Some European Moves Towards Linux

Readers VE3OGG and FFFFHALTFFFF write in with three pieces of a global picture that is emerging of governments and corporations moving away from Microsoft and towards open source. First, France: the French automaker Peugot Citroen has announced that over the next several years they will be integrating up to 20,000 Novell SUSE desktops as well as 2,500 SUSE servers into their facilities. (Let's hope that, in Novell, Peugeot Citroen hasn't bought a lemon.) Next, Sweden: the Swedish Armed Forces has made a decision to migrate its Windows NT servers to Red Hat Enterprise Linux. Finally, Russia. VE3OGG writes: "It would seem that after the recent Russian piracy debacle that could see a school headmaster jailed in a Siberian work camp for purchasing pirated copies of Windows for his school, the Ministry of Education in Russia has decided that the school boards will no longer be purchasing any commercial software."

Comments

Holy grammar batman!

[letsgolightning]

When do we get to meet this mystery European?

Re:Holy grammar batman!

[springbox]

Yeah, I know! My friend was talking to me and said "hey, did you read Slashdot recently? Some European is using Linux! Surely this individual will turn the tide on Microsoft's market saturation!"

Now that "some European" is using Linux maybe "some other European" will make the switch as well!

"Some European"?

[skoda]

Which European? He must be pretty important to get a Slashdot frontpage notice.

Re:They need the savings

[Ed Avis]

Yes - and what's more, in 1955 the Amiga had multitasking, a 3d accelerated desktop, and full-motion videoconferencing, but ignorant LEO users dismissed these features as making the Amiga a mere 'toy' and not suitable for real business use.

"Nobody has gone to prison for selecting Linux"

[Per Abrahamsen]

Should work even better than the old successful IBM FUD piece "Nobody has been fired for buying IBM". And like good FUD pieces, it has some truth in it.

Re:Interesting

[tb3]

21 minutes between the story post and the first use of the obvious "Star Wars" quote. I think you just set a new record!

Re:Interesting

[PitaBred]

For holding out? I'm proud of him, too :)

Airborne!

[kidcharles]

Teachers are not that happy about it. Apparently not many of them know much about Linux and there are no specialists around to teach them.

Sounds like we need to paradrop some bearded Linux hackers into the Perm region for an emergency education operation. Some of the heavier ones may need two parachutes.