The city of Vicenza, Italy is planning to switch its municipality’s computers’ OS from Microsoft Windows to Zorin OS, starting with a pilot run on a number of computers.

Zorin OS, a Linux distribution based on Ubuntu, offers a very familiar experience to the users of Microsoft Windows who wants to enter the world of Linux.

Zorin OS development was initially started by Artyom Zorin at 2008. It provides a powerful, yet flexible and easy to use system with a familiar Windows 7-like interface that can be changed to act and look like Windows XP, GNOME 2 as well. As of this moment, according to DistroWatch, Zorin OS is the 10th most popular Linux distro.

Zorin OS pilot program

The Zorin OS pilot program was inspired by another project at a school in the same city. Last summer, Albano Battistella, a volunteer parent, installed Zorin OS on the school’s old laboratory PCs and as the result, the school now have a reliable laboratory with 40 efficiently running PCs without any extra cost for upgrading the hardware. This journey on the path of open-source started a few years ago in Vicenza, at first only on the server-side systems and then eventually on PCs & Staff Workstations.

The Councillor for Simplification and Innovation at Vicenza’s municipality, Filippo Zanetti, earlier announced this pilot program. Zorin OS was selected because it allows the users an intuitive migration from Windows desktop environment and because of its speed and security measures.

And as Zorin OS is based on one of the most popular and well-maintained operating system – Ubuntu, it offers the stability that’s needed for the public administration of the municipality. After successfully completing the trial run, Zorin OS will gradually replace Microsoft Windows on all the 700 workstations, serving 895 employees of the municipality.

Continuing the trend

Italian cities have been a frontrunner in adopting open source software in the past as well. Stories of city municipals saving millions of Euro with Open Source switch is nothing new. In fact, various European cities have been opting for Open Source alternatives recently.

We, as a Linux enthusiast community, welcome this step of Vicenza towards the path of open-source and wish them a wonderful journey with Zorin OS. We hope that, in the upcoming time, like the city of Vicenza, more and more people will continue to embrace Linux and join the Open-Source movement.