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Spanish Region Goes Entirely Open Source

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the build-it-and-they-will-come dept.

greengrass writes to tell us TechWorld is reporting that the Spanish region of Extremadura has decided to go completely open source with their day-to-day operations. While the region has long been a supporter of open source software, within a year it will be a requirement that all officials use the ODF and PDF formats for all documents. From the article: "Extremadura, Spain's poorest region, made headlines following a 2002 decision to migrate about 70,000 desktops and 400 servers in its schools to a locally tailored version of Debian called gnuLinEx. The government has estimated that the total cost of this project was about 190,000 euros (£130,000), 18 million euros lower than if the schools had purchased Microsoft software. "

3 of 219 comments (clear)

  1. Vista makes it worse, actually... by jkrise · · Score: 4, Interesting

    What exactly do schools look for in "Computer curriculum"? Most I know only look for a browser, a HTML editor and some presentation s/w on the clients side. The servr side is mostly some Courseware s/w - Moodle or Drupal; LDAP; Centralised File System etc.

    There has been no incentive for schools to upgrade from Windows 98, indeed many schools near me have about 80% of their systems running Win98, and the students are quite happy with what they're getting. There's absolutely no incentive to upgrade to WinXP (although a RAM upgrade might allow XP to run).

    Schools in fact have every reason to ask Microsoft WHAT EXACTLY they get in return for Big $$ they need to shell out in MS upgrades. If they switch (the servers are already on Linux) the clients also to Linux, schools will have absolutely zero incentive to upgrade to Vista.

    --
    If you keep throwing chairs, one day you'll break windows....
  2. Simple math by orzetto · · Score: 5, Interesting
    The government has estimated that the total cost of this project was about 190,000 euros, 18 million euros lower than if the schools had purchased Microsoft software.

    Good argument for GNU, Linux and open source in general with your boss: cuts your software costs by 98.9%. Finally someone puts an official number on this.

    --
    Victims of 9/11: <3000. Traffic in the US: >30,000/y
  3. And now for the gaming version..! by STDOUBT · · Score: 4, Interesting
    http://juegalinex.linex.org/

    Here you can find the "home-user" version.
    And here (PDF Warning!!),
    https://www.linux-magazine.com/issue/64/Linux_Maga zine_DVD.pdf
    you can read an English language article describing this special
    home version called JuegaLinex (Play LinEx).

    It gives an option at install-time to d/l nvidia or ati 3D drivers.
    I put this on a 800mHz mini-itx box for my niece and nephew--
    They loved it!
    (You can easily localize this version to English)
    Many educational apps and a ridiculous number of games!
    I recommend to try it on any small people you may know.