Roberto del Puerto, director of the state office of information technology, told the daily that Cuba already has about 1,500 computers using the Linux system, a free operating system whose technical data is open for public viewing.

Del Puerto said his office was working on a legal framework that would allow the replacement of the Windows system.

Although Windows is used on about 90 percent of the world's personal computers, some governments and large organizations have switched to the free Linux system or have threatened to do so to get discounts.

Linux was developed by Finnish computer scientist Linus Torvalds based on the Unix operating system.

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