A German state North Rhine-Westphalia has recently signed a major contract with Novell for the supply of Linux server and desktop products to 33 universities. Novell has been selected for the supply of IT infrastructure. Novell already supports 300,000 students in the states of Bavaria and Thuringia. It's however not clear how many of the students actually will use the desktop Linux software.
The larger North Rhine-Westphalia contract will lead the region's universities using Novell's Suse Linux Enterprise Desktop 10, along with Suse Linux Enterprise Server, Novell Open Enterprise Server, Novell Identity Manager and Novell ZENworks. Forty percent of all German students now use and rely upon Linux systems. Novell has said that the universities chose its Linux offerings to deliver cost savings and flexibility, while avoiding vendor lock-in. The city of Amsterdam, along with nine other cities in the Netherlands, are going for major Linux-adoption trial. Amsterdam wants to reduce the amount of Microsoft software it uses by implementing free, open-source software. The city governments of Vienna and Munich are currently developing their Linux platforms. However, the Birmingham City Council believes that Microsoft-based platform is cheaper than that of Linux.
