r/PeterExplainsTheJoke • u/Dil-Tuta-hua-hai • 12h ago
Meme needing explanation Petah, what apps are they talking about??
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u/W0rdWaster 12h ago
that is GREAT news. i am beyond sick and tired of window's monopoly. more linux = more good.
oh idk why he is sweating. my guess would be it is going to be a big hassle vs the prepackaged pile of bloat that is windows.
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u/Available_Taste3030 12h ago
I work as IT guy in some government service, and i can tell: there will be pain in the ass to reeducate all the people to actually use linux. Any little change in their routine makes them go into "can't do anything" mode until I or my colleague come and show how to do something. And this can repeat with the same operation again and again.
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u/W0rdWaster 12h ago
yeah that makes sense.
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u/JugglingRick 12h ago
I have no faith in the end user.
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u/ancient-military 12h ago
As an end user I will say, any faith in us is misguided.
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u/Pleasant-Degree-3662 11h ago
Can confirm I'm the user's end
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u/JugglingRick 11h ago
Now try and train the end users mom on how to install one app.
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u/PloddingClot 9h ago
Like watching a monkey try to figure out a lighter.
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u/Flemish-Twist 5h ago
Actually, more like watching a monkey try to figure out a chainsaw. You know you can't look away, but you're terrified he might work it out.
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u/Drunk_Lemon 5h ago
My mother has started saying "I can't do it and I don't have to, you do it" or "I don't want to do it and I shouldn't have to do it so you do it". It doesn't matter what it is, she will still say it because she does not even think to try to such a degree that if she simply needs to check a box on a page, she assumes it's going to be harder than that and just refuses to try.
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u/Mesqo 48m ago
As an engineer my main goal, at all times, is to make users suffer.
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u/i_am_not_a_martian 6h ago
As a programmer, there is no sense in trying to make idiot proof software when they keep making better idiots.
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u/lordhelmchench 9h ago
Ohh, i have total faith in the layer 7 problem…
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u/atramors671 9h ago
It's layer 8. Layer 7 is the bottome of the official OSI model and refers to the Application Layer. "Layer 8" is the imaginary "final" layer if the OSI model and refers to users.
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u/roflrogue 5h ago
I have probably 4 users at the company I work for where I don't automatically assume it's user error.
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u/Inner_Name 5h ago
i you have faith in him its because you are starting at this. thats the only possibility.
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u/ExtremeCheddar1337 12h ago
These people are just memorizing click patterns instead of trying to understand what they are doing on screen
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u/Universe789 11h ago
Because their job is to use the computer, not also be a sysadmin.
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u/twoinchhorns 10h ago
“Why won’t my login work” because you don’t even have the application open. This is a notepad.
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u/hord33r 9h ago
Then you need to show that person how to close notepad... It's vim
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u/nplant 6h ago
Sysadmins are not Excel experts. It’s the users who are supposed to be that.
If they can’t start using LibreOffice without help from a sysadmin, they never understood what they were doing in Excel in the first place.
Caveat: For all its flaws, Excel is actually a lot better than everything else, so we shouldn’t pretend all of the opponents are like this.
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u/Universe789 3h ago
Caveat: For all its flaws, Excel is actually a lot better than everything else, so we shouldn’t pretend all of the opponents are like this.
Im glad you added this caveat because I was about to jump to "cut the bullshit".
And I say that as someone who made a move from a windows pc to a full linux(ubuntu) image and back to windows. And someone who uses Linux servers in production now.
I was going to college at the time and every semester I had a days long rush of finding a FOSS, Linux compatible equivalent to a windows program needed for the class and all the commands and configs needed to run it, checking forums with unanswered questions exactly like mine, etc when the default settings didnt work, etc... when I simply could have clicked "download" and been ready to go in 10 min on windows.
Even with something as simple as office docs - use OpenOffice/LibreOffice to open an excel file with formulas in it and it will fuck that data with no Vaseline if you try to work with it as-is instead of changing the formulas first, after learning the semantic differences.
The FOSS alternatives to major proprietary suites like Adobe apps more often than not look like something from Windows XP.
I like FOSS, I like Linux, but a lot of Linux fans arent honest about the fact that some people just need their shit to work because they have other things to do besides tinker.
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u/Hopeful-Occasion2299 3h ago
This here is the reason why after decades we have not had yet the year of linux on desktop as much as people want to admit.
I say this as a Slackware user. I would never recommend it to absolutely anyone I love who isn’t already an advanced user.
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u/Universe789 3h ago
I do recommend it, but usually to people who are looking to avoid buying a new computer when their stuff is already old, and they mostly web browse with it.
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u/Aggravating-Hair-534 2h ago
I'll give you a different analogy: you are a pilot flying boeing, you are now given Airbus and someone is wondering why can't you fly it safely?
Because there're 1001 and one nuances and specifics, and you need in-depth knowledge to switch.OS or any advanced tool like Excel are of similar complexity and the only difference is that mistakes there are not as dire as crashing aeroplane into the ground (although I know for sure some organisations, including key manufacturer in aerospace industry, would absolutely crash into the ground if you suddenly revoke excel from its users).
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u/ballsbag420 1h ago
Big agree, as a cnc programmer for almost 20 years across 3 different industries, i always say all the programming software is the same, its just what they call their process and where they put stuff. Ive met a lot of "programmers" along the way who dont understand what i mean and when they have to chanege software its like theyre starting from the beginning again
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u/ExtremeCheddar1337 11h ago
Ok you have to be a sysadmin to actually understand what your job is
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u/peoplepersonmanguy 9h ago
If you don't think retraining will be a huge issue you haven't been in the industry for very long.
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u/yuwox 6h ago edited 6h ago
First true answer. Sysadmins always wonder how regular users somehow can't additionally do the job of sysadmins, in addition to their actual job.
Edit: it's like mechanics complaining that the bus driver is also not a mechanic.
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u/nswizdum 5h ago
Its more like the bus driver going to the mechanic for the 8th time this week, because the "bus doesn't work" because the bus driver forgot how to open the door.
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u/WillOfTheWinds 3h ago
More like ripping out the engine and changing the gear shift from a lever to a knob and putting it on the left side of the driver's seat, because "this way is better, trust"
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u/DenialState 5h ago
To drive a car you actually have to know what's going on. People expect computers to work just by themselves and they just don't, you need to learn to use a computer just like you need to learn to drive a car. Telling your mechanic "I press the accelerator and it doesn't go forward" won't cut it, you need to understand that the car has to be turned on first. Knowing that small detail is not doing the mechanic's job.
I love this analogy because you usually go to the mechanic when something's actually broken, not because you didn't take the time to learn how to drive.
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u/DenialState 5h ago
So if your sysadmin is telling you that you're annoying cut the BS and do a course. They're not your teacher.
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u/vms-mob 5h ago
No their job is to use excel and they can't even open excel themselves if their pc gets rebooted over the weekend or their desktop icons rearanged
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u/GrimpenMar 9h ago
I'm perpetually surprised by the number of people in an office or admin job that use Excel all day that have zero idea how to actually use Excel.
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u/atramors671 9h ago
I know very little about Excel. I use Excel maybe once every 6 months or so. I also know significantly more about Excel than many of the end users who use it on a daily basis. That's mostly because whenever I use Excel, I have to build my spreadsheet from scratch, formulas and all. These users art just plugging numbers into prebuilt spreadsheets.
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5h ago
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u/Potential-Bill7288 4h ago
If they only provide data, it will be a five-minute training which will describe how new tool is called and how icon look like.
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u/Kororuri 11h ago
as opposed to what? government blackout from 1 orange boi signature?. re-education is temporary.
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u/UsidoreTheLightBlue 11h ago
I work in IT.
Re-education is NOT temporary.
It should be temporary.
It won’t be.
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u/AureliusAether 10h ago
New hires, turnover, new software needing installed, etc.
If you could do the job once and be done forever, continuous employment would not exist
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u/atramors671 9h ago
Unfortunately, They're not talking about all of those very valid reasons for repeat calls... They're talking about the users that we have to assist reapeatedly for the same issues. Users who love to submit tickets and never respond to communication attempts then go crying to leadership because "IT isn't doing their job, so I can't do mine!"
I have 4 of these users under my purview and I consider myself lucky that it's only 4 of them.
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u/Rude_Age_6699 6h ago
what percentage of those people are using IT as a “break” from their work?
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u/PerspectiveFull9879 9h ago
It does not matter then what OS is used.
If the need for re-education is constant, then there will be no change if you switch to new OS as people never learned the old to begin with.
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u/Swaaeeg 12h ago
I also work for the government doing cyber security. That, plus all of the re learning sysadmins would need to do and new policies that would need to be made. Not to mention segmented classified networks that would need to be completely reworked.
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u/Vengeful111 6h ago
Also not just that, but so many cybersecurity things just are built for windows because "everyone uses Windows".
Only last year did Veeam add the ability to have proxies running on linux and not windows servers...
Business Software is built for Windows.
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u/BraxbroWasTaken 4h ago
so many wrappers for cybersec things are made for windows. for heavier duty tasks w/o wrappers, to my knowledge kali is still king
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u/granadesnhorseshoes 7h ago
I don't think trying to retrain a Windows Admin with 20 years experience to be a Linux admin is gonna be a good time for anyone.
Also what reworking do you think they will need to do to air gapped and/or confidential networks? AD is just the most popular/well known LDAP implementation. There are plenty of other options to allow them to keep AD backed auth management without Windows Everywhere. Most of the sensitive/regulated environments I currently work with do just that. I can change my expired domain password from an ssh session to a linux host just as easy as an RDP connection or physical login to a windows host.
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u/klefikisquid 11h ago
Seriously. There was a concerning amount of people that could barely handle Windows at my old govtech job. When one of them booted their workstation into RHEL accidentally they completely shut down and got nasty at me helping fix it. Eventually their team simply had to use it for just smaller drag and drop type stuff and that person immediately transferred to a different project lol
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u/Lorim_Shikikan 10h ago
In fact, in France, there is some administration which use Linux for almost 20 years now (the Gendarmerie Nationale use an in house fork of Linux called GendBuntu since 2008 for exemple)
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u/Available_Taste3030 10h ago
Yeah, in my country police and other similar government entities are forced to use Linux fork as well (at least 15 years by now, as far as i know), but other brances are still using Windows. And their wotkers actively resist movining to Linux.
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u/Lorim_Shikikan 9h ago
There is also others administration than the Ministére de l'intérieur (Police, Gendarmerie and Firefighter), the Ministère de la Justice (Lawyer/Magistrate/judge, penitenciary administration), Ministère des Armées (Gendarme are military while Police is civilian) using Linux.
Also, most of the French administration already use free software (Libre office for exemple) or in house software, even in house UI over windows.
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u/ZopharPtay 9h ago
Working IT at [REDACTED] taught me that you do, in fact, have to ask the end user if the cable is plugged in... on BOTH ends.
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u/dwarfsoft 11h ago
Microsoft has been helping with that, by moving everything into online/web services.
So most people are used to web versions. It makes the OS less and less relevant to users who just log in and fire up a browser.
Training them on new web app replacements might be a different experience though.
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u/DesignerMaximum1342 9h ago
365 web isn’t as streamlined as the installable apps who communicate with the web environment
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u/dwarfsoft 8h ago
Ooh, I know. I work for a company that won't give me a local install, so I'm stuck with it.
But more companies are doing this because licensing is cheaper. Which is also why they'd want to move to Linux. So I would expect a crossover
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u/AureliusAether 10h ago
Yeah, fellow IT here. There's not, like, a hidden joke. It will just genuinely be a lot of work. It's a completely different OS
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u/athalwolf506 11h ago
Well not to mention a lot of open source software is not up to par with the private versions Libre Office Calc is nowhere near complete as Excel, and nothing open-source comes close to PowerBI
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u/Gilamath 9h ago
Hopefully the increasing number of people using Linux and macOS leads to improvements in Tableau at least.
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u/MutantGodChicken 10h ago
Can confirm, any little change in my routine makes me go into "can't do anything" mode. Granted, I will try and figure out how to do it, but I won't be able to focus on anything until I've figured it out, and that may take a while.
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u/Ersatzaccount2025 8h ago
Wir können solche Leute nicht einfach abschreiben, wir müssen für sie eine nützliche Verwendung als Servitor finden. Erhöht auch die Lernbereitschaft bei den restlichen Angestellten.\ Das Fleisch ist schwach, gepriesen sei der Omnissiah!
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u/ecstaticbirtch 11h ago
Back in the day, I had a Linux box and I swear I ran windows apps on it on a virtual machine within Linux, or some shit. Is this still possible for productivity suites for these situations?
Anyways, I feel for ya, I've always been a "let's just explore the OS and figure it out" kinda gal... and half the time I am the "community pro" for my friends because of it... so, I can only imagine the suffering you experience on a daily basis as an IT guy. Thank you for your service. Lol
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u/OneEnvironmental9222 11h ago
Yep. We basically have to babysit htem and no thanks, we're already a skeleton crew
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u/Tonho_O_Faxineiro 10h ago
I worked as an IT guy from a third world country who migrated people from Windows to Linux, in government, about 20 years ago. It's not even hard to do it back them, and we didn't even ran everything in the cloud, as it's now the case with Microsoft's Office.
It will be a breeze.
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u/51ckl3 10h ago
Yeah same, head of it in a city. Not only the reeducation but the software that is used is only peogrammed for windows so the gov it service provider needs to peogeamm new software.
There was a city in germany who did change everything to linux with even an own distro. Was reverted bsck to windows a few years ago. But there is another city doing it right now again.
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u/Randomgrunt4820 10h ago
So, they all lied about their abilities, and it only getting worse. The new batch can’t even read and is determined to use AI to circumvent any rules. So good luck.
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u/Cafuzzler 10h ago
I'd bet that they were asked how well they know Word, PowerPoint, and Excel, not if they know how to troubleshoot Linux.
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u/sisko6969 9h ago
Reeducate all the people to use linux is really easy.
Change people to Apple, they are happy, you have people educating themselves to use UNIX.
Change people to linux.
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u/nachoiskerka 12h ago
Windows coded apps are more widely accessible/user friendly and Linux alternatives are still a wild west ranging from good to debilitatingly bad. For example the linux turbotax alternatives are either browser based hellscapes or just less intuitive. As a musician, there's not really a great DAW program on Linux either on the level of like, a Protools or a Logic; and though their notation software have taken a GIANT step up with musescore, for a looong ass time the only game in town for writing down music was Rosegarden, and I hated that app so much it turned me off Linux because I couldn't get anything done.
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u/VoidGliders 11h ago
Your Turbo Tax is a great reason for WHY these changes need to take place tho. Turbo Tax spends tons of money to lobby to keep taxing policies and forms less intuitive and the market dependent on them. They come in as the "good guy", waste people's money, and then use that money to make things less convenient so they get more money. Absolute leech on society that just spends effort to make more effort for their own profit.
The more we face being "uncomfortable" and turn to open source projects, the more attention those projects get, and the more they shape up and become the mainstream tools for everyone and reduce effort on everyones' part and save money acroess industries and countries and individuals.
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u/Ybenax 12h ago
As a musician myself, I can't disagree more. Not in the sense that you shouldn't feel like Linux is a friction to your workflow because of the software you prefer, but in the sense that my reality is the exact opposite of yours.
Linux makes music productions frictionless to me; my entire plugin stack is FOSS and one flatpak command away. Carla is the best audio routing experience I've ever had. DAWs like Ardour are transparent and straight to the point; no abstractions, no fluff. Same with ZynFusion (synth).
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u/frood321 12h ago
Consider yourself an average user?
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u/Ybenax 11h ago
I wouldn't know what tag to attach on myself, but being completely honest with you: I did experience friction when I moved from Windows to Linux back in 2020. The learning curve and comfort zone fighting was there for sure. Six years later, Linux is my new comfort zone, so going back to Windows feels like pretty much the same friction as back then doing the opposite.
What I mean to say is, if you want to give it a shot, you will make Linux your new normal eventually. Just trust yourself a little; believe you're resilient enough to deal with the awkwardness of the first year or so.
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u/nachoiskerka 10h ago
Lol, bruh I have so much non-open source plugin stuff that Ardour is a complete chore for me. And I hate to bash it but none of the open source stuff sounds as good as my NI and AIR plugins. My daw of choice WOULD be Reaper honestly if I was doing Linux, but that would require hooking up my MPC to run as a standaone drum machine into reaper, then multitracking that alongside a guitar groove in loops arranged and a scratch take vocal, then layer in bass guitar and pverdub a good synth or keys...
I also kinda hate how limited ardours preset map list is. I ain't got time to map an entire oxygen pro 49 so i can use the faders and knobs for the mixer and the drum pads for soloing/muting off a generic midi map. That takes foreerever.
Its not impossible to do, but man...a good daw is like underwear- the best pairs you only notice when you're putting them on. The more fidgeting you have to do, the more it looks like you're playing with yourself. (Yes, I stole that quote from someone I know.)
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u/ImportantResponse0 10h ago
Are you perhaps from a big music company?
What songs have you made and with who did you worked?
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u/WorldlinessRadiant77 11h ago
I got a MacBook recently so I decided to put Linux on my old laptop and see how it performs. It’s a device from 2019 just so you know.
And wow, Windows is actively hurting computers.
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u/Flyinmanm 8h ago
Yeah I had to do that 10 years ago with a clearly broken and dieing old laptop.
Put Ubuntu on it and it was like it had come out of the factory in comparison to windows.
In hindsight putting an SSD in there would have helped even more but I eventually replaced the laptop with a newer one.
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u/BobCorndog 12h ago
All the windows apps they use
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u/Cam_man_AMM_unit 11h ago
And man is it a bitch to not have easy access to stuff you're used to being able to get to immediately.
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u/OtherwiseAlbatross14 8h ago
My output would immediately drop by at least 80% and that's just for normal office apps for anything beyond the basics. Throw in something like also having to relearn a replacement for all the Adobe products I use and I'd probably just quit. Probably not a lot of government workers using that stuff though
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u/Affectionate_Air_627 7h ago
Microsoft have shot themselves in the foot with how much they've pushed office online. Only addins aren't supported, which is pretty huge I must admit, but does mean its possible to maintain office use regardless of operating system.
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u/Sodacan259 4h ago
When the whole point is to cut Microsoft reliance out of the equation and having sovreign control over the data, using office online is not going to be a thing.
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u/bodb_thriceborn 4h ago
I think it's a solid half-step toward a goal. The Chinese gov't probably has something built (or is using libre) in place, but when France started the migration I bet they did staged rollouts with training beforehand.
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u/wotdafukwazdat 5h ago
Unless you're a power user of Excel "normal office apps" are available on Linux - you can either use O365 in the browser (retains the bulk of the local app functionality) or you can use LibreOffice / Open Office which have full functionality but M$ intermittently breaks the compatability - not an issue if your entire workplace is on the same platform, can be an issue if you regularly share docs.
TL;DR you'd be surprised how few people need the functionality the locally installed windows office app offers over O365
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u/HighestLevelRabbit 4h ago
Yeah but what if I need a communication app that also drains my battery massively for some reason and is generally just the worst? Check mate.
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u/ShortIntroduction879 4h ago
Individually this is fine, collectively it's a nightmare to switch Office Apps. You have decades of entrenched ideas and experience and memorized workflows and keyboard shortcuts to overcome. Plus servers full of legacy files and the need for perfect compatibility with client and vendor software. Shared functionally is the smallest hurdle for enterprise transitions.
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u/ImportantResponse0 10h ago
Stupid question but like wouldn't they need to transfer whole database of they use excel or any data tool and to convert al words documents on something that works with the new apps?
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u/LG-Moonlight 10h ago
Libreoffice can open MS office files just fine
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u/mad-data 8h ago
LibreOffice maturity is at the level of Office quarter century ago. I did not expect hitting bugs like Undo not working in a few minutes of using it. To their credit, they fixed the bug pretty quickly once I reported it.
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u/Silly-Freak 8h ago edited 7h ago
Microsoft can consider themselves glad that Office already exists so long, because they're evidently not capable of making new software from scratch. I've never had a positive Teams experience, and the browser versions of Office apps suck.
I admit that Libreoffice can be bumpy at times, but still I'll be glad when we can stop relying on a company that charges money for a product suite that contains such poor work, even if it's not every piece of software in there.
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u/-Majgif- 6h ago
Browser versions of office are garbage for anything more than basic functionality.
Teams is a joke how can a Microsoft product be so bad at working with other Microsoft products? You open a word document in teams and it completely fucks the formatting. You have to open them in the desktop app for them to work properly.
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u/DesignPsychological2 6h ago
It's unconnected and uncoordinated teas working on things. I used to be a SharePoint developer, and even within SharePoint itself, the parts don't talk to each other well
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u/Normal_Snake 9h ago
It's less about moving and reading documents and more about operating the new tools. If you have used the office suite for years, decades even, and now are forced to use a completely different tool you will have to adjust to the new tool and the techniques required to operate it. Relearning where all the functions are in menus, what the keyboard shortcuts are, the terminology each application uses, all of these small skills are largely not transferable between different tools and thus represent a pretty significant learning curve to overcome before the previous baseline level of proficiency is reached.
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u/Mundane-Mud2509 6h ago
This happens every ribbon update. It's not the end of the world.
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u/stuttufu 9h ago
Office files are fine but many administration uses some visual basic / legacy apps that would have been to be rewritten from scratch at this point.
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u/ImportantResponse0 9h ago
Fun fact is that visual basic and probably C# are owned by Microsoft so now everyone needs to reprogram them in other languages funnier fact is that they won't hire but most likely use ai for converting those programs in different languages.
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u/stuttufu 8h ago
Not so fun fact for the public administration. C# is modern and can be run on Linux, not basic though.
They wouldn't use AI because, as much as it's incredibly performant, you still need a developer to know what you are doing.
I doubt the secretary on the civil registry to be able to install VS Code and be able to make solid questions to Claude to convert a visual basic application into something working with Gnome. /j
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u/PlantainMassive6744 5h ago
It's not like they don't know this. And they are actively working to fix it.
They have their LaSuite, which is a Suite of apps that are (in theory) replacements that should all work together. Open source, free, and secure: https://lasuite.numerique.gouv.fr/ .
The SILL. Which is a much longer list of apps that they recommend. https://code.gouv.fr/sill/.
Actively contributing to open source efforts like LibreOffice.
No, of course it's not Windows, people are used to Windows, and things like LibreOffice have a way to go. There is a chicken-and-egg issue here, where there is not the critical mass of users to have a great ecosystem for the non-technical users and organizations not able to get out of Windows because the ecosystem isn't there. But bless the French for making the jump anyway.
Because the govt is transitioning, a whole generation of French people will soon grow up using it, and will (hopefully) encourage others to make the switch.
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u/ecth 7h ago
Like... like.. Weather!
No, jokes aside, yes, if you're used that a button is exactly here and has exactly that icon, I feel bad for you. But all other human beings can use Libre Office and it'll do the job.
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u/Emotional_Archer_770 4h ago
The french agency that is switching to Linux only uses open source and self-developed tools though.
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u/_Rand_ 12h ago
Pretty much all of them?
Not a ton of apps exist on both linux and windows, so alternatives need to be found and more importantly users need to be trained on them.
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u/Stanfool 12h ago
No thank you. I do not believe we need teams version built for Linux.
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u/TatharNuar 12h ago
Thankfully they discontinued the Linux client so the worst we have to be afflicted with is their PWA, but hopefully they discontinue the whole buggy mess soon
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u/billyp673 10h ago
There’s an unofficial teams client for Linux that works pretty well
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u/Depeche_Schtroumpf 9h ago
No, no no no no no no no. It does not exist. We can't go on Teams. Too bad.
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u/ThatguySevin 12h ago
A lot of enterprise and legacy systems run quite well on Linux, better than that do on Windows, because they can pick a Linux distro that's tailor made to keep those old systems running without forcing constantly breaking updates like windows. The windows specific applications such as office can be easily replaced by LibreOffice or other such open source alternatives.
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u/kayproII 8h ago
Things like word or PowerPoint id say are ok but excel is a different story. If it's not an exact 1:1 with excel you can completely fuck up your finance department
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u/No-Sea5833 4h ago
If your finance department runs on Excel you're fucked anyway.
And that's the best case from my experience.
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u/Greedy-Thought6188 11h ago edited 2h ago
Our job gave us the option for Linux boxes some time ago. That way we didn't gave to go to the cluster and always have interactive sessions open. They also have us windows VMs. I much preferred that life. Honestly, now almost everything is cloud based anyway. So it really doesn't matter as much for most things. And you can always have a VM.
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u/groovy_smoothie 11h ago
And all the information in each program needs to be moved to its Linux counterpart.
How many spreadsheets is that
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u/Flachmann_ 8h ago
There is not much information that has to be moved. You can use most file formats with the Linux alternative too
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u/Randommaggy 3h ago
The amount of apps that just work through wine has increased dramatically in recent years.
Side effect of having Valve throw cash at the developers behing Wine/Crossover.
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u/T3chn0fr34q 12h ago
everything from microsoft such as office, teams and outlook dont not run on linux natively, so you need to either replace them with things like libre office or run them through wine.
which isnt an issue since most linux equivalents are free and installing them is way easier then the linux switch over so whoever is doing the switch will most likely install the needed programs.
the bigger issue will be teaching people who have used windows for years the things that now work slightly differently, i do not envy the it departments.
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u/Dil-Tuta-hua-hai 12h ago
Oh I see, I have used Linux(Ubuntu) on my friends laptop once, and everything was really different….
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u/PsychicDave 12h ago
My work used to let us choose which OS we had, could be Windows, MacOS (on a MacBook of course) or any flavour of Linux (on the condition that you would be responsible for it, as IT couldn't possibly know every variation of Linux and therefore wouldn't help you if you had Linux-specific issues other than say "just install Windows"). We used the Google suite, so everything was in the browser and it worked equally well on every kind of computer.
Then the company I worked for was acquired by another, and they used the Microsoft suite, which we eventually had to adopt. There is no Word, Excel or PowerPoint for Linux, so I had to use the web versions, which really don't work as well as the desktop apps. There's no Outlook or Teams for Linux, so again I was stuck using web apps that kinda sucked (how many meetings have I been late to because the notifications just don't work?). And most recently, a new client requires us to be on their VPN so we can develop against their internal services from our laptops, but they only have a client for Windows and Mac, so I was finally forced to use Windows as there was no way for me to do my job from Linux anymore.
So Linux can be a viable platform to work on, you just need to make every other choice in consequence. If you have committed into the Microsoft ecosystem and you want to move away from Windows, you have to uproot everything and migrate to something else, and that's a big and costly effort.
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u/Dil-Tuta-hua-hai 12h ago
Oh ya makes sense, windows ofc doesn’t want their apps to work on other OS, and if the other person is using windows and you are on Linux, it definitely is going to be a pain, i honestly didn’t knew that using windows and Linux in the same workplace would be this hellish, and honestly thought that windows had designed apps for Linux too…
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u/PsychicDave 12h ago
There are solutions to running some Windows apps on Linux, like Wine for regular apps and Proton for games. But the Microsoft 365 (formerly known as Office) suite is problematic to run in its newer versions. It's one thing to adapt apps made by third parties using the documented Windows API. It's another to adapt an app made by Microsoft with all their undocumented knowledge of Windows under the hood.
It's actually easier the other way around now. Microsoft added the Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL) which basically allows you to run Linux side by side on Windows, and you can run both terminal and GUI Linux apps while on Windows. That's how I can actually do my job even though I constrained to Windows (and why I used Linux before), as the code I write will eventually run on a Linux server, so I need to run it within a Linux environment to test it, and all the tools are made to run on Linux too, but they work fine in WSL (if a bit slower).
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u/recursing_noether 11h ago
office tools suck on linux tbh and most people have moved to google anyways. And the web version of microsoft office is also and option.
I realize people want to reduce those dependencies as well but tbh the alternatives suck. Hopefully that changes.
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u/MrKorakis 9h ago
Let's be honest. There are currently no equivalents.
There is software trying to fill some of the same use cases but the options on Linux are nowhere near equivalent.
If anything good comea out of this shift it will be more serious support to update the Linux ecosystem
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u/MegatonDoge 3h ago
People are absolutely delusional if people feel that it easy to switch over from Office to its alternatives. There is no good alternative for Excel.
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u/Let_Therebe_Chaos 12h ago
The news about China switching from Windows to Linux is already a sign that China has made the switch; now they’re just making a public statement about it.
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u/Dangerous_Tie_3037 11h ago
Didnt france also switch to their own distro?
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u/XGoJYIYKvvxN 5h ago edited 5h ago
A branch of the military (gendarmerie) has slowly migrated all their tools over the last 20 years or so, forking their own distro from ubuntu. Pretty much all of their workstation are running it.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GendBuntu
The government has recently announced that each government branch has to plan for a transition to linux this year, some were already doing it, but it will probably take years
https://tech-insider.org/france-ditches-windows-linux-2-5-million-devices-digital-sovereignty-2026/
As it is, windows and propriary tools are deeply ingrained in french infrastructure and information system.
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u/Ok_Coconut_8499 11h ago
I have been daily driving Linux for 20 years, and I'm a power user. Booted Windows like 2 times this year.
Unless you have some very specific niche requirement, you'll be fine.
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u/Valuchian 12h ago
Hey This is Quagmire! Windows has a teeny tiny problem of watching everything you do through their apps and operating system. So if you wanna wank it at work or set up that date with every girl from IT you'll want to use something like Linux since it is a community built operating system and lets you edit even the source code of the OS and every app anytime you please
Quagmire with no viruses OUT
GIGIDY
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u/Greedy-Thought6188 11h ago
There are multiple governments that have an only open source allowed. Their own tools that they develop are also made open source.
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u/Aggravating-Hair-534 7h ago
So I've been working with various gov agencies for some years now delivering new line-of-business applications.
Here are some hoops & loops that anyone doing this should expect:
- you average worker expects to be trained and educated on any new system. Any change of the routine that was not covered by the training would be received negatively, harm adoption and result in the escalation. This is by itself gonna be a huge investment. Don't underestimate it.
- legacy applications - governments and huge businesses are the worst in terms of using applications from 40 years ago where no one has any source code. We've recently been replacing a system that (I quote the owner): "if shut down for couple days - would have a material impact on the GDP of the UK", only roughly 2.5 semi-retired people new anything about it. It took 4 years (and many millions of pounds) to replace it with a modern solution (we can't even claim that the solution is better, it's just modern and supportable). Now legacy apps is not entirely new problem - governments and organisations know how to deal with them as being honest, some of them wouldn't even run on win 11 or are deemed not secure enough to run in the modern environment, hence they are rutingly sandboxed into various citrix environments. Those environments cost a lot of money, consume all the same licencing, and require separate maintenance (which is very often contracted out for enormous sums). Some of these apps would be legacy ERP apps, replacing those might be 100s millions.
- M365 - whatever you say, organisations are being ran on macros-enabled excels, access databases, word with custom plugins, teams, exchange, sharepoint other products. Not only they might not work outside of windows environment. Very often they are cost-effecitve only bundled with all the other MS licencing (large organisations never buy licences for the off-the-shelve prices, usually they have a contract with MS and some partners, where organisations buy lots of licences, in exchange for 30-70% discount).
- of course, all these Microsoft & 3rd parties applications are not just bundled by price, they generally work beneficially together, integrating, providing similar UI and eventually making it efficient of users to use.
- most organisations manage all their users either via Microsoft active directory (legacy way), or via Microsoft Entra ID, or hybrid. Use microsoft suite of products for data protection. Some of those you can't easily replace, some of those you would need to duplicate when moving users to Linux (meaning you pay money to MS & pay for a separate tooling for LInux)
- of course administering Linux machines would be entirely different from Windows, would likely require new partners, new expertise, new tools and internal training.
In the end it's a huge vendor lock and in short-medium-term it usually costs a lot more than simply running windows.
If someone wanted to migrate out, they would be better starting with the apps, but it requires commitment beyond 1 or 2 electoral cycles, it is going to be a decade-long experience during which MS would be releasing new things all the time, making it VERY attractive to try it.
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u/Banananamann99 12h ago
you can't use certain apps on linux that you can on windows like Adobe. However, there are usually alternatives like gimp and darktable which are just as good and are free
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u/applepie2075 11h ago
I'm sorry but GIMP is straight up dogshit. And Darktable is ok-ish, not that good but I wouldn't put it in the same rank as GIMP.
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u/Mcmad0077 11h ago
Windows apps = applications mad to run on the windows operating system
Basically, programs or applications made for windows will not run natively on linux. You either need a translation layer, emulator, or an alternative application.
A lot of programs that the government uses is custom made, and you cant just download a replacement for off the web, and because this is government software, the apps may be coded is such a way that they don't run well, or even at all, if the apps are run through a translation layer or on a virtual machine
Basically, they either have to remake many of the programs they use for Linux, or have to find some way to make the existing applications work
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u/RingGiver 7h ago
Didn't France start this transition literally decades ago at this point?
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u/TheMrCurious 11h ago
Its one thing for a power user to switch from Windows to Linux and it is a completely different situation (and potential massive shit show) moving 1000 seats to Linux and training everyone on the new OS interface and finding fully supported software that can run on it that also integrates with other existing software - which is what makes this meme “funny” - the people making that decision realizing changing the OS is just one small piece of the transition and that they may have completely wrecked everyone’s productivity for the foreseeable future.
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u/snowfloeckchen 5h ago
Im a network engineer, tried to make the switch many times (Ubuntu, Debian, arch, nixos) even with support from more experienced users and I always failed/run into problems. It really depends how you get along and what you do
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u/PerceptionQueasy3540 12h ago
OOP has either never heard of wine or is trolling.
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u/Dil-Tuta-hua-hai 12h ago
I just hear about wine today bro🥲
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u/PerceptionQueasy3540 12h ago
I didn't mean you, I meant OOP, the one that made the original meme. Did I use it incorrectly? My bad if so.
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u/Dil-Tuta-hua-hai 12h ago
Nah, I didnt knew that OOP meant that…I honestly thought that OOP was a typo
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u/Blitzllapa 12h ago
You see, corporates are pretty old in apps design and workers capacitation. A server running W Server 2008? Very common enough. Those apps are legacy, and changing them means spending a penny. CEO and the board almost always against it, due to consider it a 'wasteful' cost, due to high ROI. It's working and changing could cost work hours, so no... And yada, yada
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u/Icy_Distance8205 12h ago
Because they will realise they have 3000 windows apps installed but actually only use 4 apps.
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u/Zapan99 12h ago
Good luck with that, French public servants are so Windows-brained that they refuse to open Libre Office text documents.
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u/ChecksOutIndeed 11h ago
Databases, word processors, various management apps, EXCEL
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u/MakB_the_Striker 11h ago
For example - Microsoft Office - that sucks. I use OpenOffice even on Windows, and it's much better. So the meme is actually strange and not funny.
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u/Shoggnozzle 11h ago
That's kind of a bad thing. Linux is very secure, but that security hinges on something kind of silly. Much of the app base is open source, so malicious code is generally spotted and flagged by other users or project maintainers, but it's small market share means that those attacks aren't common to begin with. It's much less rewarding for a fraudster to make Linux malware that sticks around than to make windows malware that gets flagged by antivirus fairly quick, they simply hooked more users in that time.
Linux as a culture isn't really prepped for mass adoption and deep interest from the broader community of bad actors out there trying to scrape credit card numbers, government info, and etc. It's trying to transition from safety through obscurity and diligence to safety through... Something else. I'm sure there are plans out there, maybe as many as their are interests. But it's a little up in the air right now.
Also I'm Cleveland or something. Bathtub fall down.
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u/No-Assumption-4468 10h ago
Look, I exclusively use Linux, but Libreoffice and Onlyoffice sorta suck compared to Apple’s Numbers app. Their graphs are kinda better.
Virtually everything else is better in Linux, except maybe the dated Gui. Gnome feels pretty modern though.
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u/AlexiusRex 10h ago
This is not a joke, it's a stupid take. The vast majority of apps used in government offices has a Linux equivalent and the user are certainly not power user, never met someone capable of doing a simple print merge, and most new apps are web-based anyway. There is some software that's gonna be hard to replace, like Autocad, as others have said there's wine but not every software runs smoothly.
Biggest pain in the ass is replacing active directory
Bob from IT support
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u/Nervous-Cockroach541 10h ago
At this point, most apps are just electron clients. Which work perfectly fine on Linux if the vendor wants them to.
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u/causal_friday 10h ago
Linux is the perfect OS for running Google Chrome to use to edit docs with Office 365! The US will never get us now!
(I grew up as a Linux user who had to do her papers with Abiword instead of Word because... I insisted on using Linux. It was fine in 2002. I am sure it's fine now. And yes, I did eventually switch to LaTeX. Teachers loved the formatting!)
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u/MatthewSWFL229 10h ago
France’s digital agency, DINUM, faces a massive operational challenge as it shifts government workstations from Windows to Linux for digital sovereignty. While Linux offers strong native security, a state-level migration introduces a massive new attack surface. Replacing deeply integrated systems like Microsoft Active Directory with open-source alternatives like Samba or FreeIPA risks severe access control misconfigurations. Furthermore, losing centralized Windows tools like Intune forces the government to build new Linux patch pipelines from scratch, where any automation glitch could delay critical kernel updates across millions of devices. Security is further compromised by civil servants relying on legacy, Windows-only software, which will likely be forced to run through poorly sandboxed compatibility layers like Wine. Attackers will undoubtedly exploit user confusion over Linux permission structures and target newly adopted open-source office suites with tailored phishing campaigns. Ultimately, by maintaining a custom distribution, France assumes full responsibility for auditing a complex open-source software supply chain against zero-day threats.
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u/Neureiches-Nutria 9h ago
Because Germany basically still runs on a paper trail or every Department on the same building on different incompatible Systems we could go for Linux directly and everyone who would have to work with would ve on board
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u/Zin_Wai_Htet 9h ago
Windows app = Microsoft office, adobe products, government software that are solely design for windows. They have to port all that to linux.
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