Brazil's new PC Conectado plan will make Internet-connected Linux PCs affordable to poor households. Buyers will be able to pay just under $25/month for 24 months for a PC and Internet service; the Brazilian government expects up to 1,000,000 participants in the program by the end of the year. That's good news.
Obviously, this will be a big step for Linux on the desktop. Not to mention a model for many developing countries, who already beginning to look to Brazil on number of fronts. Of course, Microsoft and Brazil's opposition are trying to get them to use "Windows XP Starter Edition" for the developing world instead. Fortunately, Sérgio Amadeu, president of Brazil's National Institute of Information Technology, is uninterested in furthering the Microsoft monopoly with tax dollars. To my mind, that's good news too.
Brazilians are unlikely to be fobbed off with Microsoft's "Starter edition", which is crippled by reducing the number of programs users can run at the same time, limiting them to an 800×600 display, and not allowing home networking, printer sharing or multiple users. Linux distributions, on the other hand, allow users to do all these things.
Brazil, like other middle-income countries such as Thailand, is onto a winner with Linux.