Extremadura abandons its custom Linux distribution

Extremadura abandons its custom Linux distribution


The autonomous region of Extremadura in western Spain, which has
pioneered the use of open source solutions in public administrations
since 2005, has abandoned the development of its custom LinExSpanish
language link distribution. The Spanish newspaper Público reportsSpanish
language link that the project was abandoned after control of the Centro
de Excelencia de Software José de Espronceda, which was responsible for
the development of LinEx and other projects, was handed over to the
central Spanish government in Madrid. In May 2011, the Extremadura branch
of the Spanish Partido Popular (PP) party won the government elections in
the autonomous region.

The Debian-based LinEx Linux distribution is said to be in use on over
70,000 school and university computers and more than 15,000 health care
workplaces, but it is hardly used by other administrative bodies.
Developers who are familiar with the distribution have pointed out that
there is now virtually no difference between LinEx and the Debian
standard distribution, because LinEx developers have introduced upstream
code into the Debian project and have contributed to the Debian Edu
project.

There is no consensus among developers on the significance of the LinEx
project's abandonment. Some say that discontinuing the custom
distribution does not mean that the strategy of using as much free
software as possible will be abandoned; according to these developers,
there are even plans to migrate further Windows systems to free software.
Others fear that the abandonment of the LinEx project is the beginning of
a deliberate political plan to abandon the free software strategy
altogether.

Extremadura isn't the only public administration to discontinue the
development of a custom Linux distribution. In May 2011, the German
government said that among the reasons for migrating the German Foreign
Office's Linux systems back to Windows were the high maintenance costs of
the custom Linux distribution.

http://www.h-online.com/open/news/i...ts-custom-
Linux-distribution-1402780.html



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