French police switch from Windows to Linux

Russ Creech
23 March 2009, 12:00 PM

The French national police force has slashed its IT costs by 70 per cent by cutting Microsoft out of the equation.

There are many arguments for or against switching from Windows to Linux. Many times these arguments are based more in fanaticism than fact.

In a recent report, the French national police force, Gendarmerie Nationale, has provided some great facts supporting the switch from Windows to Linux.

In 2002, the Gendarmerie Nationale adopted a strictly open-standards IT policy in order to improve inter-organisation communications.

Until 2004, a large part of the IT budget was spent on software licences -- between 12,000 and 15,000 licenses each year. In 2004, an accountant in the Gendarmerie Nationale tried OpenOffice and, after finding it a surprisingly competent replacement for its paid counterpart, started pushing for it to be adopted within the organization instead of Microsoft Office.

After a while, the police force completely switched over to OpenOffice for all their office needs along with adopting Thunderbird for email and Firefox for browsing. The switch was easy and required little to no training since the open source apps had a similar interface to the paid ones.

In 2007, they decided to go one step further and switch to an open operating system.

"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."

Currently Gendarmerie has about 5,000 PCs running Ubuntu, with another 15,000 planned to be switched over this year. By 2015, they hope to have the entire organization with all 90,000 computers running Ubuntu and open-source software.

This year their IT budget will be cut by 70%, but they will be just as capable as in previous years. Lieutenant-Colonel Xavier Guimard of Gendarmerie estimates that the organization "Since 2004 has saved 50 million euro on licences for standard office applications, hardware and maintenance."

Importantly, the Gendarmerie's reduced IT budget contradicts Microsoft's arguments that the 'total cost of ownership' of Windows is less than Linux, because Windows supposedly needs much less support and integration work than Linux does. The lower actual dollars being spent on IT in the French national police disproves Microsoft's argument -- in this organisation, at least.

If they want to keep their share of the PC market, Microsoft better make sure they offer an easy transition to Windows 7, along with some benefits of transitioning. Otherwise, we will likely be hearing about more and more organizations and businesses switching over to Linux this year and next.

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The Big Baboo (New user):

Don't you just love the French :) Peugot's,Renault's,Champagne,Boullebaise,Bread Sticks and now the intelligence to drop Windows and use something which completely suits their needs and costs almost nothing. Vive La France I say :)

23 March 2009, 12:43 PM (4 years ago)report abuse Send to a friend

TV Bis (New user):

I DON'T UNDERSTAND WHY THEY WOULD NEED TRAINING? MORE CHANCE OF TRAINING BEING REQUIRED FOR UBUNTU THEN ANOTHER WINDOWS OS........

23 March 2009, 12:43 PM (4 years ago)report abuse Send to a friend

Tin (User):

Not every user is an IT person who is willing to stuff around. In fact most users will call IT if an error message appears rather than read the damn message.
Throw Office 2007 into the mix and you've basically changed the entire way people work... At which point, why the heck wouldn't you choose a free or near-free OS and office package?

23 March 2009, 6:13 PM (4 years ago)report abuse Send to a friend

Raindog (New user):

I think a lot of these TCO and supposed training costs are based on sum very rubbery figures.

There have been several European examples of large installations migrating to Linux, most I have seen are from Government Departments.

It is probably much easier to migrate installations like the Gendarmerie where usage would be heavily regulated than for more typical office environments where overall training is less and computer usage is more varied.

All up it is healthy to see some more real professional Linux adoption at the desktop level. It will help the OS to grow and will help provide some more balance and competition in the marketplace. (An maybe some more open minded attitudes, although that is a lot to ask for.)

23 March 2009, 12:54 PM (4 years ago)report abuse Send to a friend

Halcon (User):

Once again, this demonstrate that Linux OS is capable to make task more easy and save a lot of money as well.
For more that Microsoft may claim to the public with the purported benefits of Windows OS and apps, these allegations fly in the face.
Microsoft is afraid to lose against Linux, painting it as an inferior product, this dirty tactic have failed.
Microsoft rely on the ignorant people to make money out of it's products.

23 March 2009, 3:08 PM (4 years ago)report abuse Send to a friend

jake (New user):

so how much percent of the worlds computers run linux hmmm ill take a wild guess and say about 4% anyway not verry much windows and mac dominate the market

23 March 2009, 5:45 PM (4 years ago)report abuse Send to a friend

Raindog (New user):

Quoting jake:
so how much percent(sic) of the worlds computers run linux hmmm

What has percentage got to do with this? I don't remembers seeing a sign saying "pissing competition this way".

Quoting jake:
ill take a wild guess

And guess what your quoted figure is nothing but a wild guess.

Quoting jake:
windows and mac dominate the market

They dominate SOME markets, not ALL markets, it's quite a distinction. SUN, Linux, etc all have there places of market dominance.

Also worth noting, the non-Windows and MAC product have their strong point too. FireFox for example offers a rudimentary spelling check.

23 March 2009, 5:57 PM (4 years ago)report abuse Send to a friend

Tin (User):

Quoting jake:
about 4%

w3schools says exactly that. XP on ~69% and Vista on 17%

Quoting jake:
windows and mac dominate the market

If you call 6% vs 4% dominating. And that's mostly a swing from MS OSes to MacOS, not a growth on it's own.

At the end of the day, no one really knows how many people use Linux... Some Linux boxes never connect to the internet (potentially some of these French police ones never will since some police computers just don't need it).

23 March 2009, 6:25 PM (4 years ago)report abuse Send to a friend

AndyCee (New user):

Quoting jake:
so how much percent of the worlds computers run linux

You've missed the point entirely. A more appropriate question might be "what percentage of businesses deploying linux instead of Windows/OSX are better off financially from the change". If _that_ was 4%, then you'd be on to something.

23 March 2009, 7:22 PM (4 years ago)report abuse Send to a friend

Eruaran (New user):

And how much do Linux users like me care about the 4% you just pulled out of your ass ? Not much at all...

Got Kubuntu 9.04 Jaunty Jackalope on my system right now and it is just fantastic. My PC is simply a joy to use, is yours ?

Furthermore, I wonder if you have any idea what percentage of the server market runs Linux ? Or what percentage of HPC's run Linux ? I doubt you have the foggiest clue.

24 March 2009, 11:28 PM (4 years ago)report abuse Send to a friend

jake (New user):

i wonder how much it costs to teach eveyone what ther firefox icon is lol they wil be thing when looking at the screen "wheres the IE icon???"
windows is the standard here

23 March 2009, 5:15 PM (4 years ago)report abuse Send to a friend

Raindog (New user):

Quoting jake:
i wonder how much it costs to teach eveyone what ther firefox icon is

Probably a whole lot less than it costs to have a ribbon bar thrust into the middle of slow adaptors office suites. A hold lot less cost to learn Open Office than to migrate to Office 2007.

Every change has cost? In the case of the Frog Plod it was the cost of change minus the cost of a mess-load of licence upgrades.

Quoting jake:
windows is the standard here

It may be the standard around your place it is no longer the standard for the entire French police department.

Standards are made to be adhered to, they are made to be broken too, once progress enters into the equation.

23 March 2009, 5:50 PM (4 years ago)report abuse Send to a friend

Tin (User):

Quoting jake:
windows is the standard here

Windows is barely a standard anywhere. MS constantly change things subtly or obviously. Every new version has multiple massive interface changes, and sometimes just a Windows update will do it.
Internet Explorer also changes it's icon and interface in almost every version, so there's no reason to assume users will struggle any more with an orange fox instead.

23 March 2009, 6:46 PM (4 years ago)report abuse Send to a friend

Archer (New user):

Quoting jake:
windows is the standard here
____

Ah, yes, that also applies for tens of thousands viruses, spywares, rootkits and any other malwares that can and will always manage to infect Windows PCs' no matter how good their firewalls, anti-viruses and any other anti-malware softwares installed there.

It's defective by design.

24 March 2009, 10:52 AM (4 years ago)report abuse Send to a friend