Spanish Province Dist-Upgrades

Johnny Mnemonic writes "The Spanish province of Extremadura has adopted Linux for the official OS of schools and offices, largely because of price. Simply, they don't have enough money for other OSes, and they promise to handle the rollout more gracefully than a similar Linux initiative in Mexico. According to Wired, this is the first time a European school system has switched to Linux."

Comments

Use the AOL strategy

[fungus]

The government has burned 80,000 CDs with the Debian Linux operating system and software ranging from text editors to an Internet browser. The disks will be sent to the area's 670 schools and distributed to the public through newspaper inserts.

1- One could send millions of CDs, containing an idiot proof linux system, to every computer owners and in computer stores. Add on it a free access to the internet for X months with a random isp, and configure it to be the easiest to use as you can.

2- ???

3- profit.

It would make Linux SO popular!

Re:What's most interesting...

[yintercept]

It's the Free Beer loving software pirate that lives within deep within the Spanish psyche that's driven them to OSS.

Isn't it the same pirate spirit that attracts most /. users to Linux. My bet is that a third of the /.ers have a parrot sitting on their shoulders as they hack, a tenth have a false eye earned in MUD challenge, and a good 70% say "har" when they think a post is funny.

A hardy and light hearted bunch they be. But if ye break the prirate code (GPL) then to to plank with ye mateys.

Re:I hope they've considered all of the

[Anonymous Coward]

Join the Great Slashdot Blackout [slashdot.org] April 21-27

You are aware that today is the 21st, right?

Re:Just a minor correction...

[xanadu-xtroot.com]

Extremadura is an autonomous community

WOMAN: I didn't know we had a king. I thought we were an autonomous collective.
DENNIS: You're fooling yourself. We're living in a dictatorship: a self-perpetuating autocracy in which the working classes--
WOMAN: Oh, there you go bringing class into it again.

Re:bilingual?

[glwtta]

Why on earth do you need to read source code to be a sysadmin? Hell, our sysadmin can barely read at all, and the place is still running. Are you like the FUD consumer of the year?

Not good

[sanity_slipping]

This isn't necessarily a good thing.

Sure, it may seem like a good thing now, but you just wait five years, when suddenly all of the good Linux jobs will be taken by those darned Spanish!