ALL school computers in South Africa could get free software if the government accepts a formal offer from Corel Corporation to provide the material. Company CEO Michael Cowpland has offered to provide Corel WordPerfect, for the Linux operating system, for each school computer, free of charge. He said that although the offer is free, it is not a scaled-down offering produced cheaply, but a full-featured package. Corel has entered discussions to provide schools in Mexico with the Linux version of WordPerfect after the government there recently announced it would install the Linux operating system throughout its educational system. The decision in Mexico will end the need for Microsoft’s relatively expensive Windows operating system — Linux is available free of charge.