French Linux Revolution?

Tuesday, February 06, 2007

Liberté - Egalité - Fraternité are the magic words for any person in France, as they stand for one of the most important events in French history: the French Revolution.

French car manufacturer PSA Peugeot Citroen is increasing its desktop environment from 75.000 to 100.000. Approximately 80% of this desktop environment will be Windows Vista, however 20% (that is 20.000) will run Suse Linux. The French have always been a nation that more or less chose their own directions, which is also much the case for Linux adoption. The French parliament is fully supporting a Ubuntu Linux desktop environment. Besides Linux adoption, we all remember Apple's legal struggle with the iTunes stores in France. Like I said: the French have their way of choosing their own directions. If they had not, there would have not been a Revolution more than 200 years ago.

Back to the PSA Peugeot desktop plans. Are we dealing with the long-sought French Linux Revolution? I don't think so. I doubt whether people will find this a demonstration of Liberté (4 out of 5 users are still condemned to Vista as Linux fans would argue) or Egalité (I am pretty positive Suse Linux users will have a completely different user experience than the Vista users). The only revolutionary element is the Fraternité: we have a peaceful coexistence of two rival operating systems, at a scale not seen in many places. Doesn't that make an extremely interesting case?

Categories: Linux, Suse, Vista, market, Peugeot, France