence) will see us through the next 10-15 years of transition as re right the past mistake of trusting the US.
Meanwhile, the resentment seems to radiate from the White House as they increasingly realize how their moves are making them irrelevant on the global stage.
We're not upset. We just don't think you matter anymore.
It's not performative.
Linus works on Linux from ... Portland, Oregon. And oh, look at where Linux contributions are coming from:
https://insights.linuxfoundation.org/project/korg/contributo...
EU's GDP is so catching up with the US:
https://econofact.org/factbrief/fact-check-has-the-economic-...
NOT
So, while the US may not be doing particularly well right now, it's still doing better than Europe.
It's a deep disconnect in values, brought to the forefront by the current administration and the oligarchs running wild.
America used to be seen as an example, the big brother watching out for us.
Now it's a cautionary tale of greed, hubris and societal decay, as well as an increasingly antagonistic actor of global instability.
Y'all ruined your reputation and the fact you're trying to pin that on us is just another example of said hubris. Until you at least own up to it, there's no viable path to recovery.
The current US administration is definitely not helping, but every ad I see on the Reddit main feed is a blatant attack on the relation, from brand new subreddits, pointing at magazines I’ve never heard about before. I’ve been reporting them, but it keeps coming, from constantly different sources, different names, subreddits, but always the same vague but incredible incredibly provocative titles
I suspect that some social-media-addled senior US officials are being fed the same crap because their reactions to non-existent European reaction are not grounded in reality.
They'd need a strong software and tech industry and ecosystem but in general business and economic policy, especially in France, is as hostile as possible and harder to change politically.
I just hope we end up having more wins at the EU-level, instead of massive fails like GAIA-X...
HN is not Reddit, and that's a Reddit pattern. It's an anti-intellectual pattern because it's a popularity/anger contest and there's nothing of substance.
I'd love to hear the pros and cons and even likelihood of Linux in government, but I'm having trouble finding the smart commentary from the grey noise.
Help!
[dupe]
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47719486
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47716043
We also migrated from AWS and Azure to European cloud.
But as you can see Mac is still from the USA so although the making things European sounds nice, it's only part of the reason.
Mac has greatly improved with the M chip line. Windows has greatly degraded over time.
AWS and Azure are by now something like 10x the price per year of just buying the hardware yourselves. They always compare the price to the salary of a senior engineer in San Francisco if you include vested stocks.
However installing a database with the correct security settings has also become a lot easier since AWS started.
There are roughly 80,000 more systems currently in transition at varying levels of complete.
Yes, this new directive is to move towards a goal of 2.5M systems. Yes, that's a lot more than their current number. They are making progress and now have a clear directive that guides them.
Microsoft has all but abandoned their self hosted products in favour of cloud, and their cloud services are a security dumpster fire.
Microsoft’s cloud was described as a “pile of shit” but it achieved FedRAMP ATO only because so many agencies were already using their services.
https://www.propublica.org/article/microsoft-cloud-fedramp-c...
Entra ID is full of disastrous design-level bugs like this one.
https://www.theregister.com/2025/09/19/microsoft_entra_id_bu...
Microsoft has deep rooted cultural problems that make the company structurally incapable of fixing their platform.
https://isolveproblems.substack.com/p/how-microsoft-vaporize...
As a bit of an old-timer, I literally don't know exactly where to start a new conversation on this in a place like this; for me the obviousness of the theoretical and practical superiority of free and open source software principles are just always there for me; and it's quite obvious here that it's different for younger people.
So I'm dropping the names and the concepts. Perhaps someone else knows how to get this going?
There's literally no non-American general-purpose operating system.
Astroturfing around this is getting suspicious.
Over time, more and more work is going to be done by AI though. At some point, it will be unthinkably slow and expensive to let humans work on anything.
To do *that* locally, you need GPUs and LLMs.
How will Europe solve these two?