Labour loves kissing those Microsoft boots!
this post was submitted on 09 Nov 2025
327 points (98.8% liked)
Buy European
7492 readers
245 users here now
Overview:
The community to discuss buying European goods and services.
Rules:
-
Be kind to each other, and argue in good faith. No direct insults nor disrespectful and condescending comments.
-
Do not use this community to promote Nationalism/Euronationalism. This community is for discussing European products/services and news related to that. For other topics the following might be of interest:
-
Include a disclaimer at the bottom of the post if you're affiliated with the recommendation.
-
No russian suggestions.
Feddit.uk's instance rules apply:
- No racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia or xenophobia.
- No incitement of violence or promotion of violent ideologies.
- No harassment, dogpiling or doxxing of other users.
- Do not share intentionally false or misleading information.
- Do not spam or abuse network features.
- Alt accounts are permitted, but all accounts must list each other in their bios.
- No generative AI content.
Useful Websites
-
General BuyEuropean product database: https://buy-european.net/ (relevant post with background info)
-
Switching your tech to European TLDR: https://better-tech.eu/tldr/ (relevant post)
-
Buy European meta website with useful links: https://gohug.eu/ (relevant post)
Benefits of Buying Local:
local investment, job creation, innovation, increased competition, more redundancy.
European Instances
Lemmy:
-
Basque Country: https://lemmy.eus/
-
๐ง๐ช Belgium: https://0d.gs/
-
๐ง๐ฌ Bulgaria: https://feddit.bg/
-
Catalonia: https://lemmy.cat/
-
๐ฉ๐ฐ Denmark, including Greenland (for now): https://feddit.dk/
-
๐ช๐บ Europe: https://europe.pub/
-
๐ซ๐ท๐ง๐ช๐จ๐ญ France, Belgium, Switzerland: https://jlai.lu/
-
๐ฉ๐ช๐ฆ๐น๐จ๐ญ๐ฑ๐ฎ Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Lichtenstein: https://feddit.org/
-
๐ซ๐ฎ Finland: https://sopuli.xyz/ & https://suppo.fi/
-
๐ฎ๐ธ Iceland: https://feddit.is/
-
๐ฎ๐น Italy: https://feddit.it/
-
๐ฑ๐น Lithuania: https://group.lt/
-
๐ณ๐ฑ Netherlands: https://feddit.nl/
-
๐ต๐ฑ Poland: https://fedit.pl/ & https://szmer.info/
-
๐ต๐น Portugal: https://lemmy.pt/
-
๐ธ๐ฎ Slovenia: https://gregtech.eu/
-
๐ธ๐ช Sweden: https://feddit.nu/
-
๐น๐ท Turkey: https://lemmy.com.tr/
-
๐ฌ๐ง UK: https://feddit.uk/
Friendica:
-
๐ฆ๐น Austria: https://friendica.io/
-
๐ฎ๐น Italy: https://poliverso.org/
-
๐ฉ๐ช Germany: https://piratenpartei.social/ & https://anonsys.net/
-
๐ซ๐ท Significant French speaking userbase: https://social.trom.tf/
-
๐ต๐ฑ Poland: soc.citizen4.eu
Matrix:
-
๐ฌ๐ง UK: matrix.org & glasgow.social
-
๐ซ๐ท France: tendomium & imagisphe.re & hadoly.fr
-
๐ฉ๐ช Germany: tchncs.de, catgirl.cloud, pub.solar, yatrix.org, digitalprivacy.diy, oblak.be, nope.chat, envs.net, hot-chilli.im, synod.im & rollenspiel.chat
-
๐ณ๐ฑ Netherlands: bark.lgbt
-
๐ฆ๐น Austria: gemeinsam.jetzt & private.coffee
-
๐ซ๐ฎ Finland: pikaviestin.fi & chat.blahaj.zone
Related Communities:
Buy Local:
Continents:
European:
Buying and Selling:
Boycott:
Countries:
Companies:
Stop Publisher Kill Switch in Games Practice:
Banner credits: BYTEAlliance
founded 10 months ago
MODERATORS
๐ This has been an issue for much longer than the current labour government has been in power.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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/
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.
You would have heard of them a lot if you were a computer nerd. You must just be one of the common folk.
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
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.
Maybe they don't have a user interface
One of their big selling points back then and now is YAST. A GUI tool for the complete administration of a Linux system. And not some pseudo tool that will break as soon as you do something manually. No, it works very well with the rest of the system.
SUSE is one of the oldest distributions still in common use today. Like Slackware and Debian old.
FOSS
Ubuntu is British
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.
Well if anything itโll be easier to install a proper OS over it afterwards instead of having to wrestle W11โs greedy clutches.
At least 1 person is incredibly bad as their job then. Eol is announced years in advance and this should've been easily avoidable.
UK government? I'm surprised they've moved past XP this quickly.
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.
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.
Well, UK is half way to US... On the continent we are more aware and supportive for sovereign free / open source / FLOSS software.
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?