Au revoir, Microsoft: French government announces plan to ditch Windows in favour of Linux
2026 is shaping up to the Year of the Linux Desktop, or should be say année de Linux? In a new announcement by the French government, the European country has announced plans to ‘exit from Windows in favour of workstations running on the Linux operating system’.
The announcement came during a government digital strategy seminar, organised by France’s Interministerial Directorate for Digital Affairs (DINUM) alongside several other national cybersecurity and enterprise agencies. The French government says that they want to push towards ‘digital sovereignty’, reducing its dependence on technology from outside of France and Europe.
One of the most notable goals here is a shift away from Microsoft Windows. According to DINUM, France plans to transition government workstations from Windows to Linux-based operating systems. While no specific Linux distribution was named, such migrations typically aim to improve transparency, reduce licensing costs and increase control over software development and security.
Several early steps toward this digital independence strategy are already underway. France’s national health insurance body for instance has already announced plans to migrate around 80,000 employees to French-developed tools. These include Tchap, a messaging platform, Visio, a video conferencing tool, and FranceTransfert, a file transfer service. Separately, France also confirmed plans to migrate its national health data platform to a “trusted sovereign solution” by the end of 2026.
“The State can no longer simply acknowledge its dependence; it must break free. We must become less reliant on American tools and regain control of our digital destiny. We can no longer accept that our data, our infrastructure, and our strategic decisions depend on solutions whose rules, pricing, evolution, and risks we do not control.
The transition is underway: our ministries, our operators, and our industrial partners are now embarking on an unprecedented initiative to map our dependencies and strengthen our digital sovereignty. Digital sovereignty is not optional,” – David Amiel, Minister of Public Action and Accounts (machine translated)
The government is also working toward creating what it describes as a “public-private alliance for European sovereignty”, which will coordinate large-scale technology initiatives. France will be hosting “digital industry meetings” in June 2026. These sessions aim to formalise new public-private partnerships focused on building European digital solutions as they aim to hit their digital sovereignty goals.
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