alt Hacker NewsDutch governments builds alternative for Microsoft based on NixOS
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France government has announced NixOS based systems some months ago:
- https://github.com/cloud-gouv/securix a hardened/secured os
- https://github.com/cloud-gouv/bureautix-example an example to use securix to build an office deployment (with some packages https://github.com/cloud-gouv/bureautix-example/blob/main/co... )
Awesome! I believe NixOS is perfect for systems you just want to work and track reproducibly, like appliances (which a lot of server software is supposed to be). I’m glad people smarter than me are actually able to realize its advantages =)
In the same space, also check out openDesk initiated by the German Government (https://www.opendesk.eu/en) and La Suite by the French one (https://lasuite.numerique.gouv.fr/).
AFAIK, there has been some collaboration with the German government on La Suite, not sure about the others.
> Digital autonomy
> Strengthening the digital autonomy of the Netherlands.
Apparently the US becoming an authoritarian state means people don't want to do business with us. We're giving away our best advantage, our reputation for freedom and openness, for absolutely nothing in return.
A note to the developers in the project, if anyone is reading: your repositories are in violation of the new Codeberg policy that forbids AI-generated code [1].
[1] https://blog.codeberg.org/protecting-our-floss-commons-from-...
The highest problem is the office suite. If you think Libreoffice/Collabora can replace Microsoft 365 without friction the project could be a success. Honestly I do not think so as of today.
Do we even need to have a suite of tools for users to create spreadsheets, paste images into them, save them as a PDF, download to their local machine, sync to sharepoint, change permissions to include everyone in the entire universe to be able to see the file, email the link to another human in the company who opens it, uses a PDF editor to copy paste it back into excel, barely scratch the surface of tools within Excel to sum a column, reply back in a password protected word doc saying looks good to me.
I would much prefer to be using something like NixOS and not be depending on Microsoft etc but I can't imagine what the stack will look like if we don't revolutionise the work. Sensitivity labels, DLP, etc. are relics of people treating information on computers as if they are physical documents, and I can't see how I will have been paying for BP/E3/E5 licenses for users and then suddenly start to argue we don't need those features anymore after spending so long insisting users need to use them.
I’ve been using NixOS exclusively the last few years. Its been a blessing and a curse!
My framework laptop, my NAS, my Home-assistant, etc
It’s how I’ve always envisioned “systems management”, but the struggle has been real.
Enter LLM’s - the barriers are kind of gone!
It’s actually making so much sense I don’t know where to start.
Just try it out, using a little bit of LLM support and you can reach a solid-state like setup for servers and workstations.
The actual code repository: https://codeberg.org/DAWO/DAWO-Core
For a second I was worried that the actual code behind this was dead in the water ("3 months ago") but it's just one more click away:
Man going from a Windows environment all the way to NixOS is quite the change isn't it? Probably good if NixOS can get more attention and easier to use. I see a lot of hype for it, and then people seem to give up as it can get pretty gnarly with some of the configuration. I'm a fan of something like Fedora Silverblue with the immutable OS setup.
Workplace is such a confusing overloaded term.
They also have "Mijn Bureau" which I tried out and wrote about here [0] which is the MS Office alternative.
I take it this is the layer below that, an operating system?
But it all looks quite fragmented still from what I can see, especially now that it's also split across GitHub and CodeBerg as well as being split across different organizations, and trying to collaborate with other efforts by other European countries while still remaining distinct.
[0] https://techstackups.com/articles/is-it-feasible-to-self-hos...
[1] https://github.com/MinBZK/mijn-bureau-infra
[2] https://code.overheid.nl/MinBZK/DAWO/src/branch/main/compone...
Over 400 comments and it’s all flamewars and almost zero discussion of NixOS.
I think NixOS would be a great solution for this sort of environment. With something like impermanence enabled to make the systems immutable, you could push all configuration from a central server and ensure that there is no drift. You could even use read-only nix stores served over nfs. This would all be easier if your hardware is limited to a few select configurations, of course.
I hope someone is security scanning all those NixOS provider modules.
I wonder if Claude could go from NixOS spec to actual config without the Nixos provider. The provider becomes a natural language description and some links to the docs/source code and then a verifier is all you need.
> Sextant: a graphical interface for NixOS management as an alternative to Intune, by Bram Buijs [1]
Now that's a fairly interesting project and a way to actually bring technology like NixOS to the administrators in the way they expect. From my experience (sample size one, yes) there are more systems administrators that use web interfaces for management than DevOps IaC folks. This would be a good bridging solution if it is a successful project.
[1] - https://members.dawo.community/en/blog/blog-1/dawo-nixos-wor...
So, could this push more software to publish to the official Nixpkgs?
> What DAWO stands for
> DAWO brings public values and technology together. The community pursues five primary goals.
But fails to state what the letters in D.A.W.O. stand for
Nixpkgs should reduce package count. Waiting 2 days for unbound CVE patch merge is unbearable.
Good move for me, breaking free from licensing and saying no to being tied to a single tech giant.
Would be nice if they also push conversion of Nix to Rust, to finish what Lix [1] and Snix[2] started.
FINALLY. I have been seeing other projects based on eg Fedora and I just think: why. Declarative, open source, and reproducible is the future.
> alternative for Microsoft based on NixOS
That sentence seems to lack an important word. Microsoft is a company so I don't assume they built an alternative for it. Microsoft 365 is what used to be called Office 365 and governments love their Office suite so that would make sense and I could see the number accidentally getting dropped but NixOS is probably an OS so I guess this is about Microsoft Windows but then it just means they're replacing one OS with another and Windows-compatibility (nor Office suite compatibility for that matter) is hardly a novel idea.
The site doesn't seem to have much information about this headline at a glance. Does anyone have a link to the missing context?
M$ is like SAP. They think of all kind of moats to lock you in.
My opinion is that Microsoft’s software business practically goes to zero in an era when anybody can vibecode changes to open-source projects to fit their exact needs. All that will be left of MSFT is Azure.
My follow up opinion is that Satya agrees with me, and that is why he has so much anxiety around AI.
I didn't know you could assign '#' to an alias, so here we go:
$ alias '#'='dsh --profile headless'What took so long? Now start building a Arm computers native to Europe the Dutch have a long history in electronics ie.. Phillips which collapsed mainly from self inflicted wounds similar to some of the old-line American companies IBM, Xerox, Motorola, and Kodak...
As long as it has a built-in "VBScript like" lang, they'll be fine.
Are they going with Copilot for Dutchies or Kaaskoppen.NET?
I always enjoy stories about governments adopting open source and moving away from US big tech.
The link doesn't work for me.
These are nice little initiatives that don’t seem to last anywhere I see them. But good luck to the Dutch, maybe they are different.
Sorry, but this from the website is kind of hilarious:
"What DAWO stands for
DAWO brings public values and technology together. The community pursues five primary goals."
as a nixos maintainer I can only say «well, it could've been so much worse»
Site doesn't work for me.
www.dawo.community took too long to respond.
Guix has reproducibility. Instead of Nonguix, which bundles tons of propietary software, they can just add the Fearware repo, which just has the tainted non-free vanilla Linux kernel with closed blobs and firmware, just enough to function your machine well (especially with 3D support for Radeon cards and wireless devices) and nothing more.
Proactively making a move before getting Microshafted is smart play.
… and every government department starts writing up a letter asking for an exemption.
Which is always granted.
Unless its mandatory, it's just theater.
This is great, would love to understand why Nix over Lix or Guix.
Thanks Trump, Europe was never this united before.
Not by your choosing, but still.
alternative TO Microsoft
I’m really curious to see what the answer for MDM and Group Policy is on Linux. The SSO part is mostly figured out, but the reason places use Windows is often manageability.
Is there anyone doing MDM or policy enforcement on Linux other than Google Workspace + chromebooks?
This thread seems hopelessly tone deaf to non-technical people's experience with something like NixOS. I can manage it just fine myself given my background, but I see a very low, if non-existent chance that a standard office worker is going to be happy moving from Windows to NixOS. I mean, good for them for trying, I just think HN is full of Nix purists who tend to gloss over all the warts that has kept this ecosystem from growing much over the last few decades.
> Not one single product, but separate building blocks that work together. Every part can be inspected and replaced.
I know it's been said before, but why tf does Claude insist on writing in Reverse Polish notation?
With AI now, I am suprised we are not seeing many new os systems built. Have fable build a secure OS..... hm...
First off - decoupling from Trump-USA is a must. Canadians noticed this; european countries are still slow. The Netherlands is faster; the biggest slow-ass behemoth is Germany - no clue why. Germany is a big reason why the EU fails, but also the expansionistic agenda and what not (why do only poor countries want to join the EU; UK left, Switzerland and Norway are not going to join, so there are indeed INTERNAL problems, but let's go back to the dependency on the USA).
So while more alternatives here are the logical answer, as well as eliminate the greedy US corpoations, I am not sure NixOS as it is right now is ideal. On paper, NixOS should solve EVERYTHING. For instance, if a build status works for one user, the environment guarantee should mean it works for EVERYONE ELSE. Same with other problems and hardware, so in theory, NixOS should be perfect.
In practice, though, I found working with NixOS annoying, for many reasons. A static system that has issues, is not good. A static system that restricts me in problem solving, is not good. Plus, Nix is ugly to no ends - I have no idea why the NixOS team thought a new programming language is required. Why do I need to define static elements in Nix? Why not make that more free form? I already describe my whole system via yaml files, which in turn ruby uses to generate everything I need. Then there are smaller issues, like why do I need to use systemd on NixOS, why can I not used versioned AppDirs with a name scheme similar to GoboLinux (hashed program directories on NixOS are, of course, also versioned app-dirs, but I hate reading 7897389nughuewz789gewh2t93h923-hghwugeiw73, that simply tells me nothing. Why not have /Programs/Python/3.15.0/ ? It can't be simpler than that.)
Anyway - good for the Netherlands to push here, Denmark, Sweden, Finland will also push, even France, though slower. Now please everyone, help us convince the german government to stop being such a tool for Trump. Merz is a failure anyway, but the problems go far deeper than merely Trump, and with the AfD going to seize power, idiocy will again dominate in Germany. That's very bad. Germany is soooooooo slow here. Microsoft even managed to kill LiMux years ago. They have placed their economic hitmen in Germany, so the whole EU does not work anyway because Germany will keep on dragging every other country down. It is thus very understandable why real innovation comes from the smaller countries in the EU, as they are quicker to innovate. Unfortunately the big german behemoth will roll over them and again cripple many required things in the EU.
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Any move away from the abusive big tech that exists in USA is a good move in my book. Microsoft just recently made a new patent where they will monitor you via camera and microphone to block your program/game to show you ads, and per ads viewed, you then earn credit to be able to use your program/game. It is absolutely wild to me how a corporation can be so toxic and abusive to its users and still be in business.