Hyderabad: Engineering students who are tired of installing and uninstalling various software pertaining to their course of study can now hope to breathe easy.

A new “free software Operating System” developed by ‘e-Swecha´, a variant of Linux--a popular open source OS, promises to solve their problems concerning the installation and uninstallation of software for the purpose of study.

Richard Stallman, the founder of the Free Software Foundation and GNU Project, will launch the e-Swecha initiative, on Wednesday, wherein about 21,000 computers will see migration from present OS to e-Swecha across the state in the next one month, they said.

JNTU Hyderabad has already taken an initiative to promote the usage of free software in colleges and has stood by its word for transformation of the current OS to e-Swecha OS, they added.

Stallman said Kerala initiated the process of switching computers in its public schools to free software in association with Free Software Foundation of India.

“Nearly 700 high schools in Karnataka and about 400 in West Bengal have also switched over to free software, but nothing substantial had been done in AP, so far,” Stallman said.