I previously posted about governments around the world using Linux, doing research on such topic was really insightful. But one example stood out more than any other, and that’s no other than the Spanish region of Extremadura. Extremadura’s migration to Linux is quite remarkable, especially that it is fully backed up by the local government. The whole case really intrigued me, so I decided to explore more about this region’s Linux escapades. I sat down with a lead developer of the project Daniel Campos, and had the following discussion.

"...RTVE, Spain’s national public TV network, claimed Gates was referring to a successful pilot project in schools in the region of Extremadura.

"...Cáceres, Extremadura, Spain, 12 December 2008 - The Debian Project, the team behind the free Debian GNU/Linux operating system, confirmed the dates and venue for its next annual conference, DebConf 9..."

After almost two weeks in the Spanish province of Extremadura, the free project Debian appears satisfied with the outcome and promises the next release “Squeeze” will benefit from the meeting.

"Guardabarranco is the national bird of Nicaragua. It’s also the name of a public school that migrated to GNU/Linux back in 2005.

Nationwide, 175 public schools have computer labs, but only Guardabarranco uses Free Software. Their choice of distribution was GnuLinEx, based on Debian GNU/Linux and developed by the government of Extremadura, Spain..."

"Right now, some Debian Developers (and also not yet Developers, like me:), are on the work sessions in Extremadura, I am on the QA and release teams meeting..."

The administration of the Italian city of Bologna has almost completed its move to OpenOffice. Most of the 3600 PCs now run this open source suite of office applications. The administration is planning to move more applications to open source, aiming to become less dependent on specific IT vendors.

I put a lot of stock on the ability to do an in-place upgrade of my Linux/Unix desktops. And regarding upgrades from one distribution to another, Debian is supposedly one of the best. You always hear about those hard-core geeks who have been running the same box since Potato, dist-upgrading all the way to whatever the current stable or testing distribution is at any given moment.

This tutorial shows how you can set up a Linux Mint Debian 201009 desktop that is a full-fledged replacement for a Windows desktop, i.e. that has all the software that people need to do the things they do on their Windows desktops. The advantages are clear: you get a secure system without DRM restrictions that works even on old hardware, and the best thing is: all software comes free of charge.