Petition Summary: The petitioner calls for the European Union to actively develop and implement a Linux-based operating system, termed ‘EU-Linux’, across public administrations in all EU Member States. This initiative aims to reduce dependency on Microsoft products, ensuring compliance with the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), and promoting transparency, sustainability, and digital sovereignty within the EU. The petitioner emphasizes the importance of using open-source alternatives to Microsoft 365, such as LibreOffice and Nextcloud, and suggests the adoption of the E/OS mobile operating system for government devices. The petitioner also highlights the potential for job creation in the IT sector through this initiative.
Honestly, in a managed environment, there’s not really much learning to do. All the hard part of learning Linux is dealing with system issues, or when shit breaks. In corporate land, you’ve got IT staff for that.
The biggest hurdle would be learning libre office, but considering the average white collar level of mastery of MS office is pretty poor, the basics really aren’t that different in LO.
Exactly, for the pencil pushers it’s going to be a transition from one desktop and office suite to another. Hardly “learning Linux”.
I see more of a challenge on sys admins and department IT support who may have gotten comfy giving mostly Microsoft product support.
I see it generating less work for the helpdesk than Windows currently does. Linux can hardly brick itself without root while Windows can and has a lot of bloat and problems occuring on random on identical PCs. It also works fine on HDD and with less than 8GB of DDR3 RAM, so older hardware won’t become garbage that quick. And since users aren’t yet familiar with any Linux, there is a 5 year lag between deployment and when average users would start to dig in settings and customization parameters fixing\breaking things themselves like they do on their home machines.
It’s investing in your own working future.
TBH I feel like many IT people are employed because they’re “microsoft certified”, not because they know anything about linux. This kind of gatekeeping is a big part of why windows is so entrenched.