alt Hacker NewsThe title is very far from the actual public statement that is linked in the article.
The French government announced that its digital agency will switch to Linux during this year. This is about a few hundreds of computers owned by the agency.
The second statement is that this agency is expected to publish, by the end of the year, a plan to reduce the digital dependency on the US. It's not "France to ditch Windows", it should be "French government promises to plan soon for possible ways to decrease digital dependencies, but calendar unknown". Also note that the government (and president) will change next year, so even if the present drive was real, a political u-turn could come soon.
Overall, this statement could be the presage of a major upturn in a few years, but I think it far more probable that the policy change will be minor. There's already a small tendency toward Linux and Free Software in the public sector.
Uh, TIL the DINUM still used Windows. I wonder what held them, it's certainly not a lack of familiarity with Linux.
I feel you're underselling the second statement a bit:
> Each ministry (including operators) will be required to finalize its own [migration] plan by fall
This sounds like there's actual pressure to start moving soon, especially for adopting existing DINUM solutions.
(I agree the title is clickbait.)