The Netherlands is building its own Linux OS to break free from Microsoft

[trparky]

Not quite. Photoshop and other larger commercial software products still don’t work under Wine.

 

[Sean T]

It's interesting reading the comments. What I've learned more from these comments is that it isn't about how great Linux is and how much it will improve the functioning of Government and being more efficient that it is the hate for Microsoft. I believe the Linux community focuses so much on how much it hates Microsoft that it deters from what it should be doing, promoting Linux in a positive light. Would be nice to see the Linux community not have MDS (Microsoft Derangement Syndrome). What is wrong with a world where both Linux and Microsoft are a successful?

 

[yRaz]

Not quite. Photoshop and other larger commercial software products still don’t work under Wine.

Actually, they work fine under wine, just use a pirates copy. Its a DRM problem from the developer, not a technology problem on Linuxs side

 

[Win7user]

I did the same thing. I use Linux Mint most of the time. I am not versed in Linux, but I'm learning more every day. One day I hope to rid myself of Windows altogether.

 

[J Oelschl]

Tell everyone you've never used linux without telling them you've never used Linux

I have been using Linux distros probably longer than you have been alive. I started with Yggdrasil Linux. Don't misunderstand my comment meaning I am anti-anti-Linux or any such thing. My point was that they are diluting their effort on something not solving their problem. Also I dont mind tinkering but sometimes when I need to get something done I just want to plug in my peripheral(s) and have them work or be able to purchase a mature software package that can do what I require. I dont want to have to hunt for the software I need to get to get the peripheral to work. It is the same reason why I abandoned Android tablets and phones in favor of Apple products.

 

[trparky]

I’ll probably be going to the Mac if and when Microsoft manages to piss me of even more so than they already have.

 

[Axeia]

@trparky I think you're hitting the real issue here.

Linux has never really had a technology problem. It has had a coordination problem.

The freedom to fork something, replace something, reinvent something, or build your own version is one of Linux's greatest strengths. It is also one of the reasons desktop Linux has spent decades circling the runway instead of taking off.

Package managers, desktop environments, display servers, installers, configuration tools, software distribution...there is almost always another choice, another fork, another "better way."

A good portion of development is still by volunteers basically just doing what they want to do in their spare time. By nature rather impossible to coordinate.

Then again it did lead to some very solid code bases, which some companies have bet their existence on. In my opinion this should be done on the European level, don't have a Dutch, German, Spanish etc different Linux distro. Pick one distro for all of EU governmental use, standardize the packages used and push it for use by regular citizens - easy way to get enough users behind it so that that every software developer who makes a Linux version of their app makes it compatible with that particular flavor.

 

[yRaz]

I have been using Linux distros probably longer than you have been alive.

Highly doubt that, but I'm well into my middle aged years.

I started with Yggdrasil Linux. Don't misunderstand my comment meaning I am anti-anti-Linux or any such thing. My point was that they are diluting their effort on something not solving their problem. Also I dont mind tinkering but sometimes when I need to get something done I just want to plug in my peripheral(s) and have them work or be able to purchase a mature software package that can do what I require. I dont want to have to hunt for the software I need to get to get the peripheral to work. It is the same reason why I abandoned Android tablets and phones in favor of Apple products.

I have been able to daily drive Linux since 2021. I have attempted many times since the early 2000s but it was not a practical desktop OS until then. Great for homelab stuff and home servers, it was terrible until 2021.

I have not run into any plug and play problems since then. I have had to switch from MS office to Libre office and can say that was an actual improvement. There are alternatives to Adobe's software suite which if I used them professionally might be an issue, but I find it easier to deal with a less polished product than dealing with Adobe's business practices.

A point I really want to drive home is that 2021 was when Linux was good enough that I could do everything I need to do in it without resistance. A trend I have seen over the last 2 years is that Linux has basically become zero resistance outside of DRMs that refuse run in it. It's not that it can't work, it's that that company goes out of their way to stop it from working. That's isn't a Linux side issue and when I see things like that, well that just makes it easier to sort out which companies I do and do not want to do business with.

Something else to note is that with AI, I can enter my problem and it spits out a few commands I can copy and paste into a command line to make things work rather than searching forum posts for hours and sometimes still come up empty.

Adjust a final note, the new CEO of Apple has said some very concerning things so it might be worth your time to give it another look.

 

[Win7user]

I have been using Linux distros probably longer than you have been alive. I started with Yggdrasil Linux. Don't misunderstand my comment meaning I am anti-anti-Linux or any such thing. My point was that they are diluting their effort on something not solving their problem. Also I dont mind tinkering but sometimes when I need to get something done I just want to plug in my peripheral(s) and have them work or be able to purchase a mature software package that can do what I require. I dont want to have to hunt for the software I need to get to get the peripheral to work. It is the same reason why I I'm

I did the same thing. I use Linux Mint most of the time. I am not versed in Linux, but I'm learning more every day. One day I hope to rid myself of Windows altogether.

Tell everyone you've never used linux without telling them you've never used Linux

Better everyone think you're a nasty fool, rather than open your mouth and remove all doubt yRaz...

 

[ActualViking]

Anyway... rant over.

With all of that said in my previous post... @Theinsanegamer, how did you expect Microsoft gained the market power that it had? Standardization and market domination, that's how!

Linux needs to fight fire with fire. Linux is so absolutely bloody close to being able to kill Microsoft stone dead, it's never been closer than right now. All they need to do is just take the final step, the one final unified choice and then... Windows is dead and the world would all be better for it.

You're saying market power comes from market domination??? Those two things is just different sides to the same coin.

It is what came before that made Microsoft what they are, it was clever marketing and software build to be okay on modest machines.
Back in the day where Windows became a thing there were alternatives, but they were either more complicated to use or so advanced only the fastest PC's ran well with them.
A prime example was OS/2, as opposed to Windows it brought real multitasking, a solid system where one frozen process did not bring the whole system, the ability to run Windows or multiple Windows instances and more. However only the biggest PC's had the muscles for it, but since IBM gave it away for free many tried it on insufficient hardware, only to have a crappy sluggish experience.
Windows was primitive compared to OS/2, but ran on hardware insufficient for OS/2 as in it ran on much cheaper hardware so it gained wider traction.

It was sort of the same with Word that really got the whole Office thing started, only here it was partly because Microsoft programmers had an inside lane when developing for their own OS and because their marketing department realized clever naming sold software. The standard word processor software back then was WordPerfect, a product which used standard naming as in version 4, version 4.2, version 5, version 5.1 and so on. Word was behind in the development compared to WordPerfect, but the Microsoft marketing people came up with a trick, so Word jumped from being version 2.0 to version 6.0 and was sold as being better than WordPerfect as it was a higher version.
The rest is history, including that inside much of the current Microsoft Office still sits old software - it is why you can't look at the Outlook settings and open an e-mail at the same time, the architecture in Outlook is from back when multi-threading wasn't a thing.

 

[trparky]

You're saying market power comes from market domination???

Yes. Look at it this way: Windows provides a unified windowing environment with a standard set of APIs, largely taking the guesswork out of, “Will my program work on this system?” Developers could target Windows knowing that those APIs would be available across millions of different PCs.

That helped create a powerful feedback loop: more Windows users attracted more developers, more software attracted more users, and hardware manufacturers prioritized Windows support. Microsoft's strong emphasis on backward compatibility reinforced that ecosystem even further.

Linux never achieved the same consistency on the desktop. Different distributions, desktop environments, packaging systems, libraries, and display stacks created additional variables for developers. Linux has improved enormously, but it has spent decades trying to overcome an ecosystem advantage Windows established long ago.

That's a major reason why Windows became dominant while “This is the year of the Linux desktop” has become a meme old enough to drink.

 

[trparky]

I think that what a lot of people in the Linux community fear is that if Linux ever becomes mainstream, it would lose its soul. Not necessarily.

The hobbyist ecosystem can continue exactly as it does today. Want Gentoo and to compile half your system yourself from raw source code? Go ahead, go nuts! Want Arch with a heavily customized desktop? Absolutely! Want to fork something because you disagree with one design decision? That's part of what makes open source what it is.

Alongside that, however, you can have what I call the “Linux product”: a carefully curated, standardized consumer platform with a defined GUI, application framework, packaging system, update mechanism, hardware requirements, compatibility guarantees, and support lifecycle. The person using it doesn't have to understand the machinery underneath.

Android and SteamOS both demonstrate that these two worlds can coexist. Neither stopped upstream Linux from being Linux. They simply selected components, established rules, built stable platforms around them, and hid unnecessary complexity from their users.

Firefox is another example. It's a product in every sense of the word, but has it lost its “open-source soul”? No. In fact, it's one of the most successful open-source projects in the public eye, and yet nothing has been sacrificed on the open-source side of the house.

So why do people assume Linux would lose its soul?

 

[scoffer]

Should be done on the EU rather than country level, other than that - great idea.

Done at the EU level would be the death knell for the project. Useless bunch of unelected liberal clowns.

 

[trparky]

Done at the EU level would be the death knell for the project. Useless bunch of unelected liberal clowns.

As apposed to...

 

[Axeia]

Done at the EU level would be the death knell for the project. Useless bunch of unelected liberal clowns.

People keep saying that yet the part that comes up with what to do is split between EU parliament and the EU council.

- EU parliament is literally voted for and thus elected.
- EU council is represented by government ministers from all member countries, you only get to join the EU if you're a democracy (those tend to involve elections).

 

[ActualViking]

Yes. Look at it this way: Windows provides a unified windowing environment with a standard set of APIs, largely taking the guesswork out of, “Will my program work on this system?” Developers could target Windows knowing that those APIs would be available across millions of different PCs.

That helped create a powerful feedback loop: more Windows users attracted more developers, more software attracted more users, and hardware manufacturers prioritized Windows support. Microsoft's strong emphasis on backward compatibility reinforced that ecosystem even further.

Linux never achieved the same consistency on the desktop. Different distributions, desktop environments, packaging systems, libraries, and display stacks created additional variables for developers. Linux has improved enormously, but it has spent decades trying to overcome an ecosystem advantage Windows established long ago.

That's a major reason why Windows became dominant while “This is the year of the Linux desktop” has become a meme old enough to drink.

You thinking is fine, except that Linux wasn't even known outside a small tech world back when Windows became the standard. When Linux became a little more known it was already to late, for the majority of people it was Windows or Apple.
At first Windows was just a GUI you ran on top of DOS, that meant people could use what they knew and also run Windows on their computers - that allowed for a "smooth" transition. And since the alternatives were either unknown to the wide public, or, as with OS/2 barely known and to hardware demanding, on PC it became Windows that ruled.

 

[Underdog]

I did the same thing. I use Linux Mint most of the time. I am not versed in Linux, but I'm learning more every day. One day I hope to rid myself of Windows altogether.

I am at precisely the same stage. I joined the fray in the late 90s with W98 and struggled with everything that followed up until W7. By then I had learned enough to resist the bullying to upgrade my hardware just to accept all the latest bells, whistles, and BS that MS was pushing. I still use a detoxed W7 today which works perfectly well for all my needs. The only worry is that one day I may have trouble finding a browser that will tolerat W7. When that happens I have a second desktop running Linux Mint as backup. It works fine with my old hardware and does 95% of what I need and I could probably manage that final 5% if I spent enough time seeking advice.

People who have professional needs or manic gamers are the ones that tolerate Windows with its dodgy updates and glitches. Ordinary users with very basic needs just don't need all the fancy stuff that requires more storage and more power, etc. They just want to boot up and get on with it. A simple version of Linux has the potential to do just that. They just need to take that first step.

 

[yRaz]

I think that what a lot of people in the Linux community fear is that if Linux ever becomes mainstream, it would lose its soul. Not necessarily.

The hobbyist ecosystem can continue exactly as it does today. Want Gentoo and to compile half your system yourself from raw source code? Go ahead, go nuts! Want Arch with a heavily customized desktop? Absolutely! Want to fork something because you disagree with one design decision? That's part of what makes open source what it is.

Alongside that, however, you can have what I call the “Linux product”: a carefully curated, standardized consumer platform with a defined GUI, application framework, packaging system, update mechanism, hardware requirements, compatibility guarantees, and support lifecycle. The person using it doesn't have to understand the machinery underneath.

Android and SteamOS both demonstrate that these two worlds can coexist. Neither stopped upstream Linux from being Linux. They simply selected components, established rules, built stable platforms around them, and hid unnecessary complexity from their users.

Firefox is another example. It's a product in every sense of the word, but has it lost its “open-source soul”? No. In fact, it's one of the most successful open-source projects in the public eye, and yet nothing has been sacrificed on the open-source side of the house.

So why do people assume Linux would lose its soul?

Not necessarily. Linux is the kernal and there is lots of in-fighting between what packaging system works best. Ubuntu is trying to much to SNAP packages and people are very against it, I don't know why. Snap is fine, so is flatpak and .deb packages. from my perspective it kind of seems like being pro or anti docker.

From what I see is that most of this is a non issue anymore. We have third party programs that cloud source the best solutions from user data and, to the best of my ability, I think that's why some people hate it.

There is a vocal minority of Linux users who want using Linux to be hard because it satisfies their ego. Linux was never that hard, that's one of the beautiful things about it. It is simple and open and you can go as deep into something as you want to. The thing is, most people don't want to.

You have Arch users making fun of Mint users and, to some extent, they're both right. But Arch is like building a racecar from parts you pull out of a scrap yard and Mint is buying a civic because all you want to do is get to work everyday. The thing is that we all have to share the same road and there is room for both.

EDIT: to any Arch users I might pissoff with this, just know I wasn't targeting you directly. This issue permeates all distros and all Linux users and Arch isn't the only distro with an elitism problem

 

[trparky]

I think we're actually pretty close to agreeing here. Your race car/Civic analogy is basically what I'm getting at. There is absolutely room for both, and making Linux accessible to the person who just wants the Civic doesn't require taking the race car away from anyone.

Where I'd disagree slightly is that the fragmentation is now mostly a non-issue. It may be much less of an issue for someone already comfortable with Linux, but from the perspective of a commercial developer, Snap vs. Flatpak vs. deb vs. RPM vs. AppImage is still another decision that doesn't really exist when targeting Windows.

That's what I mean by a “Linux product.” I'm not arguing that Linux itself needs to standardize around one package manager, desktop, or distro. I'm arguing that somebody needs to pick a set of technologies, define them as a stable platform, and make everything underneath somebody else's problem.

That's essentially what Valve did with SteamOS. They didn't end Linux fragmentation, they built a coherent product on top of it. And it's successful. Hell, it's even making Microsoft scared and they better damn well should be.

 

[zulu53]

Tell everyone you've never used linux without telling them you've never used Linux

I have used Linux and I agree with the member. Linux distro's STILL do not shape up: my fellow South African Ubuntu included. STILL not customer friendly enough.

 

[zulu53]

Developing your own distro is for people who don't understand what configuration management is or how mass deployment works.

And have no idea of how the average user works with the product.

 

[yRaz]

I have used Linux and I agree with the member. Linux distro's STILL do not shape up: my fellow South African Ubuntu included. STILL not customer friendly enough.

What problems are you encountering that makes you say that?

 

[zulu53]

It is great. And these moves will have a snowball effect making it ever easier to move for the next entity.

It's also hilarious that US "national security" moves have been breaking US tech near monopolies around the globe. Unintended consequences!

As said by others. What Governments say they want to achieve and what they actually achieve are not the same thing; by a wide margin. Whatever you do: do not bet any of your savings on the Dutch Government achieving any tangible operating product.

 

[zulu53]

I did the same thing. I use Linux Mint most of the time. I am not versed in Linux, but I'm learning more every day. One day I hope to rid myself of Windows altogether.

Grow to embrace and love the CLI and you will be able to achieve your goal. Don't and you will not.

 

[zulu53]

They’re using this distro as it is built by Dutch developers - and maintained by Dutch developers.

The whole point of open source is that it is independent of the source (Dutch in your example). Thinking that you can make propriety software (dutch built;dutch maintained as you say) merely by wishing it to be true is very questionable logic.