Slashdot Mirror
Rome Moving to Linux
fmstasi writes "La Repubblica, one of the main Italian newspapers, reports shortly about an interview (in Italian) with Mariella Gramaglia, Communication Councillor at the Municipality of Rome. They are planning to start soon trying Linux on the desktop: 'The first tests will concern e-mail, address book software and sharing systems', she says. The Councillor also says that motivations are political rather than economic: 'In the short term, the money saved on license will have to be spent on training'. It seems that there haven't been any reaction yet from Microsoft: 'At Microsoft they know how much we esteem them', she says; 'for example, they are sponsoring a campaign to spread the use of computers among the elderly. And we'll keep on cooperating with them on other projects'. Maybe Microsoft also appreciates that there is (yet) no project of migrating all the clients? The Municipality has about 9,500 clients, so an eventual migration project would be slightly smaller than the one taking place in Munich."
the link in the article is broken: this is the correct link
Very interesting.
Keep in mind folks, that it's a fine line we dance between Funny and Offtopic, because clearly, posted stories are serious things, and to have humor demands that there be something in the statement that is outside the expected line of discussion.
--Leo
I have no idea what you are referring to. But Linex is very much alive. You can download it here.
http://www.linex.org
And the distribution is actually very decent. I have also seen it widely used in schools.
Pragmatism as an ideology is not particularly pragmatic in the long term. Keep it in mind when you dismiss Free Software
The real question is why you, who appear passionately interested in this topic, have not provided any links with relevant background information.
I'm mildly curious, but the merely curious are lazy. Certainly I'm not sufficiently interested to sift through all the press releases and mailing list posts to actually find more than the first couple of nuggets of digestible information.
If you already know something about the project, you are much better placed than I to do a little background research. Go for it!
Miguel de Icaza has some interesting comments on the Extremadura deployment.
In fact, the success of LinEx is being so great that it inspired other spanish communities, so that in Andalucia they've got Guadalinex. In Malaga, Andalucia, there was recently an Open Source World conference. There, about 5000 copies were distributed. Further 100.000 copies of Guadalinex will de distributed in 2004. Free software is alive and well in Spain, thank you :) We didn't get the press because Ballmer didn't visit us to offer 90% discounts.
My journal. Mainly about freedom.
Well, since year 1870 the Municipality of Rome is part of Italy.
The City of Vatican is a small portion of Rome, not Rome itself. The City of Vatican is a separate Country and the Roman Catholic Church has nothing to do with the Municipality of Rome.
mic.
My flat mate usually uses Windows in Internet Cafes. When I gave her a login on my Slackware laptop (with almost every menu option gone and a simple "web" and "e-mail" set of icons) she didn't notice what operating system she was using, she's not even sure what an operating system is. She could browse the web and look at her PDF application form.
She did like the penguin themed desktop though.
Oh dear. Looks like it might be quite easy to 0wn the pope, then.
OTOH, the Vatican observatory use Suns. But then it's run by Jesuits, not directly by the Vatican.