France's central IT agency (DINUM) formally announced on April 8th, 2026 that all government ministries must produce migration plans away from Windows toward Linux by autumn 2026, covering desktops, collaboration tools, AI, databases, and more. This is part of a long-running digital sovereignty push — the national police force (Gendarmerie) has already migrated 103,000 workstations to a custom Ubuntu distro called Gendarmubuntu, saving €2 million per year. France is also developing Securix (a hardened NixOS-based PC model) and La Suite (a self-hosted cloud office suite with video conferencing and spreadsheet tools). Key challenges include legacy Windows applications, compatibility issues, vendor pressure, and the human factor of user training and support. The post argues France's methodical, tiered approach is the right strategy and hopes the blueprint spreads across Europe.
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