German Government Desktop Unveiled

During LinuxTag 2004 the German Federal Office for Information Security (BSI) and the company credativ unveiled the Linux Government Desktop. The Linux Goverment Desktop has been developed within the scope of the project ERPOSS which evaluates Open Source Software in government environments.

Composed entirely of free software the distribution is available as a Live CD as well as an Install CD. While it's based on Debian Stable (Woody) the CD contains KDE 3.2.2, Mozilla and a special themed version of OpenOffice 1.1.1 which integrates seamlessly with KDE.

One of the highlights brought by the Government Desktop is the fact that it saves the whole data on encrypted filesystems. Furthermore KMail is preconfigured to send and receive encrypted e-mail (GnuPG and S/MIME) and to make use of all kinds of authority certificates. The package is completed by integrated spam and virus protection and a preconfigured personal firewall.

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Comments

by Ian Monroe (not verified)

Games are the best reason (and only for me at least) to keep Windows around.

I think a lot of the resistance to Linux is because you can't buy it pre-installed at retail, and its different. And most of the non-Linux using people I know who would have the expertise to install it also have a pirated version of Windows, so there really isn't any cost benefit for Linux. Pirated Windows remains one of Linux's biggest competitors.

by superstoned (not verified)

its not only the us. the dutch government is really opposing OSS, too. the ict-guy of the liberal party stated a few days ago that the netherlands wont use OSS cuz its immature and they dont want to "experiment" with the tax-payers money. hmmm. And I just discovered his own website runs Red Hat Linux & apache...

I did sent him a letter, I voted liberal... ;-)

by Pim (not verified)

Unfortunately the 'liberal' party you are referring to is not a liberal party in the sense of the word liberal. The VVD party is just plain conservative, you can hardly call them liberal.

Which is a big pity. I am a social-democrat myself but I do like a lot of liberal ideas. Unfortunately the VVD is *not*, I repeat, *not* a liberal party.

If you want to stick to a true liberal party, go to D'66. Problem there is they have an absolut asshole as a minister for Economics in The Netherlands.. This lamehead doesn't understand anything about this whole EU Software Patent Law... but he voted in favour of it despite his own party being against it... *and* the whole parliament against it... Not a very democratic minister in my opinion...

Anyway, this is ehm *slightly* of topic ;). On topic: I am very happy about progress being made on OSS in Germany. Since The Netherlands always looks at Germany because we are neighbours I still have good hopes that if the whole thing succeeds in Germany, the Politicians in our country might wake up sooner or later...

by ac (not verified)

Actually, to continue the offtopic rant, the classical meaning of the word "liberal" applied to politics means a hands-off government that lets private industry pretty much do whatever it wants. In other words, the word liberal originally meant conservative ;)

Of course in those days conservative meant monarchist, so that meaning has changed as well.

There is no true "liberal" or "conservative". These are just handy labels that have been so woefully misapplied for so long that they mean whatever people want them to mean at the time. If you want to talk about politics in English at any real level, you need to use words that have not yet lost their usefulness.

by Scott Wheeler (not verified)

"left" and "right" sides of the political spectrum are usually pretty clear in the western world. "Liberal" on the other hand in American politics tends to note "left of center" and in Europe it's more often "rather far right".

by koos (not verified)

To me, dutch government sticks its noise in USA's ash all the time. Take for instance the decisions on the fighter planes. Also the more or less support for the iraq invasion. I can only think of short term money earning/saving reasons, but who knows what the real reasons are.

by aNDY (not verified)

yeah yeah yeah

by anon (not verified)

OOo has better MSword-compatibility than KOffice, but there should be no good reason to use Mozilla instead of Konqueror. Konq starts faster, integrates with the desktop, and can render almost any page (and is pretty future safe since Apple helps development).

by arcade (not verified)

I'm sorry, but Konq quite simply doesn't work with a huge lot of websites. Especially submitting data has caused a lot of grief for me. I've not had time to hunt down the bugs and report them, though.

I really like the amount of work the konq team has done, but there is still a pretty long way to go for me to be able to use konq on a daily basis.

Some more things:
- No flashblocker (flashblocker exists for mozilla/firefox)
- No adblocker (adblocker exists for mozilla/firefox)
- Scrolling down a page with flash often 'stops' when arriving at a flash ad
- I want a decent popup blocker.
- Slow rendering/sluggish scrolling on flash-ridden pages.

Konqueror is quite simply unusable for my daily "newspaper browsing" due to them being overloaded with flash/ads that swamp my computer. I need a browser that may block'em, or the pages are unbearable slow.

by chris (not verified)

emerge privoxy
rc-update add privoxy default
/etc/init.d/privoxy start

change konq's proxy settings to localhost:8118 and you'll have far better ad/popup blocker than can be provided by moz.

by Maynard (not verified)

What about just installing mozilla? It happens to be a better browser anyway.

by anon (not verified)

> - I want a decent popup blocker.

I'm not sure what your complaint is here. Using KDE with the "Smart" popup blocking option is better than anything Mozilla used to have. KDE had smart popup blocking well before Mozilla did, although FireFox probably has an extension that is just as good by now.

by logiq (not verified)

where is the "smart" option?

thanks
logiq

by jlar (not verified)

Under Java and JavaScript

by Cristian (not verified)

Thank you. I was also unknowledgeable of this feature by name though I really doubted if Konqueror did not have this feature somewhere.

by Me (not verified)

"there should be no good reason to use Mozilla instead of Konqueror"

Other than Mozilla being a much better browser, I guess not.

by new with suse (not verified)

hey, i'm trying to login to my gmail with konq, but not having any luck, what do i need to do to login to it with konqueror? thanks

by criteek (not verified)

It simply doesn't work with gmail. Sure, there are some
tricks with "Change Browser Identitifcation", but this
does not correct the numerous failed javascript features.

Suggestion: use firefox. Konq is great for simple,
HTML3.2-style pages. But for anything complicated,
it dies. :(

by Datschge (not verified)

Konqueror's issues with GMail are fixed now.

by Apexified (not verified)

Actually, they are not.

by Carewolf (not verified)

They were fixed, but gmail has managed to make new wierder ones.

by Laviniu (not verified)

Konqueror issues with Gmail are again fixed.

by a tester (not verified)

Nope, it is not...
but its google fault...

by Marten (not verified)

Who cares who's fault it is?
For me it is a reason *not* to use konqueror...

by Paul Eggleton (not verified)

Well, if you care enough to complain about it then you should care enough to complain to the right people, ie. Google.

by Sergio (not verified)

If you want to try this distro, be extremely careful: after you partition with cfdisk, it will format your first linux partition without any further warning!

by Kanwar (not verified)

Does this distro support installation/use in English too?

I do not want to download and find it does only German, which sadly, I cannot read or write.

by Sergio (not verified)

No, it does not. German only.

by You did not bot... (not verified)

Read carefully the GERMAN instructions, it starts at the first linux partition. If you dont want to use it click CANCEL, it then selects the next partition in acending order. It also can encrypt swap space (very nice). I tried both the live Iso and installed the woody hard drive install!

by Sergio (not verified)

My understanding of German is rather limited.
And besides a german user told me that those instructions weren't clear at all.
He is a long time linux user.
And anyway, what about a warning while you actually install?

by Kanwar (not verified)

Does this distro support installation/use in English too?

I do not want to download and find it does only German, which sadly, I cannot read or write.

by IT is in englis... (not verified)

Knoppix is easier to change you have to run locales on the hard drive install.
The iso changes only on a reboot which is impossible on a live cd.
The desktop is mostly in english if you change the language settings in KDE, Mozilla, etc

by Kanwar (not verified)

Thanks for the info but sorry I am a novice as far as changing locales go. So how do I change the locale after booting this German Govt. Desktop?