Uruguay poised to make first governmental OLPC purchase, Oct 08, 2007

Uruguay's government this week announced the results of a study indicating that XO computers from the One Laptop Per Child project were a better value for the nation's schoolchildren than Intel's similar offering, the Classmate PC.

When Linspire 6.0 is released next month, it will include the fruits of the recently announced marriage between Linspire and Microsoft. Linspire CEO Kevin Carmony says he has been in talks with Microsoft for about a year and a half before reaching an agreement.

"Financial services companies have been early adopters of Linux. First we saw Wall Street firms begin using Linux, then banks and mutual funds. [Now] we see insurance companies beginning to Linux more broadly and we are seeing Linux used in progressively more critical deployments.

While there are several different distributions of Linux specifically aimed at educators and students, they are not all created equal. Most, however, bear striking similarities -- both in the basic code and in the assortment of software offerings bundled into the distribution. Though each flavor of Linux has its own pros and cons, that variety may actually work to a user's advantage.