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French Parliament Chooses Ubuntu
atamyrat reminds us that last November it was announced that the French Parliament had decided to switch to Linux. At that time the distro had not been determined. It will be Ubuntu: "[T]wo companies, Linagora and Unilog, have been selected to provide the members of the Parliament as well as their assistants new computers containing free software. This will amount to 1,154 new computers running Ubuntu prior to the start of the next session which occurs in June 2007."
It strikes me as a good distro for individuals new to Linux, but I personally would never deploy Ubuntu in a business or government setting. I would go for something a little more enterprise-ish, like Fedora, (Open)SUSE, or Debian.
--Thomas J. Owens
chair == chaise
throw == jet
monkey == singe
boy == garçon
I'd have expected a French governmental institute to have chosen a good French product like Mandriva over an British on like Ubuntu (Conanical Ltd. is registered in the Isle of Man). Those French do so love their protectionism at the expense of flexibility and a fair market, after all.
the French would get something right?!?
The original generic sig.
Frubuntu anyone? :-)
Socialist theory, check.
Blowhards (ESR, Perens, Chirac) to pontificate and piss on the grave of corporations, check.
Unappealing brown theme, check.
Sodomy, check.
After all, why pay good money for a real distro, with a company behind it to provide support, just because its not a French one?
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
Two years from now the parliament will be switching back. This is going to cost them thousands in retraining fees, and cause headaches when their users say, "but I used to be able to do this in windows," and "why do you mean we can't run vendor xyz's software on our computers?"
This should be interesting, but I ultimately think it will just set them back a couple of years.
just another gov't trying to get favorable pricing from Microsoft.
They may have passed a resolution "choosing Ubuntu", but I'll bet that most of the representatives probably think Ubuntu is a particular type of French grape grown only in the Camargue and processed by Monks of the Suse sect in Aix-en-Provence.
From FAQ: How does Wubi work?
Wubi adds an entry to the Windows boot menu which allows you to run Linux. Ubuntu is installed within a file in the windows file system (c:\wubi\harddisks\ubuntu.hd), this file is seen by Linux as a real hard disk.
How do I install Ubuntu?
Run wubi, answer the few questions, reboot and select "Ubuntu" from the boot menu, go grab a coffee and when you are back Ubuntu will be ready for you.
How do I uninstall it?
You uninstall it as any other applications. In windows go to the control panel and select "Add or Remove Programs", then select Wubi and uninstall it. You can also use the uninstaller that you find in C:\wubi\uninstaller.exe.
...that the French had an aversion to things normal people like! Apparently they like stuff besides snails, frog's legs, and French military defeats!
Grammar Nazi
Of our frog-eating, garlic-flavoured open-sourced political masters ...?
I seem to recall, just a few years ago, Microsoft was declared in court as being a monopolist.
Now as I understand it, that's not illegal as such. It is, however, to use a monopoly to manipulate other markets.
So, ever so quietly, Microsoft is supporting Linux in general up to the point where Microsoft can no longer be seen as a monopoly.
Then it can go back to its previous predatory practices, maniulate other markets merrily, and nobody can say a word.
Have I got that right?
(I mean, it wouldn't do to see this as good news, surely?)
"Cats like plain crisps"
A new desktop theme is not an operating systems revolution.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
What will you tell your children when they ask you why using an operating system that was free and therefore obviously developed by terrorists was more fun than using Windows?
What will your children think when they hear that terrorism had won because you installed VMware to make dual boot less annoying?
The future of the world is in your hands!
Because the first year of real bureaucratic workers using only Linux will be hell.
why not ORACLE enterprise linux??? you would imagine support would matter - well, oracle should be able to give support.
Or is it just another reason for people to boil out into the streets and burn something?
Ubuntu is going to turn the French into faggots.
volume of NetBSD hal7. Even Emacs OR MISLEAD THE
I'm still trying to put my stand into words. I'm for software patents, for open-source, and not against closed-source.
--Thomas J. Owens
I'm french and for once proud to be :-p
....
Obviously that the only good decision that the french gouvernement took for a long while
Great, now that I have finally begun embrace Linux in general, Ubuntu specifically, for general, all around use at home, the friggan frog parliment decides *IT* needs to use it. I am now going to have to ditch my efforts to get off of the Microshaft addition, all because of the damn French. Oh wait...maybe they will give up on their adoption of Ubuntu, they give up on everthing else easy enough.
La mort vers la France!!!
"...a civilian some of the time, a soldier part of the time and a patriot all of the time." -Brig. Gen. James Drain
Why do they have to purchase new machines? I bet Ubuntu will run just fine on their current equipment.
just watch out for chairs though... ;)
Donald 'Duck' Dunn: We had a band powerful enough to turn goat piss into gasoline.
It seems that the deal clincher was that Linagora and Unilog promised to integrate a surrender button so essential to French diplomacy in each computer provided.
The French parliament is obviously not going to submit patches. The companies they have hired to provide local support might submit patches that makes their support job easier, but those will just come in through the normal patch stream, and not be obviously linked to the parliament.
You might now that this kind of decision is taken internally to the French Parliament. They have their own independent budget (that they vote for themselves) and governement has no right whatsoever to interfere with this.
It's an implementation the the principle of separation of powers
(Voltaire or Montesquieu ?).So you can't even give credit to govt for this decision.
Will be bashing all Ubuntu linux users next as unAmerican. .... well at least the ones I know about
http://saveie6.com/
Send X% of I.T. budget to the U.S., and spend the remaining 100-X% paying local people for support OR Spend 100% of budget paying local service people/companies (This is government remember). I assume they probably chose Ubuntu because it isn't also tied to support contracts with Redhad and Novell (ie. They can support it locally if they wish). I'm curious, what would be the downsides of chosing Ubuntu for this purpose?
"Knowledge is the only instrument of production that is not subject to diminishing returns" -Journal of Political Econom
Did you know that the Isle of Mann is NOT part of the UK or the EU? In other words not very "British" at all ;)
...to lose the OS war!
Or go for the local national stuff, like Mandriva / Mandrake ?
As opposed to the south-african origins of ubuntu, german origins of SuSE and american origins of RedHat
(Although I personally prefere SuSE's YaST to Mandriva's DrakConf. But public backing could boost sales of the distro and help finance more work on the config tools)
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
Actually the clincher was removing all of the false evidence of WMDs that could lead the US to attack them. After all the French can expect the Americans to attack almost anything that moves nowadays. I guess they really regret supporting those nasty rebels in the British Colonies, it has certainly not served the world well. God Save the Queen!
Of course, what did you expect from a law student? :D And as a Norwegian the Isle of Mann has a special place in our history. It was after all a Norwegian kingdom. Did you know Jeremy Clarkson of Top Gear fame lives there?
Okay, this is entertaining. Are you accusing the French of being socialists? France is ruled by the UMP a Conservative political party member of the International Democrat Union just like the US Republican Party!
P.S. You are more likely to find sodomy in the halls of the U.S. Congress - where pages really know what pain in the ass means!
They say it "Eu-bun-teu".
the major advances in civilization are processes which all but wreck the societies in which they occur - A.N. White
(Voltaire or Montesquieu ?). Montesquieu.
See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Separation_Of_Powers or as we're talking about France: http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/S%C3%A9paration_des_
I see you've got a French url in your profile so you should know that or don't they teach that stuff in High School over there any more
Absurd.
BTW, anyone notice that the only way that Linux can compete is thru government mandate?
I am computer geek remember?. French or not I am not supposed to know anything before Jan 1, 1970.
:)
This is great for Ubuntu! But, for atleast my brother and I, we use ubuntu, and find that it isn't easy to save on bandwidth when upgrading: Ie, both computers 'have' to download their own package files and install them. I'm sure you can save bandwidth somehow by looking at what is being upgraded, and if it is common between the two systems then downloading the latest version and sharing it between the two over our localhosts, but then again, that's hdd space which is limited over a few cents worth of bandwidth :P
signature is pants
Now Unbuntu has become un-cool.
news here and here.