Why would it be a bad idea??
Free software is something which is good for the society.
Every individual gets benefited a lot.And one thing, people say its difficult to use a gnu/linux OS , but its false.The kerala govt is doing a good job by teaching gnu/linux to every student .

I think kerala govt had done a good job.My hats off to them
: )

Kudos to Kerala's Govt. The right way to teach IT is through free software. We have paid enough tax to Microsoft for hiding real computing from us. Finally the students would learn real computing and produce better software in future. This would finally allow India to gain IT independence which we do not have till date. Hope other states follow this too.

:-)

i agree that free software is a great idea for the next generation.

Perhaps the Indians now have the upper hand against the money hungry Americas

I am living in India since 3 years. (few kilometers from Kerala)
FYI, a standard salary is around 90 dollars/month.
As a CIO, I bought this month one M$ Visio Pro licence. Microsoft charged me ~400 dollars (using volume license discount !!).
So what's happening ? People usually pirate software...
So what do you prefer ? Learning Linux and respect software licenses or teaching to crack and pirate Microsoft software ?
Actually Microsoft is very happy with the second option because people can't use anything else that their software. I choose the first option.
When you say "By forcing the students to use only free software..." I think you miss the point. Education ministry made another choice : Shall I hire 1 teacher during 1 year or shall I buy some M$ product ?
And when the students are going back home, if they want to spend their parent's half an year salary to use these microsoft software... Well they "can" do it.
But please, do not ask the Kerala Govt to waste so much money...

zindabad linux , zindabad freeworld, zindabad opensource, ZINDABAD KERALA GOVT, ESPECIALL ZINDABAD EDUBUNTU

I visited many Engineering colleges in Kerala, for some talks, and found the attitudes of students and teachers very strange. I had done Engineering myself more than a decade ago and worked in companies in India, Europe and US and have used many flavors of UNIX, windows, and linux. People use all kinds of platforms abroad for solutions, leveraging the advantage of the best. But students in Kerala have been completely brainwashed and their thinking is polarized/politicised. More than being convinced about free software ideas, it is more anti-microsoft that they are fancy about. There was an instance where a student was being sarcastic about apps that do not work on Safari. He has not created even a single solution for anyone. Should he work on all major browsers if possible, for learning sake, at least! Does he know Safari's market share? There was a friend of mine who offered a solution to a famous Eng college, for free. They said they are planning to build it on their own, and it should be on Linux. It has been three years, and they could never get started. Kerala's problem is hipocricy+frog in the pool's thinking+I know what is the best attitude. The students are completely brainwashed, especially in Govt institutions. The unfortunate thing with brainwashed people is that they think what they do is right. You can never get them to think differently or out of the box. And where do they end up? Mostly in infosys, wipro or ustechnology. That saves them a bit, since they will train them in all kinds of stuff. Better say we strongly encourage you to learn free software and you are free to choose and learn whatever software you like, than making ironic statements.

I think the Kerala Govt has done a wise thing in choosing Linux to the exclusion of Windows. A country like ours cannot spend huge amounts of money on software. It is better to spend on uplifting our down-trodden people.
I have spent on and wept under Windows: where I became an expert on re-loading the OS after every bad-event . I am on Linux. Thank GOD for Linus Torvaald.
However what needs to be done is that those packages which are essential for working need to be collected and stored in a reliable storage repository for use, and to be documented for easy setting up of package-selections by users.
The ones that I think are necessary for essential progress, other than the easy to use Office Applications and a basic Internet accessibility are Simple programming language compilers and IDEs.
My choice would start with Basic and then C/C (because that's what I have worked with) but I understand there are others equally useful on the Linux platform. The user should know clearly what libraries to use and the storage locations and commands for invoking these and for "include" files.
For all software, the student should get to know how to find, install and uninstall these.
Each student should be encouraged to do simple but useful jobs on this platform on systems which are first set WITHOUT HAVING THE STUDENT TO DEAL WITH THE COMPLEXITIES OF PERMISSIONS, though if each stays within his/her home folder there should not be much problem. If student-testing is to happen it should be on simple basics and not some hi-flown program-writing only meant to impress (probably written by someone else).
Hope this helps.