Beowulf is a project which was started in 1994 for the Earth And Space Science project at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center. Obviously, the project succeeded. The Beowulf project has since expanded into the Beowulf Consortium, comprised of 27 research laboratories and universities. While not as enormous as Scholar Net, nor as wild as a Beowulf cluster, the K12Linux project has similar hopes and needs. Unlike their Mexican counterparts, many American schools already have computer networks.
Interoperability is another area where Linux shines.
One Linux machine can simultaneously appear to be Windows NT, Novell Netware, Macintosh, and Unix. Linux is the perfect one-box Internet solution. Multnomah School District, here in Portland, was impressed. District officials are in the process of putting a Linux server in every school in the metropolitan county. Similar projects are popping up all over the world.