Dutch governments builds alternative for Microsoft based on NixOS

solarkraft

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.

vanschelven

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: https://code.overheid.nl/MinBZK/DAWO-NixOS

ricardobeat

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-...

parlortricks

This is great, would love to understand why Nix over Lix or Guix.

KomoD

Site doesn't work for me. www.dawo.community took too long to respond.

bialyalibaba

Nixpkgs should reduce package count. Waiting 2 days for unbound CVE patch merge is unbearable.

einpoklum

What is it that they need/add above NixOS defaults?

askonomm

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.

ritzaco

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...

hashar

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... )

Yizahi

The same Dutch who voted on the eAIDS... ahem, sorry, eIDAS and ADDW car spyware? I'm not particularly excited about our new benevolent OS.

sneak

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?

fbn79

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.

pards

> 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

frzen

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.

anthk

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.

koe123

FINALLY. I have been seeing other projects based on eg Fedora and I just think: why. Declarative, open source, and reproducible is the future.

mg794613

Thanks Trump, Europe was never this united before. Not by your choosing, but still.

carlsborg

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.

armcat

The link doesn't work for me.