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Comment by charcircuit | Hacker News Reader

Desktop Linux's security and antimalware solutions are not ready for government usage. This is a cyber attack waiting to happen if they go through with this. They should at least switch to ChromeOS if they want to use Linux.

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Some might be tempted to brush aside that Server Linux threat model is very different from Desktop Linux (to snarkily reply "we'll it's powering a vast majority of GDP via all of AWS, Azure, etc.").

However comparing apples to apples, what makes you say this isn't ready for government usage, when it's ready for trillion dollar big tech companies' majority of their workforce? (Aside from Microsoft, Apple obviously). Large employers like IBM etc also must be using red hat or some other distro

Google for example uses a fork of Ubuntu. When someone decided to compromise Google employees machines via a fake npm package they were able to do so successfully. When they reported this to Google they said it was okay for employee machines to be compromised and that it was part of Google's threat model. While this may be true for large companies I don't think the French government is ready to handle such a security model.

> that it was part of Google's threat model

That's just PR to avoid stocks going down.

You mean switch Windows by Microsoft for ChromeOS by Google? Weird suggestion.

As for "security" and "antimalware" solutions being ready, I don't think there is much difference between the OSs there. Windows is no candyland either.

As always, they will need competent people in the right places to pull this through. Tech is just an enabler.

Yes I do mean that. Google is one of the only companies in the Linux space who takes security seriously.

And switching to Google achieves the aim of getting away from American tech giants?

I don't think it's a wise thing to do at this point in time. There is more risk by not depending on America.

If that really is the case, why not stay on Windows?

We're talking about a country that is daily threatening to invade. You'd feel it was clever to run your entire infrastructure on an Iranian OS? It's the same for EU since USA is threatening to invade.

There is no security when the US government can legally compel Google to do whatever they want. This is why foreign governments want to move away from big tech.

Turns out the imperial boomerang impacts many things, especially when previous orders are easily destroyed (because only one country was benefiting).

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