This lacks quite a lot of (interesting) detail. The differences between Windows and Ubuntu are more than the icons and the games; what about Office (OO is quite different, particularly for advanced uses of Excel), Outlook, Active Directory, NTLM authentication for internal (web)apps, .Net for in-house development, etc? These aren't all strictly speaking part of Windows, but they are part of the Windows ecosystem, particularly at large sites, and usually don't have Linux slot-in equivalents that are trivial to implement.
So, either the Gendarmerie Nationale didn't use any of those parts of the Windows ecosystem (which seems unlikely), or they made savings in spite of having to replace them (in which case the 'icons and games' remark is disingenuous), or they haven't accounted properly (which, this being a governmental entity, doesn't seem impossible.)
I can't agree with you more. At least here in the States the law enforcement agencies use specialized software that runs only on windows (Think report writing, ticket tracking, officer tracking, booking systems, accident reconstruction, computer forensics, etc). Do the French LEA use software that's cross platform? Or did they already move to web-based software so that the workstation OS is a non-issue?
As the parent stated there's a lot more to an IT eco-system than the icons and games. Surely the French used special LEA software, and I'm wishing the article included details about that.
"the project is one of several similar migrations of French public bodies. To mention just a some examples: the French National Assembly in 2007 decided to run Ubuntu on their 1145 workstations; the Ministry of Agriculture and Fishery switched their servers to the Mandriva GNU/Linux distribution in 2005; the Paris council will use several open souce applications on their laptops, as decided in June, 2008. These developments thus clearly show how open source software is used increasingly in the French public sector."
Apparently they aren't the first in France to move to OSS so the interoperability is easier to handle.
They migrated 5000 workstation out of 90k. Presumably, they started with the easy ones first. I bet they'll keep a number of windows machines for those cases where no OO equivalent is available.
So, either the Gendarmerie Nationale didn't use any of those parts of the Windows ecosystem (which seems unlikely), or they made savings in spite of having to replace them (in which case the 'icons and games' remark is disingenuous), or they haven't accounted properly (which, this being a governmental entity, doesn't seem impossible.)