Slashdot Mirror
French Police Save Millions Switching To Ubuntu
Ynot_82 writes "The French national police force, the Gendarmerie Nationale, has spoken about their migration away from the Windows platform to Linux. Estimated to have already saved the force 50 Million Euros, the migration is due to be completed on all 90,000 workstations by 2015. Of the move, Lt. Col. Guimard had this comment: '"Moving from Microsoft XP to Vista would not have brought us many advantages and Microsoft said it would require training of users. Moving from XP to Ubuntu, however, proved very easy. The two biggest differences are the icons and the games. Games are not our priority."'"
... but solitaire and minesweeper are great training for stakeouts ;-)
You don' frighten us, Microsoft pig-dogs!
Now if only state and federal agencies in the US would do some of the same. Sadly, so long as corporations are allowed to lobby, the pork train will probably continue.
Free is cheaper. Who knew?
Haiku for you!
Am I the only one who thought they switched to Geico?
So can we now call Linux the Allies coming to save France? I didn't want to 'call' the other side of that.....
"French Police Save Millions Switching To Ubuntu."
Jesus Christ! Windows was killing millions of people in France?!?!
What the summary doesn't mention, but is worth noting, is that they were already using open source programs where possible---Firefox, Thunderbird, OOo. Now I think their migration is wonderful, but I suspect it might have been somewhat more difficult if users were asked to adjust to new programs, as well.
Jesus Christ! Windows was killing millions of people in France?!?!
Why do you think they call it the 'Blue Screen of Death'?
My blog
Or maybe...,
"French Police Save Millions of people that were in the process of Switching to Ubuntu, from M$ henchmen out to kill them.
No, no, millions of _Francs_. About $1.98.
-- Consensus - 50% probability that the majority are wrong.
I didn't know so many switching to Ubuntu were in need of being saved.
I swear I read it like that as well... But then I saw the Ubuntu in the end of the phrase and tought: naaaah. No OS other then Leopard could be harassing to so many people, and leopards are not that dangerous if you let them be.
Waddya gonna do?
We're going to Disneyland!
What?
And why do you think the French sigh of exasperation is "sacre bleu"?
Why didn't the French police didn't switch to Mandriva since it is of French origin? I thought the French are fairly protectionist and prefer to use French-based companies over foreign ones. Seems like they could have given Mandriva a needed financial boost with lucrative support contracts.
Not just in France, the summary says Euros, so people all over Europe.
Reviewing just the first hour of video games.
Actually, it's a reference the Virgin Mary, for whom the color blue is sacred.
My blog
Comment removed based on user account deletion
The Gendarmerie Nationale already used free software daily such as open office. The migration would have been more complicated is they were using MS Office.
Great for Linux , awesome for Linux admins, even better for open source movement!
France completely switched to the Euro years back. I was there. The article even mentions it was Euros. But I should expect people on /. to RTFA.
http://blindscribblings.com - Tasty pop-culture in conceptual fashion.
Who will be the first moron to post one of those lame "whooosh" postings?
Almost every time I pass the parked policy car in Cambridge, I saw the policeman playing some game (e.g., solitair) on his PC. I guess games *are* the priority here, hence don't see any migration to Ubuntu any time soon.
They saved millions by migrating 90,000 desktops to OpenOffice, they have migrated only 5,000 desktops to Ubuntu, they plan for 15,000 by the end of 2009, and 90,000 by 2015. (IIRC).
The title of the article, and the title of the slashdot posting is inaccurate - the savings are real, but the reason was not Ubuntu - it was OpenOffice.
Ken
French Police Save Millions Switching To Ubuntu
French Police are going door to door these past days informing citizens of the long-term health
effects of Windows. The so far largest campaign for public health in the history of France is
expected to continue for another week and is aiming for a coverage of over 90% of the nation's
households. Jean Trudeaux, an elderly villager in the Bretagne recalls opening the door to officers
early in the afternoon and being asked if he owned a computer. Acknowledging the possession of
a computing device, Trudeaux learned of the immense cardiovascular risks associated with using
inferior desktop software that is sold to an unsuspecting public bundled with almost every sale
of computer hardware. At the end of the conversation with the officers, Trudeaux remarks:
"I don't use my computer that often but that's mainly because it's such a hassle to do anything
with it and then I get really really mad".
While the campaign has certainly not escaped the attention of Microsoft it has also been noted
by the medical profession world-wide. In an interview with Dr. Francois Boudoir, one of the foremost
advancers of the field of cardiology in France the connection was quickly made between reducing the
amount of time spent in distress to downright rage and the more than obvious benefits thus incurred
for cardio health. "This campaign will save millions of lives in the long run and we need to look at
this problem from more angles than just the cardiologist's perspective. This is also a quality of
life issue."
You?
If you mod me down, I *will* introduce you to my sister!
The two biggest differences are the icons and the games.
Man alive. If that's what this person thinks are the "biggest differences" ... I don't know, that just sounds really strange. This wasn't a very technical person, I take it, saying this. Even from a pure user's perspective, there's more that is different than "icons." Like, the entire GUI is different. I know, basic functionality is mostly the same, and you still click things to get them to open, but there's still a lot more different. Good things, too, I'm not trying to say the switch was a bad idea (like security and updates). But it slightly boggles my mind that someone thinks the "biggest difference between XP and Ubuntu are icons and games." It's almost an insult to Ubuntu! ;) Except I like XP, too, but whatever.
I am expecting responses saying that this was from the "user's" perspective... probably true; I still think there's more different than icons and games. Package management would be a major difference from XP, for one thing. More so than icons.
Sure, the system was free to the French government. But I wonder, with the economy the way it is,who's going to help all those programmers that donated their time and effort to write all that code? Are the French going to step up and make a donation to help out all those coders trying to make the mortgage payment?
No, no, millions of _Francs_. About $1.98.
Let me guess, you got your conversion done by Bill O'Reilly, whose call for a boycott of French products utterly destroyed* the French economy!
* (According to sources named Bill O'Reilly)
I'll bite.
Uhm.... whooosh?
*shoots post in the leg*
There ya go: one lame "whooosh" posting.
~AA
I contend that we are both atheists. I just believe in one fewer god than you do.
Actually, there are two separate national police forces in France.
The Gendarmerie Nationale is, (adapted from Wikipedia):
The Police Nationale is, (adapted from Wikipedia):
Atheism is a religion to the same extent that not collecting stamps is a hobby.
Looks like results from this story last year .
According to Guimard the move to open source has also helped to reduce maintenance costs.
Keeping GNU/Linux desktops up to date is much easier, he says.
"Previously, one of us would be travelling all year just to install a new version of some anti virus application on the desktops in the Gendarmerie's outposts on the islands in French Polynesia.
A similar operation now is finished within two weeks and does not require travelling.
Aaah... government work.
Not only do they find an exceptionally complicated way to solve a simple problem - they don't know when to keep their mouth shut when it goes in their favor.
Traveling around French Polynesian islands updating anti-virus software for living?
Why yes. It is MUCH better to sit in some windowless room instead.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
That kind of self-referential humor makes my head hurt :(
My blog. Good stuff (when I remember to update it). Read it.
no
they donated their code.
if they wanted to get paid for their code, they should have not donated their time.
I am surprised that they didn't go with Mandriva, seeing how I am pretty sure they are based in France.
Hah, now all this needs is Jean Reno and Robert de Niro chasing Bill Gates across Paris in a Peugeot 406...
...Seriously?
Unless the sole purpose of the computer is to access web based application, otherwise how could it be easy?
Or does it only refer to the user training part? Then I would believe easy is the correct word to describe (Form Windows, you have to train user to use windows LOB apps too)
So... much... sunlight...
*wimper*
"C'est la fenetre bleu de la mort!"
Will this switch on a large level impact the EU's suit against MS? If there are large numbers of computers, especially at the government level, that do not use MS at all, does this not take the force out of the meme, "It's a monopoly, kill it now," or is there more to this than is clear at present?
The French public sector (much bigger in proportion than the US one) did contribute significantly to opensource software (for example, the first linux thread library and Ocaml has both been written by a French public sector researcher, Xavier Leroy, and you'll find thousands of other cases, like Frama-C.).
Also, French government did issue several contracts (outside of Gendarmerie) to support opensource software, and did pay development of significant applications. My perception is that the French government is supportive to open-source.
At last, French private sector is increasingly contributing to opensource projects (for example Penjili at EADS or Airbus).
Unfortunately, several French government sites are using proprieray (non-standard) technologies (like Flash at Assemblée Nationale - the lower Parlement Chamber).
The French non-profit APRIL association is quite powerful at lobbying for free software.
I wish I could *whooosh* this whole thread.
My blog
No, no... they call it "Le Blue Screen of Death".
No, 1,000,000 FRF = 196,721.05 USD
But, the French use the Euro now, and 1,000,000 Euro = 1,290,965.50 USD
Serious? Seriousness is well above my pay grade.
1: Switch your applications to Open Source.
2: Switch your operating systems.
And ironically, the best way to switch people away from Windows is to port free and open source applications to the platform.
Deleted
My ICONS ?!
"I don't know something about machinery, I know everything about machinery."
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/convicting
Just check the dictionary for bunnies sakes,
You can be convicted in both criminal and civil courts.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
Oh, shut up and eat your 'freedom fries' already
Understanding the scope of the problem is the first step on the path to true panic.
This tired canard yet again...
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
Many companies and institutions are using web based applications.
For once MS was right about something: when they killed Netscape they were making sure the threat to the importance of the OS as the work environment of choice will go away.
I think they have failed, big moves like this (and many others that remain unknown to the general public because big companies don't publicize this kind of stuss in general terms) give full credence to the model where the web browser is king.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
At last when compared against the whole market.
Make no mistake, this is great news, but it is by no means the final blow against MS's dominance in the desktop.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
Well, the way the story is told is that during the reign of Louis XIV, people used to say sacre-dieu (god damn). Somehow, Louis XIV took umbrage to that, being that his status derived directly from god, blasphemy, etc. So he forbade people to say sacre-dieu. The people, ever inclined to poke fun at his royal highness, instead realized that the name of the king's dog, Bleu, was close enough to the current swear that not much change in habit was required.
So instead of sacre-dieu, people started to say sacre-bleu.
I know, the parent missed the joke, but I figure if we're on the topic of explaining something, we might as well be serious about it.
Those who can, do. Those who can't, sue.
The more surprising thing is that the French police were able to save anyone at all.
"If a nation expects to be ignorant and free in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be."
Gendarmerie Nationale is a branch of the French army, and are not the police. One major difference is that they are allowed to shoot to kill, while the police is not allowed to shoot even after they get shot at and are injured.
Actually, it's sacré bleu screen of death in France.
ayottesoftware.com
They've obviously never heard of Systems Management Server, or Remote Desktop.
Likely because their desktop support people stood at their door with a softball bat watching for people trying to tell them.
For a site about things like basic rights, Slashdot users sure do like to censor "dissent".
"Bleu" was a voluntary mistake. Preventing to say "Dieu" (god) at that time it was forbidden to curse his name, but people did it none the less, just hid themself a bit" This guy is quite famous in curses. Sacre is the ceremony for making someone holy or something like that.
Before you die you see the screen.
A fatal exception has occurred.
The games that come with Vista are quite a bit better than gnome-games:
Chess Titans
Freecell
Hearts
Inkball
Mahjong Titans
Minesweeper
Purble Place
Solitaire
Spider Solitaire
Most of these have been updated quite a bit, both with respect to looks, sounds and playability.
Although I miss pinball, I miss gorilla.bas even more :-)
But have they saved more souls than Jesus? That could really put Ubuntu over the top in the OS war.
Errr, francs ? You haven't been in Europe since 2000 have you. It's been euro some time now so probably they saved as much as the US deficit.
GP is only off by a factor of about 100,000. I'm going to assume he just put the decimal in the wrong place. I get $10 confused with $1,000,000 all the time.
I don't believe in time. It's a grand conspiracy designed to sell watches.
We're talking about French Police here.
"Stop, or I'll say Stop! Again."
according to http://www.pro-linux.de/news/2009/13904.html this reduced their IT-expenses by 70%
The MAFIAA is a bunch of mindless jerks who will be the first up against the wall when the revolution comes
The IBM PC was a hamster wheel, and MS-DOS smelled of Elderberries...
And what is the air velocity of a chair thrown by a CEO?
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
Moving from Microsoft XP to Vista would not have brought us many advantages and Microsoft said it would require training of users. Moving from XP to Ubuntu, however, proved very easy.
I think the curve of going from XP to any form of Linux would be steeper than going from XP to Vista. I mean, layout changes between both versions of Windows don't exactly require staff training.
On a side note, does anybody else cringe when someone refers to Windows XP as "Microsoft XP"?
/* No Comment */
First of all, I play LOTS of games on Linux thanks to Wine, including LAN games together with other people who are using Windows themselves.
Second: police could play games: simulation games in group, combat training, etc...
Wikipedia has other etymologies. I think it's more likely a derivative of sacredieu (holy god!), myself.
Those who advocate genocide deserve every protection afforded by law, and none afforded by common human decency.
Don't underestimate the French dislike for MS as a representative of "US imperialism".
Laugh if you want, but I've heard this sentiment expressed more than once.
The only one time in my life where I've seen hatred bring about some good change. God works in mysterious ways!
No, I just can't do it.
Does something that is free have to be made in the USA? That is, let's say you purchase support contracts for a number of installations of Red Hat. Now, the money spent is for support from Red Hat, as well as the use of maybe Red Hat trademarked/copyrighted artwork (icons, background images, etc), and maybe a few Red Hat proprietary utilities/programs.
The bulk of a Red Hat distro is Free Software. Much of the software may have been 'made' (that is, written) by developers in other nations, but since you aren't technically paying for that software, does it matter?
DoD might have to use USA sourced products if it is purchasing those products, but is it allowed to use free stuff from other countries?
"C'est la fenetre bleu de la mort!"
that would be
"C'est la fenetre bleue de la mort!"
No, no, millions of _Francs_. About $1.98.
No, it's euros now days, and it's more worth than dollars :)
Cheers
Would you mind sending me $10 via PayPal? I promise I'll send you $10 back. :) If there's a decimal slip in there, it won't matter, right? :)
Serious? Seriousness is well above my pay grade.
It seems you've taken stupid pills this morning. Read what TFA has to say. Microsoft themselves said that Vista would require training.
What about the virus? Doesn't The Gendarmerie Nationale want virus in is computers :(
Now if the French National Police could only talk to the French Air Force, and French Navy, maybe their planes could take off, and their subs could avoid hitting British subs! Long live Linux and Open Source Software! And they get their favorite games as well! And it all just works!!! Go Figure!
And it is rarely used. "Nom de Dieu" is more popular nowadays.
f*ck ze pol... oh i eeze so co'nfliqueteede!!
The point is that the government should be helping to foster the development of it's own economy by investing into it.
Because your economy is completely isolated for every other economy, and cutting off others will do no harm to yourself.
[/sarcasm]
Zut Alor!
... they saved millions of souls from the devil!
GNU Software isn't simply the free initial cost it is also the flexibility to change it to meet your needs, and in this case you might easily assume that meant security also.
If a government agency as large as they are could easily afford Microsoft and some access to MS Windows source code and chose GNU what were the other considerations?
Competition is always good and an entirely homogeneous OS culture slows innovation and runs the risk of a single point of failure.
15TW = 15,000 Nuclear Reactors. (Approx. one accident a month.)
if you slathering linux zealots actual RTFA source, this claim of 50 million euro saving is arrived at by the commissioner multiplying the cost of the licenses by how many they didn't have to purchase. A text book example of calculating yourself rich. he also claims NO training was needed... so no training of your system admins, or any staff? yeah right.
If you mod me down, I will become more powerful than you can imagine....
French Police Save Millions
At first I was so glad and thought they saved millions of people.
But I was wrong it was again about money...
Check out the Grizzly, the NEV, the Spyder, or the ZENN. Yes, they're all pretty strange. If we want normal cars, we buy Hondas.
Maybe they saved 50 million euros, but they could save 15% by switching to Geico.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
My GF says: "it wasn't that hard to learn the new and changed stuff [in Vista] - I was just not impressed with having a girly OS"
~/ One man's opinions is a lifetime of pain.
I'd like them to publish their roll out plan and how everything was configured. Could be a possible security risk, but the know how would be valuable for others thinking of the same thing.
"...The two biggest differences are the icons and the games. Games are not our priority. Icons are."
Large corporations tend to have a problem that nobody is: 1) responsible for; or 2) even aware of; what's going on in many parts of the organization. This is especially true for long-term responsibility and awareness.
The lower-level managers ideally have the best idea of what's going on in their particular groups, and should be aware of any issues their group is having communicating with other groups in the company. This is especially true of day-to-day annoyances like "we always have problems opening these goddamn files people email us", which tend not to be on the agenda of higher-level management very often.
But this would work best if lower-level managers stayed with the groups for a while; at many large corporations, lower-level management positions are just stepping stones to higher-level management positions, and often get rotated through every 2-3 years. They often never really do figure out what their group is doing in detail; they just want to make sure nothing problematic happens and the figures look good (according to whatever metric the particular company happens to use).
Even in the cases where they do, the same problem continues as you percolate up the chain. Does the middle-level manager overseeing, say, 10 of the small groups stick around long enough to develop a working relationship with the 10 lower-level manager, and a working model of what is going right or wrong in the groups? Often, no.
Basically, a huge percentage of everyone's time is spent just trying to figure out who is in charge of what this month, bringing them up to speed on very basic things, and so on. Forget "rationalize office software"; you're lucky if the meetings aren't about "wait a minute, who are you again? I didn't even know we had a group doing that!"
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
Except it's a screen, not a window, so it's L'ecran blue de la mort (and damn Slashdot for not supporting accents, I mean, seriously, we're in 2009, not 1979, they could at least support extended ASCII)
You just got troll'd!
Staggering.
Essentially 500 jobs worth of money shipped to bill gates every year.
And that is just france.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
because it isn't and is considered extremely ancient and laughable to say.
Just for the record, the Gendarmerie is not "the" French national Police force. It's a Police branch of the Military, deployed in the country-side or low population areas (mostly, not always). The national Police, which is called, tumtumtum La Police Nationale, is a separate force, usually deployed in larger cities.
well, five hundred years ago, maybe.
"bordel de merde" would be a little more contemporary..
last I checked the Euro was worth more than the US Dollar. Francs haven't been used for quite some time.
What does that mean? I've used Ubuntu for years and never had any problems with "icons", whatever they mean. Then again, I never had any problems with the games either...
Ah, the glorious strength of the US economy...
Whoo you've got balls, making jokes about other countries economies while being american.
Glass house, man.
lovin'it
This was more of a stimulus to the French economy than buying Microsoft products. The best a Frenchman can hope for from that is a small cut for sales. This way, there is a reasonable prospect of projects that local talent can work on - bugfixes, improvements, customization ; much of which would be difficult or impossible with software from Redmond because the relevant source is unavailable.
LOL. Looks like the title got a little lost in translation. Guess they're going to save money and not necessary lives. And maybe time a faire des jeux.
they didnt save ANYthing on that 5000 desktops they moved to ubuntu then ?
Read radical news here
If Linux is such a great alternative then why is the EU always suing Microsoft for being a monopoly? If you can get the same functionality free then I'd say MS doesn't have a monopoly. You can't use IE on Linux so opera and others have nothing to worry about. If Opera and the EU are so interested in combating Microsoft maybe they should provide a campaign to teach people about the alternatives to Windows instead of suing and saying there aren't any. Oh, that's right, they can't get a nice fat multi-billion pay out that way.
Estimated to have already saved the force 50 Million Euros, the migration is due to be completed on all 90,000 workstations by 2015.
The article says they've saved that 50m since 2004. I'd be interested to see what the savings are over the long term, given that people cite long-term costs ('Total Cost of Ownership' or TCO in MS-speak) as a factor in the whole Windows-Linux debate.
Don't get me wrong - I'd like to see Linux succeed, but have there been many really big-scale rollouts of this nature that show that the flexibility and choice that Linux/FOSS offers trumps the inflexible but less costly (in terms of training/config) Windows/proprietary alternatives?
One thinks immediately of the Munich Linux rollout, but this link suggests that it has been delayed (I haven't been following the story).
Why yes. It is MUCH better to sit in some windowless room instead.
Yes. Now the room has ubuntu.
No, no, that was before your economy collapsed.
Millions of francs is now bilions of us dollars.
At first I thought it was people that were saved (French Police Save Millions Switching To Ubuntu) I thought the word by was missing between Millions and Switching. Even so, Millions is not people, but Euros.
Leslie Satenstein Montreal Quebec Canada
Hm.
I'm sure many other companies and organisations could also save millions by switching to Linux.
What with this Global Credit Crunch that El Gordo has failed to save the world from, this could be the window that the Penguins need to storm the market.
I'm wondering if there could be a market for Linux consultants/trainers in the near future.
Who is going to help you that donated your time and effort to write your post? People do things they enjoy for free.
I've fiddled with Wesnoth before. Are you sure it's as much of a productivity-sucker as Freeciv?
I tried Freeciv after reading this Slashdot article about using strategy games to make you smarter, and have spent countless hours exercising the neural connections in my cranium. There's an incredible amount of planning involved, in order to coordinate all the units' movement and production so that they all converge simultaneously on a single enemy city (say) and crush it.
It got to be complex enough that I had to start recording my plans and thoughts in a text file with different sections for different parts of the map, with comments like "Let's attack here with my battleship! Oh, wait, the battleship needs to go elsewhere to prepare for an assault in 2 turns." Sometimes it would take half an hour or more to make a turn, and on more than one occasion I ended up writing comments like, "Hey, what's this transport doing here? I already said before that I planned to move it over there. Did I forget to move it? Oh, wait, this is still the same turn."
The planning makes a difference, though. When you step into the gutted enemy capital city and take it over, it looks like it just happened that one turn, but in order to make that happen, you'd time your science to finish researching mechanized infantry just before your attack, so that the enemy that was expecting cavalry is now suddenly dealing with mechanized armor. And just as your engineers finish building the railroad, suddenly the units that were hovering just outside detection now have the target within striking distance. Because you know that if you don't kill all of the enemy troop units camped at the capital in 1 single turn, the enemy will just replenish units from nearby cities and your burst of force is wasted.
Of course, I'm talking about playing against the computer AI which is infinitely patient in waiting for me to make a move. And my settings are not that difficult either. I can't wait to start playing at a more challenging level, sometime when I finish my current game around Christmas (have been playing for 3 months so far). I can't even begin to conceive playing a networked game against other human players.
So ... Wesnoth similar? Should I plan for lots of time like this if I start a game?
404555974007725459910684486621289147856453481154 in hex is "You sank my Battleship?"
[GPG key in journal]
Hey, you Linux users / advocates / fanbois / proponents / evangelists (these are interchangeable terms, to someone who is none of them), you should keep an eye on each other. This guy just UN-sold me on Linux by stating: "The two biggest differences are the icons and the games. Games are not our priority."
Well, melikes games... so Linux adoption, not an option.
Put simply, don't expect everyone to take up Linux unless you appeal to everyone, not just FOSS and small business users.
Tell me about it. My favourite (not!) time was when I couldn't use the CD drive: it wouldn't eject because it was "still in use by another program". Trying to figure out what program had failed to release the CD drive, I saw on the web that the "lsof" command could give me the info I wanted. But "lsof" was not installed by default, so I told the "urpmi" program to go install it. It said: "Please insert Mandrake CD #1 into CD drive."
That was Mandrake 9. Mandrake 10 was where I jumped over to Ubuntu, and I never installed anything named "Mandriva" on any of my computers.
I'm sure Mandriva is much improved now, and PCLinuxOS is winning awards, I hear. But it doesn't matter that much to me now.
404555974007725459910684486621289147856453481154 in hex is "You sank my Battleship?"
[GPG key in journal]
Presumably, the person making this decision didn't get to do the travelling themselves and was jealous.
It's not like they ever work anyway.
This is my sig.
Except for those employed by organizations to work on open-source software.