GNU/Linux Desktop Survival Guide
by Graham Williams
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GNU/Linux Desktop Survival Guide by Graham Williams |
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The Munich city government announced in June 2004 (see, for example, silicon.com), that its year-long trial had proved a success and the local government would migrate its 14,000 desktops to Linux over the next 4 years. Microsoft have since fought very hard to turn this decision around.
The Swiss taxation office distribute a CDROM with the open source office suite called Open Office. On the CDROM is an Open Office version of the Tax form. Tax payers fill in the form and lodge their returns electronically.
In June 2003, at the Net World Order conference, held at the CeBIT trade show in New York City, and sponsored by the Business Council for the United Nations, Bruno Lanvin from the World Bank said
These countries need cheap and efficient technology to make the giant leaps necessary to catch up with the rest of the world. Many are now using Linux, which looks to become the No. 1 operating system in China and India soon.
Spain's regional government of Extremadura announced in April 2002 (see, for example, Linux Weekly News) its LinEx project, a GNU/Linux distribution based on Debian with GNOME as its default desktop environment. Extremadura set itself the goals of creating conditions for wide-spread adoption of information technology and increase computer literacy among the citizens. However, their Microsoft solution was not possible because of license costs. So the Extremadura government turned to open source software and the government gave away the product CDs to government offices and schools. The Extremadura government announced an installed base of over 80,000 LinEx computers in schools and 33 computer centers for use by the general population.
Mexico City's municipal government announced plans in March 2001 (see, for example, Wired News) to move to the Linux operating system and ``to use the money it saves to fund social welfare programs.''
