France’s Interministerial Digital Directorate (DINUM) announced on April 8, 2026, its decision to move its workstations from Windows to Linux, instructing every government ministry to develop a plan to reduce non-European digital dependencies by autumn 2026. This directive includes operating systems, collaborative tools, cloud infrastructure, and AI platforms and follows France’s earlier mandate to replace Microsoft Teams and Zoom with its Visio platform for 2.5 million civil servants by 2027, marking France’s most extensive digital sovereignty initiative.
During an interministerial seminar on April 8, involving the Directorate General for Enterprise, the National Agency for Information Systems Security, and the State Procurement Directorate, a directive was issued with two key actions. DINUM, with around 250 agents, will switch to Linux workstations, and other ministries must create reduction plans by autumn 2026. Plans must address dependencies in eight areas: workstations/operating systems, collaborative tools, security software, AI, databases/storage, virtualisation/cloud infrastructure, and telecommunications equipment.
No specific Linux distribution is announced, allowing ministries the flexibility to choose their migration path. DINUM has developed La Suite Numérique, a set of sovereign productivity tools, including Tchap for messaging, Visio for video conferencing, and webmail service, hosted on Outscale servers certified by ANSSI. By April 2026, around 40,000 users had tested the suite before the broader mandate. The next step is a set of “Industrial Digital Meetings” in June 2026 to build public-private coalitions supporting the transition.
The credibility of this initiative is supported by the Gendarmerie nationale’s history, starting with OpenOffice, Firefox, and Thunderbird in 2004, leading to GendBuntu in 2008. By June 2024, GendBuntu operated on 103,164 workstations, making up 97% of their IT estate, saving two million euros annually in licensing costs and reducing ownership costs by 40%. This example encourages France’s national effort.
International occurrences further validate these efforts. Germany’s Schleswig-Holstein state began its Microsoft-to-Linux transition in 2024 and completed nearly 80% of its 30,000-workstation migration by early 2026, saving €15 million in licensing costs in 2026 alone. The successful migration methods relied on phased, well-governed transitions.
The announcement on April 8 is part of a broader digital sovereignty strategy accelerated since 2024, motivated by altered US relations under the Trump administration. After significant growth in European cloud services from April 2025, France and Germany convened a summit on European digital sovereignty, establishing a task force for 2026. In January 2026, France announced the replacement of Teams and Zoom with Visio for all civil servants by 2027, reinforcing digital sovereignty from slogan to policy. The Linux mandate follows the same strategy. Anne Le Hénanff, Minister Delegate for Artificial Intelligence and Digital Technology, emphasized that digital sovereignty is a necessity, not an option.
Despite the move from Windows to Linux and Teams to Visio, there remains dependency on American cloud infrastructure as highlighted by Amazon’s selection of European AI startups for AWS Pioneers 2026. The comprehensive strategy for digital sovereignty would need to address this cloud layer. France’s commitment is clear, with significant historical precedents, providing hope that the objectives are attainable at scale, influencing which infrastructure AI will run, significantly shaping Europe’s digital future.