"The poorest region of Spain has adopted Linux as the official
operating system of pulic schools and offices, in hopes of
improving the area's vast technological and economic lag.
"The move by the Autonomous Community of Extremadura, a rural
zone that borders Portugal, will mark the first time a European
public school system has switched to open source, said Luis
Millán Vázquez de Miguel, the community's minister of
education, science and technology.
"The government has burned 80,000 CDs with the Debian Linux
operating system and software ranging from text editors to an
Internet browser. The disks will be sent to the area's 670 schools
and distributed to the public through newspaper inserts..."