FRENCH PARAMILITARY police are putting the boot into Microsoft by converting to Linux.

The hired thugs prefer the lure of Ubuntu to Volish XP. And rather than switch to Vista, they intend to slowly switch their 70,000 computers to the open source offering.

Colonel Nicolas Geraud, deputy director of the plod's IT department told the Solution Linux 2008 gathering that each time a computer has to be replaced, on his watch, XP will be binned and the healing bounty of Ubuntu will flow into the hardware.

"This year we expect to change 5,000-8,000 to Ubuntu and then 12,000-15,000 over the next four years so that every desktop uses the Linux operating system by 2013-2014," he said.

"The Linux interface is ahead of other operating systems currently on the market for professional use," he added/.

The coppers have been moving to open source software since 2005 and reckon it saves some seven million euros (10.3 million dollars) by doing so.

"In 2004 we had to buy 13,000 licences for office suites for our PCs," said, Geraud,"but in the three years since then we've only had to buy a total of 27 licences."

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