Three schools in Kauniainen, a city just to the west of Helsinki, Finland, are now using Open Source, runing GNU/Linux distribution Ubuntu on 120 thin clients, providing access to 1200 users.
According to a case study published by the Finnish Centre for Open Source Solutions (COSS), the move to the Open Source system turned out to be easy for staff and students. "It took teachers about fifteen minutes to understand the system, students needed about ten seconds", COSS reports.
Staff and pupils were eager to work with the new system, since the old Windows-based environment had been causing too many problems. These old machines were often out of order and teacher were spending too much time trying to repair them.
Migration to the Open Source system was moreover completed in just one month, in August 2007. The Kauniainen city council had just a few months earlier decided to switch to Open Source for the Finnish schools in the mixed Finnish/Swedish city. It based its decision on a study that pointed to Open Source as the best solution for the schools.
The Finnish IT company Opinsys Oy is assisting the schools. It provides maintenance and, if necessary, will further develop the system. The schools use the Linux Terminal Server Project LTSP, using a central server to provide terminals with the Ubuntu GNU/Linux desktop. The schools also have some GNU/Linux bases multimedia PCs and a number of GNU/Linux based laptops, having transformed the former Windows machines.
The case study quotes one of the school directors, Riitta Rekirannan, as being very satisfied with the new system. Instead of spending money on software licenses, she says, the schools are paying for actual IT services.
According to the case study, the thin clients also result in significant savings on energy costs. The computers are switched of centrally, saving the schools some 15.000 euro per year.
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Further information:
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Case study (in Finnish)