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submitted 1 day ago by Bebopalouie@lemmy.ca to c/canada@lemmy.ca
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[-] Microtonal_Banana@lemmy.zip 3 points 2 hours ago

ABOOT would be a fun name for a Linux distro

[-] EmilieEasie@fedinsfw.app 3 points 3 hours ago

I'm really glad that a lot of countries are starting to do this 🥰

[-] BaraCoded@literature.cafe 11 points 6 hours ago* (last edited 6 hours ago)

Ethereal whisper in the wind : "Liiiinuuuux..."

[-] humanspiral@lemmy.ca 1 points 3 hours ago

develop

Why would that be point or needed?

[-] SaveTheTuaHawk@lemmy.ca 2 points 2 hours ago* (last edited 2 hours ago)

So they can hire hundreds of IT consultants to fuck the dog around Ottawa cafes for three years, then deliver a system that doesn't work/ ne fonctionne pas.

This is how government IT works. They couldn't even implement a system to pay themselves.

[-] five_bucks@lemmy.ca 9 points 7 hours ago

I’ll probably take shit for my comment, so preface: I use FOSS and self-host a lot of stuff at home, my Elbows are Up, and Fuck M$. Now then…

Yeah, the federal government could give up MS licenses for the public service and switch to OpenBSD or Linux and use LibreOffice. Excellent! Big savings.

Now then, how about all the ancient databases and applications used by the CRA and regulatory agencies. Will they keep working or will they need attention? Downtime is not an option.

Then there’s weird things like lab equipment and remote devices that provide earth sensing data for weather forecasts and probably tsunami warning for all I know.

Every one of those things needs, at least, thorough consideration and many will need specific attention from developers who are familiar with some pretty old tech. The public service does not have that capacity on hand. Contracting (expensive) private sector companies is a given.

I haven’t even mentioned the requirements for handling protected data or liability. Who does the government sue for damages if there’s an unpatched exploit in OpenBSD?

Anyway, all the above can be addressed. Nothing’s impossible. But the estimated cost-savings are not realistic. Like, at all.

You may now tear me to shreds.

[-] Voroxpete@sh.itjust.works 9 points 7 hours ago

You're not wrong exactly, but I think you're perhaps assuming an unnecessarily absolutist approach. If there are legacy systems that need windows, keep windows for those legacy systems. What you're describing are exceptions, not the norm. The vast, vast majority of public service computers could just as easily be running Linux.

As for who the Federal government sues, that's why you go with an enterprise release like Red Had or Ubuntu. You find a company that you're happy to work with, you pay them maybe 25% of what you're paying MS right now, and in return you get a full support plan with clearly defined SLAs.

This isn't so much "Nothing's impossible" as it is "It's really not that hard." These are solved problems. Plenty of governments have already switched over to open source.

[-] five_bucks@lemmy.ca 2 points 6 hours ago* (last edited 6 hours ago)

Fair critique!

A less all-or-nothing approach could be to migrate Members of Parliament and departmental executive down to management… maybe even support staff. That group makes decisions based on the products from operational folks. So they can deal with a basic office suite. There’s a big savings there.

At the operational level, things would get expensive because of the specialized and in-house software for which there are no alternatives except Windows.

I don’t know enough about IT to comment on the feasibility of supporting that scenario.

I didn’t catch this in the content posted by OP, but I thought it would be interesting to mention: GCTools. It’s a suite of collaboration and document management tools. I think they’re all open source. ^But ^I ^don’t ^know ^anyone ^who ^uses ^them.

Edit: Can’t superscript. Fuck it

[-] Jiral@lemmy.world 1 points 5 hours ago* (last edited 5 hours ago)

Just curious without knowing anything about the Canadian public IT system but are those ancient databases seriously running on Windows, or why would transitioning away from Windows impact their operations? As for transition, of course any transition is difficult and takes effort and careful preparation.

If Downtime is not an option, I am not sure how well the state is served by operating critical infrastructure on a system that the potential adversary has a prominent kill switch to it.

Regarding liability, well, I don't know how things are in Canada but the state doesn't sue if it is responsible itself and it can protect itself from liability if needed for cases where there is no grave neglect for example (or even for cases with grave neglect, that is a political question not for me to decide). Not saying that is necessarily a popular option but it is certainly an option.

PS: Isolated systems running on Windows are a non-issue for example. Other systems would need to be migrated according to a transition plan that can be more or less ambitious.

[-] story@lemmy.zip 8 points 13 hours ago

openbsd is Canadian, give theo 5 million dollars

[-] Croquette@sh.itjust.works 25 points 22 hours ago

Linux is right there, no need to reinvent the wheel.

Libre Office to replace most of Microsoft 365 suite.

Pick a distro and help develop it to make it more robust.

[-] TheSecondVariety@lemmy.ca 2 points 14 hours ago

100%. I want this to happen so much.

[-] dasrael@lemmy.zip 40 points 1 day ago
[-] ArmchairAce1944@lemmy.ca 9 points 1 day ago

And make their own distro. No need to build something from scratch! For fucks sake!

[-] CrabAndBroom@lemmy.ml 1 points 1 hour ago

But then how else will they be able pay Accenture $10 million to vibe code something that's a piece of shit that doesn't work?

[-] captain_aggravated@sh.itjust.works 5 points 17 hours ago

Why make their own distro? Just use fucking Ubuntu or Red Hat or Suse. You don't need HeyDereHiDereHoDereOS.

[-] SaveTheTuaHawk@lemmy.ca 1 points 7 hours ago

Why make their own distro?

Because the Canadian government needs to make a simple solution as shitty as possible and hire hundreds of consultants to insure it will never work. They never got Phoenix Pay working.

[-] captain_aggravated@sh.itjust.works 1 points 59 minutes ago

I mean, I've seen a lot of noise by Canada and Europe about how they need to distance themselves from the United States, meanwhile if you look at the world's top visited websites, more than half of them are US based, from major search engines like Google to AI stuff like Gemini and ChatGPT to marketplaces like Amazon and eBay to social media like Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn to video media hosting like Netflix, Youtube and Twitch. Canada has one entry: Pornhub. EU countries have two: XVideos in France and XHamster in Cypress.

"Switching to our own operating system" means switching from an American corporation, to some American non-profit foundations. Trading Microsoft for GNU/Linux. Still running on Intel x86 architecture machines. Don't get me wrong, the attempt is adorable, but you're four decades behind in a four decade old discipline.

[-] Jiral@lemmy.world 2 points 13 hours ago* (last edited 13 hours ago)

Because you want a an OS optimised for the needs of public administration. It doesn't need to be a new Distro but it should be a tailored configusration, just lije thf Duch are doing right now based on NixOS.

[-] tempest@lemmy.ca 5 points 1 day ago

Which is exactly what they would do if they were to switch. Starting from scratch would be incredibly stupid, and there's no reasonable way to secure a brand new system when we simply don't employ enough programmers of that kind at the govt level.

[-] phoenixz@lemmy.ca 13 points 1 day ago

Again what I've been saying for years, just use Linux, people.

But nooooo, Canadian healthcare prefers tonstore their patient data in the USA on servers of Microsoft, even though MS already testified that the US government can access that data whenever they want, so yay!

Why self host everything and be responsible if you can simply pay a dictatorship?

[-] Valmond@lemmy.dbzer0.com 28 points 1 day ago

Or, wait, use another already existing one?!!

[-] kent_eh@lemmy.ca 8 points 1 day ago

Or, wait, use another already existing one?!!

Which is exactly what an increasing number of EU countries are doing.

[-] Omgpwnies@lemmy.world 7 points 1 day ago

The article is suggesting to make a debian-based distro

[-] kent_eh@lemmy.ca 1 points 7 hours ago

Sure, not a bad idea. There is lots of parts of the Linux ecosystem that can be used as-is.

I was just concerned about not re-doing work that has already been done in an effort to have a brand new unique Canadian government distro.

[-] Valmond@lemmy.dbzer0.com 4 points 1 day ago

Our lord and saviour Linux 😌🙂‍↕️☺️

[-] NGC2346@sh.itjust.works 16 points 1 day ago
[-] x00z@lemmy.world 6 points 1 day ago

with the Maple Desktop Environment.

[-] athairmor@lemmy.world 56 points 1 day ago
[-] lemmie689@lemmy.sdf.org 15 points 1 day ago

Take off, eh!

[-] mHtt@lemmy.ca 11 points 1 day ago

also our own pickup trucks and suvs

[-] kent_eh@lemmy.ca 5 points 1 day ago* (last edited 7 hours ago)

Even better, our own small fuel efficient cars. Most people don't need a massive gas guzzler.

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[-] historicaldocuments@lemmy.world 36 points 1 day ago

Author of the article missed the Netherlands going to NixOS by a week.

And Canada already has a homegrown operating system that's just waiting for someone to read the handbook thoroughly, read the manual, install it themselves, and see what's up. Canada has already played host to a free operating system with OpenBSD thanks to crypto being a munition back in the 90s and there's no reason to not look at both Nix and OpenBSD if they're going to head down that road.

I'll go ahead and write the international treaty:

Canada and the Netherlands agree to go halfsies on a trusted NixOS and OpenBSD repo.
[-] k0e3@lemmy.ca 11 points 1 day ago

Wasn't Arch made by a Canadian?

[-] grte@lemmy.ca 4 points 1 day ago

Yeah, Judd Vinet. He's no longer involved with the project, though.

Yes. I wasn't trying to exclude any projects, but I wanted to point out that another nation-state is looking to do the same project and for the same reasons (Netherlands with NixOS), and that there's already an even older project (OpenBSD) that already meets some of the same goals Canada would be trying to achieve.

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[-] melsaskca@lemmy.ca 7 points 1 day ago

This is good news that more countries are starting to think of tech independence. It was bound to evolve that way over time but the questionable tech bros crowd caused it to happen way more quickly because, just like the railroad barons of the past, they'll lie, cheat, steal and threaten for more money and power and people eventually get tired of being under someone's thumb (holy shit I just had spellcheck tell me that thumb has a "b". I, and probably many others, did not know that).

[-] CapuccinoCoretto@lemmy.world 25 points 1 day ago

We could save even more by crowdsourcing much of it with partners around the world with the same goals.

When Microsoft said they would operate in our country, but not obey our laws, it was the begining of the end.

[-] Auli@lemmy.ca 13 points 1 day ago

Yes and nobody seems to acknowledge that. They think data sovereignty is all that matters. But Microsoft has stated no they have to listen to the US no matter what any other countrys laws say. I thought countries would have been more upset about that but nope.

[-] kablez@lemmy.world 12 points 1 day ago

I said this exact thing to multiple Australian universities and government heads.

Not only would it save money, it would develop local industry and expertise.

No reply of course. No one's interested if it doesn't help make them rich!

[-] n7gifmdn@lemmy.ca 17 points 1 day ago

One more way to say fuck the US by not using Microsoft

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this post was submitted on 15 Oct 2026
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