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Extremadura, Spain: 80,000 Linux PCs

OS News reports on the state of Exremadura’s “Linex” project:

“With the goals of ensuring the accessibility of every citizen to the Information Society and promoting the digital literacy for everyone, both in urban and rural areas, they created what they call a “Regional Intranet” which consists of a big regional network with more than 1400 points with a bandwith of 2 Mgbps. In this way all the schools, health centers, hospitals, employment offices, etc. have a broadband connection to the Internet. Since every town in Extremadura has a school, they are also able to enjoy this high speed Internet service even in the smallest town of the region.

Another essential component of the network are the end user terminals. These were made from PCs running a localized version of Linux called Linex (compound word from LINux and EXtremadura) which they tailored to their specific needs and changing the name of the programs to more accessible ones to the people in Extremadura. For example, the Gimp image processing program was renamed to Zurbarán, a famous Spanish painter. Besides building one of the best known Linux distributions, Linex, they have achieved the amazing goal of having one PC for every two students in their schools. Yes, you read it correctly, one PC per two students.

In total they now have some 80000 desktop PCs running Linux. Of them, 66000 are in schools and education centers and the rest, 14000, are in other public administration buildings. Although not 100% of all Extremadura’s public administration departments have been switched to Linux desktops, this numbers certainly indicate that they are in the right path to reaching this goal.”

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