140,000 Linux Machines in China
Anytime they do something in China, the numbers involved are large. Linux installations are no different; Sun Wah Linux has won a deal to supply 141,624 Linux PCs to primary and secondary schools in Jiangsu Province by the middle of next year.
“Sun Wah Linux will install RAYS LX, its Debian-based Linux workstation distro, as the default operating system on the desktop PCs. According to Minou Nguyen, a U.S.-based Sun Wah Linux spokesperson, although the project at one time specified Microsoft Windows as the desktop OS, Sun Wah “managed to turn these desktops into dual-boot machines with RAYS LX as the preferred loading OS.”
“The RMB $346.2 million (USD $42.7 million) award, funded in part with Chinese Ministry of Eduction subsidies, will mostly assist schools in lower-income urban districts of Jiangsu Province — a densely-populated area that includes the lower Yangtze River plain and the western approaches to Shanghai. The deployment is part of China’s School-to-School Project, which aims to connect 90 percent of the nation’s public schools to the Internet by 2010.”