El Pais on 9 September quotes Mar Moreno, an adviser at the ministry of Education of the region, who explains that the laptop distribution is part of the central government's Edu 2.0 project. This project starts with 5th grade school students, however to get up to speed, Andalusia will including the 6th graders.
Distributing the laptops will cost more than 80 million euro, El Pais reports. "Each laptop will cost around 290 euro. The government has decided to configure the laptops with free software, using the operating system Guadalinex and other free applications." When they complete their studies, students will either be given the laptops for free or will be able to purchase them for a symbolical fee.
The Guadalinex plans were first announced in July during the Gran Canaria Desktop Summit. During this conference, the combination of the Akademy and Guadec open source desktop software meetings, Isotrol, a Spanish IT services provider, presented the prototype of the software and hardware that is going to be deployed in Andalusia.
Controversy
Spain's Prime Minister José Luis Rodriguez Zapatero's announcement in May to distribute about 450,000 laptops to schools in the country was criticised by his own party (PSOE). Zapatero wants these laptops to be fitted with Microsoft's proprietary software. However, Leire Pajín, the party's secretary said she wants these laptops to run only open source software.
More information:
Edu 2.0
Asolif
El Pais news item (in Spanish)
Earlier Osor item
09. 09. 2009
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