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French Police Migrating To Linux

Posted by timothy on from the actually-I'd-rather-the-police-use-windows dept.

kernel_dan writes "According to heise online, la Gendarmerie Nationale française (French police) will be changing all their computers to Linux. The numbers: 35,000 computers by the end of this month and 80,000 by the end of the summer will be running Linux."

44 comments

  1. RTFA by madaxe42 · · Score: 5, Informative

    It'd be great if the moderators bothered to read the article. They are NOT switching to Linux, they are switching to OPENOFFICE.

    1. Re:RTFA by madaxe42 · · Score: 2, Informative

      Ok... Replying to my own comment - how sad!

      According to the linked article (in French) they have been evaluating open source solutions, however want to wait and see how things pan out for Munich before moving to Linux altogether, as it is, there have been worries about compatibility with openoffice of XML documents which they apparently generate with MSOffice. Also, 35,000 machines in a month is one hell of a quick rollout.

    2. Re:RTFA by RyoSaeba · · Score: 1

      +5 insightful.

      --
      Tsuyoikoto ha taisetsu da ne, dakedo namida mo hitsuyousa (Strength is an important thing, but tears too are necessary)
    3. Re:RTFA by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Not only do I fail to see how the submitter of the article could have made the mistake, but what the fuck was the editor doing? Hey, Timothy! What are you paid for?

    4. Re:RTFA by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      +5 insightful?

      He clicked the link while keeping his eyes open. In big bold letters, the article says "French police to switch to OpenOffice".

    5. Re:RTFA by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      ...and yet somehow, that was utterly beyond both the person that submitted the article, and the editor that approved it. Do the editors even bother clicking through? If somebody submitted an article claiming that the Spanish government was switching to Linux, and linked to goatse, would the editors blindly approve that too?

    6. Re:RTFA by I_Love_Pocky! · · Score: 1

      Damn, I was really hoping they were switching, because I had this great French bashing joke:

      They aren't switching because of the performance/reliability/security/price of Linux, but rather because of the cute penguin.

      Oh well...

    7. Re:RTFA by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      1.) The joke is shit.

      2.) Do you mind if i joke about the average american now, like with their average iq, ignorance, etc?

    8. Re:RTFA by I_Love_Pocky! · · Score: 1

      1.) The joke is shit.

      Admittedly

      2.) Do you mind if i joke about the average american now, like with their average iq, ignorance, etc?

      I would suspect our IQs are more likely below average. Still, go right ahead.

    9. Re:RTFA by schmaltz · · Score: 0

      Huh. Still... I half expect to see a followup to this, 6 mos down the road... "Secret Negotiations Revealed! French Police Exchange Putain et Fromage for Office and XP"

      --
      Big Daddy, Johnny, Burp, Aunt Zelda, Scott, Slurp, Big Momma ... where's Siggy?
    10. Re:RTFA by rjkimble · · Score: 1

      The problem is that the linked article was written in English.

      --

      Guns don't kill people -- people kill people.
      But the guns seem to help a bit. (apologies to Eddie Izzard)
    11. Re:RTFA by yuri+benjamin · · Score: 1

      touché

      --
      You make the mistake of thinking you can educate the fundamental stupidity out of people. You can't.
  2. OpenOffice is not Linux by beck001 · · Score: 0, Redundant

    They are moving to OpenOFfice not the Linux OS. Can anyone clarify this further?

  3. Title WRONG! - to OpenOffice, not Linux by jamsho · · Score: 3, Informative


    "French police to switch to OpenOffice
    The French police are planning to switch from Microsoft Office to OpenOffice, the French industry news service Toolinux reports. By the end of January some 35,000 PCs and workstations are to be equipped with the open source office suite; by this summer the number is to reach 80,000. The French police expect to be able to cut costs amounting to more than two million euros by this move. (Robert W. Smith) /
    (jk/c't)"

    1. Re:Title WRONG! - to OpenOffice, not Linux by imr · · Score: 1, Insightful

      Mod up the parent poster, as he was right, and remove moderation rights to the one who moderated him as a troll, thx.

  4. Another inaccuracy by LeninZhiv · · Score: 4, Informative

    La gendarmerie nationale is not the same thing as la police nationale--the latter of whom I would call "the French police". The gendarmerie would be better described as "the French military police", since they are considered part of the armed forces whereas the police are civilian--although they do also take on roles analagous to those of US State troopers.

    1. Re:Another inaccuracy by LeninZhiv · · Score: 1

      The gendarmes also act as "State troopers" (and military police, Secret Service, etc.), that is. I just realised that the "they" in parent was a little ambiguous.

    2. Re:Another inaccuracy by imr · · Score: 2, Informative

      They are not "considered part of", they ARE military.

    3. Re:Another inaccuracy by WaZiX · · Score: 1

      Well Actually, the Gendarmerie Nationale is the French counter-part of the FBI and the State troopers combined. And no they are not the Military police, since france has their own MP corp. The fact that they are part of the military is really just a historical tradition.

  5. A little misconception? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    They are not switching to Linux, they are switching to OpenOffice, which just so happens to be popular among Linux users.

    1. Re:A little misconception? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      A switch in operating systems or not, this is still a more wise decision than staying with Microsoft Office.

  6. Not Linux, OpenOffice by Johnny+Mnemonic · · Score: 1


    Did the submitter not read the article himself? It clearly says that the French Police will be migrating to OpenOffice from MS Office; nothing is said of Linux.

    You realize there's a difference, right? And while this is an important change, it's not the same.

    --

    --
    $tar -xvf .sig.tar
  7. Still considering? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    http://www.comp-buyer.co.uk/buyer/news/59360/frenc h-government-considers-switch-to-linux.html

    According to this article, the French have only considered using Linux. Any updates on actually what they did?

    1. Re:Still considering? by imr · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Linux has been being used for quite some years in various part of the french administration, but always in a quite silent way.
      Lately the socialist administration of Paris made a study to follow Munich, but since the study actually showed that they first would have had to grow balls in order to have the courage to do it, they finally decided to continue to talk about it and do nothing. Behavior which can be accurately described as "the french way of life".
      So it seems that only one of the 20 areas of Paris is doing a real switch (since they apparently had the only available pair of balls among the socialists), while the others will slowly change their park of machine, do a little linux danse whenever possible (which they were already doing - see 1st paragraph) and continue to give a little tongue job to microsoft once in a while in order to not infuriate our powerfull and friendly ally. (Behavior which can be accurately described as "the british way of life").
      So this is how french life goes in french administrations: politics talks and do nothing, administration workers do the job and avoid at all cost to inform said politics about it.

    2. Re:Still considering? by DuncMan · · Score: 1

      I'm off-topic here, but how did this litany of offensive xenophobic caricatures get modded as "interesting"? It shouldn't even qualify as "funny".

      The moderation of these comments is unusually poor (see various "troll" and "redundant" moderations elsewhere). What's going on?

    3. Re:Still considering? by Scarblac · · Score: 2, Insightful

      From the amount of detail, I'm quite sure he's from Paris or at least from France himself. It's a bit cynical, but not necessarily xenophobic...

      (for the record: I'm Dutch)

      --
      I believe posters are recognized by their sig. So I made one.
    4. Re:Still considering? by imr · · Score: 1

      Actually.

      First, i'm french so there cant be anything xenophobic when I badmouth french people.

      Second, it is a national hobby to badmouth our administration. It is considered very "french" to do so; only foreigners wouldnt. [The problem is that it is working better every year, so it's getting more and more difficult; for instance try to read the comments where I say that some services have been switched to linux for years. The ministry of culture being the first, and long before linux was hype].

      Third, even if you don't consider the cultural part of badmouthing them, french administrations have dedicated themselves to the task to turn the most people possible insane. Badmouthing them is the only to actually survive them. [An american friend of mine tried to get his papers to work in France. He dropped the idea after one day. Every thing that I warned him about happened in 4 hours.]

      Fourth, yes I also badmouthed the british as having their tongue stuck in the usa's ass. But that's not xenophobia, that's common sense.

      Fifth, I fart in your general direction.

    5. Re:Still considering? by DuncMan · · Score: 1

      And I'm of French descent but consider myself English (admittedly, it was a couple of generations ago when the family left France for England and Canada).

      I don't much like England, or the rest of Britain/ United Kingdom, and tend to agree slightly with your comments. But I still consider them xenophobic and insulting. Even if someone is part of group X doesn't make it automatically OK for them to insult group X...

    6. Re:Still considering? by imr · · Score: 1

      It just exclude the word xenophobic, xeno being foreigner, you just can't be called a "foreigner hater" when you show hate of your own group, or as it is the case here, a small part of it.
      And there wasnt much hate either, apart from the comments on the french politicians which I sincerely despise. Ant this despise is shared by the ones I was talking about since they really don't rely on them or wait for them to have a task done.

  8. Time to replace Tux by AtariAmarok · · Score: 2, Funny

    Here's a new logo suggestion.

    --
    Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
    1. Re:Time to replace Tux by xutopia · · Score: 1
      oh my god you are really funny! I cannot believe I haven't thought about that joke hahaha!

      Moron.

    2. Re:Time to replace Tux by AtariAmarok · · Score: 1

      On a related subject, the French also said there were WMDs in Iraq. They were wrong, too. Ribbit!

      --
      Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
  9. Mislabelled article? by babbage · · Score: 1

    The article reads, in full:

    French police to switch to OpenOffice

    The French police are planning to switch from Microsoft Office to OpenOffice, the French industry news service Toolinux reports. By the end of January some 35,000 PCs and workstations are to be equipped with the open source office suite; by this summer the number is to reach 80,000. The French police expect to be able to cut costs amounting to more than two million euros by this move. (Robert W. Smith) / (jk/c't)

    While it's good to see that le gendarmerie are going to be switching over to everyone's favorite underdog office suite, I don't see where this is the same thing as them all moving to Linux as well. Did a longer version of the article throw in that detail, or was the submitter or the editor getting carried away here?

    --
    DO NOT LEAVE IT IS NOT REAL
  10. IN OTHER NEWS.... by madaxe42 · · Score: 2, Funny

    Microsoft move all internal support to linux - see their site.

    Oh no, I misread that, it say 'we hate linux'. Fuck it, let's post the article anyway.

  11. Tux frenzy by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    It's not just software they are changing, they got into a regular Tux frenzy and have even ordered new tux uniforms (with obligatory berets, of course) for their plainclothes female officers, they also have new firearms and even a new ASCII based special forces mascot. I would say that they've taken this a bit too far, but I'm afraid that some of them are Slashdot regulars and I'd like to not have my house raided by men with heavy duty weaponry wearing silly penguin suits.

  12. The gendarmerie is not the police ... by file-exists-p · · Score: 2, Informative

    It may seem confusing, but the "gendarmerie" is not the police. It is an army force dedicated to civil troubles and criminal investigation.

  13. And what exactly is the police by hummassa · · Score: 1

    if not an "army force dedicated to civil troubles and criminal investigation"?

    Down here we do have a lot of different police forces:

    Each city can have its "city guard"... they must only guard the City's property.

    Each state has up to three police forces: "military police" (they do rounds and prevent crime... they are called "military" because they have a military-like organization), "civil (or judiciary) police" (they investigate crimes) and "military fire corps" (they fight fires and do other disaster reliefs).

    The Union has: the Federal Police (to investigate federal crimes... mostly border issues, federal government corruption, and drugs), the Army Police, the Air Force Police and the Navy Police. Our Marine corps exists but is just a part of our Navy corps.

    --
    It's better to be the foot on the boot than the face on the pavement. ~~ tkx Kadin2048
    1. Re:And what exactly is the police by dunkelfalke · · Score: 1

      military police is not called "military" because it has military-like organisation. it is called "military" because it is part of armed forces and is policing members of armed forces.

      --
      Conservatism: The fear that somewhere, somehow, someone you think is your inferior is being treated as your equal.
    2. Re:And what exactly is the police by file-exists-p · · Score: 2, Informative

      The difference between french "police" and "gendarmerie" is clear: the former is part of the "ministere de l'interieur" (minister of internal affairs ?) and the second is part of the "ministere de la defense" (minister of defence).

      From a more practical perspective, there seem to be far more discipline and order in the gendarmerie than in the police.

    3. Re:And what exactly is the police by hummassa · · Score: 1

      Our military police is called military not because it is armed (civil police is armed too), not because it is an "armed force" (military polices are incorporated state-wide, not country-wide and they do not have armed force status, their heads do not make part of any Major State as the Army, Air Force and Navy do) but because of its command structure and the status of its men as military personell (some priviledges, low salaries, lots of things that are not criminalized to a civilian are to a military person.)

      --
      It's better to be the foot on the boot than the face on the pavement. ~~ tkx Kadin2048
    4. Re:And what exactly is the police by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      So what you are saying is that these Police concern themselves with making sure that all military retreats and surrenders happen in grand tradition we come expect from the French?

  14. I guess it was funny by AtariAmarok · · Score: 1
    "oh my god you are really funny!"

    My friend Mr +1 Funny Modpoint seems to concur with you.

    --
    Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
  15. Ballmer or Gates on the way by SgtChaireBourne · · Score: 1
    OpenOffice.org is a big step and allows the Frensh police to decide what platform they will use. If they stay with MSO, then they are stuck on MS-Windows. If they start producing documents in the DRM'd MSO 2003 format, then migration to *any* competing product will be virtually impossible.

    Just talk of dropping MSO will get Ballmer or Gates on the way soon. Right now Gates is running around the yard in Brazil trying to get President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silvan back on the leash.

    --
    Beta is broken and the link to classic doesn't work. Stop wasting our time or there won't be anybody left here.
  16. But will Open Office be simple enough by borkus · · Score: 1
    for Inspector Clouseau?
    "Now then, what do we know? One, that Professor Fassbinder and his daughter have been kidnapped. Two, that someone has kidnapped them. Three, that my hand is on fire. "
    "You fool! You have broken my pointing stick! Now I have nothing to point with! "