This is a list of companies, organizations, and individuals who have moved from other operating systems to Linux. On desktops, Linux has not displaced Microsoft Windows to a large degree. However, it is the leading operating system on servers.
See also: List of BSD adopters
Government As local governments come under pressure from institutions such as the World Trade Organization and the International Intellectual Property Alliance, some have turned to Linux and other free software as an affordable, legal alternative to both pirated software and expensive proprietary computer products from Microsoft, Apple, and other commercial companies. The spread of Linux affords some leverage for these countries when companies from the developed world bid for government contracts (since a low-cost option exists), while furnishing an alternative path to development for countries like India and Pakistan that have many citizens skilled in computer applications but cannot afford technological investment at "First World" prices. Cost is not the only factor being considered, though—many government institutions (public and military) in North America and the European Union make the transition to Linux because of its superior stability and the openness of the source code, which strengthens information security.
Africa In 2007, the first National Bank switched more than 12,000 desktop computers to Linux by 2007. In 2009, the South African Social Security Agency (SASSA) deployed multi-station Linux desktops to address budget and infrastructure constraints in 50 rural sites.
Asia
East The People's Republic of China exclusively uses Linux as the operating system for its Loongson processor family, with the aim of technology independence. Since 2006, the Kylin has been used by People's Liberation Army in The People's Republic of China. The first version used FreeBSD, but since release 3.0, it uses Linux. As of 2005, State-owned Industrial and Commercial Bank of China (ICBC) is installing Linux in all of its 20,000 retail branches as the basis for its web server and a new terminal platform. Since 2008, North Korea has used a Linux distribution developed by the Korea Computer Center, called Red Star OS, on their computers. Prior to its release, Red Hat Linux or Windows XP were used.
West In 2003, the Turkish government decided to create its own Linux distribution, Pardus, developed by UEKAE (National Research Institute of Electronics and Cryptology). The first version, Pardus 1.0, was officially announced on 27 December 2005.
South In 2002, the Government of Pakistan established a Technology Resource Mobilization Unit to enable groups of professionals to exchange views and coordinate activities in their sectors and to educate users about free software alternatives. Linux is an option for poor countries that have little revenue for public investment; Pakistan is using open-source software in public schools and colleges and hopes to run all government services on Linux eventually. In 2007, the Government of India's CDAC developed an Indian Linux distribution, Bharat Operating System Solutions (BOSS) GNU/Linux. It is customized to suit India's digital environment and supports most Indian languages. In March 2014, with the end of support for Windows XP, the Government of Tamil Nadu, India, has advised all its departments to install Bharat Operating System Solutions (BOSS) Linux. In 2021, the Government of Kerala, India, announced its official support for free/open-source software in its State IT Policy of 2001, which was formulated after the first-ever free software conference in India, "Freedom First!", held in July 2001 in Trivandrum, the capital of Kerala, where Richard Stallman inaugurated the Free Software Foundation of India. Since then, Kerala's IT policy has been significantly influenced by FOSS, with several major initiatives, such as KITE, possibly the largest single-purpose deployment of Linux in the world, leading to the formation of the International Centre for Free and Open Source Software (ICFOSS) in 2009. In 2023, India's Ministry of Defence will use Ubuntu-based Linux distribution Maya OS on all Internet-connected computers.
South-East In 2010, the Philippines fielded an Ubuntu-powered national voting system. In July 2010, Malaysia had switched 703 of the state's 724 agencies to free and open-source software with a Linux-based operating system used. The Chief Secretary to the Government cited, "(the) general acceptance of its promise of better quality, higher reliability, more flexibility, and lower cost".
Americas
North
Cuba In 2009, students from the University of Information Science in Cuba launched its own distribution of Linux called Nova to promote the replacement of Microsoft Windows on civilian and government computers, a project that is now supported by the Cuban Government. In early 2011, the Universidad de Ciencias Informáticas announced that they would migrate more than 8000 PCs to the new operating system.Cuba launches own Linux variant to counter US - By Esteban Israel, Caribbean Net News (Thursday, February 12, 2009)
U.S. In July 2001, the White House started switching whitehouse.gov to an operating system based on Red Hat Linux and using the Apache HTTP Server. The installation was completed in February 2009. In October 2009, the White House servers adopted Drupal, an open-source content management system software distribution. In April 2006, the US Federal Aviation Administration announced that it had completed a migration to Red Hat Enterprise Linux in one third of the scheduled time and about US$15 million under budget. The switch saved a further US$15 million in datacenter operating costs.AlphaTrade Finance By 2007, the United States Department of Defense (DoD) uses Linux - "the U.S. Army is the single largest installed base for Red Hat Linux" and the US Navy nuclear submarine fleet runs on Linux, including their sonar systems. By 2008, the US National Nuclear Security Administration operates the world's tenth fastest supercomputer, the IBM Roadrunner, which uses Red Hat Enterprise Linux along with Fedora as its operating systems. In June 2012, the US Navy signed a US$27,883,883 contract with Raytheon to install Linux ground control software for its fleet of vertical take-off and landing (VTOL) Northrop Grumman MQ-8 Fire Scout drones. The contract involves Naval Air Station Patuxent River, Maryland, which has already spent US$5,175,075 in preparation for the Linux systems.
South
The government of the Argentinian province of Misiones uses workstations that run GobMis GNU/Linux, a distribution with necessary tools for public administration. Also delivers a "generic" distribution without government branding known as "GobLin GNU/Linux". Brazil uses PC Conectado, a program utilizing Linux. In 2004, Venezuela's government approved the 3390 decree, to give preference to using free software in public administration. One result of this policy is the development of Canaima, a Debian-based Linux distribution.
Europe
Austria In 2005, Austria's city of Vienna chose to start migrating its desktop PCs to Debian-based Wienux. However, by 2011, the idea was largely abandoned because the necessary software was incompatible with Linux.
Czech Republic In 2005, Česká pošta (Czech Post) migrated 4,000 servers and 12,000 clients to Novell Linux.
France In 2007, France's national police force (the National Gendarmerie) started moving their 90,000 desktops from Windows XP to a Ubuntu-based OS, GendBuntu, over concerns about the additional training costs of moving to Windows Vista, and following the success of OpenOffice.org roll-outs. The force saved about €50 million on software licensing between 2004 and 2008. The migration largely completed in 2014. By 2007, France's Ministry of Agriculture uses Mandriva Linux. In 2007, The French Parliament switched to using Ubuntu on desktop PCs.French parliament dumping Windows for Linux |Tech News on ZDNet However, in 2012, it was decided to let each Member of Parliament choose between Windows and Linux.
Germany
In 2003, the city government of Munich, Germany, chose to migrate its 14,000 desktops to Debian-based LiMux. Even though more than 80 percent of workstations used OpenOffice and 100 percent used Firefox/Thunderbird five years later (November 2008), an adoption rate of Linux of only 20 percent (June 2010) was achieved. The effort was later reorganized, focusing on smaller deployments and winning over staff to the value of the program. By the end of 2011 the program had exceeded its goal and changed over 9000 desktops to Linux. The city of Munich reported at the end of 2012 that the migration to Linux was highly successful and has already saved the city over €11 million (US$14 million). Recently the Deputy Mayor Josef Schmid said that the city is putting together an independent expert group to look at moving back to Microsoft due to issues in LiMux, the primary issues have been of compatibility; users in the rest of Germany that use other (Microsoft) software have had trouble with the files generated by Munich's open-source applications. The second is price, with Schmid saying that the city now has the impression that "Linux is very expensive" due to custom programming. The independent group advise the best course of action, and if that group recommends using Microsoft software, Schmid says that a switch back isn't impossible. The city council said they already saved more than US$10 million, and there is no major issue with the switch to Linux.Linux-on-the-desktop pioneer Munich now considering a switch back to Windows, Arstechnica - retrieved August 19, 2014 Some observers, such as Silviu Stahie of Softpedia have indicated that the attempted rejection of Linux has been influenced by Microsoft and its supporters and that this is predominantly a political issue and not a technical one. Microsoft's German headquarters has committed to move to Munich as part of this issue. In 2017, the Munich city council voted to transition back to Microsoft Windows 10, citing compatibility issues with LiMux and the high cost of custom programming. By 2020, the city had begun the full migration of its workstations to Windows 10, with plans to complete the transition by 2023. Critics argued that the decision was influenced by political pressures and lobbying rather than purely technical issues. Nonetheless, the transition continued, marking the end of Munich's ambitious open-source LiMux project. The cost of the switch was estimated to be over €30 million, despite earlier savings from using Linux. A significant number of workstations in other government institutions, such as the Federal Employment Office of Germany (Bundesagentur für Arbeit), continue to use Linux, with 13,000 public workstations running openSUSE. By 2009, the Federal Employment Office of Germany (Bundesagentur für Arbeit) had migrated 13,000 public workstations from Windows NT to openSUSE.heise online – Federal Employment Office switches to Linux In 2024, the State of Schleswig-Holstein in Germany plans to replace Windows with Linux and Libreoffice.German state gov. ditching Windows for Linux, 30K workers migrating, arstechnica.com, 5 April 2024
Iceland In March 2012, Iceland announced it wishes to migrate to open-source software in public institutions. Schools have already migrated from Windows to Ubuntu Linux.
North Macedonia In 2009, Republic of North Macedonia's Ministry of Education and Science deployed more than 180,000 Ubuntu-based classroom desktops, and has encouraged every student in the Republic of North Macedonia to use Ubuntu computer workstations.
The Netherlands Since 2003, the Dutch Police Internet Research and Investigation Network (iRN) has only used free and open-source software based on open standards, publicly developed with the source code available on the Internet for audit. They use 2,200 Ubuntu workstations.