Obama Ubuntu
People from the Obama campaign have said that they use Ubuntu 8.04. It seems to be used nationally.
Does anyone know any more about the use of Ubuntu by the Obama campaign and can provide us with more details?
Feel free to leave a comment here or drop me an email at nali -SPAMREMOVE - @ubuntu.com.
Update: There might be some questions of validity here, but it really wouldn’t make sense to doctor pictures, IMO.
October 21st, 2008 at 10:26 am
I was phonebanking yesterday in Durham, NC for Obama and they had an Ubuntu desktop there as well. So there’s one data point for you.
October 21st, 2008 at 10:47 am
Yea, my buddy works at the headquarters. They use it there, and he says they use it nationwide.
October 21st, 2008 at 10:47 am
Word and Excel icons… hmpf :/
October 21st, 2008 at 10:49 am
We just confirmed it is a fake. They are running Windows over there as I work less than 2 blocks away from his headquarters here in Chicago.
October 21st, 2008 at 11:08 am
Sorry but running Word, Excel and Firefox… Doubt they are running Ubuntu :0
October 21st, 2008 at 11:11 am
alrighty, doubled back to the new headquarters location on Michigan Ave. and spoke with an insider, who is one of my best friends. All “Official” machines at that location are Dells. Laptops are Dell Latitude D830’s running Windows and their desktops are Dell as well with very nice widescreen LCDs also running Windows. My buddy who is a Debian Linux buff is running Windows (hahahahaha, he curses Windows so bad, but they use AD and Exchange and said Linux with that combination is a headache). There are however some volunteers who are local university students that do run Linux, and being Chicago he said most of them are either Gentoo or Ubuntu flavored.
I directed him to this blog post and he said more than likely those images are either fake, or not in their headquarters at all but possibly in a satellite location.
I can confirm their webservers are Linux. GO DADDY!!!
October 21st, 2008 at 11:14 am
@Jonathan - Firefox comes pre-installed in Ubuntu. As for word and excel, a quick look on winehq.com shows that MS Office will install and run in both Hardy and Intrepid. So this is very possible.
October 21st, 2008 at 11:19 am
Una razón más para apoyar a Obama [ENG]…
Ubuntu también está presente en las elecciones de EEUU…
October 21st, 2008 at 11:26 am
Yes, this is the OBAMANIA!
October 21st, 2008 at 11:59 am
I am looking for some idea and stumble upon your posting
decide to wish you Thanks. Eugene
October 21st, 2008 at 12:27 pm
When I saw Nader speak, I asked him if he was familiar with Linux and the free software movement. He told me that in his offices they only use Linux with free software, and was a staunch advocate of IP changes.
October 21st, 2008 at 1:00 pm
Didn’t the Democratic Party site require Silverlight?
October 21st, 2008 at 3:02 pm
That is definitely linux on that desktop, with one fugly theme (to make it easier for users to think they are using the same thing as at home?). I think it could easily be Ubuntu with Office on it running through Wine or Crossover or one of the the other ones. Its not really possible to customize Windows *that* much, so it must be.
October 21st, 2008 at 3:39 pm
I think the top one is probably linux, since it has a gnome login screen, and the mouse is small and black.
The bottom one is definitively windows. Yes, it is possible to customize (xp) windows that much, although i consider it a waste of time.
October 21st, 2008 at 4:14 pm
The bottom one is ubuntu too, look at the logout icon, the date format, the big icons (In Windows it is very hard to get the icons that big) and the customized button (to hard to do in Windows).
I think they use ooo.org, because the named the icons to general names (like Wordprocessor) and used custom icons, so Windows users would recognize them.
October 21st, 2008 at 11:37 pm
Why does the top picture look very much like a computer shop in the background?
October 21st, 2008 at 11:42 pm
Gnome log-in … but KDE desktop?
And Linux can run microsoft office with Codeweavers “crossover linux”
http://www.codeweavers.com/products/cxlinux/
October 21st, 2008 at 11:49 pm
The images posted here are definitely not from the main chicago hq, all the monitors are dells there.
October 22nd, 2008 at 12:50 am
Those icons are not MS Office or via Crossover or Wine etc… look at the text under the icons “Spreadsheet” rather than “MS Excel” and “Word Processor” rather than “MS Word”. I’m guessing it’s Open Office.
On the other hand, from those screenshots, I couldn’t tell if it were Ubuntu, another linux distribution, BSD or some other OS.
October 22nd, 2008 at 1:21 am
Rather lame
“go Obama”
October 22nd, 2008 at 3:24 am
That ’start’ button: change
:D
Oh, wasn’t it Obama’s running mate that tried to push a law which would forbid any software that was not a MSFT product? So their office running Ubuntu sounds a bit odd to me.
October 22nd, 2008 at 8:15 am
Obama use Ubuntu ? That is great. I mean McCain use Windows Vista Home Basic
and notepad :)) LOL Go Obama go.
October 22nd, 2008 at 10:22 am
Ubuntu and Obama? A wonderful match, I get a warm fuzzy feeling about that. But unfortunately I think they would be running Microsoft. Not good.
Go Ubuntu go.
Go Obama go.
October 22nd, 2008 at 9:42 pm
This is not fake. I volunteered at the campaign headquarters in Lakewood, CO and used this Obama themed Ubuntu. I’ll try to get some video by the weekend.
October 22nd, 2008 at 11:24 pm
[...] Obama Ubuntu People from the Obama campaign have said that they use Ubuntu 8.04. It seems to be used nationally. [...]
October 23rd, 2008 at 8:08 am
I think is a fake. BUT is not microsoft office installed. if you read it says spreadsheet and word proccesor, under the incons. Not microsoft word and microsoft excell. Yo can change the icons in linux. They do a lot for the people find their programs.
October 23rd, 2008 at 7:15 pm
[...] Rumores, por ahora, sólo rumores. [...]
October 25th, 2008 at 4:47 pm
Well, if it makes you feel any better, I work for fox news and most people here use ubuntu, there are some exceptions on a mac, but there are very few windows computers around here. ubuntu is the most popular by far. When I was meeting with some mccain campaigners, they were running ubuntu as well, so at the very least, on the other side of the ticket, they support ubuntu. Hell, Fox News even uses Ubuntu on its web servers.
October 26th, 2008 at 6:53 pm
To james
Fox News web server does not appear to be running on Ubuntu.
Both http://www.foxnews.com and http://elections.foxnews.com/ seem to run on Red Hat, albeit slightly different Apache versions.
October 27th, 2008 at 12:18 am
[...] Zu Obama Ubuntu sage ich nichts, sondern linke nur kopfschüttelnd und grinsend auf Obama Ubuntu [...]
October 27th, 2008 at 12:21 am
Well, I ordered it already (nice joke).
October 27th, 2008 at 9:56 pm
The Word and Excel Icons, are probably link to open office. note it says “word Processor” and not “word”. They probably just copied the icons to make it more familiar. McCain uses Windows 3.1
October 29th, 2008 at 8:04 pm
So the image with a GDM login window is a fake. How becoming of Linux users. Why not remove it and close the issue?
November 2nd, 2008 at 11:32 am
I noticed that mccain call center uses asus eee pc’s running linux. As for obama, I have no clue. If biden supports MS……. yikes!
November 5th, 2008 at 12:46 pm
[...] questa pagina del blog di geekissimo corredata da fotografie (la fonte delle quali dovrebbe essere questa, nella quale si ipotizza peraltro che sia un fake!) che attestano come gli addetti alla campagna [...]
November 7th, 2008 at 2:09 pm
[...] Email Encryption? We all know that Al Gore supposedly invented the Interweb, and it looks like the Obama campaign used Ubuntu (which I meant to blog a while back), but it looks like Senator Biden actually had a hand in [...]
November 7th, 2008 at 8:33 pm
[...] campaign using Ubuntu? (this is not meant to be [...]
February 24th, 2009 at 9:51 am
Very informative stuff - thanks for sharing! If you’re willing to share, what wordpress template have you got at the moment? I want to know the name of it.
March 5th, 2009 at 4:39 am
This is interesting
March 10th, 2009 at 12:53 pm
These aren’t fake. I was a volunteer in Ohio during the end of the elections, and most satellite offices got 1 PC running this themed Ubuntu, and they used the nComputing solution to hook up 4 monitors / keyboards / mice. It was great since most tools were web based, and office space / maintenance / power / money were all vital in the campaign. Yes, they made Ubuntu look familiar with the windows-ish taskbar (it says “Change” instead of “Start”, and the word & excel icons, but clicking them opens up Open Office. Another genius way the Obama folks used technology like no one has before.
March 12th, 2009 at 1:03 am
Just look here! Maybe it is true?
http://itmages.ru/view.php?action=view&id=2788&key=d31b7e
May 1st, 2009 at 6:32 am
Ubuntu and Obama? A wonderful match, I get a warm fuzzy feeling about that. But unfortunately I think they would be running Microsoft. Not good.
Go Ubuntu go.
Go Obama go.
June 9th, 2009 at 6:03 am
you do know you could rename an icon from MS Word to Word Processor, change the icon image from oo.org to ms words rather easily, it’s The OS that’s in question, not the office suite, OO.org is cross platform, as is certain versions of word in wine/crossover
June 23rd, 2009 at 1:46 am
Thank you for your post