Journal Article focusing on Linux in France - help needed

Posté par  .
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16
déc.
2002
Hello,

I am about to write a serie of articles focusing on a Linux position in a various countries to be published at

http://www.linuxzone.cz

Do you think, it would be possible to provide me information regarding to a set of prepared questions to be emailed to a responsible person with a sufficent view about the situation? I hope we can find someone who has a good ovevriew about the global position of Linux in your country. I mean, education, private companies, homes, favourite distributions, government,
the most known projects originating country, some fresh information including the forecast for the near future, description of LUGs....

ANSWERS ON EMAIL pandor@linuxzone.cz are welcome

Milan Gigel - Independent Linux Writer

So here comes a set of questions regarding to your country. Thanks a lot in advance for your kindly help. The answers will be used to form agregate article focusing this field. An additional questions may follow. The total length of the final article will fit from 8 to 15kb. So please include some detailed information.


1. What was the starting stage of raising popularity of Linux in your country? When the process started and how was it like?

2. What are the opportunities of supporting Linux users? I mean if there are any active LUGs - what is its main role, interesting Linux portals, any seminars, cons, active mailing lists or so. Is it possible to hear some news focusing on Linux on a TV or radio broadcast? What about newbies and starters, is there enough place to support them too?

3. What is the position of Linux in the education process and in the academic field? If you compare it to a Microsoft position in education system, are there any changes last time leading to a raise of knowledge regarding to Linux?

4. What about linux in companies in the position of the base backend? Is it commonly used just for the access to an internet, or is it commonly used also in a position of fileservers, application servers and so?

5. What is the situation like on the desktop field? Is Linux used here just among the Linux fans, or is it possible to see some extensive implementations? If possible some examples naming ompanies using it?

6. What about usage of linux on a government fied? Is it already implemented here, or is this only idea of the far future. Are there running any research projects focusing to this field?

7. As for the commercial applications focusing on a production field and accounting. Are there any accessible products fitting needs of your country? Are there any commercial companies developing applications targeting Linux field?

8. What about localisation field of Linux? Are there any running projects bringing users possibility to use linux using their native language?

9. Which distributions are the most popular in your country on the server and on the desktop field? Can you name some which raised in your country?

10. How many Linux users are expected in a percent amount to reside your country? What are their experience levels like?

11. I hope there is a lot of specialists and developers in your country. Can you name some of them with a short description of their projects and focus?

12. What about upcomming changes on the Linux field in your country? Will the situation switch to a better state in the near future? Which fields
will it impact?

13. Is there active approach to an expansion of linux on all the fields in your country? What about any running projects?

14. As for the internet connections. Is the global infrastructure well designed? Wheach means of data transpor are commonly used in the users homes? dialup, isdn, commuted line, wifi....?

15. Any specialities regarding to linux and linux users in your country?

16. Anything else to add here from your point of view? We want to introduce
your country from the Linux side.

  • # Re: Article focusing on Linux in France - help needed

    Posté par  (site web personnel) . Évalué à 1.

    I don't know who could answer your questions specifically. Perhaps other LinuxFr readers will have more ideas. I'll try to send my answers to you by email, in case you don't read this, but I'm stuck under Windows right now.

    1. I don't really have an idea. Linux was available early. If I remember correctly, Pearl was selling hard drives (500 MB!) with Linux 1.0 (or 0.99) preinstalled, sometime around 1994. When did we see Linux magazines in stores? Don't remember. I'd say around 1998 you could find Linux distros as bonus CDs in some computer journals.

    2. LUGs, yes. First Jeudis, etc. Mais je manque d'infos dessus. I don't think there's a Linux TV or radio show; you don't hear much about Linux there. There are Linux afficionados in lots of schools, that's a way some get started. There are IRC channels, newsgroups, or sites such as this one.

    3. Don't know. Microsoft leads, I think.

    4. Some companies use it, but there's no rule of thumb. I know some enthusiastic people who use it for simple, unexpensive servers. I know at least one major retailer has launched a study on the usability of Linux in their business. It's only a study, though. Several ISP or other big internet names use it, especially Free.fr, who is Debian based, and a leading ISP.

    5. I think it's mostly Linux fans right now. But again, I'm not an authority.

    6. I think some agencies are using it, but nothing big, and no official policy. There's a push, though, so perhaps things will change.

    7. There might be a few, but I'm not in a position to anwser.

    8. Linux and other open source software are generally well translated in French. You can look at the size of the KDE French translation, it is one of the biggest. Similarly, when you look at the GNU i18n project (I don't remember the name), France and Germany are usually tied for the first place in terms of the number of translated packages. Globally, France quite leads in terms of software localization.

    9. I guess it's about the same as elsewhere. Mandrake is French, and is probably bigger than elsewhere.

    10. No idea.

    11. On the top of my head, there's one of the authors of KVim, a port of Vim to KDE (having Vim as a browser text-area editor... my dream come true). Lots of others, but can't name them immediately.

    12. No idea.

    13. No idea.

    14. Global infrastructure is okay, I think, though thousands will probably jump upon me for saying that. Phone is available everywhere, though somewhat pricey. DSL is quite strong, stronger than cable at least, and benefits from some competition now. Usual DSL is 512 kbps down, 128 kbps up.

    15. No idea.

    16. No idea. :)

    Back to work, finally.

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