Linux s'il vous plaît: French Gendarmerie say oui to Ubuntu

David M Williams
Wednesday, 11 March 2009 18:30

Opinion and Analysis

This year the Gendarmerie expect to migrate close to 15,000 workstations in total and again, every new installation will be this same Ubuntu image. Additionally, older computers are being gradually adapted to the new set up but definitely every new computer is deployed with Ubuntu and its associated free software suite. No new Microsoft licenses are being purchased.

Despite the software being no cost, the Gendarmerie weren’t out purely to pinch pennies, believing fully that a support partner was required. French law requires a public tender process but while waiting the police have benefited from free support by none other than Canonical themselves.

Ordinarily, Canonical don’t provide free support (after all, they give the software away; the support is their main revenue model) but made an exception in this case because it was an interesting activity to be involved with.

Danek notes that just as their previous open source rollouts were accepted easily, so too the switch of operating system was met with a minimum of concern or anxiety to end users. Partially, this was because the primary apps they used were there waiting for them in Ubuntu.

Credit has also been given to Ubuntu’s easy-to-use user interface. In fact, Danek’s team believe had they opted to go from Windows XP to Windows Vista the users would have complained and definitely required training or significant assistance.

Indeed, had Vista been selected the Gendarmerie would have definitely run up a sizeable software bill. Moreso, a hardware bill too, to ensure the computers could run the newer Microsoft offering, with some breathing room.

What’s more, the Gendarmerie has noticed improved network performance between local police stations and the central headquarters in Paris.

Canonical are taking the opportunity to gather vast amounts of feedback thanks to such a large installation. This has even lead to patches and modifications in Ubuntu itself, benefiting the rest of the community.

Danek believes all the Gendarmerie’s computers will have been finally migrated to Ubuntu by 2015. Based on his experiences thus far he states this will have a dramatic improvement in the force’s IT platform and at a greatly reduced cost.