5 ms·

French police: we saved millions of euros by adopting Ubuntu

86 points by terpua 18y ago

zcrar70 18y ago
This lacks quite a lot of (interesting) detail. The differences between Windows and Ubuntu are more than the icons and the games; what about Office (OO is quite different, particularly for advanced uses of Excel), Outlook, Active Directory, NTLM authentication for internal (web)apps, .Net for in-house development, etc? These aren't all strictly speaking part of Windows, but they are part of the Windows ecosystem, particularly at large sites, and usually don't have Linux slot-in equivalents that are trivial to implement. So, either the Gendarmerie Nationale didn't use any of those parts of the Windows ecosystem (which seems unlikely), or they made savings in spite of having to replace them (in which case the 'icons and games' remark is disingenuous), or they haven't accounted properly (which, this being a governmental entity, doesn't seem impossible.)
- sangaya 18y ago
  I can't agree with you more. At least here in the States the law enforcement agencies use specialized software that runs only on windows (Think report writing, ticket tracking, officer tracking, booking systems, accident reconstruction, computer forensics, etc). Do the French LEA use software that's cross platform? Or did they already move to web-based software so that the workstation OS is a non-issue? As the parent stated there's a lot more to an IT eco-system than the icons and games. Surely the French used special LEA software, and I'm wishing the article included details about that.
  - mileszs 18y ago
    They switched to OOo in 2005, and to Firefox and Thunderbird a year later, according to this article: http://afp.google.com/article/ALeqM5iU4Lq7tOR_WVOJLZ3IeRaIH03x6w http://afp.google.com/article/ALeqM5iU4Lq7tOR_WVOJLZ3IeRaIH0... You were right. They moved their 'Human Resource' application to the browser at some point, as well. See this article: http://www.osor.eu/news/fr-gendarmerie-saves-millions-with-open-desktop-and-web-applications http://www.osor.eu/news/fr-gendarmerie-saves-millions-with-o...
    - sangaya 18y ago
      Thanks for the link to that article on osor.eu, on that page was a link to the case study: http://www.osor.eu/case_studies/towards-the-freedom-of-the-operating-system-the-french-gendarmerie-goes-for-ubuntu http://www.osor.eu/case_studies/towards-the-freedom-of-the-o... "the project is one of several similar migrations of French public bodies. To mention just a some examples: the French National Assembly in 2007 decided to run Ubuntu on their 1145 workstations; the Ministry of Agriculture and Fishery switched their servers to the Mandriva GNU/Linux distribution in 2005; the Paris council will use several open souce applications on their laptops, as decided in June, 2008. These developments thus clearly show how open source software is used increasingly in the French public sector." Apparently they aren't the first in France to move to OSS so the interoperability is easier to handle.
- cedsav 18y ago
  They migrated 5000 workstation out of 90k. Presumably, they started with the easy ones first. I bet they'll keep a number of windows machines for those cases where no OO equivalent is available.
EliAndrewC 18y ago
The most interesting passage to me was: "Moving from Microsoft XP to Vista would not have brought us many advantages and Microsoft said it would require training of users," said Lt. Col. Guimard. One of the main barriers to Linux adoption is the fact and/or perception that it requires a lot of retraining. So now that we have the fact and/or perception that moving to Vista requires retraining as well, then Ubuntu becomes just another alternative. I've dealt with plenty of situations where Windows is the sensible choice and plenty where Linux would be. And I have no problem with someone considering the options and choosing Windows even if I'd personally have chosen Linux. But often Windows is mandated by some executive who seems to consider a computer using Windows to be as necessary as a computer using electricity; that's just what computers use. In most places it would still be a major coup for Linux to even be CONSIDERED as an alternative to Windows, even if it was rejected. I actually don't believe that moving from XP to Vista would have required much retraining. But I'm happy to see that Vista's perceived problems have led to large organizations at least looking at Ubuntu as an alternative, whether they use it or not.
- jibiki 18y ago
  I've never understood the retraining argument. Surely going from computer-illiterate to windows-trained takes orders of magnitude more effort than going from windows-trained to linux-trained. Setting linux up takes a bit of work (solving driver issues and such,) but actually using it seems like it just can't be that hard to learn. What I heard, from a guy at IBM, is that companies don't switch to linux because installing 3rd party software is difficult. That's not an issue of retraining though, that's an OS problem.
  - chancho 18y ago
    It's not an OS problem, its a network problem, as in, linux doesn't have a network of ISVs who distribute software with 1-click installers. Its certainly possible, making an .rpm or .deb is no harder than making a Windows installer or an OS X app bundle. Look at skype, for instance. Download, double-click, bang. I think the bigger problem is the availability of 3rd party software for linux to begin with. Installing it is a minor detail. (Here "3rd party" means something outside of your distributions package management system, ie proprietary.)
omouse 18y ago
I think they mean that adopting Free Software allowed them to be more aligned with what their nation stands for: Liberté, égalité, fraternité: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libert%C3%A9,_%C3%A9galit%C3%A9,_fraternit%C3%A9 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libert%C3%A9,_%C3%A9galit%C3%A9...
timbowen 18y ago
I think this is a very exciting development for the open source community. More and more applications are going web based, and I can see a future where the only application anyone will really need is a web browser. We already have Google docs, once that functionality improves just a little bit there's your office suite. Serve your ticket and lien database through a secure web connection or VPN, and you're good to go. Total software cost: 0. Surely it must be cheaper to employ a couple of Linux techs than to keep bleeding money in license fees. Windows environments needs techs anyway, so most of the cost is already budgeted. There will be some cost and security concerns, but it seems clear to me that over the long term open source is a better solution. This could even lead to government sponsored developers who are paid to improve open source projects, somewhere way down the line. Exciting stuff!

86 points by terpua 18y ago

This lacks quite a lot of (interesting) detail. The differences between Windows and Ubuntu are more than the icons and the games; what about Office (OO is quite different, particularly for advanced uses of Excel), Outlook, Active Directory, NTLM authentication for internal (web)apps, .Net for in-house development, etc? These aren't all strictly speaking part of Windows, but they are part of the Windows ecosystem, particularly at large sites, and usually don't have Linux slot-in equivalents that are trivial to implement. So, either the Gendarmerie Nationale didn't use any of those parts of the Windows ecosystem (which seems unlikely), or they made savings in spite of having to replace them (in which case the 'icons and games' remark is disingenuous), or they haven't accounted properly (which, this being a governmental entity, doesn't seem impossible.)

sangaya 18y ago
I can't agree with you more. At least here in the States the law enforcement agencies use specialized software that runs only on windows (Think report writing, ticket tracking, officer tracking, booking systems, accident reconstruction, computer forensics, etc). Do the French LEA use software that's cross platform? Or did they already move to web-based software so that the workstation OS is a non-issue? As the parent stated there's a lot more to an IT eco-system than the icons and games. Surely the French used special LEA software, and I'm wishing the article included details about that.
- mileszs 18y ago
  They switched to OOo in 2005, and to Firefox and Thunderbird a year later, according to this article: http://afp.google.com/article/ALeqM5iU4Lq7tOR_WVOJLZ3IeRaIH03x6w http://afp.google.com/article/ALeqM5iU4Lq7tOR_WVOJLZ3IeRaIH0... You were right. They moved their 'Human Resource' application to the browser at some point, as well. See this article: http://www.osor.eu/news/fr-gendarmerie-saves-millions-with-open-desktop-and-web-applications http://www.osor.eu/news/fr-gendarmerie-saves-millions-with-o...
  - sangaya 18y ago
    Thanks for the link to that article on osor.eu, on that page was a link to the case study: http://www.osor.eu/case_studies/towards-the-freedom-of-the-operating-system-the-french-gendarmerie-goes-for-ubuntu http://www.osor.eu/case_studies/towards-the-freedom-of-the-o... "the project is one of several similar migrations of French public bodies. To mention just a some examples: the French National Assembly in 2007 decided to run Ubuntu on their 1145 workstations; the Ministry of Agriculture and Fishery switched their servers to the Mandriva GNU/Linux distribution in 2005; the Paris council will use several open souce applications on their laptops, as decided in June, 2008. These developments thus clearly show how open source software is used increasingly in the French public sector." Apparently they aren't the first in France to move to OSS so the interoperability is easier to handle.
cedsav 18y ago
They migrated 5000 workstation out of 90k. Presumably, they started with the easy ones first. I bet they'll keep a number of windows machines for those cases where no OO equivalent is available.

EliAndrewC 18y ago

The most interesting passage to me was: "Moving from Microsoft XP to Vista would not have brought us many advantages and Microsoft said it would require training of users," said Lt. Col. Guimard. One of the main barriers to Linux adoption is the fact and/or perception that it requires a lot of retraining. So now that we have the fact and/or perception that moving to Vista requires retraining as well, then Ubuntu becomes just another alternative. I've dealt with plenty of situations where Windows is the sensible choice and plenty where Linux would be. And I have no problem with someone considering the options and choosing Windows even if I'd personally have chosen Linux. But often Windows is mandated by some executive who seems to consider a computer using Windows to be as necessary as a computer using electricity; that's just what computers use. In most places it would still be a major coup for Linux to even be CONSIDERED as an alternative to Windows, even if it was rejected. I actually don't believe that moving from XP to Vista would have required much retraining. But I'm happy to see that Vista's perceived problems have led to large organizations at least looking at Ubuntu as an alternative, whether they use it or not.

jibiki 18y ago
I've never understood the retraining argument. Surely going from computer-illiterate to windows-trained takes orders of magnitude more effort than going from windows-trained to linux-trained. Setting linux up takes a bit of work (solving driver issues and such,) but actually using it seems like it just can't be that hard to learn. What I heard, from a guy at IBM, is that companies don't switch to linux because installing 3rd party software is difficult. That's not an issue of retraining though, that's an OS problem.
- chancho 18y ago
  It's not an OS problem, its a network problem, as in, linux doesn't have a network of ISVs who distribute software with 1-click installers. Its certainly possible, making an .rpm or .deb is no harder than making a Windows installer or an OS X app bundle. Look at skype, for instance. Download, double-click, bang. I think the bigger problem is the availability of 3rd party software for linux to begin with. Installing it is a minor detail. (Here "3rd party" means something outside of your distributions package management system, ie proprietary.)

omouse 18y ago

I think they mean that adopting Free Software allowed them to be more aligned with what their nation stands for: Liberté, égalité, fraternité: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libert%C3%A9,_%C3%A9galit%C3%A9,_fraternit%C3%A9 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libert%C3%A9,_%C3%A9galit%C3%A9...

timbowen 18y ago

I think this is a very exciting development for the open source community. More and more applications are going web based, and I can see a future where the only application anyone will really need is a web browser. We already have Google docs, once that functionality improves just a little bit there's your office suite. Serve your ticket and lien database through a secure web connection or VPN, and you're good to go. Total software cost: 0. Surely it must be cheaper to employ a couple of Linux techs than to keep bleeding money in license fees. Windows environments needs techs anyway, so most of the cost is already budgeted. There will be some cost and security concerns, but it seems clear to me that over the long term open source is a better solution. This could even lead to government sponsored developers who are paid to improve open source projects, somewhere way down the line. Exciting stuff!