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Ecolo, a green political party in Belgium, is planning to complete its move to a complete open source desktop system by the end of 2011.

On the 220 workstations in its main office, it will gradually replace the underlying operating system to Ubuntu Linux, says Sebastien Bollingh, the party's ICT manager.
Ecolo decided to increase its use of open source software in 2000. "We started by changing the applications that did not change anything for the users, like the database and the website."

It then started using OpenOffice and other desktop applications, such as web browser Firefox and Gimp for handling images. The first users moved over to these applications in 2007, and a few began using Ubuntu Linux on a few workstations. "This way, we gave a few users a taste of how to use this desktop."
"We are identifying power users that are able to use OpenOffice and got them starting the switch to ODF (Open Document Format) files. Their use of ODF is enticing the others to start using OpenOffice whenever they need to work with a ODF document, and this results in a gradual increase of OpenOffice."
According to Bollingh's experience, users have a hard time to switch to a Linux desktop. "They are used to a certain way of working, and it is really hard to get them to change their habits."