This is not the first time they have used Ubuntu

Dec 19, 2014 15:52 GMT  ·  By

Linux systems are becoming more and more popular, not to mention easier to use. The direct result of this is that the public sector has started to take notice. In Slovakia, for example, Ubuntu has been used in the recent elections.

One of the main features of Linux systems is definitely security and that might be the main reason for choosing it, especially in a sensitive domain like the elections. Another major advantage is that Linux is usually open source and that helps city administrations, governments, and other public structures to save a lot of money.

The government in Slovakia could have chosen a proprietary solution for the election process, but they wanted to give open source a chance. Configuring the operating systems to work in a certain way that would ensure the security of the voting process was easy enough and the entire procedure was painless. It's probably safe to say that they will most likely make the same choice in the future.

Ubuntu used in elections is something new

One of the favorite pastimes of the Ubuntu community is to see their operating system being used in all sorts of interesting places, like NASA or in a film. This time, it's being used by The Slovak Republic’s Bureau of Statistics mostly like thin client, something that is not usually done.

"The Bureau of Statistics booted Ubuntu Linux from a USB key. The agency created its own customised version, specifying hardware drivers, configuration scripts and security settings. The selection includes a few desktop applications, including a web browser (Chrome) and the LibreOffice suite of office productivity tools. The PCs only used the USB key: hard drives and other storage media in the PC were physically disconnected," said Štefan Tóth, director general of Informatics Section at the agency.

He also explained that it was not the first time that the Bureau of Statistics used open source."We use Linux to run our application servers, and our good experiences here convinced us to also use this operating system for the election PCs."

Interestingly enough, this information was published by the Slovakian press and by joinup.ec.europa.eu, which is the official web portal of the European Commission. The Bureau of Statistics used Ubuntu 12.04 LTS on more than 500 computers and it looks like that number is ever increasing.

Linux systems are on the rise and they are finally making an impact. The difficult economic times forced the public sector to look for alternatives to proprietary software that would provide the same kind of functionality for a fraction of the price. It's needless to say that they found much more than they wanted.

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