| Region | Roll-out | Savings |
|---|---|---|
| Valencia, Spain | 120K PC in admin, courts and schools | €1.5million p.a. |
| Extremadura, Spain | 70K PCs in schools, more in offices | |
| France | 72K PCs in French national police, Parliament and ministries checking it out | €2 million p.a. |
| Germany, Munich | 14K desktops | €11 million on hardware and licences |
| Estonia | pilot study, potentially 6k desktops | > €1 million p.a. |
| Portugal | 890K desktops | lots |
| Turkey, Defence Recruitment | 4.5K desktops | |
| Turkey, schools | 1600K notebooks+tablets |
So, when I write about millions of users of GNU/Linux for personal IT, they are out there. This is far from an exhaustive list but a few minutes of searching the web. The whole of Europe is near 1.5% share of page-views from GNU/Linux and Norway is over 3%. Europe is a hot bed of activity with governments promoting and sharing ideas about how to implement FLOSS and GNU/Linux on clients and servers. A lot of activity is in schools where students will be introduced to FLOSS and run with it. I expect GNU/Linux to become more available and widely accepted in Europe in the next few years.
luvr wrote, ” I arrived at Ubuntu Computers by Linux-Service.be”
It’s a beautiful place, according to Google. It was not quite as quiet when my Dad was there during WWII.
I’ve been looking for a new laptop lately, since I passed my laptop on to acquaintances of ours after their nine-year old laptop had broken down. (They had gotten their old laptop from me some four years ago; I had gotten it second-hand myself, with a nonfunctional Windows XP system on it, and I installed Ubuntu 10.04 on it for them. Then, when Ubuntu 10.04 was about to go out of support, and I didn’t want to force the Unity desktop on them, I replaced it with Debian 7 XFCE. I wasn’t entirely sure if XFCE would be right for them, but they turned out to love it. They are now running Xubuntu 14.04.)
I have to say, I find it still far too hard to buy a laptop with anything but Windows. Since I will be running Linux on it, a Securely Restricted Microsoft Windows UEFI Boot Crap machine is out of the question, so any computer that comes with Windows 8 is simply not an option. (There are too many problems and stupid issues with attempting to replace Windows 8 with a real OS, and I’m not prepared to take the risk. Want references? Look them them up for yourself… You know how to do that, don’t you?)
In addition, I want to avoid NVIDIA graphics. I mean, I know (from experience, even) that the NVIDIA proprietary driver offers great performance, but I know equally well that upgrades are somewhat of a hit-and-miss affair. It may well be that the situation has improved a lot by now, but I won’t change my mind about NVIDIA until and unless they change their ways. (No hard feelings, however; I’m perfectly happy leaving them alone, and I’m sure they won’t mind either.)
Anyway, I found the almost-perfect laptop for me at alternate.be, except for ony tiny little detail: The screen size—which is 15″, while I’m looking for a 17″ screen. I sent them a message about this, but I never received a reply. Ah, well…
Looking further, I arrived at Ubuntu Computers by Linux-Service.be, where I ordered my perfect 17″ laptop, and I opted to have Xubuntu installed on it (not because I couldn’t do the install myself, but I wanted to minimise the risks of discovering that the computer might be DOA—which I had happen to me once with a no-OS desktop computer, many years ago).
The computer arrived earlier today, and it works great! I sure am a happy camper!
Possibly.
Not proven.
There’s a wealth of opportunity out there for future articles, Robert. I encourage you to explore that particular domain.
Good to know that you’ve added Estonia to the list, Robert.
What would any of us do without Estonia and its possibly greater than €1 million savings on a pilot project?
Me, I lie awake worrying about these things. The starving millions? Who cares?