Government Users of Linux

Government Users of Linux

Some of the government agencies that use Linux at all levels(national, state, federal and international)have opted to deploy Linux across their computer for the below reasons:

1. Preferring the open-source benefits of the OS

2. Others are financial, as Linux is typically far less expensive than buying a license for Windows

Here are some of the governing bodies that now run Linux on their computers

1.U.S. Department of Defense: "single biggest install base for Red Hat Linux" in the world. http://bit.ly/1VEOAN

2. U.S. Navy Submarine Fleet: the US Navy nuclear submarine fleet is using GNU/Linux http://bit.ly/bNk9uJ

3.The City of Munich, Germany: Uses Debian which was customized to meet Munich's municipal computing needs http://bit.ly/moPt5K

4.Spain: its own customized Linux distribution called LinEx based on Debian http://bit.ly/mUE9Px

5.Federal Aviation Administration: migrating to Red Hat Enterprise Linux saved 15 million dollars. http://bit.ly/mxL4XJ

6.French Parliament:Started using Ubuntu Linux from November 2006. http://zd.net/jh5FOi

7.Industrial and Commercial Bank of China:Linux became "the basis for its web server and a new terminal platform" http://bit.ly/b9EVfV

8.Pakistani Schools & Colleges: http://bit.ly/kbelN4

9.Cuba: Has its own Linux called "Nova"

10.Macedonia's Ministry of Education and Science: Uses Ubuntu workstation http://bit.ly/11r1fi

11.U.S. Postal Service: While the Postal Service ran Windows NT on its servers until the bitter end, they then switched to using over 900 Linux clusters spread throughout the country for use in sorting the nation's bulk mail

12.U.S. Federal Courts: U.S. Federal Courts rely on Linux for all manner of administrative tasks, including "case management, case tracking, finance and accounting, probation and pretrial services"

13.Government of Mexico City: government of Mexico City had concluded that "they can no longer justify the ever rising cost of Microsoft Windows when the cost of Linux software is very low"

14.Garden Grove, California: it saved so much money that they later decided to roll out Linux across the city, including on some desktop systems

16.Largo, Florida: "Largo Loves Linux More Than Ever" explains how the Floridian city came to rely so heavily on Linux software. After having such great success running city computers on Linux, Largo's municipal government soon thereafter was "talking about Linux-based terminals in all the city's police cars.

17.Czech Post: Perhaps taking a cue from the U.S. Postal Service, the Czech Republic's own post office successfully migrated to Linux in 2005. The chosen distribution of Linux (SuSe) now runs on "4,000 servers

Educational Users of Linux

18.Russian Schools: In 2007, the nation of Russia announced that all its schools would begin running Linux software

19.German Universities: German students plus thousands of staff at 33 German universities will now be supported by Linux systems from Novell." SuSe Linux Enterprise Desktop was the specific distribution chosen, evidently for the "more flexible IT architecture" that it provides "when compared to other proprietary software."

20.The Phillipines: after a successful deployment of 13,000 Fedora Linux systems from a government grant, plans are underway to roll out another 10,000 based on Ubuntu

21.Georgia: began running all its school computers and LTSP thin clients on Linux, mainly using Kubuntu, Ubuntu and stripped Fedora-based distros

22.The Indian State of Tamil Nadu: the Indian state of Tamil Nadu decided instead to "distribute 100,000 Linux laptops to students there."

23.Switzerland Schools: Wikipedia also reports that Switzerland converted 9,000 of its computers to using Linux and OpenOffice.org's suite of office productivity tools

24.Bolzano, Italy: The town of Balzano in Italy (with a student population of 16,000) reportedly switched to using a customized distribution of Linux.

25.Kerala, India: government and government-aided high schools in the state will no longer use the Windows platform for computer education. Instead, they have switched over to the free GNU/Linux software

26.Indiana Schools: more than 20,000 Indiana students are now Linux-enabled under a state grant program to roll out low-cost, easy-to-manage workstations

Business Users of Linux

27. Novell:Longtime software and services company Novell announced in 2006 that it was undergoing a company-wide migration from Windows to Linux on employee desktop computers

28. Google:Believe it or not, the gigantic, ever-growing cluster of servers that power Google's search and other apps runs Linux

28. IBM: IBM Supports Linux 100%. In the last decade, perhaps no larger company than IBM has contributed more to the success of Linux, both financially and developmentally

29. Panasonic: Electronics giant Panasonic is another household name company to use Linux in powering some of its operations

30.Virgin America:Virgin America, a low-cost U.S. airline run by entrepreneurial big-shot Richard Branson, uses Linux to power its in-flight entertainment The entertainment system (called RED) is powered by Red Hat and Fedora specifically, and was reportedly chosen because it is "very stable and agile.

31. Cisco: Cisco Systems, the computer networking and routing giant, switched to Linux after vowing to use Microsoft's Active Directory solution for its servers In an imfamous turn of events, however, Cisco's own IT staff could not get its network printign to work properly using Windows NT and were thus forced to switch to Linux

32.Conoco Phillips: Never let it be said that Linux is a fringe operating system for inconsequential gizmos and gadgets. No stronger proof to the contrary exists that ConocoPhillips, which proudly uses Linux to power a massive (and massively important) cluster of servers aimed at exploring the earth for new sources of untapped oil

33.Omaha Steaks: Omaha Steaks, a popular catalog-oriented steak retailer, switched to open-source Linux in 2001

34. Amazon: Online book and electronics retail behemoth Amazon.com is said to "use Linux in nearly every corner of its business"

35.Peugeot: European car maker Peugeot announced in 2007 that it was set to deploy up to 20,000 copies of Novell Desktop Linux and 2,500 copies of Suse Linux Enterprise Server

36.Wikipedia: Popular online encyclopedia Wikipedia is another staunch supporter of Linux, having switched to Ubuntu in 2008 after a lengthy tenure using Red Hat and Fedora prior to that

37.New York Stock Exchange: The New York Stock Exchange is another perhaps unexpected business user of Linux.

London's stock exchange was also "abandoning the failed Windows platform", it was stated that New York's exchange already used Linux to power its trading platform and furthermore that it "seems to be doing quite nicely. that it was Red Hat Enterprise Linux, specifically, that the NYSE ran on its trading platform.

38 Burlington Coat Factory: Burlington Coat Factory, a retailer with 280 individual stores across 42 states, run Linux in their distribution centers and "a few new stores"

39.Raymour and Flannigan: Raymour and Flannigan's transition to Linux as "a major transformation" for the Syracuse-based furniture retailer, who switched all its servers to Linux back in 2002

40.Tommy Hilfiger: Tommy Hilfiger "chose eOneGroup and Linux for its new e-business infrastructure" way back in 2001. Company representatives were quoted as saying that "we saved significantly on the time and expense of deploying this total infrastructure

41.Toyota Motor Sales: "30 dealer pilot roll-out" of a system using Linux to connect car dealerships to Toyota's factories. The system was a "web based system from the ground up, and will be handling 30 different functions including parts ordering, warranties, sales transactions and repairs."

42.Travelocity: Travelocity (funny gnome guy and all) is yet another Internet business powered by Linux servers. "to improve our flexibility and really decrease our time to market" as the chief reasons for choosing Linux over other alternatives

43. Netbooks:While Net-books are still frequently sold with Microsoft Windows installed, they are shipped with Linux more than perhaps any other mass-market laptop around

44.Dell Model: In recent years (particularly 2007-2008) distributions of Linux like Ubuntu have placed a higher than ever priority on user friendliness in efforts to capture some of the Windows market

45.CERN: CERN uses Scientific Linux on a massive scale for mission-critical applications