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."

Comments

Quick French Lesson For Posters

[Anonymous Coward]

chair == chaise

throw == jet

monkey == singe

boy == garçon

Re:Quick French Lesson For Posters

[Silver Sloth]

It isn't as if the French have ever made a major correct decision... Yeah, their decision to support those damn rebels in the colonies and help them overthrow their rightful British rulers, that was a real bad one! And that stupid statue they gave them, how inappropriate!

In more recent times, their decsion to stay out of a disasterous war based on dubious evidence is looking better and better as time goes by.

Re:Quick French Lesson For Posters

[dlasley]

I'll grant that as a rebuttal to the parent post, but the unfortunate truth in the U.S. is that a dramatic lack of historical scholarship and a distinct inability to grasp the nuances of the presence means that thousands of "decision-makers" around the country will look at this headline and say "well, if France is doing it, it must be anti-American since they support back invading Iraq". The fact that is was probably a smart call doesn't matter to people who's only worries are the three-month and six-month profit forecasts. Those decision-makers - many of whom have no excuse other than their own inadequacies - will see this as (optimistic) a ratification of Americanization and choose RedHat or (pessimistic) view it as yet another transgression by the neo-socialist liberals against the goodness of capitalism and choose Microsoft.

So far, Kubuntu (I like KDE, what can I say?) has been excellent as both a laptop and workstation platform, and I do have Ubuntu on a handful of servers. My personal choice would be Ubuntu/Kubuntu over just about anything else, and I applaud the decision and hope (uber-optimistically) that it's the beginning of this so-called tipping point for Linux on the desktop.

Re:Quick French Lesson For Posters

[oliderid]

"France were quite content to look the other way on Saddam Hussein's atrocities because they had a nice trade relationship with him. They were widely criticized for this "cheese eating surrender monkey" approach."

1. Correction: they were widely criticized in the US.
Americans were convinced that it was part of the war against terrorism while the Frenchmen were not. Do you remember these so called Al Qaeda bases in Iraq? Or these Iraqi chemical stocks, the mobile lab? The fake British report? I do. de Villepin speech was acclaimed by most foreign countries. I stil remember it.
2. The US supported Saddam when he invaded Iran (just like France, Germany and countless of other western countries).
3. Nobody reacted when he gazed Kurds in the 80's.
4. Nobody tried to support the Shia uprising after the first Gulf war.

Of course the real US agenda was different (securing oil production, stabilization of the region, etc.) and the American agenda was in opposition with some French interests (French oil companies had secured extremely lucrative deal in Iraq prior to the invasion).

The US had a "grand vision" of the middle east (getting rid of dictators, bringing democracy and western values, securing this major oil source). the French government didn't share it and they wanted to protect their own interests. Both failed miserably.

OT: Have anyone tried Wubi?

[atamyrat]

I came across with Wubi - new Ubuntu installer for Windows. You don't have to burn CD nor create new partition.
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.

Re:I don't get why they would use Ubuntu...

[MartinG]

enterprise-ish

Would you care to define enterprise-ish for us non-bullshit speaking types?

Re:Perfect matchup

[dreamchaser]

While it's not my favorite distro, there are plenty of support options available for Ubuntu. Of course I'm pretty sure you knew that and just felt like tossing out a troll. The alternative is you're just daft.

Re:I don't get why they would use Ubuntu...

[Knuckles]

The thing is that Ubuntu is built around the latest and greatest bleeding edge bits and pieces, it's quite common for stable packages to be replaced with beta versions and for things to break horribly without warning. Maybe Ubuntu could start releasing a toned down distribution for use in environments where stability and predictable behaviour is more important.

You have no clue how the Ubuntu releases work, do you? What you proposing exists since 06/2006, it is called Ubuntu 6.06 LTS

Re:I don't get why they would use Ubuntu...

[Zonk (troll)]

Who is modding down all critique of Ubuntu? I use Ubuntu every day, and it is really a immature* piece of shit. Can you elaborate? Ubuntu provides a Usable desktop out of the box. Fedora and RHEL need a good amount of tweaking to get decent. Ie, the default Gnome config is rather bad and it's KDE needs to be replaced to work adequately.

IMHO, the main area Ubuntu lacks is in configuration. It's a step backwards in that regard as it does require editing config files if the default doesn't cut it. Ie, if you need to change something with X you have to modify /etc/X11/xorg.conf wile Fedora/RHEL have system-config-display. This really needs to be addressed.