No matter what else you may think of Hugo Chávez (probably bad if you get your information from the U.S. mainstream media, probably good if you get it elsewhere), it appears that Chávez and Venezuela understand both education and Linux.

As part of a plan to increase the digital literacy in Venezuela by distributing computers to schools, Venezuela made an agreement with Portugal to buy one million Classmate laptops. The agreement includes the creation of a factory in Venezuela to build the computers.

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez on Saturday ordered 1 million low-cost laptops from Portugal — one of several bilateral deals that Portuguese officials valued at more than US$3 billion.

The government is hoping to launch the first version of a "national operating system" for its computers as early as next year, a senior Communications and Press Ministry official said Thursday.

We have reported extensively about the Venezuelan government’s support of open formats in the area of information technology. But it was only recently that the National Center of IT (CNTI) made it mandatory for the public sector to use open formats (ODT, ODS, ODP, ODG).

"Speaking at the Second ODF Workshop in Pretoria, South Africa, yesterday, Carlos Gonzalez of the National Center of Information Technologies, announced that the Venezuelan government had formally adopted ODF as a standard for the ‘processing, exchange and storage of documents’.” Venezuela joins a number of other countries who have adopted this open standard, along with Brazil, Uruguay, Sout

Venezuela's government has migrated a total of 23 public institutions to open source platforms, the government said on its websi

The South American nation of Venezuela is the latest country to adopt the Open Document Format (ODF) as a national standard

Cuba's government is trying to shake off the yoke of at least one capitalist empire —Microsoft— by joining with socialist Venezuela in a program to convert its computers to open-source "free" software.