 The French paramilitary police force made the announcement that they will be removing all Microsoft systems and replacing them with systems running the open source Linux operating system. This is one of the largest government organizations to completely devout themselves to switching to Linux. The police force had already moved away from such applications as Microsoft Office to the popular open source alternative, openoffice.org (learn more about alternatives to Microsoft and other proprietary software here).
The gendarmerie's 70,000 desktop PCs currently run the Microsoft operating system Windows, but these systems will be increasingly switched over to Ubuntu-driven PCs over the next coming months. In 2006, the administration had moved to using exclusively open source web browsers. "We will introduce Linux every time we have to replace a desktop computer," explained Colonel Nicolas Geraud, deputy director of the gendarmerie's IT department, "so this year we expect to change 5,000-8,000 to Ubuntu and then 12,000-15,000 over the next four years so that every desktop uses the Linux operating system by 2013-2014." Making the move from proprietary to open source software is saving the police force approximately seven million euros each year for its PCs. After making the switch from Microsoft Office to Open Office in 2005 and then from Internet Explorer to Mozilla's Firefox and Thunderbird in 2006, it was an easy decision for the French administration to move completely to Linux-based systems. Though one of, if not, the biggest group to make the switch entirely to open source, this isn't the first French government-run organization to make the switch; the national assembly switched to Ubuntu in 2007 for its 1,200 PCs. Europe is continuing its trend of supporting Linux. With the French police force fully adopting Linux, this only further cements Europe's devotion to open source and the Linux operating system. Germany's city of Munich made the plunge to use Open Office for its administrative offices; Berlin's government also signed a deal with IBM to support Linux-based software. The UK has often endorsed Linux as the most secure operating system in the world. Some Spanish governments made the switch for security reasons. Only registered users can write comments.
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