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20 Linux events scheduled in France, March 19-21.
Stefane Fermigier
writes "Already 20 Linux events (install parties, exhibitions,
conferences) have been scheduled all over France for the
Fete de
l'Internet (march 19 to 21). Check out
this partial list.
Why limit ourselves to France? The
Internet Fiesta opens the opportunity of organising
similar events all over the world. "
The French are loveable culturally xenophobic. I am sure that many cultural elites in France despise seeing American technology like Windows in their schools.
So obviously a French branded, Frenchified Linux distribution is the ultimate solution to cast off the invading American influence.
Also, because France has yet to be computerized to the extent of other Western nations they don't have as much of a MS, Novell, etc yolk to throw off.
What distro is most popular in France? I am guessing SuSe or Mandrake?
I think every "first world" country suffers from xenophobism. By far, the most xenophobic culture is the American one. Try to convince one american that a good non-US product is better then a crappy US product...
Mandrake is just RedHat with KDE and some other enhancements. And MandrakeSoft is based in Paris.
This post is either a joke, or foolish. Linux's growing success in France is based on the same technical reasons as elsewhere : it is more stable, faster and cheaper than Windows.
The only difference between Europe and the US in that respect is the price that Ms charges for Windows : three times as much as in the US.
I work at a school where all students are required to be fluent in English as a second language. We have asked MS for US licences in order to install English versions of windows and Office on all our machines (500), in order to save the extra cost of French licences. We were told that we would still be charged 3 times the US price, because we needed French licences, as we are in France.
There is nothing culturally xenophobic about trying to avoid that kind of scam.
As for 'Frenchified', or rather internationalized versions of linux, they are in high demand, as in other European countries. Being able to type and print accented letters and other diacritical signs has little to do with xenophobia. It simply allows you to write in your native language.
My guess is that the most common distro in France is Red Hat, which in France comes with a French manual and support for the French keyboard. I personally use Suse which is not French, as you seem to imply, but German.
BTW stephane, I love your searcher, fermivista, it's so cool, I haven't gone to the library in a lonnnnnnng while
hey just a thought! has Linux been ported to the minitel yet? non? c'est bien ce ke je pensais
> Still, if you have cable I hear you can get unlimited local calls by using your cable op as a telco.
That's changing. Some Cable companies have been absorbed by other companies (Cable & wireless seem to spring to mind). Now they're going back to charging for local calls.
"Zed" French? I don't get it...
Minitels are about the dumbest terminals in the world. I'm not saying they're stupid, the Minitel system kicked ass, it was the first ThinClients that really worked. But damn, Minitel Beowulf? I dont think the minitels have ANY processing power at all inside them. There was a big market for "Memory" devices for the Minitel, allowing you to save the "pages" for later "playback". Most of them relied on the built-in serial port, then someone came up with the simple idea to record the phone signals that made up the pages. I remember frying a tape recorder trying to do that.
Posted by Le_Jax:
:-(
> Still, if you have cable I hear you can get unlimited local calls by
> using your cable op as a telco.
It's a little different.
1) the routers seens not very well configured
2) the unlimited word is not really unlimited. In fact we are 125 Mb of upload by month. The download are unlimited. If you want make some games or some video chat you will burn your 125 Mb very quickly.
3) I can not tell more, I will be connected on Friday afternoon.
But something sure, the French Phone is very expensive.
For example, during the day (between 8:00 am and 7:00 pm) one hours cost 16 FRF (about 2.60 USD) and during the night it cost 8 FRF (about 1.30 USD) (calculate whitout any price reduction).
We can have the "primaliste internet" service which cost 10 FRF/month (about 1.6 USD/month) for having 50% rebate between 10:00 pm to 8:00 am.
I hope this can explain your situation a little.
Good day, sun shine....
mvh,
Why are you being so gratuitously rude? Grow up and learn some manners.
Nick
-- "It's a sad day for American capitalism when a man can't fly a midget on a kite over Central Park" - Jim Moran
ça va plutôt être la fête à France Télécom qui va s'en mettre plein les pognes!!! quelle connerie ça de payer les appels locaux... v'nez émigrer au Québec pis hop! internet sur le cable ou ADSL pour 150FF par mois ou par dialup pour 80FF et après vous payez pu un sous!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
--
"Science will win because it works." - Stephen Hawking
Usually right after I say the word "french", I like to spit.
--Perhaps, if I am very lucky, the feeble efforts of my lifetime will someday be noticed, and maybe, in some small way, they will be acknowledged as the greatest works of genius ever created by Man.
Sure we're culturally xenophobic!!!
Actually we like to have our own thoughts and not getting fed with poor quality products...
>:))
Oh, by the way, just to remind you of a thing:
You'll never see in France a remake of an american movie...
Most popular distro in France? RedHat after me...
I think every "first world" country suffers from xenophobism. By far, the most xenophobic culture is the American one. Try to convince one american that a good non-US product is better then a crappy US product...
Bullpuckey. So many americans have the attitude that any product with a japanese brand name is superior to any american product it is not funny. Even when the product is also sold with an american brand, the market favors the japanese branded version of the product. When studies were done by Chrysler on this subject a few years ago, they found that for identical model cars with the nameplates visible, testers overwhelmingly preferred the japanese branded cars. For tests where the nameplates obscured, testers preferred the american branded cars by a small margin.
These days most japanese branded electronics isn't even made in Japan. It is funny to look on the back of a product with a big japanese brand name and see "Hecho En Mexico".
Its not just japanese xenophilia which afflicts a lot of americans, the same thing seems to occur with german products like BMW and Mercedes, and products of other northern european countries such as the U.K. and Sweden.
Usually right after I say the word "french", I like to spit.
:-)
Being german by descent, I tend to feel the same way...
The good news is, since 1945, a few things happened. Ever heard of EEC? Drive to a bookstore and get yourself a history book. Might be useful!
Eh? WWII was only one incident in centuries of conflict between the germans and french. The EEC doesn't do anything to change people's feelings when it comes to pride in their heritage, etc. Besides that, my relatives left europe in the late 1800's, so that sort of thing kinda got frozen at that point.
http://www.fete-internet.asso.fr/prog/prog.asp
www.fete-internet.asso.fr is running Microsoft-IIS/4.0 on NT4 or Windows 98
From the "Fiesta" press release:
DIRECTORATE GENERAL XIII - Telecommunications, Information Market and Exploitation of Research:
"IS Day Europe 99 is a major awareness campaign aimed at the European public with the objective of having a long term effect on their perception, interest for, and use of information and communication services, technologies, and applications, that are shaping the Information Society."
That's European for "party hard"
We will also celebrate the 'defaite de l'internet' to protest against the french (un-)justice's actions against AlternB and Le Village.
Take a look at this site (in french, sorry).