Large scale use of Linux on the desktop in organizations?

April 30, 2009 2:49 PM

I'm looking for a list or reference to press releases/news articles about large corporations or government departments that have switched to Linux as a desktop platform. For example this week it was reported that the French police have 5,000 PCs running Ubuntu.

I'd like to compile some kind of list of large organizations that have successfully replaced Win2000/XP on the desktop. Can anyone describe a real world example they have seen first hand?

I've read about significant uptake in Germany and in Brazil, and educational-specific Portuguese language specific versions of Linux. In the English and German speaking worlds I know that Novell and SuSE are making businesses out of this, so I'll check their PR archives as well...

French reference:
http://www.linuxreaders.com/2009/04/27/french-police-switch-from-windows-to-linux/

posted by thewalrus to computers & internet (3 comments total)

The POS system in Lowes appeared to be some type of Linux desktop when I was poking around at it a few weeks ago, but it could have easily been a commercial Unix instead.
posted by odinsdream at 3:13 PM on April 30

Most press releases and official announcements on this topic can be found at the Open Source Observatory and Repository of the European Union:
http://www.osor.eu/news

There are already more than 200 announcements of this kind, from the The Finnish Ministry of Justice to the the public administration of the city of Boom in Belgium.

For outside Europe, it is a bit more complicated. But Ubuntu's own press releases archives give some numbers.
posted by dov at 12:46 AM on May 1

I'm not sure if this is large scale enough but the Howard County library system in Maryland US has installed Groovix on their 284 public PCs.
posted by jessamyn at 6:38 AM on May 1