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French Parliament Chooses Ubuntu

Posted by kdawson on Mon Mar 12, 2007 07:58 AM
from the all-those-letters-are-silent dept.
Software Government Linux Politics
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."
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[+] French Parliament To Go Open Source 231 comments
dhoyte writes, "Newsfactor.com reports that next June the French parliament will be switching from Microsoft to open source products such as Linux for desktops and servers and OpenOffice for day-to-day documents. They see it as a cost-cutting measure." The French have not settled on a Linux distribution yet. The article quotes an analyst voicing a note of caution: "'The evidence on the cost savings attributable to a switch to Linux has been mixed,' according to Chris Swenson, director of software industry analysis at research group NPD. 'There has been some evidence that companies have to spend a good deal on training and support after you deploy...'"
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  • Quick French Lesson For Posters (Score:4, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 12 2007, @08:04AM (#18314577)
    chair == chaise

    throw == jet

    monkey == singe

    boy == garçon

      • Re:Quick French Lesson For Posters (Score:5, Insightful)

        by Silver Sloth (770927) on Monday March 12 2007, @08:47AM (#18314909)

        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 (Score:4, Interesting)

          by dlasley (221447) on Monday March 12 2007, @09:11AM (#18315169) Homepage
          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 (Score:5, Interesting)

            by oliderid (710055) on Monday March 12 2007, @12:19PM (#18317647)
            "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.

  • Cool (Score:3, Interesting)

    by archeopterix (594938) on Monday March 12 2007, @08:08AM (#18314603) Journal
    Ok, Yet Another Visible Organization chooses Ubuntu, joy & bliss. I'm curious whether they plan to contribute - bug reports, patches, new features/apps maybe?

    Frubuntu anyone? :-)

    • I'm curious whether they plan to contribute - bug reports, patches, new features/apps maybe

      It is hard not to contribute while using Linux in a large organization. They've got several companies doing support and services for them and that is going to include solving bugs. If nothing else, I imagine they'll be contributing bug fixes to the french language support, which is good it being such a common language in many third world countries where Linux can be a boon.

  • OT: Have anyone tried Wubi? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by atamyrat (980611) on Monday March 12 2007, @08:13AM (#18314641)
    I came across with Wubi [cutlersoftware.com] - 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.

  • Actually it's a Microsoft conspiracy (Score:3, Interesting)

    by SimonInOz (579741) on Monday March 12 2007, @08:18AM (#18314667)
    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?)

  • Good stuff (Score:3, Informative)

    by RoiDaGaubert (970028) on Monday March 12 2007, @09:51AM (#18315685) Homepage
    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 ....

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Short Circuit (52384) *
      To me, Fedora is the RPM equivalent of Ubuntu.

      I'm not sure either should be used as an enterprise's first Linux desktop rollout; Windows admins aren't accustomed to their relatively furious rate of major releases.

      Debian might have been a better choice, with its slow release cycle and decent security patch rollout rate.

      • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

        by meringuoid (568297)
        I'm not sure either should be used as an enterprise's first Linux desktop rollout; Windows admins aren't accustomed to their relatively furious rate of major releases.

        There's no law saying you have to be bleeding-edge; they can perfectly well stick with Dapper, which is the current 'long term support' release. The rest of us can install pre-release versions of Feisty if we want, but it's certainly not compulsory.

    • enterprise-ish

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

        enterpriseish: expensive, in such a way as to allow the head of IT to justify his large budget and hence status within the organisation; carries connotations of several very nice lunches with vendors and junkets to important conferences on an expense account.

        • Re:I don't get why they would use Ubuntu... (Score:4, Interesting)

          by MartinG (52587) on Monday March 12 2007, @08:20AM (#18314671) Homepage Journal
          That sounds like pretty good description of Ubuntu to me!

          Which of those characteristics you describe are Fedora, (Open)SUSE or Debian better than Ubuntu at?

          Just to be clear, I'm not saying I think think Ubuntu is better than the others. In fact Fedora is probably my favourite disto. I just don't see how it is more "enterprise-ish" than Ubuntu is.
    • 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)
        • 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 [ubuntu.com]

        • Re:I don't get why they would use Ubuntu... (Score:4, Insightful)

          by Zonk (troll) (1026140) on Monday March 12 2007, @09:02AM (#18315075)
          Hmm. Perhaps you haven't heard of the LTS release. Dapper [ubuntu.com] is supported on the desktop for 3 years, 5 on the server. Packages are stable, only getting security and bug fixes. Similar to RHEL. I'm sure this is what they're planning on using. If not, they need to fire the implementers.
        • Linus... is that you?

          • Re:I don't get why they would use Ubuntu... (Score:5, Interesting)

            by Zonk (troll) (1026140) on Monday March 12 2007, @09:13AM (#18315193)

            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 [sourceforge.net] 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.

            • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

              by Carewolf (581105)
              In Ubuntu or Kubuntu you need to replace both GNOME and KDE to get something stable. They apply a bunch of experimental patches to "improve" the experience, but the patches often creates more bugs.

              There also seems to lack mature features for installing 3rd party content. This might not be much of a problem for really basic desktop user, but for a standard Linux users not being able to install and run tar-balls is a real problem (ubuntu doesn't even include /usr/local to PATH!), and they have obscured everyt

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by corwin2 (680613)

      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.
      It may also mean that your view of the French mindset is not totally accurate ? ;)
    • Did you know that the Isle of Mann [wikipedia.org] is NOT part of the UK or the EU? In other words not very "British" at all ;)

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