Hackaday Podcast Ep 389: Spinning Lightfield Displays and Jenny Visits a Blast Furnace

This week in Hackaday news, no more Windows for the Dutch government.

I'm not pronouncing that in Dutch.

Do you wanna take it in Dutch?

[laughs] Ze Kiezen Nu Linux.

Very good.

Het spijt me, Nederlandse vrienden.

Uh, my Netherlands is, is heil slechs.

Sorry, Dutch friends, my Netherlands is a bit bad, but that should say, "They're now choosing Linux." [laughs]

Fantastic.

Yeah, so apparently the Dutch government has an initiative to build out a Linux distribution to replace its reliance on Microsoft Windows.

We've seen this happen in a bunch of places before.

I think it's really, I think it's extremely bold and adventurous, and I totally, totally, totally support them.

I mean, in principle, it should work just fine.

I think that the Dutch are learning heavily from previous things.

I believe Bavaria did it and kind of backpedaled.

Ha, ha.

Schleswig-Holstein is doing it in northern Germany, and are also learning from Bavaria.

My impression, obviously I know one or two members of the Netherlands hacker community, and my impression of them is some of them have done government work, and the Dutch government seems slightly more clued up than certain other governments I could mention.

Certainly more clued up than the British government.

Now, my Dutch friends will say, "You have no idea," at which point I will say, "Hold my beer." So I suspect they are trying to learn from what's gone before.

They are using a, an established distro with a strong, I mean, originates in the Netherlands, Nexos, but, um, with a strong knowledge base in the Netherlands.

My guess is they're hiring good people, and it wouldn't surprise me entirely to know that some of the people they're hiring I either know or are Hackaday readers.

So, hi, guys.

So they're probably going to try and give it a good job.

I don't know whether I hope they're learning the lesson of Munich's Linux initiative or not.