| Japan may migrate 400,000 Windows school desktops to Linux |
Mar. 08, 2007
Japan's public broadcasting network, NHK, reported late last week that the Japanese Ministry of Economy, Trade, and Industry plans to introduce Linux for use within classrooms across the country in the near future, according to Japanese non-profit educational website Gyaku.
Japan has been considering Linux for use in its schools since 2004, Gyaku noted. An investigation conducted in Spring 2006 found that more than 400,000 computers at schools in Japan were running on Windows 98 or Windows ME -- systems no longer supported by Microsoft. The cost of replacing these machines with newer models, as well as the rising price of proprietary software, prompted teachers and administrators to propose switching to open-source software, Gyaku said.
Last week, Gyaku said, about 2,000 government officials, teachers, and education board members from across the country gathered in Tokyo for a conference they called "E-squared Revolution." The conference was organized through a government-sponsored group called the Center for Educational Computing (CEC) to discuss switching from unsupported and out-of-date versions of Windows to Linux. According to Gyaku, the CEC claims that it will make Linux documentation and software available for download from its website.
Gyaku is a nonprofit media project whose name means "contrary" or "opposite" in English. It strives to tell the "other sides of the story" in the news: stories involving the helpless, the invisible, the disconnected.
To read the full story, go to Gyaku's website, here.
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