UK government? I'm surprised they've moved past XP this quickly.
this post was submitted on 09 Nov 2025
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Funny thing is, only about 5-10 years ago, the UK government was trying to do "ALL FOSS EVERYWHERE"
But the pushback from old fogies unwilling to change was so hard that they basically did like one department (Department of Work and Pensions) before they rolled it back.
It did save that one department a lot of money though.
At least 1 person is incredibly bad as their job then. Eol is announced years in advance and this should've been easily avoidable.
If this project was authorised after November 2021, people should be fired for the waste of public funds.
Once Windows 11 came out, it was clear that Windows 10 had an end date and they should have just gone balls-deep and skipped 10 altogether.
Probably all because some twat didn't want to use libreoffice
I have both Libre Office and MS Office at my work PC and I much prefer to use Libre. Sure it's not perfect but I find it more focused on the task I need to do than MS one. Speaking particularly about Calc vs Excel, not sure about other parts.
I like libre because it doesn't pop up AI crap and suggest things like MS.
They will start the upgrade to windows 11 in 5 years and complete it in 3, just in time for windows 12 and nothing will have been learned.
On a serious note, the lack of a major European alternative is really a big problem. What do we have? A bunch of community driven alternatives with no marketing, no business, maybe support, maybe paid development, but mostly just dedication and dreams. Government shit on dedication and dreams on the regular.
Ubuntu is British
SuSE is European.
Wow, never heard of them.
SUSE is the leading independent Enterprise Open Source company, founded in 1992. Pioneer in software-defined infrastructure and beyond. More than 90% of SAP HANA deployments and more than two-thirds of the Fortune Global 100 companies worldwide trust SUSE.
https://www.nordicmind.com/suse/
Never seen it used nor mentioned anywhere. Maybe they don't have a user interface and are just used on servers or infrastructure (whatever "software-defined infrastructure" means)? That would explain why governments still use Microsoft (and increasingly fruits).
SuSE is one of the two major enterprise Linux distributions, with RedHat being the other. I would assume servers make up the bulk of their business, but they provide desktops too.
RedHat is probably better known to most end-users, due to their Fedora community distribution, and their heavy involvement in Gnome.
SuSE's community distribution is openSUSE
EDIT: Fittingly, the very top of their website says "Make your old Windows 10 PC fast and secure again!" and links to https://endof10.org/
Maybe you've heard of Novell, the American company that bought SUSE in the early 2000s and then eventually sold it off. They were kind of big in the 2000s.
After many more mergers and acquisitions SUSE is (for now) back under European ownership.
Its also a linux OS for business, theres an open variant for home pc use aswell: https://www.opensuse.org/
Tumbleweed was such a great choice for me when getting started with Linux. The enterprise support has benefits, I found specific rpm packages for problems I was having with a printer and a remote desktop client. And Yast is great to have for a Linux noob.
Mostly they use it due to vendor lock-in tbh
Microsoft and Apple both use a sly tactic of offering the OS for cheap, and some products for cheap, but with the express intention that everything is so interlinking you can't replace just one thing, you have to replace it all.
Which is too much time and effort for most governments
You would have heard of them a lot if you were a computer nerd. You must just be one of the common folk.
FOSS
Saving you a click, its defra.
Im surprised theyre not on windows 8 still
There's probably odd boxes here and there still running Windows 98.
Labour loves kissing those Microsoft boots!
I agree it was disappointing to see Starmer agreeing to work with Microsoft to build AI datacentres in the UK.
But most, if not all, governments and major businesses worldwide have been kissing Microsoft's boots for the better part of 40 years. As much as I want them out of the picture completely, turning back decades of brainwashing through Windows focused IT education is a battle that will take a long time if it has a chance at all.
๐ This has been an issue for much longer than the current labour government has been in power.
Well if anything itโll be easier to install a proper OS over it afterwards instead of having to wrestle W11โs greedy clutches.
Well, UK is half way to US... On the continent we are more aware and supportive for sovereign free / open source / FLOSS software.
We won't be free from Microsoft's clutches in the UK until they shutdown sadly.
Microsoft or the UK?
Either one is equally likely at this stage
Nah, Balkanisation is more likely
Of the UK or Microsoft?
Both possible tbh
Techradar's article has a different tone than it's source The Register which implies that money's starting from 2022.
It doesn't say that they're staying on Win10 either, but they are behind schedule to move on...
The original linked article was lacking info.
Operating systems are more like toys now than anything serious, why would any organization with a rigidly defined set of operations need anything more than some custom coded programs in C?