GendBuntu: How France’s Military-Police switched 100,000+ PCs to Linux

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Thought I'd share a success story.

France’s National Gendarmerie (military police) rolled out GendBuntu, their own custom Linux OS
* Around 35,000 desktops/laptops deployed by December 2011, and today 97% of 103,000+ PCs run GendBuntu
* They started by replacing Office, IE & Outlook in 2005, then moved to Ubuntu in 2008, achieving a 40% reduction in total cost of ownership
* The switch slashed annual license and maintenance costs by millions of euros (~€2 M per year and ~€50 M total) .

The switch away from big Tech to Open Source alternatives might not be easy, but it's been successfully done before.

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It could have been gendar'Mint, gend'ARM64, or gend'Arch,BTW.

But they chose that awkward sounding abomination.

Oh well, it's the year of the Linux desktop, I'll forgive them.

For now.

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"GendBuntu" is an atrocious name, and it doesn't sound good in French either (perhaps even worse). I don't know why they insisted on referencing Ubuntu in the name. GendarmOS would have been fine, or GendarmeSE to be more correct.

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gendarme from "gens d’armes" to "gens d'ubuntu" (people of ubuntu) which, pronounced quickly would become "gendbuntu" is ok for an os name for gendarmerie

if only they went with arch to call their os "gensdarc" to play with the name Jeanne-d'Arc 🤭

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True, but then it should have been GendUbuntu... Although people may think that's a guy named jean d'Ubuntu.

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we're writing about a society that pronounces "je ne sais pas" as "chais pas", of course it's gendbuntu

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Chepas, moi... Pourquoi pas G'b'ntu tant qu'à faire?

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https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/GendBuntu

https://www.slideshare.net/slideshow/french-gendarmerie-nationaleubuntulibrecon2014bilbao/43013966

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This has become one of the major incentives of the scheme for staff; transferring to GendBuntu from a proprietary system means the staff member receives a new computer with a widescreen monitor.

Smart! What I wouldn't do for new equipment...

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Deleted by moderator

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OP

There aren't really news articles about it that I could find, only info in Wiki.

So I thought I'd share so more people are aware of it

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Me a FOSS advocate who hates the French police and army trying to choose what emotions to feel:

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Frabuntu sounds better IMHO.

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