The Register: Open Source Puts Down Roots in Finland

“Some 400 IT managers and other decision-makers from throughout
Northern Europe explored the business climate, for GNU/Linux
specifically and Open Source generally, in Helsinki last week.
Government ministers as well as IT people from academia, large and
small businesses and even a monk listened and debated with some of
the leading lights of the GNU/Linux world. And The Register talked
to a couple of local success stories.

“Brother Viktor is from Valamo Monastery, the Finnish Orthodox
Church’s only monastery. Valamo is located in the midst of the lake
region of eastern Finland and supports itself chiefly through
tourism, hosting more than 100,000 visitors a year. It runs its
hospitality operations on Windows clients, but is in the process of
switching to Oracle on Linux.

“‘We began using Linux at the beginning of 1998,’ Brother Viktor
explained. ‘We run the usual stuff like firewall/router, web server
(including a web store) and email, with the main infrastructure,
and then also your typical disk and print sharing for Windows
clients, and of course the centralized backups.’ The conservation
laboratory also runs on Linux…”

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