The poorest region of Spain has adopted Linux as the official operating system of public 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.
Largely bypassed by the industrial revolution, Extremadura has pinned its hopes on the technological revolution.
"Making free software available -- that we've designed for use in an educational environment, but are offering to all citizens for personal or professional use -- is a key part of technological literacy," said Vazquez de Miguel.
The project was born out of the need for cheap, easy-to-use systems to equip the region's 32 technology centers, where citizens can take basic computer courses free of charge. The government estimates that free software will save the community about $7 million a year.

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