The French parliament is planned to switch over Linux

[paul]

The French parliament is planned to switch over Linux by dumping window in support of open source, the planned switch date is June 2007.

[kev woodman]

A few governments have done this - it would be interesting to see how the staff coped using, say, OpenOffice instead of MS Office.

[Rodney]

Yes that will be a good move by the French Government.
Most of the governments are thinking of using free stuff compared to the expensive Microsoft products.
I also read in a blog that in Madras,one of the states in India, the government has also decided to switch to Open source Linux and has already started ordering computers loaded with Linux. Microsoft officials failed to convince the Government as their deal wasn't cost effective. I think it is a growing trend all across the globe to cut down on heavy investments.
If it is a big organization or government organization then they also can invest all this amount in better training programs.

[kev woodman]

I still think that Linux has a lot to prove in the desktop market. In a commercial setting I would be worried about a loss of productivity as staff got used to a new OS. A lot of staff can barely function using Windows and other MS products and I can't see any of the Linux flavours as being inherently more intuitive.

[paul]

Yes it is difficult to train their staff for linux as they are more user friendly with MS but The Government official can hire Linux people to mentor and train staff.

[kev woodman]

Realistically how many people though - the Civil Service is the largest employer in this country by a huge margin, you're talking about hundreds of thousands of staff. I imagine the French are the same. That's an awful lot of training.

[sanderson]

Yes Rodney, you heard/read right. Tamilnadu (TM) govt. has already purchased linux based systems for the village schools of TM.

Basically it's all about finance and less of maintenance cost for the linux based systems comparing to M$ based.

M$ affects badly on the govt. economy.

I think this is the best solution.

In less budget they can hire teacher and teach students.

[kev woodman]

Linux may well be a reasonable choice for village schools in India - that doesn't make it right for the massive civil services of Western governments. The UK civil service employs around 460,000 people, the majority of whom use a MS product at least sometimes during their working day. Asking them to switch to software which is not either a) exactly like MS or b) so intuitive they don't have to think about it, is just not feasible. To give you just a small example: my wife is a teacher, she uses the computer in her classroom for maybe an hour every day, at home she uses MS Office for doing all of her paperwork. If you want to try and ask her to give up precious time to learn a new system you're going to be on the receiving end of some severe finger wagging.

The fact is that Linux has lost the battle for the desktop before it even got going.

[Administrator]

Initial problems are always there with any new software or new technology ( Linux is old for us but not for the Government Employees ). Today or Tomorrow they have to switch and I personally don't think that Linux is behind windows for any specific feature.

Custom softwares have been developed for user interface like we use cpanel and there is no other control panel as good as cpanel. One should not forget that cpanel was close to development of windows control panel but they stopped it at 85% before 2 years. Development has too many limitations on windows as you cannot modify system files / DLL's / Registry in windows while in Linux you can change anything starting from Kernel to Binaries. You can upgrade Fedora to CentOS and CentOS to RHEL with proper knowledge.

I am not saying that such kind of OS upgrades should be done in Government offices but the flexibility you have with Linux is not possible with windows. If Linux can capture more than 90% of the hosting market then why it wont succeed in Desktop market ?

Probablly Government people are more optimistic than we are as we cannot dare to switch to Linux in our offices as of now but they have already done. How come HP, Dell and IBM have switched to Linux all over the world ?

[kev woodman]

I know this is one of those topics that everybody loves to argue about but for what it's worth here are my favourite reasons why Linux won't take over the desktop:

1. It hasn't already. people talk like Linux is the new kid on the block and it's not. It has been around for years no and has made no real impact on Windows in the Home/Office area;

2. Just because Linux is a success on servers doesn't mean it could be successful elsewhere. The server market is a specialised area which is full of technically minded people, it in no way represents or correlates to the desktop market;

3. Ease of software development makes no difference to the average user. If developers were only releasing the best software for Linux then perhaps it would but that isn't the case - in fact the opposite is true.

4. I like cpanel, well I prefer it to Plesk, but is it easy to use? I'd say no. If that's an example of the best in UI that Linux has to ever then things are in a pretty sorry state;

5.Dell switch to Linux - I don't think so. Dell may produce servers loaded with Linux but for the desktop - not happening. And do I think Michael Dell walks into his office and drafts a letter to his good friend Bill using Open Office - can't see that either. Same goe s for the others (with the exception of some governments of course);

6. And finally....Linux just isn't as easy to use as Windows. I'm sorry but that's the plain truth of it. The user permissions frighten people, installing software is a fucking nightmare, driver compatibility is still a problem and if you even mention a kernel to most users they will turn pale and run.

If you're looking for an OS that will destroy Windows monopoly then, no matter how many advantages it may have, Linux isn't it and never has been. You'd be better off looking to the Web as a platform or hoping that Apple gets off it's high horse and starts selling OSX to run on any hardware.