Linux gets a love letter from South Korea

The South Korean postal service is migrating around 4,700 desktop computers from Microsoft Windows to Linux.

The migration is expected to save the government-run organisation 850 million won (£450,000) per year, according to an article in The Korea Times last week. The computers, which are in 2,800 post office branches, are provided to allow the public to access the internet free of charge.

Korea Post also plans to be using Linux for its internet banking and payment system by the end of the year, according to the report.

The South Korean government has funded a number of open source initiatives over the last few years. In 2003, the government announced a plan to replace a significant proportion of proprietary software on PCs and servers with open source alternatives by 2007. Earlier this year, the government said it would provide more than £1.5m to government agencies to encourage them to adopt open source software.

South Korea is also part-way through a massive rollout of open source software to schools. The project, called the National Education Information System, plans to install a Korean-developed version of Linux in 10,000 schools across the country.

Ingrid Marson writes for ZDNet UK