
French Gendarmerie: "Open source desktop lowers TCO by 40%" - Tsiolkovsky
https://joinup.ec.europa.eu/community/osor/news/french-gendarmerie-open-source-desktop-lowers-tco-40
======
cs702
If the 40% figure is accurate, this is a BIG win for the Linux desktop (and
Canonical in particular), because the TCO (total cost of ownership) of an
enterprise desktop can be as much as _four to five times_ greater than the
cost of its hardware and software licenses.[1] At most corporations, training,
support, maintenance, security, and other ongoing costs together vastly exceed
the cost of just hardware and software.

For example, the hardware+software-only costs of a run-of-the-mill
Windows+Office enterprise desktop, for a large corporation, might be $1,200
over three years, but the TCO could easily top $4,000 or even $5,000 a year.
(If these figures seem high to you, think about the cost of training thousands
of individuals about as computer savvy as your Aunt Tillie, and then having to
troubleshoot all their virus infections, messed up files, one-off application
bugs, unrepeatable weird crashes, etc. so they can do their work every day.)

The Gendarmerie, in other words, is claiming that the switch to Ubuntu Linux
on the desktop is saving them somewhere between one and two thousand dollars a
year per seat. With 72,000 desktops, the aggregate savings are probably in the
mid-to-high tens of millions of dollars a year.

\--

[1] [http://www.gartner.com/id=2371417](http://www.gartner.com/id=2371417)

~~~
nols
Keep in mind that a motivation to change was the end of Windows XP so they're
probably assuming the training costs for each OS (GendBuntu vs Windows Vista)
would be identical. So while it is a victory for Linux, it's not a rout like
these numbers might make it seem.

~~~
Malstrond
But also keep in mind that when using FOSS software, there is no controlling
entity that can forcibly end something and force exit costs[1] and the
subsequent training costs for a new product on you.

1: [https://joinup.ec.europa.eu/news/tco-should-include-exit-
cos...](https://joinup.ec.europa.eu/news/tco-should-include-exit-costs-and-
cost-vendor-lock)

~~~
vacri
Sure there is, it's just smaller in magnitude. When the security updates for
your distro revision stop, that's the end of that revision. Then you have
upgrade costs.

Ubuntu in particular are bad at keeping things the same between (LTS)
revisions - so many times when you google to fix something, there's different
instructions for each of the past X releases.

~~~
hrkristian
Even on my Arch Linux systems that is hardly an issue, and even when there are
complications rollbacks are relatively easy to do, even system-wide.

~~~
vacri
How do you roll back "There are no more security updates available"?

------
perlgeek
It's a smart move to first introduce cross-platform applications. Then after
switching to a different operating system, the users will be familiar with the
applications, so "only" the desktop changes, not the whole experience. If you
are used to firefox, thunderbird and libreoffice, to many users it doesn't
matter much if it's windows or linux underneath.

~~~
takluyver
Definitely. I'd say that improving the Libreoffice experience on Windows is
probably one of the most effective things we can do at present to increase
adoption of desktop Linux.

~~~
Steko
This was also true a decade ago. The fact is OpenOffice and Libreoffice in
2013 still suck compared to Excel. By most standards they even suck compared
to Excel 2003. I'm not even sure they are closing the gap at all. And the
outlook isn't very good because Google pays top people top dollar and
Docs/Sheets/Drive has the exact same problem.

~~~
bal00ns
I've always been curious, what makes Excel better?

~~~
AnthonyMouse
Accountants use it as an IDE.

~~~
dsuth
As do engineers, for that matter.

~~~
Steko
The VB stuff matters of course but as a regular excel user what kills me when
I use LibreOffice is:

(1) The responsiveness which I guess is from hardware acceleration. It's like
comparing a $60 cheapo tablet and an ipad or Al Bundy's old Dodge to a 2014
Camry.

(2) The need to flout basic Excel conventions as if that's somehow lauditory.
LibreOffice has made some strides here (hey you can use commas in formulas
again) but it still feels like someone from Samsung should be put in charge of
the whole thing.

~~~
Decade
1) I think the responsiveness of Microsoft Office is largely from using
appropriate APIs. LibreOffice is ultimately based on StarOffice, and
StarOffice was the worst office program I've ever tried. It dragged its own OS
platform on top of whatever OS it was installed on, and it was slow and buggy.
LibreOffice is heaps better now, and it's improving fast, but it still suffers
from the legacy.

2) I don't see the need to slavishly follow Excel conventions, but I don't
know of any evidence that Samsung would be a good lead developer of any
software. Be that as it may, Samsung is free as anybody else to contribute to
the LibreOffice project.

~~~
pessimizer
>2) I don't see the need to slavishly follow Excel conventions, but I don't
know of any evidence that Samsung would be a good lead developer of any
software. Be that as it may, Samsung is free as anybody else to contribute to
the LibreOffice project.

I think 2) was a joke about Samsung copying Apple.

------
mercurial
They've also contributed to Trustedbird [1]. Personally, I think that's
totally awesome.

1:
[http://adullact.net/plugins/mediawiki/wiki/milimail/index.ph...](http://adullact.net/plugins/mediawiki/wiki/milimail/index.php/Download)

------
debacle
That's an impressive number, all things considered.

Many people rant about Open/LibreOffice not being comparable to MS Office, and
while there probably is no good replacement for Outlook in Linux (simply from
an ease of use standpoint), swriter and scalc provide 99.9% of the features
that most people use MS Office for.

Overall, I'm eager for the time when a major US municipality switches over to
Linux desktops. It just makes sense.

~~~
officemonkey
What is the best email/calendar/contact manager on Linux?

~~~
fps
gmail/google calendar/google contacts. I've been a desktop Linux user for 14
years, and while Evolution worked well enough for a while, it really stagnated
about 8 years ago as all the users switched to webmail. I tell chrome to
pretend it's on Windows and use Outlook Web Access when I need to interact
with Exchange, and I actually like that better than outlook on windows anyway,
but nothing beats gmail.

~~~
a8da6b0c91d
I'm using Evolution on imap now and it sucks. I'd been using mutt for many
years and decided it was time to try a GUI client now that most emails are
fairly graphical.

Evolution will routinely chew on my disk for over thirty seconds before
starting up, for no clear reason. It pops up strange error messages about host
resolution when I know the host is up just fine and quite reachable. It
doesn't atomically handle email moves, so I've closed the client and later
reopened it to find messages I've moved right back in their original places.

------
jlengrand
My father is a gendarme. One day, he found his computer changed, with an
Ubuntu instead of XP.

A few years later, he still complains about it. I still haven't found any of
his colleagues happy of the change.

The huge majority of those guys are not technical, and as pragmatic as the
change may be; it is quite hard for the people impacted :).

In the end, every single guy I know now has bought a laptop with Win 7, brings
it to work and works on it. Ubuntu is not used.

People don't want to change.

~~~
Intermernet
This may be true, but it does raise some questions:

Did your father have to configure his access to the (probably) Samba based
file shares, set up his own account on the network, map all of the printers,
configure his own email client etc?

Part of a large enterprise roll-out is pre-configuration. I can't imagine the
Gendarmerie IT dept. appreciating all of this extra configuration for "every
single guy" with a Win 7 laptop.

~~~
jlengrand
Hum, once again you go too technical. (no offense)

How does it work? With a cracked version of Office and a USB key that is
passed from hands to hands. The email client? A web based interface.

For gendarmerie based stuff that requires special software (taking depositions
for example), of course it is handled on Ubuntu because they have no choice.

But a lot of their paperwark time is spent filling word documents and excel
spreadsheets, something that can be done on any computer.

Gendarmerie IT dept, lawl? They changed the computer and gave them one phone
number for support, of a guy that is located 200 km away :).

------
devx
Governments should use as much open source software as possible, both because
of cost reasons, but also in principle (especially now about the NSA scandals,
instead of buying proprietary software from American companies).

~~~
masklinn
> Governments should use as much open source software as possible, both
> because of cost reasons, but also in principle

IIRC the latter is a major reason why France's PM released a circular strongly
recommending the increased use of OSS in administrations last year.

The first activity in that direction turns out to be almost 15 years old: back
in 1999, a french senator had proposed mandating OSS use across the board[0]

[0] [http://slashdot.org/story/99/10/28/0820202/french-senator-
pr...](http://slashdot.org/story/99/10/28/0820202/french-senator-proposes-
requiring-open-source)

------
wil421
This is the first public announcement (I have seen) of a large government
agency using open source desktop OSs. I've seen articles about tech companies
using Linux for Desktops, and other articles that mention large organizations
using Linux Desktops but the couldn't specify the company specifically (dont
know if it was US based or not). I have doubts about a large US non-tech
organization actually using Linux for their desktops. The user training would
have to momentous and cant imagine the IT support personnel/time needed to
successfully implement this kind of change. To be honest I cant even imagine
my company or others even switching to Open Office.

I am glad that this is working out for the French, I wonder if their are any
US government agencies that would consider a switch like this.

~~~
seszett
The National Assembly has been using Linux since 2007.

This article:

[http://www.zdnet.fr/actualites/linux-a-l-assemblee-
nationale...](http://www.zdnet.fr/actualites/linux-a-l-assemblee-nationale-un-
premier-bilan-positif-39382082.htm)

is in French, but it claims they have saveed 500 000 euros (over one year)
from this switch, and that deputies are mostly pleased with the switch. It
also features testimonies from both rightwing and leftwing deputies that agree
with each other!

~~~
wil421
I can see why this would be a viable option in Europe. They seem to be more
progressive in their decision making than the US. No way you could get the
left and right to agree on something major in the US! Maybe if they saw how
much money they would save doing something like this.

I wouldnt be pleased more if the strangle hold that windows has on "Work"
computers was loosened in this decade. Even the multinational company I work
for now has a BYOD program. They restrict us to using the "guest" throttled
wifi as punishment though.

~~~
Nanzikambe
> Maybe if they saw how much money they would save doing something like this.

I really don't think national fiscal responsibility is high on the agenda for
either party. Lobbying practically guarantees that any FOSS initiative is dead
in the water.

------
baltcode
What I want to know is the PC that they are using. I love to use Linux on my
computers but always have a hard time making sure that the hardware is
completely compatible. I hope such adoptions lead to better hardware
compatibility with cheaper commodity hardware. I've had a few weird
experiences:

1\. Previous laptop: wifi under Linux didn't connect to certain networks, wile
the same machine connected to all networks under windows.

2\. Current desktop: Under Linux, it will sometimes freeze with no errors
reported (usually under heavy and sustained CPU and graphics usage) but
nothing of the sort happens under windows.

And these issues are really hard to figure out for non systems programmers
like me.

~~~
Iftheshoefits
1) WiFi chipset manufacturers and the linux kernel are and have been at odds
for some time. The issue is primarily that some (many?) of the chipset
manufacturers that make the machinery that runs WiFi cards don't provide open
source drivers for their chipsets. Some of these make proprietary kernel-
compatible drivers (often inferior to their Windows offerings), and others
have to make do with hackish workarounds (NDISwrapper). I'd argue this isn't a
problem with Linux as much as it is the device manufacturers. I'd also argue
from the end-user perspective that doesn't matter much.

2\. See (1)--there is a notorious hate-hate relationship between nVidia and
Linux; I'd bet that what you've experienced is related to that, although
happily will admit to being wrong (if you aren't engaged in accidental
selective memory--that is, remembering times Linux froze but not Windows, even
though the latter surely has frozen on you before, under similar
circumstances).

~~~
baltcode
You're right, the Wifi chipsets have proprietary driver issues. My graphics
card is one of those low end ATI models that come in cheap desktops. I've
heard that graphics cards can be an issue. I wonder if I could just disable
the graphics card in some Ubuntu setting. I just want to run things like vi,
ssh, gcc and a browser most of the time anyway.

~~~
Decade
Intel integrated graphics are getting astonishingly better, and they're open
source friendly, except for the Atoms that have the pathetic PowerVR graphics.
At this point, for casual use, I don't think it's worth the hassle dealing
with AMD or NVIDIA graphics.

Though, if you are burdened with having to run a video card in Linux, then AMD
models have basic performance for less hassle than NVIDIA. You actually can
disable the graphics card, but you probably don't want to, because you would
have no bitmap graphics at all. Vi, SSH, and GCC don't depend on graphics, but
a browser does.

------
kriro
As someone who has worked on Open Source in France I think this is big for
another reason. It might lead to a nice push of Linux in Africa (specifically
through the African Union). Many of the French speaking countries look at
France for "tech trends" etc.

Microsoft is following an interesting strategy in Africa. basically the MS-
whatever certificates are cheap and widespread (and nonauthorized copies of
Windows are tolerated) which leads to IT guys wanting Windows. I always
thought that was strange and Linux should be much stronger in Africa :)

~~~
SeppoErviala
"About 3 million computers get sold every year in China, but people don't pay
for the software. Someday they will, though. As long as they are going to
steal it, we want them to steal ours. They'll get sort of addicted, and then
we'll somehow figure out how to collect sometime in the next decade." \- Bill
Gates @ 1998

------
Mikeb85
Everyone who cares about control over their software should be using open-
source. This is why pretty much any investment bank, hedge fund and
proprietary trading firm runs Linux or BSD, uses open-source tools and rolls
their own trading software...

------
trimbo
I'd be interested to know about how much they have in the way of custom
software. If they're just using Office, I agree, this should be fairly easy.
The tough thing is when you have custom development that happened on Windows.

For example, the US deploys a large number of custom applications on Windows.
One of the biggest is the VA's electronic medical records application, CPRS.
CPRS is a massive application. Wine might do the trick, though I'm not sure
how it works with AD and other Windows services the VA depends on.

~~~
neltnerb
Isn't pretty much everyone moving to custom web applications for internal
services? I doubt that in those cases it matters much what platform you're on
since it's probably running on Apache on a linux server anyway.

I've seen this model even at tiny companies, and my impression is that it is
also how the big ones do it. There are limitations, but the benefits are
pretty substantial.

------
Zigurd
I would not be surprised if many non-US government agencies are evaluating
running their own security-oriented Linux distributions. Hopefully this will
result in a critical mass of vendors and technologies for running networks
that have at least some chance of keeping communications and data storage
secure.

Sadly, I would also not be surprised if many governments continue to rely on
US vendors for a lot of network and voice infrastructure that have already
been compromised.

------
mddw
[https://joinup.ec.europa.eu/sites/default/files/11-apresenta...](https://joinup.ec.europa.eu/sites/default/files/11-apresentacao-
stephanedumond.pdf)

Nice use of Comic Sans in the presentation. Wonder if he paid the licence or
used Powerpoint.

Nice post though, I did not know about GendBuntu !
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GendBuntu](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GendBuntu)

~~~
username42
Comic Sans is freeware:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Core_fonts_for_the_Web](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Core_fonts_for_the_Web)

Installation is trivial (apt-get install ttf-mscorefonts-installer). I think
it is a default package.

------
nraynaud
I can't imaging the savings if they had fused them with the police first and
used the same software for everybody (even non-open source).

~~~
a-priori
It's not unusual for a nation to have multiple police forces with overlapping
jurisdictions. And I don't see it as a problem in and of itself. In Ottawa,
Canada, for example, because it is the national capital there are three police
forces with jurisdiction within the city: the Royal Canadian Mounted Police
(the federal gendarmerie force), the Ontario Provincial Police, and the Ottawa
Police Service. As far as I know, and I live in Ottawa, it works out well.

But back to France. I imagine that IT costs are a small portion of the
gendarmerie or police's budget. Most of it would be taken up by wages for the
officers and staff and maintenance of equipment and facilities. Merging
France's two police forces would do little to reduce those costs, since the
combined organization would have the union of the two organizations' duties.

~~~
nraynaud
it would at least make only one set of procedures and one set of tools for
everybody.

~~~
6d0debc071
That can be a bad thing as well if those tools are chosen poorly. By
diversifying you don't necessarily have the same weaknesses across all your
components - and other parts of the group can copy things that work when
someone tries something new out.

------
frank_boyd
I always wonder how important people can take so long to understand so obvious
stuff like that.

~~~
code_duck
Sounds typical that society is figuring this out right about at the end of the
era of desktop computers.

------
LAXF40
"[A] proprietary office suite". Hmmm... I wonder which one it's talking about?
Haha

------
Apocryphon
I find this somewhat cute. I didn't know what TCO was at first, so I had
assumed from headline that France's national police was blowing FUD against
open source, and this was another article about government agency malfeasance
in tech.

------
chatman
Good to know adoption of so many GNU/Linux desktops. Though, Ubuntu is a bad
choice because of the Amazon search bar spyware enabled by default which sends
back search queries to Amazon. Perhaps they don't understand the underlying
principles behind free software: something that gives the users complete
freedom.

~~~
chatman
Fedora would have been a better choice.

~~~
melling
That's why 20 years later Linux and open source are still struggling to gain
mainstream traction. Gnome vs KDE, 200 varieties of Linux, Open Office vs
Libre Office, etc.

Most people don't care in the least. They just want a good acceptable solution
where they can get help if they ever have a problem. Why would most people
choose the mess of open source? Gimp vs Photoshop? Time is money.

The Open Source community is its own worst enemy.

~~~
chatman
Mainstream traction cannot be a justification for total domination of
GNU/Linux by a company like Canonical that puts in spyware in Ubuntu (Amazon
search).

~~~
Sanddancer
Then make something better. Canonical is in this position because it does more
things that are good for the end user than any other distro maker. Redhat's
too busy trying to domineer the system through terribly written software like
systemd to work on giving users a good experience, Arch is too centered around
power users, and Slackware is similar. If you want people to not use
Canonical's Linux offerings, then you need to provide something that will be
supported for more than a year at a reasonable price, easy to use, and will
reasonably Just Work. No other Linux distro has that at the moment, and it
doesn't look like any will anytime soon.

