French Parliament To Dump Windows For Linux ! Another Feather In Linuxs Cap

[miCRoSCoPiC^eaRthLinG 0]

According to a recent posting in ZDNet Blogs as reported by By Christophe Guillemin of ZDNet France, the members of French Parliament are about to make a complete switch-over to open source based systems. Starting from June 2007 1,154 French parliamentary workstations will be running on an open source OS, with OpenOffice, Firefox and an open-source e-mail client. A spokesperson for the parliament's administration said a decision as to the choice of Linux distribution and e-mail client hasn't yet been taken.

 

The Parliament seems to be following suit on the gendarmes (armed police force) and the Ministry of Culture who have already shifted over to open source.

 

Full report...

The gendarmes and the Ministry of Culture have done it, and now members of France's parliarment are about to switch to open source. From June 2007, PCs in French deputes' offices will be equipped with a Linux operating system and open-source productivity software.

 

The project, backed by parliament members Richard Cazenav and Bernard Carayon of the Union for a Popular Movement party, will see 1,154 French parliamentary workstations running on an open source OS, with OpenOffice.org, Firefox and an open-source e-mail client.

 

A spokesperson for the parliament's administration said a decision as to the choice of Linux distribution and e-mail client hasn't yet been taken. Currently, some of the parliament's servers have been running Linux, with Apache Web servers and the Mambo content management system.

 

The project was the subject of a study by technology-services company Atos Origin, whose conclusions convinced the French parliament, the Assemblee Nationale, to make the switch.

 

"The study showed that open-source software will from now on offer functionality adapted to the needs of MPs (members of parliament), and will allow us to make substantial savings despite the associated migration and training costs," the parliament said.

 

Open-source supporters have welcomed the decision. BenoĂŽt Sibaud, president of the Association for the research into and promotion of open-source computing, said the decision to migrate to open source will allow the Assemblee Nationale to have greater control over its information technology without depending on any one vendor, and to make better use of public money.

 

This will be the first case of a French public institution switching its PCs onto a Linux operating system. Previous open-source initiatives concerned servers, as was the case with the Minstry of Agriculture, and with OpenOffice and Firefox, which were adopted by France's gendarmerie.

 

Source: http://forums.xisto.com/no_longer_exists/

 

Another feather in Linux/Open Source's cap

[toby 0]

Why Firefox though.. It's not like there's a corprate licesne on Opera.

[miCRoSCoPiC^eaRthLinG 0]

I don't think there's a Linux port of Opera... so how can you run it on a Linux distro?? Except maybe with the help of WINE and some ugly tweaking

[Markymark2 0]

nah mate u got that wrong!!If you didnt know already Opera has been around for years hence the reason they own http://www.opera.com/ cos they registered it 12 years ago :PTimeline..1996: The first public release was Opera 2.0 for Windows, released as shareware.I think it was 97 that the MacOS version was released with a Unix version in the same year.Opera has been making versions for Linux and MAC ever since then...LONG b4 mozilla...long b4 KDE etc etc..For me I have never used another browser on Linux for more than 10 mins till I have got Opera installed.And to go back to the topic of this thread...I can post these institutions that have dumped IE and any crappy Mozilla clones years ago..Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Harvard University, University of Oxford, Georgia Institute of Technology, and Duke University.Ohh look two of the biggest IT universities in the world use it...Also Opera make versions of the browser for mobile phones..Nintendo DS and the new Sony Mylo..infact theres about 60 devices that use Opera in Flash form to load onto thier sevices.Also I would like to point out that most of the core features from Mozilla clones have been "taken" from Opera, normally 3 years after Opera have made designed it and got it to work reliably.Tabbed browsing..Zooming (FF still cant do this right!!)..disabling images..extended info on the url....favicons...mail support...torrent support...IRC chat client...password manager(thats NEVER been hacked unlike most browsers that copied this feature and tried to implement it ..RSS feeds...Notes..Text reader and Voice control....built in google search (yes it was in Opera first!!) sessions and the ability to export and save them..XML as the language for all bookmarks etc..Sure FF has a lot more plugins than Opera (prolly not for long cos lots of new ones are written every day)..but no browser can beat the features that are installed as the core..and NO other browser can beat it on the Acid broswer test..yes FF is NOT as compliant in Opera...So if you wanna see what cool features that will be in FF3..check out the latest version of Opera and you wont have to wait two years!!

[Quatrux 4]

I got surprised when miCRoSCoPiC^eaRthLinG said that there is no version of Opera for Linux But maybe he was just joking? :SAs been said above, Opera is ported to a lot of different Operating Systems: BeOS, Linux PPC, Linux i386, Linux Sparc, Solaris Sparc, Solaris Intel, QNX, OS/2, FreeBSD i386 and MacOS..Mozilla is ported to a bit more Operating Systems, but it is only due to it is Open Source and third party programmers do it. For example, some time ago Firefox was ported to Risc OS by fans/people/programmers who use Risc OS.. AmigaOS fans always wanted to have a port of Mozilla engine, but for over 6 years noone ported it to Amiga 68k, MorphOS and OS4 even though a lot of people donated a lot of money through PayPal to the people who said that they will port it. Even though, recently KHTML engine was ported so no need to waste time on Mozilla engine port anymore.And etc.

[xboxrulz1405241485 0]

nah mate u got that wrong!!

If you didnt know already Opera has been around for years hence the reason they own http://www.opera.com/ cos they registered it 12 years ago

 

Timeline..1996: The first public release was Opera 2.0 for Windows, released as shareware.I think it was 97 that the MacOS version was released with a Unix version in the same year.

Opera has been making versions for Linux and MAC ever since then...LONG b4 mozilla...long b4 KDE etc etc..

For me I have never used another browser on Linux for more than 10 mins till I have got Opera installed.

 

And to go back to the topic of this thread...I can post these institutions that have dumped IE and any crappy Mozilla clones years ago..

 

Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Harvard University, University of Oxford, Georgia Institute of Technology, and Duke University.Ohh look two of the biggest IT universities in the world use it...

 

Also Opera make versions of the browser for mobile phones..Nintendo DS and the new Sony Mylo..infact theres about 60 devices that use Opera in Flash form to load onto thier sevices.

 

Also I would like to point out that most of the core features from Mozilla clones have been "taken" from Opera, normally 3 years after Opera have made designed it and got it to work reliably.

Tabbed browsing..Zooming (FF still cant do this right!!)..disabling images..extended info on the url....favicons...mail support...torrent support...IRC chat client...password manager(thats NEVER been hacked unlike most browsers that copied this feature and tried to implement it ..RSS feeds...Notes..Text reader and Voice control....built in google search (yes it was in Opera first!!) sessions and the ability to export and save them..XML as the language for all bookmarks etc..

 

Sure FF has a lot more plugins than Opera (prolly not for long cos lots of new ones are written every day)..but no browser can beat the features that are installed as the core..and NO other browser can beat it on the Acid broswer test..yes FF is NOT as compliant in Opera...

 

So if you wanna see what cool features that will be in FF3..check out the latest version of Opera and you wont have to wait two years!!

 

It wasn't long before KDE, KDE was being worked on in 1996, that's when the project was founded, and first release was in 1997.

 

xboxrulz

[miCRoSCoPiC^eaRthLinG 0]

Oooopss I'm afraid you guys got me there.. hehe.. as they say ignorance is bliss. I am not much of an Opera fan - and have been a faithful FF follower since it's inception - though I always have Opera installed as a secondary browser. I should have run a small search to see if there are Opera versions for Linux. Heh. However, I believe the key determinant factor here in choosing Firefox over Opera was FF being OPEN SOURCE. If you notice - the general trend in French Govt. bodies is all about shifting to open source. So there..

[sujith 0]

I am an Opera fan (not a fanboy), I have seen many people who run Opera as thier main browser on Linux.And many of them said it is the only proprietary software product that they are running on thier machine.

[Quatrux 4]

Well, on Linux, with KDE environment (Anyone still use Gnome? I moved all my friends to KDE) I use Konqueror and I find it even much faster than Opera, anyway, sometimes I laugh from these browser wars "Opera is better, no FF is better" But yeah, Opera might not have been chosen do to it is closed source, I think it is even better that at least one major browser is closed source, but absolutely free. The main thing it is free, open source software is more reliable to programmers and Linux where you can compile everything on your computer, do to Windows is Windows, it is enough to have binary installation/files, even though I would like they have different binaries.. Windows XP is still only available for the old i386 which isn't the most popular processor in the world anymore and I saw something for amd, but never seen it with my own eyes, so if windows would be compiled for i686 then there could be a possibility they would run faster

[xboxrulz1405241485 0]

Quatrux, sadly all the Ubuntu users are usually stuck with GNOME because they are new to Linux and may have never heard of KDE.xboxrulz

[sonoftheclayr 0]

Quatrux, sadly all the Ubuntu users are usually stuck with GNOME because they are new to Linux and may have never heard of KDE.
xboxrulz

I started off using GNOME on Ubuntu but switched over to KDE a couple of months back, it is the best thing I have ever done, KDE is much faster than GNOME.

Back on topic I think it is great that the French government is starting to use Open-Source. Another great step in the on-going war between open-source/free and Windows/closed-source/not free.

I don't have anything on my computer that isn't open-source! (Guess what side I'm on?)

[Alegis 0]

Why Firefox though.. It's not like there's a corprate licesne on Opera.

Oh do keep whining, one or the other is fine; can't blame them for picking either. It's good Open Source has finally advanced so far that many can choose now. I like competivity.

[Quatrux 4]

Quatrux, sadly all the Ubuntu users are usually stuck with GNOME because they are new to Linux and may have never heard of KDE.
xboxrulz

What about Kubuntu? or they think Kubuntu is something totally different than Ubuntu? Or maybe the Free CDs isn't available for Ubuntu? But still, usually people move to KDE or XFC if they liked Linux and continue to use it after getting more advanced to a different distribution.

[KDEWolf 0]

Well I suppose it's quite obvious that I'm a KDE fan... (in case you haven't noticed: look at my username)Though it's said Gnome is more stable.Here in Brazil many public universities already use Unix/Linux-based systems for most of tasks, because of scalability and more control over the network and it's capabilities. Also, even computers running Windows have Firefox installed and set as default (they even hide the IE icon). This addresses various issues very common in this kind of network, like people running unintended software, or getting lots of adware/spyware by simply searching the web, and so keeping maintenance to a lower level.It's also curious that more developed and wealthy states or harder top-notch universities (usually public here in Brazil - as mine =D), tend more to adopt free software than others. This might show that knowledge and proper education leave some space to think about what's best for one, as also for the rest of the world. And it's not always proprietary software...In some states, public repartitions already use computers running Linux and free office applications (even if not thoroughly), but Microsoft is each day more making offers so government keep using their products. They say for example, that Linux isn't as friendly as Windows and that it could cause confusion because most of their employees run Windows machines in their homes, and it wouldn't have the adequate drivers for their equipment...Still, we're leaving proprietary software, slowly...

[xboxrulz1405241485 0]

What about Kubuntu? or they think Kubuntu is something totally different than Ubuntu? Or maybe the Free CDs isn't available for Ubuntu? But still, usually people move to KDE or XFC if they liked Linux and continue to use it after getting more advanced to a different distribution.

It's just that apparently, people know Ubuntu more than Kubuntu. I have used both and completely hated them.

I do also like how the French government is taking such actions, I just wish that the Canadian government can do the same so that I can stop paying so much tax.

xboxrulz