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.
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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.
Yea, my buddy works at the headquarters. They use it there, and he says they use it nationwide.
Word and Excel icons… hmpf :/
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.
Sorry but running Word, Excel and Firefox… Doubt they are running Ubuntu :0
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!!!
@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.
Yes, this is the OBAMANIA!
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decide to wish you Thanks. Eugene
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.
Didn’t the Democratic Party site require Silverlight?
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.
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.
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.
Why does the top picture look very much like a computer shop in the background?
Gnome log-in … but KDE desktop?
And Linux can run microsoft office with Codeweavers “crossover linux”
http://www.codeweavers.com/products/cxlinux/
The images posted here are definitely not from the main chicago hq, all the monitors are dells there.
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.
Rather lame
“go Obama”
That ’start’ button: change
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.
Obama use Ubuntu ? That is great. I mean McCain use Windows Vista Home Basic
and notepad 
) LOL Go Obama go.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Well, I ordered it already (nice joke).
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
So the image with a GDM login window is a fake. How becoming of Linux users. Why not remove it and close the issue?
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!
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.
This is interesting
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.
Just look here! Maybe it is true?
http://itmages.ru/view.php?action=view&id=2788&key=d31b7e
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.
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
Thank you for your post
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