France moves government desktops to Linux
France announced a plan to replace Windows on government desktops with Linux and to shift 80,000 health‑sector employees to open-source alternatives, citing digital-sovereignty goals. The move positions public-sector IT away from mainstream proprietary vendors in favour of open-source stacks. (x.com)
France said on April 8 it will move state workstations off Microsoft Windows and onto Linux as part of a wider digital-sovereignty push. (numerique.gouv.fr) The announcement came out of an interministerial seminar organized by the Interministerial Directorate for Digital Affairs, or Direction interministérielle du numérique, with the General Directorate for Enterprise, the National Cybersecurity Agency of France, and the state purchasing office. (numerique.gouv.fr) In the same statement, France’s National Health Insurance Fund said 80,000 of its employees are being moved to state-backed tools including Tchap for messaging, Visio for video meetings, and FranceTransfert for file transfers. (numerique.gouv.fr) French officials tied the shift to a campaign to cut what they called “extra-European” digital dependencies across desktop software, collaboration tools, antivirus, databases, virtualization, and network equipment. Each ministry and public operator has until autumn 2026 to file its own plan. (numerique.gouv.fr) The desktop move lands as France is also relocating its national health data platform to hosting that is secured in Europe and not subject to non-European laws. The Health Ministry said on February 6 that migration is due by the end of 2026. (sante.gouv.fr) France has been building this policy for years. A 2021 government action plan said free and open-source software should be used more widely inside the state, with support contracts, code sharing, and contributions to public digital commons coordinated by the digital directorate. (code.gouv.fr) By October 2024, the government was presenting “La Suite Numérique,” a set of open-source, European-designed tools for public employees, as part of a broader sovereignty strategy alongside a trusted cloud for public administrations. (numerique.gouv.fr) France has not yet published, in the April 8 release, a timetable for how fast Windows desktops will be replaced or which Linux distribution ministries will use. The next concrete deadline is autumn 2026, when ministry-by-ministry plans are due. (numerique.gouv.fr)
