The Russian Ministry of Communications and Mass Media approved on Tuesday the prototype of a Linux based operating system scheduled to become Russia’s national OS.
The government plans to equip school and public administration computers across the country with the new OS, thereby saving considerable amounts in software licenses, Russian business daily Vedomosti reported.
The idea of creating a Russian analog of Windows came in the summer of 2010. A few months later, the project was included in the government’s Information Society 2011-2020 program with a budget of 490 million rubles, roughly $16 million, for the first two years.
In September, 2011, Pingwin Software won the tender to develop the OS prototype, having offered to complete the project for just 5 million rubles, or $160,000, well below the original price tag.
Pingwin was the first Russian company to join the Linux Foundation in March of this year. The company is linked to Mandriva, a French Linux based software publisher, through its shareholder NGI, which acquired a stake in both companies in 2010.
In another move earlier this year to develop open source software in public administrations, Russia adopted OpenDocument Format, or ODF, as the national standard for electronic document interface.
