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  From: Alan Kennington <Alan.Kennington@dsto.defence.gov.au>
  To  : linuxsa@linuxsa.org.au
  Date: Fri, 6 Nov 1998 19:22:57 +1030

French numbers for linux users

In the last article in the French linux news

    http://www.linux-center.org/news/index.html

there is a set of pointers to further info.
The interesting thing is the estimate of 10 million users.

There's too much material for me to translate.
But there's an interesting number in

    http://www.aful.org/presse/CP-MENRT.html

This item starts [minus some non-ascii chars]:

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L'association francophone des utilisateurs de Linux et des logiciels libres
(AFUL), a signe le 28 octobre un accord cadre avec le Ministre de l'education
nationale, de la Recherche et de la Technologie (MENRT) portant sur le
deploiement de l'informatique libre dans le systeme educatif francais.
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Translation:
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The french-language association of linux and free software users (AFUL),
has signed on 28 October an agreement with the national minister of
education research and technology (MENRT) dealing with the deployment of
free computing in the french education system.
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It goes on to say:

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Linux est un systeme d'exploitation complet, moderne et performant, developpe
par des milliers de programmeurs repartis dans le monde entier et communiquant
par le riseau Internet. C'est, avec environ 10 millions d'utilisateurs et une
progression annuelle de 100%, le systeme qui connait actuellement la plus forte
croissance. D'apres une etude recente de Datapro, c'est aussi celui qui apporte
le plus de satisfaction a ses utilisateurs en entreprise.

Divers exemples illustrant son interet et son utilisation dans l'education comme
dans l'entreprise peuvent etre consultes sur le site web de l'AFUL.
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Translation:
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Linux is a complete, modern, powerful operating system, developped by thousdands
of programmers spread over the whole world, communicating by the Internet
network. It is, with about 10 million users and an annual growth of 100%, the
operating system which which is currently experiencing the strongest growth.
According to a recent study by Datapro, it is also the OS which brings the most
satisfaction to business users.

Various examples illustrating its interest and use in education as in business
may be found on the AFUL web site (http://www.aful.org/xp/).
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I think this indicates that there's a French education system linux
push which corresponds to the Mexican one.
The AFUL group is apparently going to set up networks and also
user software for the French education system.

The 4 parts of the AFUL/govt agreement are:

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1.  The support of AFUL to projects for networking high schools, colleges and
primary schools, using internet/intranet technologies on free platforms and
software, and the use of workstations under linux or multi-amorcage.
[multi-amorcage may mean multi-OS???]

2.  Technical and pedagogical assistance of AFUL to the implementation of these
projects and the trainging of National Education personnel.

3.  The provision [recensement?] of software, free or not, relevant to
education and research, available for the linux OS platform.

4.  A determination of the best means of assuring the distribution of standard
versions of this software.
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If I've interpreted this correctly, then it implies that within a few
years, there will be heaps of people emerging into the workforce
in both France and Mexico with better familiarity with linux than
with MS software.

I remember the Atari ST was also very popular in schools for a while,
because of its cheapness. But it sort of disappeared.
In the case of linux, the cheapness for schools is what's getting
it in there, but I don't the same reason exist for its disappearance.

Cheers,
Alan Kennington.

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