This month, Homebush Boys High School in Sydney will trial Novell Inc.'s Suse Linux Enterprise Desktop (SLED) 10 on 11 computers in the library, dual-booting them with Windows XP.

If the trial is successful, the school will look at doing the same for its entire fleet of about 250 desktops.

The school's desktop and server systems administrator Ryan Chadwick said the computers in the library are used for Internet searching and basic office work, so it "seems like a nice place" to trial SLED 10.

Novell support personnel will also go to the school to help set up the pilot project.

"Authentication and basic apps like OpenOffice and Firefox [will be used], but printing is something we are trying to figure out at the moment," Chadwick said. "Ideally we would like Linux so students won't play [Windows] games, which is an added bonus."