FUD Failed

You have read the FUD:

  • You will have to spend a lot to migrate to GNU/Linux
  • You will need some particular app not available on GNU/Linux
  • You will not save any money
  • TCO higher with GNU/Linux
  • etc.

Well, it is not true. You can do it. Here’s how the French police did it.

  • wake up to the reality of the Wintel treadmill
  • wake up to the reality of the cash flow to licensing
  • choose to use FLOSS apps
  • when all the FLOSS works and you use the browser for apps on the server, change the OS
  • because your users are used to the FLOSS apps, there is only a small cost to migrating the OS.

They saved millions of Euros over several years with this approach. In a few years 100000 employees will be free of that other OS completely.

This is a recipe that works, but I still like making the switch on a weekend. ;-)

- Robert Pogson

2 Responses to “FUD Failed”


  1. 1 Yonah X. Mar 29th, 2009 at 3:47 pm

    Earlier this morning I clicked on the link you provided and was greeted with this:

    This Sunday afternoon we are going to do some maintenance tasks in the platform and the services will be totally stopped during the maintenance window.

    The platform will be unaccessible from 17:30 to 21:00.

    Sorry for any inconvenience, the OSOR team.

    That’s not exactly a great endorsement. Running Linux requires maintenance so severe you have to stop serving web pages? They don’t seem to know what they are doing, quite frankly.

    AD HOMINEM REMARKS DELETED

  2. 2 Robert Pogson Mar 29th, 2009 at 7:00 pm

    Your comment assumes that running GNU/Linux required serious downtime. It is their business what service level they want to run. If they felt it was important not to have an outage they could have switched to another server for surgery. I really do not care. Netcraft reports some seriously reliable sites running GNU/Linux.

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My Mission

My observations and opinions about IT are based on 40 years of use in science and technology and lately, in education. I like IT that is fast, cost-effective and reliable. I do not care whether my solution is the same as yours. I like to think for myself.

My first use of GNU/Linux in 2001 was so remarkably better than what I had been using, I feel it is important work to share GNU/Linux with the world. I have been blessed by working in schools where students and school systems have benefited by good, modular software easily installed in most systems.

I have shown GNU/Linux to thousands of students and hundreds of teachers over the years and will continue in some way doing that until I die in spite of the opposition.

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