The French city of #Lyon will also be replacing Microsoft for #opensource solutions. Really curious what #Linux distro they will choose ๐Ÿ‘€

Also featured; #Jitsi for video conferencing, #Nextcloud paired with #OnlyOffice for document sharing and co-editing, #Zimbra for email, #Chamilo for online training, and #Matrix for instant messaging. ๐Ÿ”ฅ

https://news.itsfoss.com/french-city-replaces-microsoft/

French City of Lyon Kicks Out Microsoft

Microsoft faces growing rejection in Europe whereas open source software sees growing adaption.

It's FOSS News

@Gina Matrix for IM. OMG, good luck with that.
Been using it for some chatrooms and the whole encryption thing is such a pain in the ass, and I'm a techy.

**message could not be decrypted***

@n3wjack yeah that's my issue with Matrix too. Plus it's not super admin friendly, from my brief experience.

I've implemented Rocketchat in the past, but would prob recommend Mattermost now.

@Gina @n3wjack What puts Mattermost above Rocketchat for ya? (I've only really run or use Matrix myself, other than very briefly using Rocketchat and reckoning it looked slick enough at a first glance that it wouldn't scare most folks away.)
@keithzg @n3wjack No particular reason. It's been about 6 years since I used Rocketchat, and most of the communities I'm in now use Mattermost. They're prob very comparable.

@Gina @keithzg @n3wjack I'm a big fan of Zulip. It's like an IM and forum mixed. Very admin friendly.

But also, I host a mattermost for my scout group and have had no problems. It's pretty user friendly.

@n3wjack @Gina when was that?
@kitkat @Gina Just now. Elements is bitching about key storage not being in sync in the browser again oslt.
@n3wjack @kitkat I have the same issue, since I havent used Matrix in a while and I also dont have the other device anymore that could verify this one. Not sure what happens when I reset everything.
@Gina @kitkat It's talking about a recovery key, but I can't remember seeing or getting that before. So I don't have that, of course. The other option is resetting my identity, but since it all still seems to work, I'm not doing that either. ๐Ÿ˜

@n3wjack @Gina
you get it when you first login or start using encryption;

in Element Desktop you could change the recovery key and get a new one (without changing the identity).
But this won't give you access to the messages secured by the lost key (if you lost it, you'd need another device which still has access to the messages -> you could
1) change the recovery key there to get a new one and use the new one with other devices
or
2) export the message keys and import them in the current client
).

@Gina @n3wjack you can verify using the recovery key as well, if you don't have access to the other device

@Gina I believe the French Gendarmerie has been running on Linux for about a decade now?

Not sure which distro theyโ€™re using. But this must have helped to build a network of companies who can implement and support major roll-outs like this.

The French have it right: theyโ€™re looking at Free Software as something that can help drive the local economy.

@slothrop that's exactly the way to look at it.

As opposed to the defeatist BS from the SAP Grand Fromage recently.
@Gina

@Gina hope they will be giving out paid projects to improve or at least pay a fraction of the saved license fees to fund OSS. My impression is that organizations largely take but seldom give.

@Gina

Really hope this leads to a viable Linux desktop distro that's designed for the 21st century and not some hobby project stuck trying to force everyone to use their computer like it's the 1980s.

@contrasocial I wish they would finally just throw a big bag of money at a Linux project. Any would do.
@Gina Paris next I hope! โœจ

@_elena and Amsterdam! They're involved with our gov's #MijnBureau (My Desk) initiative, building an #opensource workspace together with Germany's OpenDesk and France's LaSuite:

https://github.com/MinBZK/mijn-bureau

https://www.opendesk.eu/de

https://lasuite.numerique.gouv.fr/

GitHub - MinBZK/mijn-bureau: Onderzoek naar open source samenwerksoftware voor, door en met overheden.

Onderzoek naar open source samenwerksoftware voor, door en met overheden. - MinBZK/mijn-bureau

GitHub
@Gina ๐Ÿ‘๐Ÿ‘๐Ÿ‘๐Ÿ‘๐Ÿ‘
@Gina I just hope they have really thought this through. 100% sympathize though!
@maartenpelgrim btw completely unrelated but love the bouldering background in your profile ๐Ÿ’™
@Gina what a beautiful news! Thank you for sharing it :D
@Gina
Most comercial platforms (including Windows and office) are very accessible to PWDs. This is not true for FOSS software (including all linux distros and most of software targeting Linux). This move will leave PWDs out.
@mush42 @Gina or maybe accelerate the accessibility of open source software
@mush42 @Gina have to ask, what PWDs mean?
@Antti98 @Gina
People with disibilities.
@mush42 @Gina thank you for the info!
@Gina Amazing. It's depressing to see UK institutions doubling down on Office 365 and huge licences for copilot, subsidised by decimating the workforce. I hope the EU is able to sustain this momentum when big tech spins up the lobbying machine. โœŠ
@Gina This can ring a bell in the whole continent and beyond regarding open-source software. I'm curious to see how it goes.
@Gina Maybe we left a bunch of friendly penguins behind after the big Linux conferences there in 2019.
@Gina
Am using/have used all of those except for Chamilo. The ones I have experience with are all great! Shout out to #Collabora instead of #OnlyOffice if you aim for better compatibility with open formats and #LibreOffice
@sebulon I'd never heard of #Chamilo either, I'm more familiar with #Moodle
@Gina ๐Ÿ’ฏ x 1,000,000!
@Gina it all comes down to which Truman Show production one wants to be a part of. USA? China? How will the EU operate? Will each country air- gap itself from the EU edge as it shields the continent from encroachment or will all countries band together under a single system? Quick decisions need to be made as the world races towards EOL for MS OOTB.
@Gina for some incomprehensible reason OnlyOffice doesn't seem to work on Arch Linux - AUR pkg or the Flatpak
@Gina I think the friendliest desktop is Mint. I can see the EU governments wanting something system admin friendly and a distro who is legally obligated to provide support, so maybe RHEL. Eventually if they want the U.S. out of their software they could make their own EU distro like China made theirs. Perhaps SUSE will step up and make themselves government friendly.
@Gina This is the second reference I've heard to OnlyOffice. How does it differ from LibreOffice?
@Gina None, because they only mean to replace the Office-suit, not the OS, as I understand it.
@ThibaultDu oh that's a shame ๐Ÿฅฒ
@Gina But I may be wrong, frankly there aren't many details in the news (for someone working with coporate IT). They do name Linux but together with PostgreSQL databases, which makes me think they consider switching their infrastructure to Linux (and I guess probably dump vmware too). Changing users clients OSes seems like a bigger undertaking.
@Gina And just like that <poof> my new favorite city in France is Lyon
@Gina Hi, thatโ€™s not really directly related but Iโ€™ve heard the Lyon city (or either the metropolis, the Grand Lyon, or the region, AuRA) used Gentoo Linux in production.