French Govt. dumps Windows
 

In favour of Linux, according to ZDNet news.

I blame Microsoft.

Lol! Don't get too carried away - it's just the parliament, around 1,400 workstations or so. But I agree, M$ are tending to price/license themselves right out of the market.

If you use a narrow range of applications e.g. "word" and "excel" etc then it's easy enough to get open source equivalents.

They will still have hassle with people emailing them attachments in the latest version of M$ Word 2009 or whatever, which don't open in their app.

For everybody else it's just a constant hassle.

I remember reading a while back that the dutch went open source a few years back, not quite sure of any more detail i cant remember. I know some schools in the USA like Linux too, and at our Uni we have a fair few Solaris machines as well as SUSE.

For most people, linux would be the same as windows, all my family use a pc for is wordprecessing and card games, linux can provide that, and it would make buying a pc £60 cheaper.

I have used Linux on and off, i cant use it too much as most things i use are made for MAC or Windows. To my way of thinking, MAC Apps should run on Linux as i am sure BSD is more or less the same thing.

M$ Will never be short of orders, too many things depend on it, there are atms that run windows 2000, and some we all know run XP as 200 went a little mad some time back and random ones gave extra cash out.

I would like to see a really good attempt at Linix for the Windows user. Linux is beyond most people, just because its so different in ways, longer boot-up, different file structure, etc. Lindows, Linspire was supposed ot bridge the gap, but i recon SUSE or Madrake are easier than Linspire.

Oh and most people will never get to grips that you will have to look on the box when buying games to see if it supports the OS. I have had so many people in the past buy Windows games and moan because they wont install on an Apple. But if business starts to go Linux more, then staff get used to linux, and the ones that dont play games (unless its cards/mine sweeper,etc) will adapt it for the cost saving and be nice and happy they have saved £60 or so on there desktop. I notice HP will now cut the price if you want Linux, FREEDOS, and no OS on some of the range online.

Funny thing is that so many institutions that use Linux / opensource actually get MS products at massive discounts - virtually free! I'm thinking here mainly of charities and educational establishments.

While large corporates and Government (local, civil service) can negotiate hefty discounts with MS on volume licensing, it leaves the small - medium business with the biggest expense sticking with MS, therefore the greatest driver for a cheap alternative, but they are worst placed from a technical perspective to convert and support.

Funny that. :rolleyes:

SD

Looking across my range of 7 assorted boxen, some of them dual-boot, I'd say that the times are quite similar tho' Linux is a bit quicker on most.

The difference is that when the Desktop appears in Linux, you're ready to go, whereas in Windows it's only pretending - it's still busy sorting itself out in the background and isn't really ready for action for another minute!

:ok:

That struck a chord - sounds like someone I know who takes another thirty. ;)

Back on topic - I know the Viennese government had a major initiave to go *nix, about 40,000 seats.

To my shame, I was asked by $BIGBOSS whether the firm's desktop operations should migrate to *nix or not, and I advised not (the bonus that $BIGBOSS would get was predicated by luser satisfaction, not cost savings).

BOFH

No-one ever gets sacked for buying IBM <- nothing's changed...