Ethereal whisper in the wind : “Liiiinuuuux…”
ABOOT would be a fun name for a Linux distro
I’ll probably take shit for my comment, so preface: I use FOSS and self-host a lot of stuff at home, my Elbows are Up, and Fuck M$. Now then…
Yeah, the federal government could give up MS licenses for the public service and switch to OpenBSD or Linux and use LibreOffice. Excellent! Big savings.
Now then, how about all the ancient databases and applications used by the CRA and regulatory agencies. Will they keep working or will they need attention? Downtime is not an option.
Then there’s weird things like lab equipment and remote devices that provide earth sensing data for weather forecasts and probably tsunami warning for all I know.
Every one of those things needs, at least, thorough consideration and many will need specific attention from developers who are familiar with some pretty old tech. The public service does not have that capacity on hand. Contracting (expensive) private sector companies is a given.
I haven’t even mentioned the requirements for handling protected data or liability. Who does the government sue for damages if there’s an unpatched exploit in OpenBSD?
Anyway, all the above can be addressed. Nothing’s impossible. But the estimated cost-savings are not realistic. Like, at all.
You may now tear me to shreds.
You’re not wrong exactly, but I think you’re perhaps assuming an unnecessarily absolutist approach. If there are legacy systems that need windows, keep windows for those legacy systems. What you’re describing are exceptions, not the norm. The vast, vast majority of public service computers could just as easily be running Linux.
As for who the Federal government sues, that’s why you go with an enterprise release like Red Had or Ubuntu. You find a company that you’re happy to work with, you pay them maybe 25% of what you’re paying MS right now, and in return you get a full support plan with clearly defined SLAs.
This isn’t so much “Nothing’s impossible” as it is “It’s really not that hard.” These are solved problems. Plenty of governments have already switched over to open source.
Fair critique!
A less all-or-nothing approach could be to migrate Members of Parliament and departmental executive down to management… maybe even support staff. That group makes decisions based on the products from operational folks. So they can deal with a basic office suite. There’s a big savings there.
At the operational level, things would get expensive because of the specialized and in-house software for which there are no alternatives except Windows.
I don’t know enough about IT to comment on the feasibility of supporting that scenario.
I didn’t catch this in the content posted by OP, but I thought it would be interesting to mention: GCTools. It’s a suite of collaboration and document management tools. I think they’re all open source. ^But ^I ^don’t ^know ^anyone ^who ^uses ^them.
Edit: Can’t superscript. Fuck it
I’m really glad that a lot of countries are starting to do this 🥰
Linux is right there, no need to reinvent the wheel.
Libre Office to replace most of Microsoft 365 suite.
Pick a distro and help develop it to make it more robust.
100%. I want this to happen so much.
Just…use…linux!?
And make their own distro. No need to build something from scratch! For fucks sake!
Why make their own distro? Just use fucking Ubuntu or Red Hat or Suse. You don’t need HeyDereHiDereHoDereOS.
Why make their own distro?
Because the Canadian government needs to make a simple solution as shitty as possible and hire hundreds of consultants to insure it will never work. They never got Phoenix Pay working.
I mean, I’ve seen a lot of noise by Canada and Europe about how they need to distance themselves from the United States, meanwhile if you look at the world’s top visited websites, more than half of them are US based, from major search engines like Google to AI stuff like Gemini and ChatGPT to marketplaces like Amazon and eBay to social media like Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn to video media hosting like Netflix, Youtube and Twitch. Canada has one entry: Pornhub. EU countries have two: XVideos in France and XHamster in Cypress.
“Switching to our own operating system” means switching from an American corporation, to some American non-profit foundations. Trading Microsoft for GNU/Linux. Still running on Intel x86 architecture machines. Don’t get me wrong, the attempt is adorable, but you’re four decades behind in a four decade old discipline.
Which is exactly what they would do if they were to switch. Starting from scratch would be incredibly stupid, and there’s no reasonable way to secure a brand new system when we simply don’t employ enough programmers of that kind at the govt level.
openbsd is Canadian, give theo 5 million dollars
Again what I’ve been saying for years, just use Linux, people.
But nooooo, Canadian healthcare prefers tonstore their patient data in the USA on servers of Microsoft, even though MS already testified that the US government can access that data whenever they want, so yay!
Why self host everything and be responsible if you can simply pay a dictatorship?
Or, wait, use another already existing one?!!
Or, wait, use another already existing one?!!
Which is exactly what an increasing number of EU countries are doing.
Our lord and saviour Linux 😌🙂↕️☺️
BeaverOS
deleted by creator
also our own pickup trucks and suvs
Even better, our own small fuel efficient cars. Most people don’t need a massive gas guzzler.
Why do people keep buying them then? The advertising works to make them ‘think’ they need it
But how will a 140lb nurse get to work without a 1200lb PAYLOAD? Think about the PAYLOAD.
Also american emissions regulations incentivized making them huge… efficiency per wheelbase area. Guess which one is easier to improve and market?
This is good news that more countries are starting to think of tech independence. It was bound to evolve that way over time but the questionable tech bros crowd caused it to happen way more quickly because, just like the railroad barons of the past, they’ll lie, cheat, steal and threaten for more money and power and people eventually get tired of being under someone’s thumb (holy shit I just had spellcheck tell me that thumb has a “b”. I, and probably many others, did not know that).
One more way to say fuck the US by not using Microsoft
On top of OpenBSD, I really don’t see why Canada needs a Windows replacement when open source replacements already exist? And we can already run NextCloud-AIO with EuroOffice on top.
The only things missing are AI and surveillance— and there’s a perfectly functional open source agentic tool that can run open models. And nobody really wants the surveillance.
My guess would be all kinds of proprietary tools that would need various degrees of rewriting which takes design, time, and money. It’s harder than normal software since, y’know, you could essentially destroy someone’s life.
Those proprietary tools mostly run on DOS, Windows XP, and in some cases Windows 7.
That’s a solved issue for the most part, between DOSBox, ReactOS, Bazzite and Linux with WINE. And for the most part, those tools can still run XP in offline mode; they’re never going to be upgraded to a modern OS anyway.
The Canadian government mostly moved to web-based systems a number of years ago anyway; it’s public servant computers that are mostly stuck with Windows — and they don’t need to be.
The bigger challenge is in how to get them off Google Chrome, since there’s a lot of stuff that requires Chrome (as opposed to Chromium) to run properly.
between DOSBox, ReactOS, Bazzite and Linux with WINE
Assuming it does work, how are you going to explain that to Joe Enduser that knows nothing about any of this? I actually don’t even know what ReactOS nor Bazzite are (though I’ve heard the names) and I’m a software engineer for a living and have linux on some of my systems. I think the helpdesk budget would certainly increase. I’m not sure how much of this is solvable with certain strict machine images.
ReactOS is essentially a ground-up reimplementation of Windows XP.
Joe Enduser doesn’t really know anything about Windows either, so the help desk shouldn’t have any issues.
Plus, as we already established, Joe Enduser will do just fine with Chrome wherever it’s running; those specialized OSes are for specialized tools run by specialists.
Ah, I see what you mean; I misunderstood. Interesting on ReactOS as well.
Yes but also what is important is establishing meaningful, stringent, enforceable, independent security auditing of the tools that Canada chooses to use, they must be open in this sense if not fully open source. There is the obvious but quite unfortunately likely possibility Canada could throw out Microslop only to recreate the worst parts of it domestically. Canada must keep their eyes on two balls in this sense, getting rid of Microslop AND doing better at the entire framing of how these tools are built and maintained otherwise all the effort to get rid of Microslop will become a slap in the face when you end up in almost the same place… which none of this is meant to bash Canada at all, this is just how these things tend to want to go given the forces at work…
