Traveling in Spain recently, I came across the audacious free software
project, LinEx, sponsored by Extremadura, an autonomous region
(state) in western Spain. Here's a story about it from the
Washington Post.

The web page for the gnuLinEx project is here, including
a link that enables on to download gnuLinEx for your personal
use.

As Bruce Sterling writes of about Extremadura,
in Wired, "this quaint haven has suddenly become a bastion
of Tux the Penguin. Extremadura has gone whole hog for free
software: ¡Software libre para la libertad! Its government has
minted some 80,000 CDs to marinate the populace in Linux.
Social workers carry the latest open source code to remote schools,
municipal offices, and city-funded ISPs. Thanks to Juan Carlos Rodríguez Ibarra,
the left-wing academic who became regional president and has
dominated local politics for the past 20 years, the Global Project for
the Development of the Information Society aims to give every resident
access to the knowledge gathered by humanity throughout history."

My thanks to my Spanish colleagues Javier Bustamante and Andoni Alonzo
for alterting me to this wonderful development.