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Spanish Extremadura Moving 40,000 Desktops To Linux
jrepin writes with this quote from a post at the European Commission's JoinUp site:
"The administration of Spain's autonomous region of Extremadura is moving to a complete open source desktop, replacing the current proprietary desktop platform, confirms the region's CIO, Teodomiro Cayetano López. The IT department started a project to install the Debian distribution on all 40,000 desktop PCs. 'The project is really advanced and we hope to start the deployment the next spring, finishing it in December.' The project makes it Europe's second largest open source desktop migration, between the French Gendarmerie (90,000 desktops) and the German city of Munich (14,000 desktops)."
As a taxpayer I'd prefer my tax money to go towards supporting lean security-hardened Linux distros (with some genuine potential for overall cost savings) rather than licenses for the latest Microsoft desktop OS, Exchange servers etc. This ought to be good news for taxpayers long-term regardless of how the economy is doing now.
oh don't be such a party pooper.
The GP has a point. The Linux desktop went nowhere. 40K desktops in Spain, 14K in Munich and 90K by the French police are by themselves respectable numbers. But when you take the perspective that:
one needs to reckon that, yes, we may all use Linux at home and some even at work (I do) but the Linux desktop never made it anywhere close mass market presence.
If I want to buy a high-quality laptop withOUT paying for an OS license that I am not going to use, the situation is as dire today as it was 10 years ago.
It's only the service nations which are going broke. Those with quasi-socialist governments which own or heavily sponsor manufacturing are doing very well - from Germany to China. Those which have steered to the right, consistently eschewing investment in manufacturing and scaling back the welfare state (which, from an economic PoV, keeps people in sufficient health and education that they can remain productive as long as possible) to create a non-productive underclass, such as Spain and Italy, are pretty much fucked. England and the US had a hope thanks to heavy research, heavy+specialised manufacturing and investment portfolios, but Cameron/Brown and Obama/Bush have been making sure to destroy our remaining self-worth and finish the job Reagan and Thatcher started.
Linux should be supported from a socioeconomic PoV not because its initial licence cost is cheap but because it removes the strangehold of those who would create imaginary property and other artificial scarcities - the worst of which are the trade arranagements which make it artificially cheaper to manufacture in countries half way across the world with barely any human rights and/or protections.