German tax office moves to Linux

The tax authority in Lower Saxony, Germany, is migrating 12,000 desktops to Suse Linux and the open-source KDE desktop. The project is "one of the most important in the history of IT" at the office, according to the regional tax office in Hannover. The systems are moving from Sun Microsystems' Solaris x86 version 8, which the organization has been running since 2002.

The migration process has entered its peak phase, with 300 systems ported every day, said Eva Brucherseifer, president of the KDE community in Germany and managing director of consultancy BasysKom. Planning started two years ago; the actual porting started in April, and should be completed in September. For the full story on ZDNet UK, click here.

Peter Judge reported for ZDNet UK in London.