On 8th April 2026, the French government made a decision that could send shockwaves throughout the world of computing and IT, cause businesses and public sector authorities to consider their options in the future, and fundamentally change the role of IT support.
On this day, the French government published a press release that announced that the country would be changing the operating system of all of its 2.5 million workstations from Microsoft Windows to Linux.
This is part of a larger move to transition away from “digital dependency” on platforms and systems owned and operated outside of the country and towards European IT solutions where possible.
Specifically, the French government will no longer accept relying on infrastructure that uses their data and has rules, pricing structures, updates and inherent risks out of their control. Each ministerial department has until autumn to develop its transition plan.
An open-source operating system, Linux is designed to be modular, and the French police (the national Gendarmerie) already use a version of the popular distribution Ubuntu and have done so since Windows XP ended development in 2008. It runs on over 100,000 government PCs.
The EU has been moving away from Microsoft software packages such as Copilot 365 (Formerly Microsoft Office), Teams and OneDrive for several years to avoid what has been called “The Microsoft Trap”, and some individual states and autonomous regions have outright switched to Linux.
However, this is the first nation to not only announce they are switching from Windows to Linux but have turned those words into action, which has huge implications for the IT sector as a whole.
The Linux desktop has been an option for over three decades, but there has always been a technical and compatibility gap that has given both home and business users pause.
However, with Linux getting easier to install and customise to the particular needs of users thanks to tools such as Zorin OS, alongside the controversial end of Windows 10 support and update issues in the first part of 2026, the future of computing may not exclusively be shaped by Windows.
