NSW secondary school students could be issued $56 million worth of Linux-based laptops.

Jim McAlpine, NSW Secondary Principals' Council president, said the plan was to use non-proprietary software for the laptops, such as Edubuntu, the education version of popular Linux distribution Ubuntu.

In the package would be Open Office, Gimp for picture editing and the Firefox Internet browser. It means that students would also have access to thousands of other open source educational programs.

It seems that Microsoft has been overlooked in the rush to provide the laptops, as the government papers are only interested in Open Source software.