LO on La Gendarmerie Nationale computers ?

M_Henri_Day · October 3, 2013, 4:15pm

Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols
has published an interesting article,
*French police move from Windows to Ubuntu Linux* (
http://www.zdnet.com/french-police-move-from-windows-to-ubuntu-linux-7000021479/)

, over at ZDNet. It deals explicitly with a migration from Windows XP to a
«customized version of Ubuntu Linux», but if, as I presume, LO is included
as the standard office suite, it is significant for us as well. Anyone
familiar with the details ?...

Henri

krackedpress · October 3, 2013, 4:32pm

I do not remember what the current LO version is in the Ubuntu
repositories, but I use 12.04LTS instead of 13.04 and 13.10 comes out
this month as well.

Still there was an earlier message that their President or Prime
Minister stated that the French government supports LO and wants to drop
MSO in favor of LO. That was sometime this past spring.

So, if that is the case, then the combination of the two statements
"implies" that they will be using LO.

M_Henri_Day · October 3, 2013, 4:46pm

It was due to the reference to a «customized version of Ubuntu Linux»,
that I posed the question....

Henri

Brian_Barker · October 3, 2013, 5:00pm

Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols has published an interesting article, *French police move from Windows to Ubuntu Linux* ( http://www.zdnet.com/french-police-move-from-windows-to-ubuntu-linux-7000021479/ ), over at ZDNet. It deals explicitly with a migration from Windows XP to a «customized version of Ubuntu Linux», but if, as I presume, LO is included as the standard office suite, ...

Perhaps not.

http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2009/03/french-police-saves-millions-of-euros-by-adopting-ubuntu/ (from 2009) says

The Gendarmerie began its transition to open source software in 2005 when it replaced Microsoft Office with OpenOffice.org across the entire organization. It gradually adopted other open source software applications, including Firefox and Thunderbird. After the launch of Windows Vista in 2006, it decided to phase out Windows and incrementally migrate to Ubuntu.

Brian Barker

sophi · October 3, 2013, 5:04pm

Hi,

Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols
has published an interesting article,
*French police move from Windows to Ubuntu Linux* (
http://www.zdnet.com/french-police-move-from-windows-to-ubuntu-linux-7000021479/)

, over at ZDNet. It deals explicitly with a migration from Windows XP to a
«customized version of Ubuntu Linux», but if, as I presume, LO is included
as the standard office suite, it is significant for us as well. Anyone
familiar with the details ?...

They use LibreOffice since some times now. You may have also seen that
MIMO is part of our Advisory Board, it represents several ministries in
France which are using LibreOffice. See this announcement:
http://blog.documentfoundation.org/2013/06/17/the-document-foundation-welcomes-frances-mimo-in-the-advisory-board/
Ministry of Defense is participating here.

Kind regards
Sophie

planas · October 3, 2013, 5:25pm

Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols
has published an interesting article,
*French police move from Windows to Ubuntu Linux* (
http://www.zdnet.com/french-police-move-from-windows-to-ubuntu-linux-7000021479/)

, over at ZDNet. It deals explicitly with a migration from Windows XP to a
«customized version of Ubuntu Linux», but if, as I presume, LO is included
as the standard office suite, it is significant for us as well. Anyone
familiar with the details ?...

Henri

The only "standard" office suites on Linux with good MSO file compatibility are LO and AOO. If they are using Ubuntu as the base I would expect them to use LO.

James_Knott · October 3, 2013, 5:34pm

Brian Barker wrote:

Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols has published an interesting article,
*French police move from Windows to Ubuntu Linux* (
http://www.zdnet.com/french-police-move-from-windows-to-ubuntu-linux-7000021479/
), over at ZDNet. It deals explicitly with a migration from Windows
XP to a «customized version of Ubuntu Linux», but if, as I presume,
LO is included as the standard office suite, ...

Perhaps not.

http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2009/03/french-police-saves-millions-of-euros-by-adopting-ubuntu/
(from 2009) says

The Gendarmerie began its transition to open source software in 2005
when it replaced Microsoft Office with OpenOffice.org across the
entire organization. It gradually adopted other open source software
applications, including Firefox and Thunderbird. After the launch of
Windows Vista in 2006, it decided to phase out Windows and
incrementally migrate to Ubuntu.

Either way, they're not using Microsoft Office. They're using open
source software that's supported on multiple platforms and share common
standardized file formats. This ends the MS lock in for them.

M_Henri_Day · October 3, 2013, 5:47pm

Thanks, Sophie - that is, indeed, what I surmised, but it could have been
otherwise, as Brian's message above, which shows that MSO was replaced by
OOO before the move to a new operating system took place, indicates.
Still, it seems reasonable that if a version of Ubuntu were to be
installed, the default office suite found there would be used, rather than
being replaced by AOO, which simply would introduce a complication without
any corresponding benefits. Good, at any rate, to be able to replace
speculation with knowledge....

Henri

planas · October 3, 2013, 8:11pm

Hi
It's not "the only". There are choices. It's not hugely tough to
uninstall LibreOffice and install Gnome Office, AOO, KOffice, Calligra,
Google-docs or even Kingsoft or the weird one that comes with Macs. I'm
sure fanboys/girls of each could successfully argue why 'theirs' is the
best.

Whichever you prefer it's good to know it co-operates with all the
others. It's only Microsquish that tends to restrict the types of
formats you can use and the interoperability with other products. The
only real question for me is can i carry on using what i prefer using
and still communicate with "them" (whoever "they" are). When they are
using MS the answer is a bit chancy but if they use anything else the
answer tends to be yes.

It's just "the icing on the cake" if they do choose to use the best (by
which i mean LibreOffice)
Regards from
Tom
I have installed on openSUSE 12.3:

Gnome Office
Calligra Office
EuroOffice 2012 (AOO and LO fork/derivative)
Free Office (covers Word, Excel, PowerPoint) - stripped down version of
SoftMaker Office (proprietary)
Kingsoft Office (covers Word, Excel, PowerPoint) (proprietary)
Apache OpenOffice 4.0
LibreOffice both 4.0.4 and 4.1.1 (first from repositories and second
from LO site) LO 4.1.1 is my primary suite

I installed most for testing/curiosity/backup and for reading/editing
MSO files when LO has problems. I have not had any problems with clashes
or other problems between the suites

James_Knott · October 3, 2013, 9:17pm

I've just received a batch of resent messages, such as the one below,
from some idiot joto2036@verizon.net, who thinks it's fun to resend
messages without adding any content.

joto2036 wrote:

Tom_Davies · October 3, 2013, 6:36pm

Hi :)
It's not "the only". There are choices. It's not hugely tough to uninstall LibreOffice and install Gnome Office, AOO, KOffice, Calligra, Google-docs or even Kingsoft or the weird one that comes with Macs. I'm sure fanboys/girls of each could successfully argue why 'theirs' is the best.

Whichever you prefer it's good to know it co-operates with all the others. It's only Microsquish that tends to restrict the types of formats you can use and the interoperability with other products. The only real question for me is can i carry on using what i prefer using and still communicate with "them" (whoever "they" are). When they are using MS the answer is a bit chancy but if they use anything else the answer tends to be yes.

It's just "the icing on the cake" if they do choose to use the best (by which i mean LibreOffice)
Regards from
Tom

NoOp · October 6, 2013, 3:22am

Perhaps LO is included, however the presentation is done using Ooo 3.4.1.
<http://www.eventolinux.org/images/el2013_apresentacao-stephanedumond.pdf.pdf>