When French MPs and their assistants return from their summer break this June, they will conduct parliamentary business on PCs running Ubuntu. From the next session of parliament, 1,154 desks will feature the Linux-based PCs.
As well as using the Ubuntu distro, the MPs and their assistants will also use Firefox, OpenOffice and Mozilla’s messaging client Thunderbird, and other tailored applications.
The French lower house is already using open source software elsewhere in its IT systems, including Apache web server and the Mambo content management system. The MPs’ move to open source is the first concerning a switch of operating system—previous initiatives have been more focused on servers (such as the Agriculture Ministry), OpenOffice (such as the gendarmerie) or Firefox (such as the French tax office).
Buried in the story is another tidbit. They’ve budgeted about $100K for this changeover. I doubt if our Congress could change toilet paper vendors for that little.
Slowly but surely, M$ is losing its grip on the world and they have only themselves to blame. Years of being a monopoly have made them fat and lazy. Charging whatever they want while giving very little innovation in return. It may take another decade, but eventually consumers will have real choice on what OS they run on their computer. I look forward to that day.
“Buried in the story is another tidbit. They’ve budgeted about $100K for this changeover. I doubt if our Congress could change toilet paper vendors for that little.”
They probably can’t either. Do you think French bureaucrats are really that much more efficient than those in the US?
They are probably just worse at math.
“Nous tournerons notres culs vers l’infame Emperor du Mal”
http://tinyurl.com/yphe7o
Knoppix is better
# 3 Love to hate French? Believe it or not, some governments/bureaucrats are more efficient than the one in the US. Just like some businesses in other countries are more competitive and better managed, some public services operate better the US private industry and on and on and on.
If I was still an office manager, I’d switch all the regular staff over to some flavor of Linux. I can’t think of any reason NOT to — and I can think of couple hundred rea$on$ per workstation to make the switch.
At the VERY LEAST, I’d switch everybody over to OpenOffice. I deleted MS Office completely from all my computers over a year ago and haven’t missed it at all.
#6. I work around 6,000 PCs running a site licensed edition of Xp and quite frankly I shudder at the prospect of integrating Vista and Office 2007 into the ‘frastructure. From Xp to Ubuntu would be so much easier to do, and as you rightly pointed out, inexpensive.
#7 If XP and Office 2003 are working, why change at all? In my company (in the Fortune 500) we will not upgrade in the foreseeable future. New PCs with Vista will be ‘downgraded’ to XP. We’ll wait for the ‘next’ version – cheaper and muuuuuch better, we hope. If not, we may consider a Linux distro sometime.
If Ubuntu could run “I can’t live without this” software like Creative Suite, and cleaned up all those driver issues, I’d seriously consider switching.
#3 – Mooning the evil emperor? What a great sentence!
It’s the old chicken-and-egg problem. If whole governments move to Linux, the drivers will follow. I have to get rid of a Logitech mouse I bought, because they didn’t bother to provide a *nix driver for it. But as the user base grows, companies like Logitech will become willing to write drivers for their devices (or continue to lose business from people like me). Lack of ability to handle DRM’d files and media will be a much bigger obstacle to widespread adoption, seems to me. Apple’s making it automatic in the hardware, M$ is at least making it possible while trying to lock in the market, and Linux…. anybody aware of any DRM licensing for a Linux distribution? I’m not sure how that would work on an open-source platform.
I love Ubuntu, but the OS war was lost long ago. It just evokes pity when geeks clamour for “Yaaaayyy dump Microsoft.”
Each new version of Windows brings the proclamation of “Well NOW everyone will move to Linux.” This is not going to happen. Neither is an Apple revolution. The public is hooked on Windows and so is the government.
Remember July through September 2001? CodeRed, CodeRed II, and Nimda hapened then. Surely that would be enough to sour everyone. These events made the newspapers and the network news for days on end. All the negativity changed nothing.
2001 was the summer of Windows worms. In November and December 2001 Windows XP sold over 17 million copies.
#11, The issue is that Linux has always taken more knowledge to run then Windows. Yes Windows is a good OS and MS apps are pretty good too. But people want more then a bloated, expensive OS and related software.
Linux is getting better with every distribution. With the French Government’s move, it just means that many more NOT using MS. It is a slow progression, but pretty soon Open Source will overtake MicroSoft. Every Linux user is another non-MS user.
If cheese eating surrender monkeys can operate it, it must be getting pretty good.