France quietly deployed 100,000+ Linux machines in their police force - GendBuntu is a silent EU tech success story

Arch de Triomfe

On a GendARM

Schleswig-Holstein is ditching MS for Linux and Open Source, and let's hope many others will follow.

@BigShammy80@feddit.org

It also worked for decades in Germany, until some politicians meddled with it

https://lstn.niedersachsen.de/aktuelles_service/pressemitteilungen/-67312.html

https://www.heise.de/news/Linux-Aus-Niedersachsen-will-knapp-13-000-Rechner-auf-Windows-umstellen-4119380.html

I hope LiMux makes a comeback, it's much more well known than GendBuntu despite its issues

Germany, as regressive as ever.

I'm surprised it has been so quiet, so many people know of LiMux why don't more know of GendBuntu

Maybe because of the poor name choice, it should have been "Arch de Triomphe"

Several tax authorities in Germany used Linux until they were forced to change to Windows in the name of standardisation a few years ago

https://www.heise.de/news/Linux-Aus-Niedersachsen-will-knapp-13-000-Rechner-auf-Windows-umstellen-4119380.html

I found just one, and it's some time ago :-)

French police move from Windows to Ubuntu Linux -- (October 2013)

The big reason the French Gendarmerie made the Linux move? It saved them 40 percent in total cost of ownership over Windows.

**In other news:**

Yet another European government is ditching Microsoft for Linux: Schleswig-Holstein - Germany's most northern state - switches to Linux and Open Source - (June 2025)

>[After] the state's cabinet had declared it would make the move [in April 2024, Schleswig-Holstein's] goal is to fully transition from Microsoft programs to Linux and open-source programs within the next three months.

**And**:

Why Denmark is dumping Microsoft Office and Windows for LibreOffice and Linux - (June 2025)

>Before the Danish government announced its move, Denmark's largest cities, Copenhagen and Aarhus, had already announced plans to phase out Microsoft software and cloud services. Here's why.

I hope word of this success story spreads, I could literally not find a single English news article about it.

I feel there is still a sentiment that it's too difficult, or the tools are not ready etc.

But this shows that it is possible at a large scale and has been done before

Some kind of Ansible based custom solution:

This project offers a complete solution reminiscent of SCCM from the world of Windows, but Ansible replaces Powershell DSC and we have a bonus in the form of version control system git.

https://github.com/skosachiov/remediations-gendbuntu

According to this comment a custom solution based on ansible and got.

Yeah that's really the biggest issue with these deployments.

Nice! Hopefully their experience can be used to help other agencies to move to Linux and open-source software. It also shows how long time it takes to move for a big organisation, in 2018 it was 82% of the PC workstations that was running GendBuntu.

Reposting because yeah


They could've had "GendArch", what a missed opportunity.

Here is its Github page for those interested.

But why did they do this quietly? Would also be interesting to know whether there are more of these "quiet" projects in Europe :-)

I am interested in seeing how the machines are managed, Windows uses GPOs, what does GendBuntu use?

Thank you for sharing. This is the kind of news that brightens my day. You see @EUCommission@ec.social-network.europa.eu , this is how it's done.

The.. year of...?!

Crazy how other countries are able to do this, but in germany it's an impossible task... 🙄