France's Interministerial Digital Directorate (DINUM) announced on April 8, 2026 that it will migrate its own workstations from Windows to Linux and has ordered all government ministries to submit plans eliminating extra-European digital dependencies by autumn 2026. The directive covers eight categories including operating systems, cloud, AI, and collaboration tools. France's Gendarmerie nationale provides a credible precedent, having run GendBuntu on over 103,000 workstations with 40% TCO reduction and €2M annual savings. Germany's Schleswig-Holstein migration offers further validation. The move is driven by geopolitical tensions with the US under the Trump administration, with European cloud sovereignty accelerating rapidly. Key open questions remain around specialist software dependencies and the fact that European cloud infrastructure is still predominantly American-owned.
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What France is actually committing toThe precedent that makes this credibleThe geopolitical triggerThe limits and the open questionsSort: