Digital Sovereignty

France's Own Linux Pilot Has Reached 70 Machines

France's DINUM ordered every ministry to plan a Windows-to-Linux exit for up to 2.5 million workstations by autumn 2026. Four months on, DINUM's own in-house pilot, the one meant to prove the model works, has reached 70 production-ready machines.

Digital SovereigntyBy Servola Tech Desk2026-08-144 min read

AI-assisted, edited by humans. | Editor-in-Chief: Leon Soliman | Editorial standards

France's Own Linux Pilot Has Reached 70 Machines

Key takeaways

On April 8, 2026, France's interministerial digital directorate DINUM announced it was migrating its own workstations from Windows to Linux and ordered every ministry and public operator to submit a roadmap by autumn 2026 for cutting non-European dependencies across workstations, collaboration tools, antivirus, AI platforms, and databases and network infrastructure, covering an estimated 2.5 million government devices in total.
DINUM chose to run the pilot on itself first, inside its own roughly 250-person agency, before asking any other ministry to move: trade press tracking the rollout puts the current production-ready footprint at 40 desktops running Sécurix and 30 running Bureautix, DINUM's two custom Linux builds, a combined 70 machines four months after the announcement.
Sécurix is a NixOS-based build hardened to the standards of ANSSI, France's national cybersecurity agency, aimed at administrator and security desks; Bureautix runs KDE Plasma with a Windows-like interface and is aimed at ordinary office staff, a deliberate split between two very different risk profiles rather than one universal image.
Sovereignty progress is moving at two different speeds inside the same plan: LaSuite, France's sovereign collaboration suite, already has roughly 600,000 civil servants on it, with the 80,000-strong National Health Insurance Fund (CNAM) joining in April 2026, while the harder engineering problem, replacing the desktop operating system itself, is still measured in double digits at the one agency built to specialize in exactly this.
Every other ministry has until autumn 2026, a few months away, to file its own dependency-reduction roadmap; DINUM's own pace, going from zero to 70 machines in four months with in-house Linux and NixOS engineers, is the realistic benchmark for ministries without that specialist depth, not the 2.5-million-device headline.

The Announcement Was National. The Pilot Is One Building

On April 8, 2026, DINUM, France's Direction interministérielle du numérique, announced it would migrate its own workstations from Windows to Linux and ordered every ministry, agency and affiliated public operator to produce a formal roadmap by autumn 2026 for reducing dependence on non-European suppliers. The directive is broad by design: it covers not just desktop operating systems but collaboration tools, antivirus software, artificial intelligence platforms, and the databases, virtualization and network equipment underneath them. Officials and multiple outlets covering the plan have cited a scope of up to 2.5 million government devices once every ministry's roadmap is executed.

DINUM chose not to ask any ministry to move first. It started with itself: an agency of roughly 250 people whose entire job is digital strategy for the French state. That choice matters for how to read the numbers that have emerged since.

Two Linux Builds, 70 Machines, Four Months In

Trade press tracking DINUM's internal rollout describes two custom Linux distributions built specifically for this transition. Sécurix is built on NixOS, the immutable, declarative configuration system, and is hardened to meet requirements set by ANSSI, France's national cybersecurity agency; it targets administrator and security-sensitive desks. Bureautix runs a KDE Plasma desktop deliberately styled to resemble Windows, aimed at ordinary office staff who need the least possible disruption. As of the reporting reviewed for this piece, the production-ready footprint stands at 40 Sécurix desktops and 30 Bureautix desktops inside DINUM's own building, a combined 70 machines.

Seventy machines, four months after the April announcement, inside the one government body in France built specifically to run digital transitions, with in-house Linux and NixOS engineers on staff. That is not a criticism of the engineering, splitting hardened admin desks from general office desks is the correct call, and building two separate Linux distributions from scratch rather than reusing one generic image is real, careful work. It is a data point about pace.

Two Speeds Inside One Sovereignty Plan

The OS migration is not the only sovereignty track running in parallel, and the contrast is informative. LaSuite, France's sovereign alternative to Microsoft 365-style collaboration tools, already counts roughly 600,000 civil servants as users, with the 80,000-employee National Health Insurance Fund (CNAM) onboarding in April 2026 alone, following earlier moves by the National Gendarmerie and the Directorate General for Public Finances. Swapping a web-based office suite for another web-based office suite is a comparatively contained engineering problem: change the login, migrate the documents, retrain the habits. Replacing the operating system underneath every desktop, the layer every other piece of software depends on, is a fundamentally harder problem, and the DINUM numbers show it.

Emma Ghariani, head of DINUM's open source division, has framed the effort in human rather than purely technical terms, stating that "the human aspect needs to be at the core" of the transition and that "users need to be accompanied" through it, a description that matches an approach measured in tens of machines rather than thousands.

What the Pace Tells Every Ministry With a Deadline

Every French ministry and public operator now has until autumn 2026, a matter of months from today, to file its own roadmap for cutting non-European digital dependencies. None of them will have DINUM's specialist Linux and NixOS engineers on staff, and few will have the luxury of testing on themselves first before rolling out to a wider workforce. If the agency built to prove this model works needed four months to reach 70 production-ready desktops, the realistic planning assumption for a ministry starting from a much thinner in-house skill base is not a sudden fleet-wide switch, but a roadmap document, followed by a multi-year pilot of its own.

For any EU government or public agency watching France as the test case for exiting Windows at scale, the transferable lesson is not the 2.5-million-device target, which describes an eventual destination, not a current state. It is the 70-machine number, which describes how long the actual engineering takes even inside the one agency built to specialize in it.

Frequently asked questions

What did France's DINUM actually announce in April 2026?

DINUM said it would migrate its own workstations from Windows to Linux and ordered every French ministry and public operator to submit, by autumn 2026, a roadmap for reducing dependence on non-European suppliers across operating systems, collaboration tools, antivirus software, AI platforms, and underlying databases, virtualization and network equipment. The eventual scope cited is up to 2.5 million government devices.

How far has DINUM's own Linux migration actually gotten?

Trade press tracking the internal pilot puts the current production-ready footprint at 40 desktops running Sécurix (a NixOS-based, ANSSI-hardened build for administrator desks) and 30 running Bureautix (a KDE Plasma build styled to resemble Windows for general office use), a combined 70 machines inside DINUM's roughly 250-person agency, four months after the initial announcement.

Is French government sovereignty progress slow overall?

Not uniformly. LaSuite, France's sovereign collaboration suite, already has around 600,000 civil servant users, including the 80,000-employee National Health Insurance Fund which joined in April 2026. Swapping collaboration software is a faster, more contained change than replacing the desktop operating system itself, which is the harder engineering problem and the one still measured in tens of machines.

Why does this matter for other EU governments?

Several EU member states are watching France as the proof case for exiting Windows at government scale. DINUM built the transition tools itself and tested on its own specialist staff first, and even so needed four months to reach 70 production-ready desktops. A ministry or agency elsewhere without that in-house Linux and NixOS engineering depth should plan for a roadmap and a multi-year pilot, not a fast fleet-wide switch.

The headline version of this story is 2.5 million French government devices leaving Windows for Linux. The verifiable version, four months into the plan, is 70 machines, inside the one agency in the country built specifically to run this transition, staffed with the specialist engineers every other ministry lacks. Both numbers are true. Only one of them describes what has actually happened so far, and it is the one every ministry now racing an autumn 2026 deadline should be planning against.

DINUMFranceLinuxdigital sovereigntySécurixBureautixLaSuitegovernment IT

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