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

bilingual?

[CmdrTaco (editor)]

I've wondered for quite some time now about the need for programmers to be bilingual, especially with things such as Linux. I know most of the documentation has been translated into various languages, but it is impossible to translate the actual code. So to be a sysadmin for a Linux based network, I would think you would need to know at least some English.

This brings up the point of cost. Sysadmins in Spain that are bilingual will probably charge a slightly higher fee than those that speak only Spanish. In my experiences, getting Linux running properly requires mucking about in .conf files and code and what not, whereas an MS box will essentially set itself with only the occasional button to press or box to check. I think the end result will be lower cost savings over other alternative OS's than previously predicted, although it will definitely still save them a significant amount of money over an MS "solution".