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Spanish Extremadura Moving 40,000 Desktops To Linux

Posted by Soulskill on from the influx-of-the-tux dept.

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)."

2 of 137 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Europe is broke , Linux to the recue by Mannfred · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

  2. Re:Undercosting much? by BlackCreek · · Score: 3, Insightful

    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:

    • -- these are the 3 biggest deployments of (desktop) Linux within the whole European Union public services,
    • -- AFAIK the only 3 very large ones,
    • -- in 2012

      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.