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The Netherlands Built a Nix-Based Linux Desktop Because Microsoft Cut Off the ICC (itsfoss.com)

submitted 4 days ago by tardigrade@scribe.disroot.org to c/buyeuropean@feddit.uk

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When the U.S. government imposed sanctions on the International Criminal Court (ICC) in early 2025, the consequences were far-reaching yet quickly enforced.

The restrictions cut off the ICC chief prosecutor's access to Microsoft services, including email, followed by a freezing of his personal and institutional bank accounts in affected jurisdictions.

While this was happening, the Dutch government was watching, coming to the bitter realization that access to essential services depended on decisions made in the U.S.

Hence, their response to this is DAWO, short for Digitaal Autonome Werkomgeving Overheid, or Digital Autonomous Work Environment for Government in English.

It is a framework that looks to tackle the government's digital stack, covering the OS, an office suite, collaboration apps, cloud services, IT management tools, and AI, with all of it being built around a NixOS foundation.

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[-] blargh513@sh.itjust.works 4 points 3 days ago

Nobody should have trusted us anyway.

Microsoft is a disease. My biggest problem with them is that they make every single product with the sole intention of putting it behind a pay-per-use meter while misleading people into believing that their up-front costs cover all usage

They nickel and dime you to death, say that its free and then start charging you later on.

Trying to look cleanly across the costs is impossible. They will give you isolated dashboards for individual services, but never anything usefully comprehensive. They will gaslight you into believing that you just don't know how to use their monitoring tools and you should know better. It should be easy, but it isn't.

They are just a giant leech on all companies that use their shit. They only sell to exec leadership because none of those old farts understand how any of this stuff works. They don't talk to tech people because they will ask three good questions and see the bullshit. If their products were any good, they wouldn't need to sell this way. They're not good. Azure is a clusterfuck. Entra is shit. Defender is incompetent. Sentinel is worthless and horribly expensive. Desktop os is a joke.

They can just make Microsoft office, that's all they were ever good at. The rest is overpriced slop.

this post was submitted on 26 Sep 2026

447 points (100.0% liked)

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