It has been a couple of bad weeks for Microsoft as more anti-Volish governments have been announcing successful open source operations.
Last week we had the British cabinet office moving away from Microsoft’s open document standard, and this week we have the Spanish praising Linux.
The government of the autonomous region of Valencia (Spain) has been waxing lyrical about Lliurex, a customisation of the Edubuntu Linux distribution.
Lliurex is used on more than 110,000 PCs in schools in the Valencia region, saving some 36 million euro over the past nine years, the government says.
The Lliurex distribution is managed through the Ministry of Finance and Public Administration. During installation, users can choose between several variants, tailored for example for use at home, in schools or by small and medium-sized enterprises.
Sofia Bellés, Director General of the region’s Information Technologies Department said that the new version will ease maintenance and management of PC equipment in schools in the region.
The software has also been optimised to save time in creating PC labs and is allowing better control over printing, reducing printing costs.
Liurex is one of several free software projects used by Valencia. It is using LibreOffice, a free and open source suite of office productivity applications, is used on all the 120,000 desktop PCs of the administration, including schools and courts. Using LibreOffice will help save the administration 1.5 million euro per year, the government said last year.
Last week, the administration of Extremadura, another Spanish region, revamped the website of its Linex distribution, also used in schools. Linex is installed on about 70,000 PCs and laptops in schools.
