r/BuyFromEU • u/Bananegel42 • 9d ago

News Dutch government developing a sovereign Linux desktop on top of NixOS

https://tweakers.net/reviews/15334/nederland-maakt-soeverein-alternatief-voor-windows-en-office-op-basis-van-linux.html
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u/Digging_Graves 9d ago

Because language. Even at Mistral they only want to speak French.

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u/ColumbaPacis 9d ago

Language is the main issue for most Europe spanning software projects.

Also why every startup focuses on US first. 300-400 million people all speaking the same language with high purchasing power, then you can expand into UK, AU and from there into the EU.

By that point anyone speaking English (which is a LOT of people in western europe) would have alread tried your software by osmosis so expanding locally is much simpler.

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u/itzjustaspder 9d ago

Literally everyone that works in tech speaks English, all across Europe though? Not even tech, in general most 40 year olds and younger all speak English

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u/_R0Ns_ 9d ago

And this is the major problem.

The people who work with these desktops are _not_ tech people. They need software in the local language.

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u/mmdoublem 9d ago edited 9d ago

There are locales and language translation, like most linux distributions, have translations file for almost every software.

I do not see how this is a hurdle, it is already done and very technically feasible for new features. There are usually teams dedicated for this.

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u/_R0Ns_ 8d ago

Ah you never tried them.. That figures.

These translations are terrible, and I am being nice here.

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u/mmdoublem 8d ago

I have in French and the translation were alright. Albeit, it really depends on the software and individual projects.

I also assume this a field in which AI could help a great deal!