Birmingham City Council is converting the PCs used in
its 40 libraries to Linux as part of a year-long trial of the open
source operating system.
The council - the UK's largest - has commissioned an independent
auditor to assess whether the trial demonstrates that using Linux
and open source software represents better value than using
Microsoft alternatives.
Birmingham is trialling Linux on more than 500 PCs as part of
the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister's E-Innovations project to
test open source in the public sector.
The PCs will be equipped with the Gnome presentation layer of
the Linux operating system, the Openoffice productivity suite and
Mozilla's Firefox browser.
The local authority has kept IBM's Lotus Notes 6.5 on the
500-plus desktops because library staff need to remain within the
council-wide e-mail system.
Les Timms, Birmingham City Council's IT manager with
responsibility for the open source trial, said, "The next phase of
the project is to do a detailed study on the cost base, the
long-term viability and how it integrates with our existing
structure and security."
The IT department chose Linux using the Gnome presentation layer
after inviting both library staff and members of the public to try
desktops using different operating systems and presentation
layers.
Timms said, "We had Mac, Microsoft Windows and best-of-breed
open source configurations, including KDE and Gnome. We had 300
people using the PCs. The one they preferred was Gnome."
The Linux trial will run until the end of March 2006.