Spanish Extremadura Moving 40,000 Desktops To Linux

jrepin writes with this quote from a post at the European Commission's JoinUp site: "The administration of Spain's autonomous region of Extremadura is moving to a complete open source desktop, replacing the current proprietary desktop platform, confirms the region's CIO, Teodomiro Cayetano López. The IT department started a project to install the Debian distribution on all 40,000 desktop PCs. 'The project is really advanced and we hope to start the deployment the next spring, finishing it in December.' The project makes it Europe's second largest open source desktop migration, between the French Gendarmerie (90,000 desktops) and the German city of Munich (14,000 desktops)."

Extremadura has done a lot for linux

[emj]

They have hosted codesprints and Debconf 2009 [debconf.org]. So this is really just a continuation of a long time of moving towards Linux. But I do not like the part where he says "Our budget for this is zero euros", that will not go well.

Re:Undercosting much?

[PeterBrett]

"And of course, it needs to be free. Because our budget for this plan is of zero euros."

Yep.

Can't see this blowing up in anyones face. (See: the ongoing ordeal and budget overruns of the Munich conversion)

Um, last time I checked (which was a couple of weeks ago) the Munich project was going extremely well.

Re:Undercosting much?

[Aloriel]

Don't be an idiot, Extremadura developed and deployed Linex, massively deployed in every single public (high)school in Extremadura; they know how to do it and what it costs.

A few clarifications

[lufo]

Please allow me to make a few clarifications on the subject, because there are some additional facts related than can be missed if you didn't read TFA and TF(Spanish Newspaper)A linked by TFA:

• Extremadura became pioneer in Free SW creating their own Debian-based distro 9 years ago, LinEx (Linux Extremadura)
• They implanted a PC every two school students (primary education, up to 13 yr) region-wide running LinEx, appart from the Regional Administration
• Now they're closing the LinEx development project, handing it to a national-level (rather than regional)
• The information is based in a 2011-12-31 statement by the regional CIO, saying they're migrating from LinEx to "pure" Debian as LinEx is orphaned
• I've tried to find additional info (like planning, additional commentaries, etc) in newspapers, the official regional citizen-info site, etc. on the subject but I've found nothing
• I've found some statements from LinEx project (now ex-)workers but these statements where just suppositions
• Regarding to a HW and UEFI related comment I've seen, I don't think they will replace any hardware, they will just migrate the OS in those systems already owned by the regional administration

Re:Undercosting much?

[kamapuaa]

It's been nine years and more money than budgeted and they've converted 65% of the computers. The idea of converting to Linux is still so strange and uncommon that an autonomous region of Spain considering the same move nine years later is Slashdot-worthy news. It sounds to me like a huge failure.

Re:Europe is broke , Linux to the recue

[lucidlyTwisted]

They're not moving to Linux though, they are simply moving from a customer Linux distro (called "Linex") to Debian, purely because they were finding maintaining their own distro too much of an overhead.

Re:Typical misleading summary

[lufo]

I don't know what the automated translation looks like, but I can tell you that

a) LinEx was not a "ridiculous incest", it made sense big time and also was more than just the distro, they put a free-software-based-PC every two under-13 school kids, they put the same PCs in every public library in the region ("Nuevos Centros del Conocimiento", New Knowledge Centers), they created elder-persons computer-literacy programs and more...

b) how can they "suck in public money" if they were the very public administration? They stopped giving away public money to (US) private companies, and created a public entrerprise to create a public-interest, publicly-available, free-as-in-beer-and-also-as-in-speech region-wide computer network with public access to the internet.

Re:A few clarifications

[lufo]

It was done some years ago: in 2002 they bought 70.000 PCs and put the first 50.000 one for every 2 high-school students (so my first information was wrong, it's not under 13 but 13 to 17 years old) and the remaining 20.000 for primary education (under 13 yo.)

Here is a blog entry (in Spanish) from 2009 in which one of the responsibles comments on the conversion of the original PCs into thin clients:
http://www.itais.net/2009/01/26/reutilizando-70000-ordenadores/ [itais.net]

Re:Europe is broke , Linux to the recue

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, only the computers in schools, high-schools and public health services work with Linux (at classrooms we used Linex some years ago, Debian-Edu last years and Debian squeeze this year). But we have many computers at offices working with Windows XP, 9x and W2000. These are the computers that are going to migrate.

The changing name from Linex to Debian is provoked by a political change (progressives lost, conservative won) not for maintaining troubles. The brandname Linex was associated to the progressive party, so the new party doesn't want it around. Linex was Debian with Artwork packages and some selected programs. You can do the same without the Artwork packages.

Re:Undercosting much?

[gerddie]

Not in Europe, but The Worlds Largest Linux Desktop Deployment: 500,000 Seats and Counting [linuxfoundation.org] in Brazil should count for something.