Linux

Trump is driving European governments to Microsoft alternatives: What Germany, France, Denmark, the Netherlands, Switzerland and Austria are planning.

With Ukraine's cold position, rapprochement with Russia, and its tariff policy, US President Donald Trump has startled the Europeans – and fueled the discussion about digital sovereignty. The risks of dependence on American tech companies have suddenly moved up on the political agenda, not only in Berlin, but also in other European capitals.

The discussion has many facets, because US companies such as Microsoft, AWS, Google, Oracle, Broadcom and OpenAI dominate in numerous areas of IT, from hardware to cloud services to operating systems and (AI) applications. In some segments, however, Chinese suppliers such as Lenovo and Huawei also have a strong position, just like the Europeans themselves, for example with ASML or SAP.

An IT world without dependencies on third parties would not be conducive to productivity and prosperity and anyway unrealistic, after all, there is hardly any know-how for the increasingly complex products in hardly any company. But the dependence on Microsoft's software and cloud services is particularly concerned about many European politicians. If the company is forced to shut down cloud services like 365 due to orders from the US government, the impact would be drastic: ministries and agencies with 365 subscriptions could not even chat or email from now on.

If Microsoft no longer provide security updates, sooner or later all users of Windows and the "On-Premise" (i.e. on customer hardware instead of the cloud) ongoing variants of Office and Exchange got into trouble. Microsoft's plan to offer Offices only in the cloud in the future puts additional pressure on Europeans. And the switch to other providers is complicated, among other things, by the fact that management applications such as e-file programs are interwoven with Microsoft Office.

Archive : https://archive.ph/2025.04.30-111200/https://www.heise.de/hintergrund/Wie-europaeische-Staaten-ihre-Abhaengigkeit-von-Microsoft-reduzieren-wollen-10365345.html

The following gif demonstrates folding:

The countdown has begun. On 14 October 2025, Microsoft will end support for Windows 10. This will leave millions of users and organisations with a difficult choice: should they upgrade to Windows 11, or completely rethink their work environment?

The good news? You don’t have to follow Microsoft’s upgrade path. There is a better option that puts control back in the hands of users, institutions, and public bodies: Linux and LibreOffice. Together, these two programmes offer a powerful, privacy-friendly and future-proof alternative to the Windows + Microsoft 365 ecosystem.

The move to Windows 11 isn’t just about security updates. It increases dependence on Microsoft through aggressive cloud integration, forcing users to adopt Microsoft accounts and services. It also leads to higher costs due to subscription and licensing models, and reduces control over how your computer works and how your data is managed. Furthermore, new hardware requirements will render millions of perfectly good PCs obsolete.

This is a turning point. It is not just a milestone in a product’s life cycle. It is a crossroads.

I think the least that distros can do, is allow listing all packages and system settings in config files like .toml rather than having to type in every single package to install, or click through system setting GUIs to setup. Would that require using a whole programming language or system like NIx?

While NixOS works much differently from most distros, that's the only reason I use it: package and system settings in text files. If I fix something, it's fixed permanently, I don't need to hunt down files in random directories if I want to change a setting. If I ever need to reinstall the OS I don't have to write dnf install every single damn package and manually setup all that up all over again. Having daily-drove Windows macOS & Fedora as throughout the years, my setups have felt hacky as well as houses of cards as I've wanted or had to set them up again (I don't mean Fedora specifically, but distros in general).

Basically it feels insane that it's the way most linux users and servers in the world operate. If I, a humble computer hobbyist can figure out Nix, why don't more users do so, and why is Nix so niche?

So, I imported my connection-configuration provided from OPNsense Wireguard VPN.

The connection is working on an old (<10 years) Android Phone. But from within Linux (same config) I am unable to resolve subnet ip addresses. I can still access the internet though.

So; Am I using my origin connection to resolve foreign ips or am I using my VPN DNS? Why am I unable to access my subnet ip addresses on my linux machine?

The Linux machine is 6.13.30-arm64 with /etc/debian_version pointing to 13.0.

I have installed wireguard-tools and network-manager only. I have also wireguard installed but it doesn't make a difference and its usage is for hosting a endpoint.

Again: It works for other machines like intended. If of concern: I am running XFCE.

A few months ago, a new terminal emulator was released. It's called ghostty, and it has been a highly anticipated terminal emulator for a while, especially due to the coverage that it received from ThePrimeagen, who had been using for a while, while it was in private beta.

I want to see either a persistent rectangle box on the edges of the region being recorded (anything outside the box isn't recorded), or dim the parts of the screen that aren't being recorded. I looked for screen recorders for hyprland & wlroots and didn't find any with this functionality. wf-recorder + slurp works for me but I want a boundary visual.

Just putting this here for others to find in the future. Updated to Fedora 42 a few days ago. I don't use the machine, but my son does and he kept saying it was "crashing". Looked at random errors saying FFMPEG was crashing. Then Freetube caused the desktop to crash. Then steam. Caught this in the logs:

Jun 10 18:42:19 desktop kernel: [drm] scheduler comp_1.0.1 is not ready, skipping  
Jun 10 18:42:19 desktop kernel: [drm] scheduler comp_1.0.4 is not ready, skipping  
Jun 10 18:42:20 desktop kernel: [drm] scheduler comp_1.0.6 is not ready, skipping  

Then saw this:

Jun 11 18:29:53 desktop kernel: amdgpu 0000:01:00.0: amdgpu: ring uvd timeout, signaled seq=77082, emitted seq=77085  
Jun 11 18:29:53 desktop kernel: amdgpu 0000:01:00.0: amdgpu: Process information: process ffmpeg pid 576748 thread ffmpeg:cs0 pid 5767>  
Jun 11 18:29:53 desktop kernel: amdgpu 0000:01:00.0: amdgpu: GPU reset begin!  
Jun 11 18:29:53 desktop kernel: amdgpu 0000:01:00.0: amdgpu: BACO reset  
Jun 11 18:29:54 desktop kernel: amdgpu 0000:01:00.0: amdgpu: GPU reset succeeded, trying to resume  
Jun 11 18:29:54 desktop kernel: [drm] PCIE GART of 256M enabled (table at 0x000000F400900000).  
Jun 11 18:29:54 desktop kernel: [drm] VRAM is lost due to GPU reset!  

Tracked that amdgpu ring uvd timeout to: https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/AMDGPU "Flickering and white screens" section.

It recommended checking GPU clock speeds at: https://www.techpowerup.com/gpu-specs/

Then check what the current clock and memory clock were:

cat /sys/class/drm/card0/device/pp_dpm_sclk
cat /sys/class/drm/card0/device/pp_dpm_mclk

Sure enough the GPU was clocked to 1196Mhz, but the max clock was 1175Mkhz. I used LACT to change the clock speed and I'm back to a stable system.

From next month, Danish Digital Minister Caroline Stage plans to phase out the use of Microsoft and its programs.

Over the summer, half of the ministry’s staff will switch from Windows to another operating system, Libre Office. Caroline Stage aims to lead by example and test this transition herself.

The goal is for the ministry to be completely free of Microsoft by autumn. If the transition proves too complicated, they will revert temporarily.

This initiative is part of a broader strategy called “digital sovereignty,” aiming to reduce Denmark’s dependence on US-based tech giants.

Recent global events and debate around data protection have intensified calls for digital independence. Political parties, including Enhedslisten and Alternativet, support reducing reliance on American technology companies.