"If we're running the dual environment I expect the management cost to be more, but it should be minimal if everything works as it's supposed to," he said.

The school won't be upgrading to Windows Vista as soon as it is available, because "it doesn't seem to offer us any major advantages."

"It's meant to be more stable, but once you lock XP down there is no real advantage," he said. "In a school where a majority of machines are one year old it's not like we can just drop Vista on our machines anyway."

A source familiar with the department's IT strategy, who requested anonymity, said a lot of Linux desktop work is being done "under the radar" with the hope successful implementations can be "sold to others."

"We will work together to see how Linux could be used in education and training," he said. "Then use that as a lighthouse, but it goes against corporate regulations."