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Microsoft Alternative in Extremadura, Spain

Posted by timothy on from the penguins-come-in-all-sizes dept.

grylnsmn writes "The Washington Post today has a front page article talking about how the Extremadura region in Spain is converting all government offices, businesses, and home from Windows to Linux. The article talks of their problems last spring and how the community banded together to solve them. "But the glitches are more an annoyance, [Ana Acevedo, who heads one of the government's document-processing units] said, than a hassle. 'It's mostly very tiny things,' she said." Overall, this is an important testbed for localities all over the world who are looking at making the switch. Overall, a very good and balanced article." Update: 11/03 20:37 GMT by T : Headline misspelled "Extremadura" as "Extramadura" -- fixed now.

6 of 296 comments (clear)

  1. The heading is wrong by RinzeWind · · Score: 4, Informative

    It's "Extremadura", not "Extramadura".

  2. Re:Redundant by IamTheRealMike · · Score: 5, Informative
    OK, is Slashdot now poting a story every time somebody installs Linux? This is getting ridiculous. We understand that more people are using Linux now. This stopped being news several years ago.

    This isn't somebody. This is over 100,000 machines with 10,000 switched already. I don't recall ever hearing about such a large OS conversion ever. This is news.

  3. Re:Redundant by Phouk · · Score: 5, Informative

    You obviously didn't read the article.

    Already, Vazquez de Miguel said, more than 10,000 desktop machines have been switched, with 100,000 more scheduled for conversion in the next year. [...] Organizers called their version "Linex," combining the names of Linux and Extremadura. The software has become so popular that it has been downloaded more than 55,000 times from www.linex.org by people outside Extremadura.

    This is a bit different in orders of magnitude from just "somebody installing Linux", isn't it?

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  4. Re:Look at the picture by Hektor_Troy · · Score: 3, Informative

    Ehm ... in a word:

    No.

    Linux is a kernel. Windows is an entire operating system.

    Add a bunch of various GNU/BSD/Whatever programs, and you end up with something, that sometimes are better than Windows, and sometimes with something that isn't.

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  5. Re:Heh Heh by sconeu · · Score: 4, Informative

    I haven't seen in any Linux distribution yet is no cost, easy to install security patches.

    Two words: Mandrake Update

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  6. Re:the biggest problem by pe1rxq · · Score: 3, Informative

    You can hot plug/unplug usb devices with any recent kernel that supports usb..... I'm pretty sure the same can be done with firewire.
    ACPI has nothing to do with this.

    Jeroen

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