French Government Moving from Windows to Linux
The Gendarmerie has been moving towards open source slowly over the past few years, first ditching Microsoft Office in favor of the free Open Office as a replacement for Powerpoint, Excel, and Word. Then the organization left Internet Explorer and Outlook for Mozilla's Firefox browser and its lesser known sister application the Thunderbird E-mail client.
According to the Gendarmerie, moving to Linux will have 3 major benefits. One, it will allow it to diversify its suppliers instead of relying on one company. Two, the nature of open source puts the operating system in complete control of the police force, allowing it to tailor the software to its needs. And three, the cost. Ubuntu is free, as are most other Linux distributions. And that should make the tax payers happy.
From Yahoo! News
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