New Zealand's Inland Revenue is testing Linux on a handful of its 7000 personal computers and expects to decide next year whether to become the first government department to take a big punt on open source desktop software.

The department has signed an umbrella contract with Novell that sets out the terms and conditions on which it can buy the SuSE distribution of Linux as well as a range of proprietary Novell software products. These include NetWare and ZenWorks, which it uses to handle email and project management.

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