Tamil Nadu, an Indian state with a population of 62 million, will be deploying over 32,000 state computers running OpenOffice.org and Linux.

“We have already dispatched 6,500 Linux systems to village panchayats and another 6,100 Acer desktop systems with Suse Linux operating systems are on their way. We are procuring 20,000 desktop systems for schools, which will run only on Suse Linux…” Mr Umashankar told this newspaper. He said all the ELCOT servers were on Redhat Linux and the government IT company’s 28-seat software development wing was fully on Suse Linux.”

Microsoft offered to cut its operating system prices by 90%, but they still could not match the cost of Linux-based systems, even before the cost of applications (MS Office vs. OpenOffice.org) was considered. And, lack of compatibility with ODF was another major strike against Microsoft Office’s suitability for Tamil Nadu’s needs.

In addition to all the technical and economic merits, politicians are providing high-level political support to the open source migration as well. It looks like a “perfect storm” of open source is hitting Tamil Nadu!

This entry was posted on Wednesday, January 10th, 2007 at 8:36 am and is filed under GNU/Linux, ODF, Open Source, OpenOffice.org. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.