France has just taken the most ambitious step any European government has ever made in the field of digital sovereignty: abandoning Windows on the computers of its 2.5 million civil servants and migrating to Linux. And when I say ambitious, I mean this is not a pilot in three offices of some obscure ministry — it’s a nationwide decision affecting the entire French public administration.
Those of us who have spent our careers advocating for free software know what this kind of announcement means… and we also know how easy it is for them to end up as empty promises.
What exactly has France announced?
French Public Accounts Minister David Amiel has announced that France will leave Windows and commit to Linux on all government computers. The DINUM (Interministerial Directorate for Digital Affairs) will coordinate the entire plan, and each ministry will have to submit its own migration plan before autumn, covering not just the operating system but also collaborative tools, antivirus software, databases, virtualisation, and artificial intelligence.
2.5 million workstations. The largest Windows-to-Linux migration ever attempted in Europe. To put it in perspective: the state of Schleswig-Holstein in Germany, until now Europe’s benchmark, is migrating 30,000 computers. France multiplies that figure by more than eighty.
The minister delegate for AI and Digital, Anne Le Hénanff, made it clear: digital sovereignty is not an option, it’s a strategic necessity. And she urged the rest of Europe to follow the same path.
This isn’t new — but this time it looks serious
Those of us who have been around the free software world for a while have seen this film before, and it doesn’t always have a happy ending. The most famous case is Munich, which back in the 2000s migrated thousands of workstations to Linux with its LiMux project, only to return to Windows in 2017 amid controversy, lobbying, and political decisions that had little to do with technology. They’ve since moved back to a hybrid model, but the damage to the model’s credibility was already done.
In Spain, the story is long and bittersweet: Guadalinex in Andalusia, MAX in Madrid, Molinux in Castilla-La Mancha, Lliurex in Valencia, Linex in Extremadura. Most ended up going back to Microsoft, and the money invested in those distributions evaporated as if it had never existed.
The difference with France is the scale and, above all, the political tone. When the minister says “the State cannot merely acknowledge its dependency, it must break free from it,” he’s not just talking about software. He’s talking about geopolitics. And after everything we’ve seen with the tensions between Europe and the United States recently, the phrase takes on a very concrete meaning.
Why Linux, and why now?
The short answer: because depending on the software of an American company to run a European country’s administration is a vulnerability you can no longer afford to ignore.
Linux isn’t perfect — nobody claims it is. But it’s auditable, modifiable, and yours. If something goes wrong tomorrow, you can fix it or pay someone locally to fix it, without depending on a company across the Atlantic deciding whether to help you or not. That, in a state’s critical infrastructure, isn’t a technical whim: it’s common sense.
And let’s not forget that Linux is already everywhere that really matters: servers, supercomputers, cloud infrastructure, embedded devices, telecoms, most of the world’s smartphones (Android is Linux-based), the International Space Station. The desktop has always been its unfinished homework, more due to a lack of political and corporate will than any technical limitation.
What open source alternatives exist to replace Microsoft?
One of the key questions when talking about migrating from Windows to Linux is: what do you replace the entire Microsoft ecosystem with? The good news is that in 2026, the alternatives are more solid than ever.
For the operating system: Ubuntu, Debian, Fedora, SUSE Linux Enterprise, or Red Hat Enterprise Linux all have enterprise support and a long production track record. For office suites, LibreOffice has been a fully functional alternative to Microsoft Office for years. For email and collaboration, there’s Thunderbird, Nextcloud (as an alternative to OneDrive and SharePoint), and Zimbra or Modoboa as mail servers. For directory management and authentication, FreeIPA and Samba are solid alternatives to Active Directory.
The open source ecosystem has matured enormously. We’re no longer in 2005 trying to convince people that OpenOffice was “almost” like Microsoft Office. The tools are there, they’re robust, and they have enormous communities behind them.
The real challenge: not ending up like Munich (or Extremadura)
Let’s be realistic. Migrating 2.5 million workstations is not installing Ubuntu on your brother-in-law’s laptop on a Sunday afternoon. It’s a project of enormous technical and organisational complexity that requires training, support, application adaptation, and above all, sustained political will over time. And that last part is what has historically failed.
The problem has never been Linux. The problem has always been that a change of government comes along, or Microsoft makes an irresistible offer, or users complain because “this isn’t like the old one,” and everything gets rolled back. Or worse: someone without the necessary technical skills is put in charge, and when things get complicated — and they always do — the easy conclusion is “Linux doesn’t work.” No. What didn’t work was the management.
If France wants this to succeed, it needs to politically insulate the project and, above all, invest in training and in building a local support ecosystem. Which is, incidentally, another benefit nobody mentions: the money spent on Microsoft licences can be reinvested in local European companies that support free software. That’s what digital sovereignty really means: not just using free software, but building your own business fabric around it.
How much money could France save?
Although France hasn’t given official savings figures, we can make a reasonable estimate. A Microsoft 365 business licence costs between €12 and €36 per user per month. Taking a midpoint of €20 per month for 2.5 million civil servants, that’s €50 million per month in licences, or €600 million per year. And that’s without counting Windows licences, server licences, CALs, and the rest of the Microsoft ecosystem paraphernalia.
Obviously, migrating to Linux isn’t free: it requires investment in training, support, adaptation, and development. But that investment stays in Europe, generates local employment, and builds in-house capabilities. It’s not the same thing to pay €600 million per year to a company in Redmond as it is to invest a fraction of that in European companies that build and maintain your country’s digital infrastructure.
An optimist? Halfway
I’m genuinely pleased that a country of France’s weight is taking this step. But I also know, from experience, that between the political announcement and the technical reality there’s a huge gap, and that the proprietary software lobbies won’t sit on their hands. Microsoft is not going to lose 2.5 million licences without a fight, you can count on that.
What I am clear about is this: if it works, it could be the tipping point that free software on the desktop needed in Europe. And if it fails, it’ll just be one more excuse for those who say “Linux isn’t ready for the desktop” (spoiler: it is, it has been for years — what wasn’t ready was the political will).
And then there’s the uncomfortable question nobody wants to ask: why isn’t Spain doing the same? We have the experience (for better and for worse), we have more than enough technical talent, we have companies working with free software every day. What we lack is the political courage to make a decision like this and sustain it over time.
Congratulations, France. Now go and actually do it.
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