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January 24th, 2012, 17:31 GMT · By

Spain’s Extremadura Moves 40,000 PCs to Linux

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Teodomiro Cayetano López, Extremadura's CIO (Chief Information Officer), confirmed on January 23rd that the administration of Spain’s autonomous region will move all their desktop PCs to Debian Linux.

"The project is really advanced and we hope to start the deployment the next spring, finishing it in December." said Teodomiro Cayetano López in the press release, referring to the Debian distribution that will be installed on all 40,000 computers.

The Extremadura administration's computers will receive the same Debian Linux OS used by the region's
public health services and schools for about five years now, LinEx.

"That version gives us a good starting point to adapt Debian to the needs of a standard user and offer a light and secure desktop, compliant with the requirements of ISO and IEC 27001 IT security standards."

The installation of the Debian-based distro on all 40,000 computers will take about three months, during which it will also be prepared to be deployed on all the offices of the regional government, which will be completed in about one year.

"We aim to deploy the new desktop first in the headquarters off the Government, in Mérida, in a period of six months." says Cayetano López. After Mérida, the offices in Cáceres and Badajoz will be next to get the LinEx open-source operating system, followed shortly by the remaining small offices in Extremadura.

According to Teodomiro Cayetano López, migrating to an open source alternative is very important for the unification of all desktops of the civil servants.

Debian Linux offers a secure, easy-to-use, virus-free and totally free alternative to the Microsoft's Windows operating systems. "And of course, it needs to be free. Because our budget for this plan is of zero euros."

This is now classified as the second largest open source desktop migration project in Europe, between French Gendarmerie's 90,000 desktops and the 14,000 desktops of German's Munich city.

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READER COMMENTS:


Comment #1 by: dementonio on 25 Jan 2012, 07:58 UTC reply to this comment

What took them that long :-)

Comment #1.1 by: alfonz on 25 Jan 2012, 13:29 GMT

What about Macedonia 180.000 users.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ubuntu_(operating_system)


Comment #2 by: Sum Yung Gai on 25 Jan 2012, 15:28 UTC reply to this comment

I wonder how long it will take for the Microsoft lobbyists to show up with their wads of cash. "Hey, Extremadura folks, we noticed that your aunt/brother/nephew has this company. We're in the market for what they produce! Oh...we also noticed that you're moving to this Linux thing. How about we talk about coming back home to Microsoft?"

And if that doesn't work...then they'll resort to similar tactics that the music and movie MAFIAA used recently in Spain with the so-called "Sinde law".

Let's hope that the officials in Extremadura have the same guts that they have in Munich and stick to their current plans. Free Software is the great equalizer, and it's wonderful to see a government realizing that and acting on it.

--SYG

Comment #2.1 by: zalus on 25 Jan 2012, 16:37 GMT

Actually Extremadura does not migrate Windows to Linux, it migrate its own Linux distro (fork) to Linux Debian, because they have figured out that maintaining work with 14 Linux administrators is just too expensive and unproductive.


Comment #3 by: dtr on 25 Jan 2012, 17:02 UTC reply to this comment

If only more governments, schools, and businesses made the switch from MS, Hopefully these migrations to Linux is just the beginning.
Personally I just can't understand how governments in other countries can justify the cost, and rely so heavily on a US based company for their vital IT infrastructure.


Comment #4 by: TanKe on 25 Jan 2012, 17:15 UTC reply to this comment

I have heard that Linex was dead because of an restructuring of the new
goverment. Now they are planning to install linux to so many computers? I
don't understand the spaniards. Well... here in my country the total number
of industries, schools and goverment offices have never heard of linux...
¿ubuntu..? it can be eaten?


Comment #5 by: karori on 25 Jan 2012, 21:50 UTC reply to this comment

using catalan money


Comment #6 by: harrywwc on 27 Jan 2012, 23:18 UTC reply to this comment

The 2006 UN sponsored doco "The Codebreakers" http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dToGLZO_xWY shows Extremadura rolling out LinEx to their schools back then. Although getting a little old, it is a "must see" documentary for FOSS advocates.

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