The government of Spain’s autonomous region of Extremadura has begun the switch to open source of it desktop PCs. The government expects the majority of its 40,000 PCs to be migrated this year, the region’s CIO Theodomir Cayetano announced on 18 April. Extremadura estimates that the move to open source will help save 30 million euro per year.
It is one of the world’s largest governmental projects to switch to an open source desktop operating system. It is Europe’s second largest governmental desktop migration, after the French Gendarmerie, which is migrating some 90,000 desktops. Europe’s third largest project is the German city of Munich, which has to date switched 13,000 PCs.