Win2Linux
The French Gendarmerie has been running Linux on 103,164 workstations, 97% of its fleet, for nearly twenty years. Official figures, public sources.
Every figure has a source.
Gendarmerie Nationale on GendBuntu — June 2024.
Of total estate. Remainder: specialised hardware.
Over 20 years. General Marc Boget · 2024 parliamentary inquiry.
Total cost of ownership. Internal Gendarmerie figure, in production since 2013.
• €2M / year avoided licensing (IDABC) — for a CFO.
• €500M cumulative / 20 yrs (parliament 2024) — for a strategic / policy audience.
• €7M / year — Gendarmerie's early internal estimate (2008-era), only with the "unaudited" caveat.
The same figures, on video.
A gradual migration, spread over twenty-three years.
Applications first (2005-2007), then the operating system (2008+), workstation by workstation.
The Gendarmerie replaced the same tools you use.
The Gendarmerie's application inventory maps directly to course modules M5 (email), M6 (office), M11 (browser).
| Microsoft application | Open-source replacement | Year |
|---|---|---|
| Microsoft Office | OpenOffice → LibreOffice | 2005 |
| Internet Explorer | Firefox | 2006 |
| Outlook | Thunderbird + OBM | 2006 |
| Windows 2000 / XP | Ubuntu LTS (GendBuntu) | 2008+ |
Three operational reasons.
No more single-vendor lock-in
The IDABC report quotes architect Pascal Danek (Bureau Sécurité Architecture) on this goal.
OpenOffice and Firefox had been live since 2005-2006
Users already knew the office suite and the browser when the OS swap came.
New workstation = Linux. Old workstation = gradual upgrade.
The Gendarmerie migrated at the pace of its hardware refresh cycle.
"The end-user transition went unexpectedly smoothly. Almost no additional training was required." — Officers already knew their applications. win2linux delivers that same familiarity to ministries starting in 2026.
Check everything yourself.
• IDABC OSOR — European Commission case study · 9 pages.
• Wikipedia GendBuntu — en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GendBuntu · annual figures.
• Marc Boget parliamentary testimony (2024) — origin of the €500M figure.
• win2linux dossier — admin/gendbuntu-evidence-brief.md · 190 lines.
User NPS · Helpdesk ticket volume · Exact retraining cost · Security incident counts. If a prospect asks, answer: "it's not in the public record". The published evidence is enough.
Ready for public procurement and deployment.
UGAP, Chorus Pro, framework agreements
SIRET · legal commitment number · purchase order · Chorus Pro invoice.
Hosted in France
DPIA available · processing register up to date · no non-EU sub-processors.
Drop-in package
MENTOR · Moodle · Sakai · Chamilo · tracks retakes / time / score.
Progress by department, office, agent
CSV export for training reports and activity summaries.
Ready? Module 1 starts here.
Twenty-five minutes, no terminal, no installing anything. We start at the base: what Linux is, and why your organisation is asking you to switch.