1-Brazil

  • Ministry of Education has bought 3000 Debian Linux computers to be installed in rural schools. This purchase adds up to the previous 90,000 Debian Linux computers to be installed in 9000 schools, an average of 10 in each school. (2007)
  • Ministry of Cities fully operates on Linux, with Microsoft no where in sight.
  • The government launched a PC program called “PC Conectado“, the PC’s are low cost and has Fenix Linux pre-loaded. Although admittedly, a big percentage of these PC’s are turned into Windows through pirated versions.


2-Germany

  • Linux has officially won 14,000 municipal desktops in Munich. This deal went through despite Microsoft’s attempt to dissuade the mayor of Munich, it has been reported that Steve Balmer even cut his ski trip short to give the Mayor a personal visit :D
  • This might be old news and I really don’t know what is the status of this project, but back 2002 Germany has signed a deal with IBM to facilitate the migration to Linux in state, federal, and local governments by offering discounts on hardware and support on Linux supported products.

3-Austria

In 2005 the city of Vienna has chosen a customized version of Debian Linux dubbed Wienex as the official alternative of it’s 18,000 PC’s. It’s up to the individual to choose between the two OS’s though.

4-Spain

The regional government of Extremadura developed it’s own distro called LinEx . LinEx is intended to be used in all schools and official institutions. The whole region is investing heavily into Linux especially the education sector with around 700,000 PC’s and 400 servers running Linux! Here a picture (or video) is worth a thousand words:

5-China

State owned Industrial and Commercial Bank of China (ICBC) is using Linux in it’s 20,000 branches servers. ICBC serves around 100 million individuals and 8 million corporate accounts! And that was back in 2005, one would expect larger numbers now especially with China’s mind boggling growth rates! The bank has been granted a site licence and front-end applications based on Turbolinux 7 DataServer.

6-France

The French Parlimant switched to Linux in 2007! 1,154 French parliamentary workstations are running on Linux, with OpenOffice.org productivity software, and Firefox as a Web browser.

7-India

The Indian Judiciary is moving 15,000 desktops to Free Open Source Software (FOSS) according to the text of speech delivered by Indian justice Yatindra Singh on 9 July 2007 on the occasion of inauguration of the Allahabad High Court Website and launching of E-court project. Allahabad is a city of just over 1 million people located in the North Indian State if Uttar Pradesh. As if often the case with Free Open Source Software, the Indian Judiciary began this adoption to support local IT competence and to create local jobs:

We [the nation of India] lead in the information technology world. Expansion of open source will, not only create more jobs in the service sector (an area where we dominate) but also permit us to maintain our lead in the field of Information Technology. The step opens a new chapter in judiciary: it opens a new horizon; a new vista in information technology.

8-South Korea

Thousands of computers in ministries, government-linked organisations and universities in South Korea will replace the Microsoft Windows operating system and Office productivity suite with open-source alternatives under the plan, according to the country’s Ministry of Information and Communication. It is estimated that around 20% desktops software and 30% server software will be changed to open source alternatives according to a spokesperson from the Ministry of Information and Communication.

9-Peru

Peru has passed its law encouraging procurement of Free Software by the government. Please note that the law is about Free Software, not Open Source, as opposed to proprietary software, distinguished by license. Here’s an English translation published by the Asociación Peruana de Software Libre, and here is the law itself [PDF] (Source: Groklaw)

10-Russia

By 2009 ALL schools in Russia will be running Linux ! According Alexey Smirnov, Director General of the Company ALTLinux, most schools run pirated software, but with Russia joining the WTO laws have become stricter, and the cost of buying all that software? Well thats off the table! Ushering the way for FOSS!

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