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French Police Migrating To Linux
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."
It'd be great if the moderators bothered to read the article. They are NOT switching to Linux, they are switching to OPENOFFICE.
"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)"
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.
Here's a new logo suggestion.
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
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.
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.
It may seem confusing, but the "gendarmerie" is not the police. It is an army force dedicated to civil troubles and criminal investigation.
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.
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.