After a request from the Union Ministry of Communications and Information Technology, the state government’s Information Technology department has decided to say goodbye to Microsoft Windows. According to a government order dated November 9, the IT department would use the BOSS (Bharat Operating System Solutions) operating system, which is a free and open source computer operating system developed by the National Resource Centre for Free/Open Source Software of India.

All systems of the IT department will use BOSS from Monday.

The operating system is Linux based and has been “endorsed by the government of India for adoption and implementation on a national scale.” It is available in almost all Indian languages including Tamil. Mr Santhosh Babu, IT Secretary to the government of Tamil Nadu told this newspaper that BOSS was a “very good operating system and costs next to nothing”.

“It is an open source software and has many advantages. It does not crash easily,” he said, adding that the BOSS software had also been installed in the laptops distributed free to students.

According to IAS Uma Shankar, since Linux updates itself, it never becomes obsolete. “It is stable and does not slow down your system. It also comes with lots of downloadable freebies and is completely secure. I have been using it for a decade now and find it very cool.” The IT department has also made recommendations to other departments of the Secre-tariat to install BOSS in their systems.